Archer is a cheat-class in the game ;P
I'm starting to believe you are right...
I did have a momentary increase in difficulty when I hit the first tower, but since then I haven't had the need to even eat a cheap piece of food (with the exception of a certain bunny - tho that became, jump, run, turn, shoot, repeat). Later a section said I should run unless I want to make my enemies job easy (hinting the area was way above my level), yet I cleared it out without any issue. Though I'm a fraction from level 15 now and still haven't gone to the other tower - for some reason I like the banter of the voice in my head complaining with every quest that I'm wasting time. The highest level mob I've found in the wild is level 11, so might not just be Ranger in this case (tho any range attack is obviously stronger in this setting).
I believe these were a compromise. Many secrets are not nearly as obvious. If the keys were very well hidden as they are in the earliest quests they would drastically impede progress for players that are not used to unassisted problem solving.
I see where this can come in. When I saw that the world was open for me to explore early on I had hoped it would be more unassisted. Maybe age is distorting perception, but it seemed I had to think more in the classics. The console trend seems to be the faster you have to mash buttons = harder (Demon Souls was a welcome exception), and graphics > story. The game is still fun, I just sigh a little every time I see a key sparkling under a barrel in the distance.
Forking narratives are very time consuming to implement. If you ever read Choose Your Own Adventure series of gamebooks you quickly realize the amount of pages necessary to implement a relatively short story. Larian's use of framed stories to allow you to dig into smaller sub-stories through minor choices and quests is a great compromise for a smaller team.
I've read many choose your own adventure books as a kid! In part, I think that has influenced my desire for choice over linear progression. While bigger arcs like found in Dragon Age (and it's DLC save game loads) or Heavy Rain are great, I still think a smaller company can find a better middle ground than one NPC will have a choice of two greetings depending on your action. At least it is not as bad as some of the older games that would offer a choice but if you chose wrong it would just ask the question again (Nintendo was bad with this - Dragon Warrior comes to mind - Will you help? No. Will you help? No. Will you help? Yes. Quest starts. :p).
If you don't have the team for massive arcs, you can still have quest that have prerequisites to activate where you can only chose one of the actions. You can keep a hidden value that goes up or down by your moral choice that effects the way NPCs interact or comment as you walk by. You could also have a unique quest for each class type (to unlock the way of x skill maybe?). Etc., etc. Where I find having choice matters is in the replay value. I played through DA 4 complete times not because one element of the game was so great, but because I wanted to see the story from different origins, race choice, class choice, party makeup and reaction to events, decisions, etc. Replayed Heavy Rain a few times too so I could see the results of different actions. I think if I replay Divinity, it will be once to get things I missed or experience combat as something other than a ranger (but twice is probably it's limit before archive).
I am enjoying the game and happy I found it, so this is all constructive criticism - not bashing. It seems the games we enjoy the most we become the most critical of. If the game sucked, I wouldn't even of bothered making an account.
