Whilst we're at "streamlining": Baldur's Gate was never a niche hardcore RPG to begin with. Nor was it intended to be. If you "streamline" significantly more, what's left? I mean, if you put it next to Dragon Age 2, Witcher 2, Mass Effect 2, it may look the raw deal. Put it next to Darklands, Realms Of Arkania or Age Of Decadence however, and it appears like Diablo mixed with Warcraft 2, two major PC blockbusters of that time. Which the combat intentionally mimiced some, if not mechanically, then viscerally. In particular BG1 is mostly auto-attack combat just the same, due to the lack of spell complexity and fighter type classes being fighters and that's that. Like the units in an RTS. Key Bioware staffers were major fans of Warcraft either way.
Or as Guido Henkel (former Attic, Interplay and the dude on Planescape Torment's cover artwork) put it:
It is easy to glorify these games in retrospect with nostalgic glasses on, but the fact of the matter is that compared to many other games and genres, games like Star Trail simply did not nearly make as much money. As a result publishers turned their backs on these kinds of hard core games and instead went down the path of streamlined mainstream products, especially since Baldur’s Gate proved very clearly at the time that there is a market for light role-playing games.
