At the end of the day the rulesets are imperfect ever changing tools whose only purpose is to try and make a fun table top game, customization is a huge attraction for audiences which is why you see the rulesets shifting towards it.
Rules purists, especially those who follow specific editions of rules like some sort of canonical text miss the forest for the trees.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
And yeah, Swen said that WotC gave them a lot of free reign to make the game the way they wanted to. I didn’t interpret that as a non-interference clause though. I think it’s probably more likely that WotC just thought they were doing a good job and let Larian do it’s thing. They are the ones who approached Larian to make this game (after rejecting Swen’s initial pitch years prior).
