Well, I was just wondering if you were going to keep this ongoing tradition.
I always enjoy reading these.
Wow, so much snark.
I think it's more that Larian likes it's systems, and then quests get broken, and devs spend time adding in reactions for those situations. And Sven for some reason is super in love with that stuff "Isn't it cool that our systems are fundamentally broken? And look we even add VO to it". And it is odd - on paper giving player objective and bunch of systemic ways of achieving it is a way to go - Fallouts, Deus Exs, Arcanes work that way. Those systems, however, work in a sensible way, and don't, willy nilly, break fundamental laws of the universe. Stop-time spell in BG2 was really cool. In BG3 you stop time by crouching when someone is in combat, and become invisible for people in conversations?
I'm a big fan of "systemic design" in principle and I have no problems admitting that Larian's reactivity with some of this stuff is occasionally phenomenal (i.e. characters acknowledging in dialogue if you pick pocketed them out of some relevant item, etc).
That said, one thing about systemic design is that its open-ended nature almost implicitly calls for tight mechanics to work properly. Otherwise you open yourself to an ocean of potential exploits. And to be honest even the best designed one will show the cracks if put under enough stress.
Now, a problem with Larian is precisely that the studio recognizes the existence of a lot of these "loose ends", but they take the deliberate stance to NOT address the problems because they genuinely take pride in leaving to the player the possibility to exploit them.
In some cases the "fix" wouldn't even require any specific roadblock to the player's options, just some more sensible implementation (i.e. making enormously heavy items impossible to move and throw around would prevent the players from using them to one-shot bosses, having explosive barrels less abundant in number and heavier would limit their stocking and abuse, forcing hidden characters into the action queue (spotted or not) when extremely close to an ongoing combat would stop them from cheesing the initiative system, etc, etc).
P.S. Not touching the argument about foul language with a ten feet pole.
