Yes, it appears that something happened during development that caused Larian to flinch away from a more genuine sense of choice and consequence. Notably, Gale's magic hunger is reduced to any three magic items instead of three major ones. But there are a lot of smaller oddities, too. The one that stuck out to me is the Mind Flayer corpse that Dror Razglin communicates with -- in early access, if could and would recognise you if you killed it on the beach. Now, the narrator goes "This is not any Mind Flayer you recognise, but maybe it can identify you?" I just got a message from a friend who did not play EA asking me what the point of that scene was.
Between the Daisy changes I outlined in another thread and all these small elements, it is clear Larian had a really big shift in narrative tone at some point and all the interesting material was cut and replaced for something more typically heroic. It's a real shame. I genuinely don't understand why they'd change so much. This isn't unimplemented content, this is implemented content that was altered which involves a lot more work than just not finishing something.
I guess some complaints just stuck? People are usually less likely to advocate for something if they like it (because, what's to say hh? It's good.), but people who don't like something will be more likely to speak up (because, how else can you get it to change?). I think you're right, and at some point, Larian must have gotten spooked and when those changes clashed with the goal they were working towards you get this.
Or, maybe it was just too much. The game is so big is even hard to tell sometimes what's a bug and what's a feature because there is so much you can do/so many different ways things can go.
The mind flayer thing is weird to be cut though, and I do sort of miss when the companions were more prickly to start out. I miss the missing dialogue I remember being there. I'm usually in favor of more options versus different options when it comes to implementing things, but of course, at some point, you would have to pick one or the other with some things.
edit: this all sounds fairly disparaging, but I do really love the game, and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing for people to complain that they want *more* of your game (to a certain point of course). At least to me, it feels like people are saying, 'hey, this was really good to a certain point, give me more of that' (story, romance, dialogue, or whatever else). I could definitely be wrong though, but it doesn't seem like the primary issue is hating the game.
