I construe it as not as an unwillingness to invest, but a simple and practical business decision based on what they have and where they have come from. Certain things might seem easy and cheap to implement, but we cannot really know. If they can spend X amount of $ to get feature A in the game, or use X amount of $ to get features B,C and D in the game, it seems reasonable to me (provided a rough equality between features A-D). Everyone has a budget to work with. As for passion, Larian seems to me to be as passionate about their work as any developer I can recall.
Nah, I can't walk into their offices and cross-reference the new engine with the old one. Given the features that are going to be missing from BG3 I'm willing to bet it's been rewritten to a much lesser extent that they're letting on. Budgets aren't set in stone either. Passion can overcome many issues but it seems to me they want to be reasonable first and foremost. That's okay but if I recall BG1 was not expected to perform great commercially yet here we are today. If you want to win big you have to take chances, right?
