Can you kill the demon guy fighting the mindflayer on the ship in the opening to get the big flaming sword still? Or has the big flaming sword been removed?
I barely spared him a glance as I headed straight for the transponder, so I'm not actually sure that Zhalk still had the flaming sword. But that whole fight seemed pretty similar to EA, so I don't see any reason to expect that we won't be able to kill and loot him. Though that was rebalanced even between patches, wasn't it, so even if still possible it might be harder (my preference!) or easier.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"