I also liked the very start of DD, with some quests around town that didn't involve any hack and slash. For BD the setting (breaking out of a prison) kind of limits how many non violent quests can reasonably be included. At least once you get to the citadel there start to be more and more variety of quests (assuming you wear the citadel disguise armour so most of the guards remain friendly).
There are more that just fetch or hack-and-slash type quests in the imp village.
In act 1 you got a confirmation message if you attacked a rat, making sure you want to attack all rats. In later acts there is no confirmation, so if you attack a friendly creature they will all turn hostile for the remainder of that act.
You should switch combat mode off in friendly areas like the imp village, or when going back over a region you previously cleared. Directing your characters by holding the left mouse button down, rather than repeatedly clicking, helps to avoid accidental attacks on friendly creatures.
If you quicksave on a regular basis you can reload if you attack a friendly creature.
There was a limit on the amount of dialog in the game, to keep the cost of localization down and make it more attractive to publishers in various regions.
While differing opening dialogs between first and subsequent conversations would be nice for all NPCs that had anything significant to say (especially if they were initially surprised by your approach, etc), this was only done with some NPCs (particularly with main plot quests).
Either there was originally going to be different cut scenes with Samuel depending on your progress, giving the guard Kegan white rum was originally going to be a required quest, or there was a miscommunication somewhere along the way.
Hopefully, DD2 will have more of everything (budget, beta testing, quests, etc). <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
