Not being able to talk to NPCs or allies, and NPCs not responding to being attacked is a bug. It doesn't matter if someone triggered it by screwing around in a manner you don't approve of.
Indeed, and fine.
That gives you the freedom to go exploring and get a quest before even finding a particular NPC,
I am all for this, and Larian seems to be doing an amazing job about this.
the resources freed up by that simplification were still never going to be put into an entire lumberjack simulator,
Sure. What about day and night cycles ?
I already barked about this. If I have the freedom to kill an entire city, will I have the freedom to spare some orcs ?
Larian is doing a great job in giving multiple ways for people to interact with quests, which I really truly applaud. However, I wish the game was not balanced toward murdering and stealing. However, this is an assumption, and I really would like to be (honestly) proven right or wrong, by people who finished the beta the "moral" way, not stealing flagged items or killing people that don't attack you first, and others who did the bully way, as far as money, item and XPs go.
