You're making it sound like that's escaped me, and it hasn't.
I'm sorry but by your post is painfully obvious that it has.
You are oversimplifying one of the manifestations of this freedom as "killing everybody without rhyme or reason " and it goes beyond that, freedom implies divers ways to approach a quest apart from clicking everyone until they stop moving. And just because one specific options is not particularly interesting to you doesn't mean that is not an important part of the whole framework of actions.
Swen mentioned in the stream how confusing a special indication for quest items could be because of the plethora of options that the players has to solve a quest. If original sin is going to be even half as complex as the games mentioned as inspiration for it; factors like spells, information gathered, factions, previous quest results and a lot of other things that aren't just an alive/dead check are going to make the implementation of elaborate schedules hard.
Saying that any of those factors are pointless to you because of your game style is ignoring the fact that is thanks to the freedom of the game that you can have a game style in it.
