That's not the problem (and in fact, they are adding a TON of new assets, hundreds if not thousands of new models and animations and textures, not just reusing stuff from D:OS1). The problem is giving a sufficient number of NPCs reactive behavior to the day night cycle to make it actually immersive, instead of just pretty. You seriously underestimate the amount of work it takes to give lots of NPCs schedules, new quests, etc. They could do a minimal amount of scheduling, making vendors go inside, 3-5 night-specific quests, etc. but I think Swen would much prefer to go all the way. It's just like with the origins, which aren't going to be little gimmicks but have a massive effect on the game. Trying to throw a well-developed day/night cycle on top of that is asking too much.
OK...development of the game is just beginning...what's stopping Sven from "going all the way", exactly? It seems silly to reject a concept which you have never attempted to implement and for which, therefore, you have no concrete notions as to what it would consume in terms of developmental resources. This is kind of a chicken-egg scenario, imo. If you haven't ever done a night cycle, how can you reject doing it on the grounds it will consume resources you do not have? That's an illogical premise because since you have never attempted it in a game you cannot know what it will cost to implement.
This will be the second game in which a night cycle has been deliberately rejected by Larian--and I think you'll have to admit, it is an intriguing insight into Sven's thinking. He worries about the "realism" of NPC activity during a night cycle; but he doesn't worry about the non-realism of a perpetual day without end. See what I mean? Somehow the facts just don't add up completely.
No, a night cycle simply does not have to put everything in the game on a "night schedule" that is fundamentally different from a "daylight schedule"--it doesn't happen that way in real life, so why should it be different in a game? What are the two main elements that happen at night--sleep & businesses closing, right? How difficult is that to implement? Why not a few quests that have to happen at night--and only happen at night--like something involving ghosts and/or haunts? That's all you need.
Witcher3 has a day/night cycle--I just completed a quest that could only be accomplished at midnight. But, just because the sun goes down, again, it does not mean that everything in the game relating to NPCs has to change. Doesn't happen that way in the Witcher 3 and the game in no way suffers for it. The Witcher meditates (rests)--what about player characters in a Larian RPG needing rest on a daily basis?
Don't misunderstand, I very much enjoy Larian's games and have for a long time and I think D:OS is a masterpiece. But I really don't understand this peculiar aversion to day-night cycles in games. Larian fans aren't as demanding as Sven when it comes to "nighttime realism" and if they were they'd be all over him about the unrealism of perpetual daylight and the absence of a few other normal things that usually happen only at night. I think he's missing a huge opportunity to move Larian forward with D:OS2 by so quickly deciding that Larian cannot afford to implement nights inside the DOS2 universe.
