Well to be fair D&D isn't known for the consistency or the structured background (that's one of the reason a miriad of rpg followed this one).
Said that.
My point of view: something strange is happening in Faerun, not only mindfliers are making a move, but there are hidden players able to bring very different races to cooperate (Drows, Bugbears, Trolls, Goblins), furthermore said players were able to made Drows and Goblins to left their faith and embrace the Absolute, the tadpoles this fellas concocted is able to resist the powers of a hag, a high druid, a mindiflyer, it allows a lower vampire to walk under the sunlight, and even death doesn't affect its parasitic tie with character and companions.
Moreover, if my memory doesn't betray me, the Undeerdark too, in this set, is somehow immersed in a chaos of sort.
The circumstances of the area are so weird they attracted the attention of an explorer like Volo.
So I don't find strange that there are minotaurus, I won't be surprised if some enemies that are in act 1 (hag and minotaurs) are being placed there (by manipulating them from the shadows, or by force what could be happened to the minotaurus) to test the recilience, resistence, of the particular strain of tadpoles that infests the protagonists).
Ok let's try to think about it another way...
The first act's map is something like what ? 1km2 ?
On 1km2 you have :
- a village
- a druid grove
- a swamp
- an inn
- an outpost
- a forest
- an ancient temple
- a goblin's camp in another ancient temple (or something like that
- 3 or 4 entrance to the underdark.
-...
On this 1 km2 you have tons of different creatures.
There are no usual wolves that would have make sense but there are lots of unsusual creatures.
Some of them are here for story events, that's fine... But lots of them are supposed to live in this km2 even if they don't have any place to...
That's something I find strange and inconsistent. That's nothing related to D&D, that's related to the world and map design.
Even the gnolls are just dropped there... Maybe I miss something but where does these hyena comes from ???
A colony of hyena in the 200m between an inn and an outpost on a trade route ?
This world don't look alive at all... Everything looks completely static with things just dropped one after the other without any reasons and consistency.
It's the same in the underdark.
This is a cave of 300m2 in which you have tons of different creatures... Even creatures that aren't supposed to be there such as minotaurs.
It's not like it's a colony or something... It's just another handcrafted encounter where they decide to drop minotaurs...
As Etruscan said... That's about subtelty.
Maybe such things aren't important in a D&D campaign but usually, BG games aren't a random D&D campaign... It's a part of the FR's history and stories and BG3's world doesn't feels like a consistent location in the FR... even if references are everywhere and even if important events happen in the world.
That's not only related to minotaurs but minotaurs are the only things that bother me about the underdark's creatures.
(I could talk about how easy it is to go in the underdark... That's also inconsistent to me but that's something else).
