Which brings us back to if turn based combat can be suitable and fun for BG3?
Larian are creating complex 3D environments, lots of things to interact with on the battlefield, they want stealth to work well in combat, etc. They want people to experiment and find interesting ways to approach things inside and outside of combat. That’s what WOTC said they liked about them. Not that they make turn based games, but that they make systems that allow players to be creative.
So I don’t think the key question is which is better between turn based and real time. It’s about which is most suitable for the systems Larian are building and the kind of gameplay they want to make.
While you could argue that you can do all these things with real time and pause, I strongly suspect that the reality of trying to carefully position characters, use stealth, set traps and use the environmental would be a frustrating mess as you try to fight the AI. It can be enough hassle in original Baldurs Gate just stopping companions charging into AoE spells. BG3 will have far more complicated environments and options.
Ok, good. So it seems like there is space for civil discourse between us, and that makes me happy.
I appreciate your attempts to convince me that BG3 combat could be fun despite the nature of the combat system. Speaking only for myself, I am actually still keeping myself open to that possibility. I do not believe it is likely, but it is possible. Larian can end up surprising me with what they ultimately produce. As I've said elsewhere, I think the only thing that can possibly make a TB combat system palatable to me is if the combat encounters are such that they can be concluded in a relatively short amount of time. In D:OS, for example, three rounds was my limit before I got too exasperated and annoyed with the combat. So what I did in that game was to always just drop the difficulty to the lowest setting just before combat, breeze through the combat in three rounds or less, and then bring the difficulty setting back up afterwards. Yes a pain to keep doing, but it made the game immensely more enjoyable for me. The point of all this is that encounter design I think is ultimately what will matter in BG3. If encounters are designed well, and especially with only a small number of opponents and opportunities to "remove" some of your opponents ahead of time (through dialogue, checks, or stealth), such that even on normal difficulty combat does not last for too long, then I can see myself being okay with the combat. I will still not consider it "good" by any stretch, and the combat system will remain a strike against the game for me meaning I could never give this game anything more than an 8/10 rating at best. But given that story, storytelling, characters, character development, writing, lore, branching dialogue, meaningful choices with meaningful consequences, interesting quests, etc. are MUCH more important to me than combat will ever be, if the game is very strong in those areas then those strengths can overcome what I see as a less than stellar combat system.
As for your last point about whether RTwP can do justice to all the "systems" in a Larian game, I strongly feel that that is ENTIRELY up to the quality of the developer (whoever they are). Yes, 5e D&D rules can be fully implemented in a RTwP game, as well as all of Larian's environmental interactions. It is purely a matter of the imagination and competence of the game's designers and programmers. Swen Vincke, in an interview some months before BG3 was announced, spoke at length about how he as a game developer can make only so many games in his lifetime, and therefore he wanted to be challenged by making as many different types of games as possible and not just making the same games again and again. So my challenge to Swen would be (post BG3 obviously): "Prove to me your reputation is well-deserved and that you are one of the greatest RPG designers of all time by making the greatest ever RTwP RPG. You've already made several TB RPGs that a lot of people love. If you truly believe in a challenge, demonstrate this to me by making an awesome RTwP RPG."
