I’m not that guy (the one you asked to reply…), but I will say this as a lover of the first two games - play them. They are remarkable games and 20ish years after coming out I still play them (and do so regularly). If you’re a younger gamer you may find the interface or the graphics a bit clunky, but really, you ought to give them a go.

From my time on the Baldurs Gate subreddit, it seems like 3 was less story connected (per others’ comments), but that was before some of the added characters were announced (e.g. Minsc). That said, I haven’t played 3 at all, so I can’t comment personally.

tl;dr: I don’t know if you’ll be missing out in the story by starting with 3, but you should definitely play 1 & 2 because they’re incredible games.

From playing the initial act a couple of times (a while ago now) as someone who hasn’t played the previous games - there was nothing that I remember not understanding or missing, it was just a new game setting.

That said, if there were callbacks I wouldn’t have known about it.

When this game first released in its public beta phase a lot of fans of the baulders gate games claimed it wasn’t really part of the baulders series and was more like divinity sins 3 with dnd-like rules.

I’ve never played the original baulders gate games but I have played divinity and love dnd and really like baulders gate 3.