Well, I suppose it does have a consequence. An extremely underwhelming and stupid, circumventable consequence, but a consequence nonetheless.
I think what people imagined the Upper City to be makes the story of Larian going from mentioning it in their latest panel shy of a month away from release to just straight up deleting it for full release with no trace of it in the datamines too incredible. I try to stick with Occam's Razor for this one.