Originally Posted by Taril
Uhh... Pretty much every RPG tracks those things.

Heck, Elder Scrolls and Fallout actually tracks individual stolen goods permenantly (Fallout also has a Karma system and various Reputation systems that change how NPC's act around you)

The ONLY thing that BG3 does, is have NPC's show up again in later acts. Which is not complex. It's simply state based flags used by many games of various genres (Heck, Skyrim has you make a choice about who takes over control of Whiterun)

None of these things cause BG3 to be complex. At least no more so than any other RPG be it Classic or not.

It's easier to track stolen goods permanently than only under certain circumstances. You can just set a flag "stolen_item" and every NPC with a "can_see_stolen_item" flag can react to it. Setting a flag and making sure it's only visible for a certain time under certain circumstances is more difficult. For example, making sure that the flag does not activate if you are invisible when stealing the item is a separate exercise in itself.