Where you and I differ is that I don't really think that the writing starts from a good place. I think that from the start of the game the foundations set by the writing were bad, and that the ultimate outcome we got was pretty much inevitable based on that. If the writing seemed good initially, then it's just because it's still starting small, planting the inocuous seeds that will grow into what problems we see down the line.

And even if what you were saying is the case, I am very hesitant to put a poor game down to lack of effort by the creators. From everything I've read and watched and learned about game development, it's a difficult, complicated job there comes a point where sometimes sacrifices in quality HAVE to be made in order to actually get the game to ship. I clearly am not inclined to give Larian a lot of grace on this game, but unless I hear it from someone on the team, I won't believe that the poor writing is a result of "taking the easy route." That makes it sound like at some point they decided to just stop putting in effort when what I expect happened is that soemwhere along the line, poor planning meant that they had no other choice but to let things fall to the wayside because that was the only way to actually finish the game, not because they just didn't want to put the work into it.