We might've gotten a very different Baldur's Gate 3, but a "shattering" review bomb broke up the team that would've made it

gamesradar.com:

Baldur's Gate 3 could have been a completely different game from a completely different studio, if not for a review bomb that shattered the team which would've made it.

The two original Baldur's Gate games were developed by the legendary RPG studio BioWare. Many years later, BioWare co-founder Trent Oster would head up an indie studio called Beamdog as it created the Enhanced Edition remasters for both games. In 2016, Beamdog tried its hand at creating some new content for Baldur's Gate with Siege of Dragonspear, an expansion pack that bridges the gap between the first two games.

Siege of Dragonspear received mixed reviews from players, but the negative responses grew in volume and vitriol for two reasons: the expansion included an off-handed joke referencing the Gamergate harassment campaign, and a minor character named Mizhena who revealed in dialog that she's transgender. Angry gamers threw threats and harassment at Beamdog, prompting a condemnatory response from Oster at the time. The studio cut the Gamergate line and expanded Mizhena's dialog, but the damage to the team had been done.

"We were sailing down the river and then all the cannons opened up so we just shut all the hatches," Oster said in a recent interview for Epic. "And you could hear cannonballs bang the hull, and everybody was just huddled down inside. It basically fractured that team. At Beamdog today we have one person remaining from that team. Everyone else is gone. It drove some of them out of the industry. It drove others to seek completely different kinds of games to work on. It was a shattering experience."

Oster said, "With another game under their belt, that team could have done something amazing. But that team doesn’t exist anymore. And that’s