I fear that a trip to the Abyss would have a whole lot less dialog and a whole lot more Diablo style hack and slash. Which I believe would be a step backward for Baldur's Gate. Of course this may not be the case if proper steps were taken. Just my opinion.

The abyss is only one plane out of many full of intelligent and unintelligent life ripe for dialogue, combat, whatever. Adventuring entails a little bit of both. Plus Higher lvl authorities on those planes could make for interesting quests, new allies and enemies.

ie. Send a paladin and his/her party to destroy a demon lord(Not a pit fiend. The real deal!) bent on ruling on the prime material(earth) plane as well...

anyway having been a dungeonmaster and player for awhile on paper I've expirienced fun and challenging high lvl AD&D and look forward to it emulated in the virtual enviroment.

I'd like to see a BG3 set in Waterdeep, with your PC beginning to really make an impact on the real movers and shakers of Faerun ie. Elminster, Khelben, the Seven Sisters (or at least a few of them anyway), Halaster Blackcloak etc. Maybe you start of in Waterdeep, then move on to Undermountain, which has gates to so many outer planes - you would be battling tanar'ri and baatezu as well as ancient dragons, godly heralds like maruts, not to mention other Bhaalspawn. A possible plot might have you ultimately deciding to play TRULY evil and to become at least a Godson of Murder (like Iyachtu Xvim). You might start to have to start building a cult of personality with worshippers, etc to prepare yourself for this, start getting involved in politics and intrigue with the gods, godlings etc. None of the gods would actually have to DIE so that would support the forgotten realms setting. Or you could also go the good way and use your divinity for good - or you may take the ultimate humble way at the end and decide to give it all up for the good of Faerun, if chaos is really sown in your footsteps (to paraphrase Alaundo). And that would put a close to the BG series!!

Yay I found it. No ones replied to this in a while. There's a lot of essay length posts here that deserve to be read.

Well if they make BG3 across the realms it might as well be planescape 2. Actucaly the impression I get from the end of Bg2 is a group of Bhaal Children will ally togetter to kill you. Maybe they will find a way to drain you in a similar way as Irenicus did save you loose experiance or the gods themselves may view you as a threath and lower your power. Personaly If it becomes a treak accross the reamls I hope there is some Ravenloft stuff in it! hey but that just my opinion!

One problem I see in starting at such a high level would be that a newbie to BG would have very much problems to get started, since you have hundreds of spells. And in a big magic fight they would just get confused with all the different protection and remove protection spells.
I suppose the developers are aware of that too, so they should be some changes, since they(the managment at least) do not want just the veterans of black isle
("as us" we proudly shout out ) to play the game.
st.Schnupps

if u can import ur char(complete party?) id suggest a BIG tutorial for
newbies(like 3 chapters or sorta)

personally i want a bigger world ..... ive some maps of AD&D waterdeep and athkatla
r jokes give me 7 dvd´s(!) and we could fill in A LOT ..includin some other planes
and it hink there arnt problems with high level parties remember durlags tower ?
or the demon in that lil city ? tough enough for my "high level non cheated" party
i think the next step would be a nice online-area to play in (i hate UO no real good
quests)

anyways i trust the developers