Another one who has no idea what a game engine is. No, the game engine has nothing to do with the number of party members that you can recruit. This a something you can put in every single engine on this planet with a few simple lines of script.
Ultimately I think this is the real issue. It's not about whether party size of 4 or 6 is what is appropriate for a game called BG3, or even a decision based on limitations of the game system or technology. Rather, this, and all other choices (ex. the combat system, misses in combat "not fun," etc.) are being made purely on the basis of one criterion: what is best for co-op/multiplayer? That seems to be the definitive driver of all the game design choices Larian is making. And *that* is absolutely a dealbreaker for me.
The game needs to have been designed and built from the ground up to maximize the single-player gaming experience first and foremost, and so what is ideal for the SP game is what ought to have driven game design choices. If this is not the case, then definitely it is not a game for me. And labeling and marketing a game that was not built this way as an SP game would be blatant false advertising. All of the IE games had MP, but it was very clear from all the marketing for those games, everything that the devs said about the games before they were released. and from even a short amount of time spent playing the games that those games were designed as SP games first and foremost and that all design choices were made with SP in mind.
