I actually agree with much of what you say here. That's what brings us right back to where all of this discussion started: the name of the game. To restate my point, if you're going to make a new game that significantly deviates from earlier games in a franchise, you should give it a new name, exactly like what Obsidian did by calling their game Fallout: New Vegas, and exactly how Larian itself did with its own franchise by calling their new game Divinity: Original Sin rather than Divinity 3. To have called Divinity: Original Sin Divinity 3 would have been false advertising, in my view.
I sort of see the point, though IMHO games, sequels and pretty much everything should use names and drop the numbering scheme as implies so many things, many of which are contradictory. Is it a continuation, a rehash, in the spirit of, the next book rather than the next chapter (which is what I sort of meant by continuation)...? Giving it a name might help stop those preconceptions. I tend to adapt after that initial "but that's not what I was expecting" but I can rant about it in the meantime. Then again, no matter what it's called you will get people who will assume and then object forever, e.g. TES:IV Oblivion being lambasted for not being TES:III Morrowind Part II in spite of the fact that it never said it was going to be and the name didn't imply anything other than it being the next Elder Scrolls game.
I'm also thinking that Larian's numbering scheme is... well, it's its own thing. Divinity 2 is really Divinity 3 given that it was the third in the series, and also chronologically; and is it called Divinity 2 or Divinity II or Ego Draconis or Dragon Knight Saga? Then there's the also often overlooked Dragon Commander, which is also part of the franchise and arguably part of the series depending on how you define "series" and classify Dragon Commander, though chronologically it suddenly deviates. And Original Sin which is therefore sort of Divinity 5 except that it's positioned between DC and DD in terms of when it happened, so maybe Divinity -1, or Divinity 0 depending on one's opinion of such things. And let's not get started on Divinity Original Sin II which is not Divinity 2, it's Divinity 6, unless we're going by chronology with DD being the first so it's... I dunno, I've lost track. What it before or after BD? If it was before, maybe it really is Divinity 2, which would make Divinity 2 Divinity 4. My head hurts.
