A day/night cycle does not neccesarily need to have Skyrim-like routines for NPCs. Many games had a very simplistic one yet it added so much. NPCs were at a set spot, and when time has passed you get a cutscene of the sun rising/setting or whatever and it was day/night with all adjustements made. Even DA2 without a real-time day/night cycle managed to implement something with day and night situations in the city. I think Larian is making it harder on themselves than it needs to be and and seems it was just marked impossible without looking for alternatives/options. (I would assume they did look for options but considering how many other games did these cycles and had their own version or variation of it one way or another.. -something- should have been possible I would think)
