Hmmm, that is a solid point you're making regarding Larians responsibility when taking on specific titles (in this case Baldur's Gate), compared to the standards when they are doing their own original products. From this perspective, I absolutely agree.
And I apologize, if that is the definition you meant by term "design philosophy", then I agree. The only thing I disagree with is that I don't think they are sacrificing the quality of choices on purpose, I think they simply fail to hold on to the quality-standard they set when they try to maximize character freedom. It is a pity, really. Because when thinking back on DOS2 (which is not very long ago in my case xd heh) - I see that a lot of the core issues for the storytelling are stuff that has been around since... Well, always. And I was VERY late to the party - there have been tons and tons of updates and patches for the game during these years, but these pretty innocent, yet so devastating, clashes of choice and consequence linger still.
And hence I fear you're right about them not being fixed for BG3 either (but I would be overjoyed to be mistaken!). DOS2 was lovely and I basically binged the entire game for at least 2 weeks (for ONE playthrough!), talking to every NPC I could find, read every book and piece of paper I could find (and saved most of them too!), opened every single barrel, box, chest and bookshelf, exploring every inch of each act, attempting to clear ridiculously difficult encounters while being too low level (looking at you, burning witch in Act 2), nagging at every puzzle until I could solve them, read the entire quest tracker over and over to make sure I missed as little as possible... And 90% of the game was absolutely wonderful - it felt amazing to be able to choose not do a quest and reap the reward elsewhere (like when trying to master Source in DOS2 - you need only 2 masters to share their knowledge, but there are plenty to go around so you can refuse a few if you don't want to do their particular quest) and, at least in the side quest-lines - you had a choice. The core quest line was... Mostly bearable... It was the options outside of the core-story that I loved. From deciding what to do with the two hexed cows to whenever I was gonna kill Ryker or not.
But time to time there were these really annoying conversations that didn't make sense at all - like the incidents of the Red Prince and Sebille. Or the Doctor - I didn't even get the option to kill him. I genuinely tried to, in every single way possible - but he just ported me out of his home and that was that. I never found a way to kill him.
Or the incident with Lohar and the magisters - I couldn't choose to side with Lohar because I didn't directly give him the magister's letter at the beginning (I didn't trust him) - then when Beast told me that we should side with him, the option to do the Lohar-path was gone. >.< And for not mentioning the Queen's Letter incident with Lohar. Most of the time, from my perspective, it was not as much faulty dialogues as much LACK OF THEM. Like I mentioned in my previous comment. ... And not just regarding big stuff, but also the smaller incidents - the characters do talk and make comments on some occasions, so it feels weird when they don't do it when it is due. I mean, I felt extremely weirded out when visiting the Doctor's Home and talking to his "nurses", as someone talking to each and every NPC, and having NONE of my companions reacting to their... Inappropriate behaviors. I was at least expecting a smug comment from Fane or some dwarf-threats from Beast. :x
In general, both BG3 and in DOS2 (but primarily the later cause yknow, I've had more time playing DOS2) are severely lacking companion character input in conversations. Like the mentioned meeting with Ryk-... I mean vampire dude while having followers. Same goes for when the yellow lady loses her stuff and tries to attack you during the same night as the seductive dream, really. I believe one out of the other four companions made a slight note about it afterwards, but other than that they didn't really seem to care. Half-devil's visit could also have included the companions a bit more.
And it is not even that they can't include companions in conversations - because they do! From time to time, but it is so very inconsistent and that takes away a bit of the magical feeling for me.
