I mean....being able to initiate combat with enemies on your own terms isn't exactly new. This isn't really an innovation in the genre, so I have a hard time thinking that it's the reason for Larian's success.
I wonder what the stats are for how many people are playing multiplayer. Becuase this sort of goes back to what I said before, about the allocation of resources. If other designers conclude that multiplayer is the route to take, and the single-player experience suffers as a result, I'd be pretty sad about that.
The point isn’t being able to intimate combat on your own terms. The point is non-linear decision making. If an encounter starts a big cutscene or dialogue, very few games provided you the tools for unprompted, player driven decision making to say, “fuck it, I’m going to backstab this fool / build a box ladder and drop an owlbear druid / set up a bunch of grenades and firebolt them / pick up the boss and throw him off a ledge / whatever.” And it isn’t just encounters. Just moving around the map, you have so many tools to decide how you approach a barrier. This is very true to table top gaming. It is something games like Dragon Age games don’t even attempt and it is a big part of this game’s positive reception.
