I sort of agree.
When people say the BG saga is "dead", get over it, don't rape the franchise, ToB was TEH END (etc) I can't help but feel that they're missing the point.
For me, "Baldur's Gate" is less about the whole Bhaalspawn thing and more about the sum of parts. As Compton points out.
For me it's about a well put together, isometric, sizeable, fairly twinky, story-driven but not dominated, party-based, superior squad-level fantasy sim loosely based on D&D.
A game set a hundred years before or after the events of the original trilogy is OK with me as long as the abovementioned elements remain more or less intact. Which, of course, they won't but that's another story.
I'm just loyal to the franchise, as a customer. I've had so many hours of fun playing the BG titles that I'd just like to see, and enjoy, another. I feel much the same way about the Jagged Alliance and Total War franchises, too.
I ran a thread over at Obsidian about how you'd plot BG3. I've thought about it and personally I'd to see it take place a few hundred years after the end of ToB. I had the remains of the Bhaal Essence platform crash to earth and be buried under the sands of somewhere suitably desolate in the FR. <CHARNAME>, a level one grunt from a nearby settlement, gets embroiled in events when [insert iconic FR baddies] set up an archeological dig to discover the POWAZ of the ruins...
Simple, easy-to-get-your-head-around, ambiguous but ties into the original saga. Edwin is now a Lich who, Hannibal Lecter style can advise PCs about "the old days", Minsc is long dead (Yay!), Viconia (being Drow) only has an extra wrinkle or two after a century or so...
Cheers
MC