DAO-DAI did nothing like this (one can argue DA franchise is more like a theatrical storytelling not RPG storytelling).
Infinity Engines games allows you to "initiate" the combat first (meaning you probably sneaking up to them for sneak attack, quest usually borked if you kill quest giver).
In Larian games? It's standard procedure. We are so used to it we demand more options atop of already wide selection of options which most games doesn't even give you.
But wide options making it less focused, story can easily feel incoherent, some feels like disjointed.
I believe Larian can make more narrative/storytelling focus game, akin to DAO, but it requires to sacrifice the RPG aspect of the game, it's an exchange, I personally wouldn't want them to take.
I've never cared much about being able to do this in games since I value the narrative and such more that mechanically being able to do stuff but I do feel like Larian could get the story to be a bit more narratively focused and satisfying if they made a few minor changes. Hell, I could see them diverging in a couple different ways to reach that goal.
For one thing, tailoring the story more to their strengths would help a great deal. The level of choice and shenanigans and randomn nonsense they want to put into their games would be better suited to a game that's definitely more personal and honed in on the story of the player. With BG3 they tried to tell this epic story that necessitates a lot of twists and factions and conflicts going on around us that drive plot and Larian really wasn't willing to commit to all of that in the way they needed to. If they narrowed the nature of the story more, hey probably wouldn't have as many problems on the narrative front. I think this would be where I would want them to go for their future games, it's a direction I suspect they would really flourish in since it plays to the strength of their character writing as well, which I think of consistently quite good. It's when that writing intersects with a plot that tries to be more grandiose than they seem capable of that things go wrong.
The second approach they could take, and would have improved BG3s story a great deal, is committing to letting players screw their story. I've made a whole thread about how the lack of story-essential side characters is a big part of why I think the game story doesn't ever come together well, and falls apart in act 3. I think if Larian were willing to give us those plot vital npcs to allow for the fleshed out story they need to be trying to tell, then they would be better off. And relating to that, I think those plot important npcs should still be killable, and killing them should majorly impact things. Yes, you should entirely miss out on questlines, yes, there should be situations where if you kill an important NPC then you get a game over. I think this would have let them integrate some side plots that really should not have been side plots and instead parts of the main plot.
As to the question at the heart of this thread, I think the answer is: absolutely not. I think the game has a lot of fundamental problems and it's massively overpraised, but bad for crpgs as a whole? Nah. People have made some fair observations as to why it might be, but I think there's a bit too much doomsaying and hand wringing going on. Maybe it will lead to an increase in rpgs that are more streamlined, more tilted towards mass appeal, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. We've been in a golden age of crpgs for a while now, and I don't see that niche going away. There's still an obvious hunger for the old style of these games and people will keep making them alongside the shinnier, newer variety for people who enjoy those.
And just to give my 2 cents about the romance and sex aspect of this discussion, I think that too is wildly overblown. It's there, yes. It's always been there, at least as far back as I can recall, which is admittedly only around Dragon Age Origins. There has always been a contingent I'd fantom for these games that has a lot of enthusiasm for the romances. I see it as an extension of enthusiasm for the characters, since romance is a way to get a deeper view of a character, which will only help someone enjoy them. Further, people like romance, and people like sex scenes. I don't for a moment think it's actually meaningfully more prevalent in this game than any other crpg in the past several years.
