Baldur's Gate III - Spoiler Edition (please read updated OP)

New interview with Sven and WotC dude (Mike Mearls). Linking the reddit thread as it's contain a bullet points of what was said for people who don't want to spend 20 minutes listening to Sven...and beware of the rest of the comment in there.

The most interesting things coming from that interview: the game art style is what was shown in the trailer.

They had me at Mind Flayer. Oops, I mean illithid. But Mind Flayer sounds so much cooler!

I hate Illithids.

Anyhow, die BG player and modder here. Very skeptical on a non-Bioware company taking the reigns of a BG game. We'll see as more info is released.

What makes me a bit sad is that you wont be able to import choices from previous games and canon bhaalspawn will be Abdel Adrian instead of your own bhaalspawn. Of course it makes sense in a way but still... I love the feel of continuity.
Recurring characters sound good, though I doubt any of them will be companions. The game will be set half a century after BG1/BG2?

Edit. Actually more like 150 years after, I think?

All in all I am preparing for a disappointment, just in case.

Why do they have to make a canon Bhaalspawn? I find that possibly unnecessary at best, and actually disrespectful of the series fans (not to assume yet though) at worst.

Which is just a weird opinion to have given how silly Baldur's Gate 1 was.  Random stuff off the top of my head:

* Clicking on bears in the wilderness enough times made them say "That's a nice pickinick basket, BooBoo."
* Everything to do with Minsc
* Everything to do with Tiax
* Everything to do with Xan
* Talking a suicidal nobleman from jumping off a cliff by saying nothing but "Okay"
* Breaking into a house with a sleeping guy and meowing at him when he wakes up; when he sleepily insists he has no cat, you reply "I'm a stray," which he accepts and rolls over and goes back to sleep
* the silly lines that break the fourth wall that all party members utter when you click on them enough times
* any number of silly NPCs who serve no purpose but to be silly (One off the top of my head: some woman named Maple Aspen Willow or something who ranted about how much her parents loved trees)

And I could keep going.  It's a very silly game.  It got toned down in later games but never went away.

The "Quest Like No Other" from the Wish spell in BG2 much?  Which among other things had you recover a guy's prize gong that an ogre mage had been using to scoop cow poo from his prize cow that was suffering from diarrhea.

Deekin Scalesinger?

The list goes on.  

WotC made a canon PC Bhaalspawn 20 years ago.

Said character died along the other remaining Bhaalspawn in Baldur's Gate at the very start of 5e continuity to bring back Bhaal in 1482 DR. That heralded the second Sundering of 1484 DR which is the true start of e5 content. BG3 will start around ~10 years later (going by the existing 5e FR modules timeline). There is no way the character doesn't get referenced, even if it's just "10 years ago, the Blaahspawns fought and the winner rampaged in the city as the Slayer and once killed Bhaal came back, all of him".

That also means BG3 is set about ~120 years after the first two games.

I don't care about a canon Bhaalspawn as long as I can keep going back to the first two games and play a Bhaalspawn the way I want.

" A mind flayer begins life as a small, tentacled, tadpolelike parasite that invades the skull of a helpless humanoid victim, devours its
brain, and then subverts the body to its own use. Within a matter of days, it transforms the body it steals into an adult illithid, and all traces of the
creature’s former being are permanently extinguished. "

According to the Monster Manual ( 4th Edition )

I for one, hope to meet that Spectator Beholder from BG2 again.

Me too! I liked that there were monsters that you could bargain/reason with and which didn't instantly wanted to kill you. I also remember in Icewind Dale 2 there was an Illithid that lost some sort of magical item, and it asked you (begrudgingly) to retrieve it. It rewarded the player with a ring of protection +2 if I remember correctly. An honorable Illithid, pretty cool. 

About the spectator: 

I must have one ! For my toddler son of course

I always read the beholder's lines from BG2 in the telepathic voice of Gilbert Gottfried. Quite fitting imo 

You could also meet that Beholder in ToB, that is if you havent killed it in SoA