However, clearly Larian has been erring on the side of radical change so far, defaulting to their cheese over more immersive D&D alternatives. Larian has been somewhat responsive though, so I wouldn't rule out positive changes, even significant ones down the line.
I hope you are right but it's getting harder for me to believe that this is true. This patch turned up the surfaces and the cheese from a 6 to an 8 and it looks like we're headed towards eleven.
There are some good things in this patch -- some improvements to dialogues and the game has many more books -- but it's cheesier than before.