I am glad that Larian is being ambitious and pushing boundaries. More devs need to do that to keep setting the bar higher and higher. If BG3 releases a little buggy that is okay. If it is a disaster with game breaking bugs then that will not be okay.
I personally think they have prioritized some things that they shouldn't have. The ability to get into a cinematic conversation with every single person in the world seems overboard. I think it is a great feature for any NPC with legitimate dialogue options, quests, etc... but I see no problem with being able to just click on an NPC and if there is nothing significant coming from them then they just say a one liner or something like that. I imagine just cutting that out would have saved a ton of time and dev costs. It's cool, I think it s a neat feature... it's just something I would add as kind of "one of the last features" as opposed to making it a "top priority item".
That is to say, I think they should have moved forward with development and if they were ahead of schedule or feeling good about it - include it. If not just leave it out and if you want to add it later if the game sells well include it in the definitive edition or something like that.
Also - if there is a character that needs to be in your party I think they botched the writing. Just make that character's item or something like that essential for their personal quest or whatever, but not to the overarching story. I find it hard to believe that they can't accomplish that with their writing staff... but then again I don't know the entire story yet and don't care to be spoiled.
