Baldur's Gate III Preview - Gamebanshee
So far it looks like Larian is doing with Baldur's Gate what Bethesda did with Fallout -- putting one of their games into an existing franchise. Bethesda was lucky in a sense that the post-apocalyptic setting from Fallout wasn't anything like the Elder Scrolls setting, and so nobody confused Fallout 3 with Skyrim 2. But with Larian, the opposite is true, and with a few edits here and there, Baldur's Gate III could easily be Divinity: Original Sin 3.
Is that good or bad? The answer might depend on your age. I grew up with the Baldur's Gate series, and so I'm wary of a new game in the franchise that doesn't have anything to do with the original games, has a completely different style, uses a new rule set, and has so many tieflings and githyanki around that it barely feels like it's in the Forgotten Realms. Larian could have just started their own Dungeons & Dragons franchise. They're a popular enough developer that I don't think it would have hurt their sales at all.
But given the situation, Baldur's Gate III seems to be coming along fine. The first chapter is packed with high quality content, and that bodes well for the rest of the game. I might argue that Larian seems to be paying more attention to the official Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks and manuals rather than the first two games in the series, but perhaps they're looking for a clean break on purpose. Or, given that many of the people you meet in the first chapter mention Baldur's Gate, maybe we'll see that city soon, and the game will begin feeling like it belongs in the series. Plus, maybe we'll see some cameos.
Baldur's Gate III doesn't have a release date yet, but since it's nowhere near being complete, don't expect it before 2022. In fact, unless Larian is holding back a bunch of the game from early access, I'd say don't expect it until 2023. Pretty much everything can change between now and then. It'll be interesting to watch how the game evolves.