As I read through these comments, one thing occurs to me: If BG had had an early access similar to this one, the 2/2.5e rules lawyers would have ripped it to shreds. The "expert" writers would have torn the story down "but it's just a "the Chosen One" trope story", etc. I wonder, if it had had it's own message board, how many dumpster fire threads it would have had for it's EA. I also wonder if one of those would have been "Maybe BioWare isn't the right company to develop this". Of course, back then there weren't a lot of companies that were even doing games, let alone that could have done it the justice that BioWare did. I read an earlier post here that said that BG redefined the cRPG, and that's not exactly true, it actually defined the cRPG. Prior to this, I was happily playing Doom and Quake as Freeware, and the same was true for Mortal Kombat. I got my hands on BG and never looked back. They inspired a lot of people, including CDPR, who used the engine from NWN to make The Witcher.
So my takeaway is that maybe Larian is the perfect company to do this. I played the Outer Worlds. It was a good game, but it wasn't genre defining. I also played NWN 2, yeah... Admittedly, barring the "rocks fall, everyone dies' ending, and the expansions, which were "meh" at best, the other issue was Atari, and their DRM, which they eventually patched out, which not only messed up the actual game it was supposed to protect, but interfered with my licenses to music that were completely unrelated to the game it was supposed to protect. But I digress. Most of the complaints about this game would have appeared in a BG EA situation. There would have been thread after thread complaining about RTWP gameplay mechanics too. My first experience with TB combat in a cRPG was ToEE. I shelved it, and never looked at another TB game, until after this one was announced, and it was indicated that it would have TB combat. So I looked up who was doing it, and found DOS 2. I bought it, figuring I'd play it to get used to the system, and to see what they were about as developers, because up until then, I'd never heard of them.
I'm glad I did, because it gives me some perspective on the "but it's just DOS 3" arguments, which I don't agree with, at least, not on it's face. There are elements, and assets that cross over, and the vast majority of those I actually don't mind in the least. I understand not wanting flush hundreds of manhours down the drain recreating every plate in a game. It's a huge waste of time and money. The "barrelmancy" argument falls flat, mainly because it never occurred to me to exploit it, maybe? Or, alternatively, because exploding barrels have been a trope for as long as I can remember, in games that have nothing to do with Larian. This, of course, has to be swept under the rug because "but Larian used it". Yeah? So did Square Enix, check out all the latest Tomb Raider reboots. "But Food", Bethesda says "Hello", particularly ironic since I fired up FO 4 yesterday for a bit, and you'll never guess what's on the loot tables for healing items... It's been a while since I fired up FO 3 or NV, I wonder if I'll find food there too? If I use TES: Oblivion as a "benchmark" I'm betting yes?
I also don't agree with the "but it's not DnD" posts, on their face. I say that from the perspective of someone that's played BG, BG 2, IWD, IWD 2, NWN, NWN 2, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Neverwinter, off the top of my head. All of those games are officially licensed DnD games, and all of them are wildly different, to degrees in some cases, with the "actual rules". Note that I'm not just going with 5e in that assessment, although Neverwinter is supposed to be 5e. DDO was supposed to be 3.5e, but it's wildly different from NWN, which used the same ruleset. Yet, for all of that, they are all officially licensed which means, at the end of the day, they're all DnD games. So Larian is guilty of doing what lots of other game companies have done before. What's worse? They're guilty of doing what lots of game companies are going to continue to do going forward. Why? Because it works. Because it's possible to make great games doing this kind of stuff.
Anyone mad about barrelmancy needs to play DDO and get the quests in the 12, or maybe convince someone to get them a guest pass, and do the quest "Undermine". That quest predates Larian by quite a while, but my favorite thing to do is to blow up the barrels, because it creates a lovely chain reaction, that can wipe an entire party. Of course, it can also clear most of the mobs in the rooms where it's an issue, so if used wisely, it's a great tactic for clearing it, and is likely intended as such. Hey, if ya'll are really mad about barrelmancy, you should play Horizon Zero Dawn. Some of those robots come equipped with their own barrels.