I am honestly just a tourist here considering BG3 is the first non Japanese RPG I've played and really enjoyed. I tried out Divinity Original Sin 2 a few years back when a friend wanted to play but it wasn't my thing at all and I ended up dropping it after about 8 hours. The companions and NPC focused stories really are the driving factor in why I love BG3 so much and already have 40 hours invested in just two weeks.

So yeah, I completely understand the fears from dedicated fans of CRPGs or DND who want games to be more combat focused (at least that's the vibe I'm getting here?), but my hope is that both types of games can coexist because BG3 is, for me, legitimately the best RPGs I've ever played and I would want to see another game like it or at least have the game go through a few years of major updates + new content.

tbh this reminds me of the outcry from old school Fire Emblem fans once the modern era 3DS games with character focused + romance available stories started to take over. What ended up happening was other developers started to fill in that space and a lot of fresh takes on the genre started popping up. Even if the original space for these games starts to shift in tone, a new team will eventually come in to take over the space and maybe even bring in some new features the dedicated crowd likes.