And don't forget that EA also gave us Halsin or unnecessary mechanics like nonlethal damage.
Non-lethal attack was there from the very beginning, though it’s implementation changed during EA - initially it was a seperate low damage attack, that required you to bring enemy HP down through conventional means, and than finish him of with this generic attack. Later they switched to what is used today, so a passive which changes all melee physical attacks into non-lethal damage.
I do agree that considering how sporadically and inconsistently non-lethal option is used, it would be better if non lethal was scrapped entirely, and was implemented through scripting alone. But nothing fundamental changed based on EA.
I do think that arguining that EA was detrimental to the game a hard position to argue. Surely one polished act is still better than none. And there are plethora of changes that were made during EA which I think made BG3 a flat out better game. Perhaps a lot of changes would be done with internal testing, maybe not.
Only Larian can judge how much EA informed their 1.0, but overall they seem to think it was worth it.
