Multiple characters combined with real-time-with-pause would not be as appealing today, it leads to you pausing so much that it might as well be turn based, which is not a problem in a game where you play as only one character (e.g. divine divinity).
Turn based is the reason why larian skyrocketed. Back when dragon commander or DIV2 was the latest game from larian, they weren't as liked as they are today. Divine Divinity and DIV2 were very good games but they didn't meet with the same success as DOS1 and DOS2.
Although part of the reason is that the combat in beyond divinity and dragon commander are games I would not recommend, and the combat in DIV2 is not amazing. Despite that, it's not a stretch to assume that larian will try their hand at real time combat in their next game (and not just in order to mix it up), since there is no reason to assume they are incapable of making a good real time combat system.
