No matter how little Larian did with this EA so far and at what snail pace this whole thing progressed (honestly the last thing I expected joining in was that I would be still waiting for several BASIC classes and races almost two years into EA), it's terrifying to even imagine how the game would have turned out without it.
We would have a whole lot of HORRIBLE mechanical implementations without experiencing the chance to bitch about them for months before seeing them addressed.
I'm talking about unquestionable shit like "advantage for walking slowly behind your opponent", "advantage for being two meters higher than your enemy" (and DISADVANTAGE for being lower than him, factually DOUBLING that gap) and so on.
Swen Vincke stated months before EA started that they had decided on a party limit of 4, but that 6 could have worked as well.
They stated that they set for what they thought it was best but they were open to feedback. They got tons of that feedback and they decided not only to not act on it, but to almost ostentatiously ignore it.
Same goes for their hideous chain-based control scheme and how WIDELY unpopular it turned out to be. It's not even worth to debate if it's liked or not at this point. I may be more annoyed about it than most people, which is why I've been very vocal about it, but it's not even in question that the OVERWHELMING majority of users either actively dislike it on an instinctive level or realize they do when it's pointed out to them what a better alternative would be like.
The only people who defend the chain system seem to be the ones that just don't know better or the ones that would defend Larian even if the studio formed a cult and started stabbing their newborn child on an altar.
He rejected the notion of being *mechanically* faithful to the original as they weren't looking to simply recreate the game and times had changed.
He argued that some mechanics would be poorly suited for a computer game, but then they came up with WORSE alternatives and a competitor came to the scene proving that a more faithful adaptation ironically enough worked far better.
This becomes even more clear when you consider the turn-based vs real-time "discussion".
There was never an actual "real-time vs turn-based" argument to be had, because they've been adamant from the get go on what they wanted to. THIS one is indeed a case where they've been transparent and some people just refused to listen.
