definitely no level scaling but good gradual increase of difficulty so you know what is going to happen. Btw I really like the idea of throwing in random story bits in optional side quests. For example (not related to original sin story plot) if there is a wicked dictator that kills potential adversary then an optional quest might result in several hour exploration of a cave for a (corky example) lost child of a local village and as a by product you might find the skeleton of an assassinated adversary which might kick off another optional quest to motivated the villagers against the dictator by finding additional evidence as to who and why this person was killed.