Why I still play Baldur's Gate 2 to this day. When you have 20 NPCs joinable, all with party banters, friendship dialogues (not just with your character!) , romances, and not to mention even more great banter and dialogue content from MODS...
I kind of chuckly when people discover BG3 and think its the greatest thing since slice bread. Yea it looks and plays terrific. Party mechanics...dialogues...friendships...all is really lacking compared to WAY older games.
While I love BG3 for what it is, I am bored out of my mind due to always having those same 7 boring npcs which only interact with Tav. Frankly after 3 years I am sick and tired of seing these same NPCs. It would of been great having more inner-party dialogues between multiple npcs.
Tired of Keldorn? Switch to Korgan and replace Nalia with Aerie for some fun banters. Anomen is getting annoying, put Viconia instead! Want JAN to shut up? Get the dead quiet Valigar for a couple hours of relaxation....etc. In the long term Its just so much more fun to switch up all your npcs when you have over a dozen to work with.
BG3 is really missing these party dynamics that BG2 did so well.
You are absolutely correct on both counts: older games had those systems and people being tricked into thinking that BG3 is revolutionary in this aspect.
But and there is always a but with me: BG1/2 had the most annoying reputation system. Get 20 rep? Say good bye to all the evil aligned companions like Korgan, Edwin, Viconia. Like the moment you'd hit 20 rep they'd just abandon you and go to their home base until you killed an innocent NPC to lose rep (or used cheats to lower it). Sure, that system made sense but was so annoyingly implemented it kind of forced you to either keep good aligned parties or evil ones (on evil runs), then that got changed in ToB where companions no longer gave a damn about your reputation...
Also the love triangle between Gorion's ward, Aerie and Haer'Dalis was kind of hilarious. The only game where a companion can effectively block off your romance with someone! Seen various permutations of that on youtube!
I am wondering how BG3 could possibly be improved with all of that... the only companion who goes out of her way to sleep with someone is Lae'zel if actively rejected by the player. If you romance Astarion, she tries to sleep with Wyll (and is disappointed cause all Wyll wanted to do is talk - you can ask her about her 'conquest' the day after), if you romance Gale she goes after Astarion and I believe if you (try to) romance Wyll she does after Gale. If you romance any of the ladies, she defaults to Astarion. Regardless aside from that one comment she makes a day after the tiefling/gobbo party, it is never ever mentioned again. Not in banters, not in conversations. Why? Larian could've gone wild with that! It is kind of assumed that the companions all become friends after a while, even SH and Lae (under the right circumstances), but again, it's only ever mentioned in some banters, never really shown or mentioned in cutscenes (aside from Gale's comment at the very end of the game, when he has that conversation about SPOILER at the docks).
