Watching that DOS2 video does provide some clarity into their design decisions.
I think being able to screw your party members over is a completely different game. And it brings the question, is it worth the dev time to develop two different games into one? A story driven party based RPG, and a goofball mess around game where you are hindering other players rather than working together.
How are you going to be able to progress in the story if you're focusing on messing with your companions? Unless also combat is made trivially easy through cheesy exploits, so the goofing around does not make it impossible to continue the storyline. You can always toss a few barrels to solve a problem or just metagame or alpha strike the hell out of encounters.
This is the core of my problem with Larian I guess. They want everything in one game. They can't focus on what's relevant or to make a chosen aspect of the game great. Is combat tactically challenging, or just a meme generator of pushing everyone into lava? Is the tone mature or juvenile? Is it an immersive RPG world, or a casual videogamey romp that constantly reminds you it is "just a game"? Baldur's Gate 3 touches on all of those things, but it's not great at anything except production value. And I wish the direction and vision was a lot tighter.
When you try to be too many things at once, the end result is inevitably a lame experience on all fronts. So far in EA, I'm not enjoying the combat, and I'm not immersed in Faerûn because BG3 feels far too videogamey and inconsequential. Like when someone is incinerated in a sea of lava, they just appear in camp where you buy a cheap rez from a convenient vendor. I was more immersed in Neverwinter Nights 1, which has crude 1st gen 3d graphics and doesn't even have a proper D&D party. And the direct prequels BG1&2 still feel far superior as a D&D experience and as a take on Forgotten Realms. BG3 is just a meme factory of cheesing, exploiting and screwing around in comparison.
Larian needs to save all their goofball energy for DOS3 and take another long hard look at what actually makes BG1&2 and D&D great.
