I feel like the easiest thing they could do, if they don't want to implement a full day/night cycle, is advancing time after certain actions are taken, or after certain quests are completed. For example, once reached the grove, or coming out of the ruins after exploring them, time could advance to night. It'd make things somewhat less jarring, at least.
It's honestly almost hilarious how many convoluted solutions are being considered as a workaround about the fact that they refused to take the simpler approach from the beginning and include proper passage of time and a day/night cycle.
Triggers to switch between day and night arbitrarily, a separated instanced camp where your characters will rest and talk, etc, etc.
All of which can do just partially the job while feeling way more artificial in the process.
We are not even talking about cutting edge features, I should stress. The entire genre had been sporting day/night cycle as the standard since the Ultima series 30-40 years ago.
