That's a fair enough analysis on most points I think, Rutger... And yes, sorry... I speak harshly, and I usually go back over everything and vet myself carefully for tone, but I'm feeling pretty exhausted right now and I'm probably not being as careful to guard myself as I should be.
I would say that this quote:
"We started by setting out the ruleset very meticulously, and then seeing what worked and what didn’t work – because it is a videogame, and D&D was made to play as a tabletop game. So for the things that didn’t work, we came up with solutions."
In the English language and, as a native English speaker, says, to me... That the individual talking started with the rules, set out meticulously and faithfully (tying in with their other quote about wanting to do this "as faithfully as possible", incidentally), used that rule set as their foundation, and changed them
only where it was literally problematic for their project.
That is what that sentence, structured as it is,
says. That's not fluffy or fuzzy interpretation - that is that quote's meaning.
That is NOT what they
did, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.
This sentence says, very strongly, that their basis is the 5e rules. That the 5e system is their foundation, and that they made changes to it only where it literally did not work. If they genuinely meant something other than that, then the sentence is misleading. If they meant to say this, despite knowing that this was not actually the case, then the sentence is deliberately misleading - and is misrepresenting their product for the sake of better advertising.
TL;DR: So, basically, it all boils down to a single word - "videogame". Swen used a generic term, while having a very specific one in mind.
I'll say this: If by "videogame" Swen meant "Our Divinity2 Game Engine", then yes, in that case, the quote as a whole would not be a misrepresentation of what they were doing.
However, if they expected the average listener to make that leap of logic and assume that they meant "Our Divinity 2 Game Engine" when they said "videogame" in this context, then they are very stupid, and need to fire their speech-writers and PR department heads. If, on the other hand, they knew full well that your average listener would not assume that the word "videogame" was supposed to be interpreted as "Our Divinity 2 Game Engine", and would instead take it as given that the word "videogame" meant the general concept of videogame media as a whole, or else as a reference to one of its sub-genres, such as RPGs, or even fantasy RPGs, or even D&D Fantasy RPGs.... then they were deliberately misrepresenting what they were doing in order to draw and/or impress a larger crowd and raise hype in more sectors.
==
If they had never said things like "as faithfully as possible" in the context of how they wanted to make their game in relation to the 5e ruleset...
If they had never said anything about starting with a meticulous description of the 5e rules...
If they had never said anything about making their game based on the 5e system...
If they hadn't
consistently used
diminutive and
minimising language around nearly every mention they make of deviating from the rules - heavily implying by their wording choices that the differences from core 5e will be minimal...
If they'd never implied that this was going to be an actual 5e D&D game in the first place...
And instead, had simply advertised that they were making BG3, as made by the developers who brought you Divinity... I'd probably be on board with that... I
might even play it, if the character customisation looked good enough (It doesn't! I still don't know why people complement character creation in this game! It's simplistic, stale and limited in the extreme! It's completely unsatisfying! It feels like an almost vestigial afterthought!).
And I'd be disappointed that we STILL DIDN'T HAVE, and STILL WEREN'T GETTING a proper D&D video game in 5e rules... because that's what I'm actually interested in, and clearly that's what this is not intending to be.
