Minsc and Boo! Buttkicking for goodness!!!

A Minsc statue came to life in the Baldurs Gate comic, too.

(note: I cant do apostraphes until I fix my keyboard settings. Sorry).

i assume Larian is giving us a flash to that event in the comics as a tease to say Minsc is in the gate city kicking evils' backside but who knows

actually as that is a clearly wild magic misfire i'm hoping Neera is also there but thats mostly hype on my part

Bringing the characters back would at least give us some kind of through-line to the previous BG titles. Having references to BG II events might help give it more of a BG feel, even if they're not actually playable. I'm sure people would be thrilled if they joined the party, but based on the emphasis on the handful of EA characters, I feel like adding another (with all the emotes, side quests, etc) might be a bridge too far for a 2023 release. But what do I know. Maybe they were planning this all along...

Non-human characters have incredibly long lives. I'm not sure how long the time gap between 2 & 3 is, but some of the older cast might still be around.

It's fantasy. They can bring back anyone they want.

Story-wise, yes... they may be around as flavor, or they may be critical characters in the story. I was just saying that I'm not optimistic that they'll be adding them as playable characters. As much as I'd love it if they did, adding new character quest lines and such at this late stage seems like a LOT of time and effort.

I was speculating on who might have succumbed to old age, and was not suggesting that certain characters can't come back via resurrection or another method. I apologize for not making that distinction clear in my previous post.

The Game Awards trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOWGnC3h9WQ) gave us a bunch more juicy tidbits as well. Supposedly this is actually Jaheira in this trailer, although I'm not sure if that was actually confirmed by Larian. It would make sense though, as being a half-elf, she could quite conceivably still be alive (to say the least of full-blooded elves like Aerie and Viconia).

All in all, it gives me hope that maybe we'll see more links between BG3 and the earlier games, possibly even an opportunity for us to have some input into who Gorion's Ward was. It doesn't need to play a major role in BG3 at all; I'd be content if the game just let us specify their race, class, alignment, whether or not they had a love interest (which might have some changes on what people like Jaheira/Aerie/Viconia say), and whether they ultimately chose godhood or remained a mortal. I envision a scene where Volo is singing about the tale of the canonical Gorion's Ward (aka Abdel Adrian) and their exploits, and the player has an opportunity to pipe up and go "Hang on, that's not where I heard!" and we can provide our input there.

Jahiera and Minsc will be recruit-able (and presumably playable)!

Great news already!

The game is getting rushed out untested is less great news but I don't need Monk

I don't have any context about the testing that's currently in place, or isn't in place... but it's entirely possible that they've got Monk implemented and have a team of folks actively testing it. 9 months of dedicated testing by a test team is probably pretty sufficient.

Or they're still adding new content, and it could be buggy and will, like most games, have a flurry of hotfixes soon after release.

I'm just excited to get some new areas and story next year.

There is a world of difference between playing a game and testing it

Watch the panel, he turned the owlbear into an undead which bugged out stopping the script from asking if you want to save the cub... This on a part of the game he used during live streaming tells us exactly how much effort goes into testing

If Minsc would have been petrified he could still be around, yes.

Half-Elves IIRC get to be 200 years old. So Jaheira could still be around, too. But she would be an old woman and frightening powerful. Also I'm not sure an AD&D fighter/druid can even be halfway accurately represented in D&D5.