I do however wonder, isn't adding meaningful choice to an RPG a good thing? That's kind of what I always found IE games lacking as opposed to Fallouts 1 and 2: both were story driven and had pretty good writing for games back then, but Fallout was just miles ahead when it came to actual role playing.
To address previous points properly would require deeper game analysis: how story and characters are designed with single protagonist in mind, and how levels smartly guide a progression, and how the game is not nearly as open as it seems (BG1 is, but it is easily the lesser of the two).
As to final point - one can improve on BG1&2, certainly. Witcher3 did just that. When I was young, I did think that Bioware did a mistake by not expanding the RPGness of their games. Something I understood recently, is that wasn’t the point. BG achievement wasn’t creating the most reactive and responsive world - it was giving a memorable adventure, with likeable companions, engaging setpieces and well presented villain. What people remember of Baldur’s Gate are Minsc, Jaheira, Irenicus, exploring keep taken by trolls. Those are things I don’t expect Larian to deliver on, as their focus so far has been on multiplayer interaction, and.... well... D:OS strength wasn’t in writing or characters.
If all Larian did was move toward more reactive RPG I would welcome it - in recent years I developed taste for those kind of RPGs where I can define my character, over Imposed “Child of Bhaal” storyline of BGs. But just because the game use top down camera, doesn’t mean it belongs to the same genre.
I am pretty sure Josh S. from Obsidian said, they they got data from Swen that playerbase for PoE and D:OS had very little overlap. That wouldn’t surprise me. Singleplayer RPGs are my thing. I must have played almost every single one. D:OSs land in situational bucket, due to their lack of appeal when played singleplayer.