While DOS2 is more linear than BG3, it still allows for far more expression and creativity than the Dragon Age games in how you handle solutions. A basic example is that in DOS2 you have a broader toolkit and can use things like stealth and pickpocketing to avoid combat entirely in a way you cannot in DA games. You can also fundamentally break certain encounters by doing things like teleporting an enemy into lava before combat has even begun.
That is true. When we get to the level of single encounters, things tend to work well in Larian's games. But that's exactly not the focus of what we're talking about here. It's more about what happens when you string events and places together. How does your sense of scale and location hold up? Is it feasible to do things in different orders? If you get an encounter that functions as a gate, can you run away and keep immersion, or do you have to wait to get killed and need to reload (again, the Gith patrol)? Do quests with multiple encounters have different paths through them (DAO did this well, BG3 appears to be good at it as well, we'll see)?
Also in DOS2 you were always motivated to just kill them all. Almost every non-civilian was awful, conversations rarely mattered because the quest had to work regardless of whether you killed them all without talking, and you really needed every single xp you could get.
