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.
I don't know. Some of this stuff is fun, sure. But some of it seems very immersion-breaking to me. It's fun to stack explosive barrels all around the goblin camp and set them off in a chain explosion. But...really, some of the people in that camp should be asking you "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I'm all for creative solutions, but I like when they make sense (like distracting and poisoning the goblins.) Building a giant box ladder to drop an owlbear on an enemy might be fun, but honestly it just highlights the fact that these are AI creatures with limited interactivity.
