see the argument you're making but I think conflating this game with being a dating sim is entirely off base and I honestly think that the argument in general, not just yours, is overblown.
I think there's a lot of strawmanning here. No one claimed this game is just a dating simulator. We said it attracts the crowd > The crowd demands certain stuff > certain stuff is usually unnecessary. It was more of a concern for the future honestly.
To make it clear I don't think the romance is the worst part about the game in general. I think it's the direction change from the original vision that we saw glimpse of in the EA.
Who exactly is this "dating sim crowd" that people are talking about?
They're not a monolithic entity but see fylimar's point about what people are most vocal about.
Furthermore, whatever problems DA2 had, romance was not one of them.
Again, I didn't speak about the romance itself but rather the actions of those mostly interested in the romance.
but it's not pandering to some imaginery thirst crowd that's just sitting waiting to corrupt rpgs.
Halsin is the biggest example of pandering to a thirst crowd.
It's not like the crowd deliberately want the game to be worse. It's that they're so interested in one trivial thing more than anything else that it matters little if the game has issues as long as that one trivial thing is good.
Here's a hypothetical example, let's assume the Witcher 4 is a buggy unplayable mess but somehow ended up with a great Gwent minigame that somehow attracts the Hearthstone players. Player A wants to finish the game and thinks it's a mess but the Hearthstone player is very loud and vocal about how great the game is and is against any criticism to the game because they enjoying playing the Gwent minigame 9 hours a day. Now if the Witcher 4 devs see that most of the feedback is positive because of the Gwent players chances are they'd think they've done a great job on the game.
And finally, I entirely disagree with you about Owlcat games. They're not perfect, but they're pretty damn solid, and their overall story and plotting is good.
I don't see how Linzi stealing from the treasury and forcing a Lawful Evil character to forgive her is good writing or that Darzen stuff. But I don't want to turn this into a Larian vs Owlcat thing.
Overall, this game feels like the best DnD game I've played gameplay wise with top tier voice acting and music. It's just that the whole time I was playing I was thinking: "I wish the plot was like DA:O, PoE1 or MoTB".
