I think, they lost love for the game in the end because of WotC. They don't seem to be the easiest to work with and I remember Swen or someone else from Larian mentioning, that all the people, they worked with on WotC are gone now. That can't be easy.
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I think the fact, that they work with their own IP now should be helpful.
True, that was maybe a big part of the problem and it was completely out of their control. But still I'm wary. Even though they seem to be very conscious about what went wrong, tthis time they are "even more ambitious", aiming higher. I for one would be fully satisfied if they would manage to develop a game of the scope of BG3, that delivers on its promise (i.e. completed and polished.)
Maybe they mean, that they finally fit try to make the DIvinity lore fitting together. As I understand, the DIvine DIvinity games and teh DOS games have some lore contradictions. That would for me be a pretty decent 'aiming higher'. And if they do early access, listen more to the gameplay complains (toilet chain and still wonky fighting mechanics - shooting through doors is still not working properly - and more).
Ido
m pretty sure that the possibility to have Minthara as a companion was there from early on, because there was a mod, long before the official Minthara recruiting procedure was released, that unlocked this. With this mod you could knock out Minthara to recruit her. She also had the voice lines to give her opinion about the other companions.
What I find more amazing is that there were not more "evil" companions for a dark urge run. My DU ended at the reunion party with only Scratch as remaining companion. All the others were dead (mainly because of the DU's actions) or had left. I read somewhere that, initially, Ketheric was also set up to be a possible companion. But I don't know how close or far that is from the truth.
You sure about Minthara? I admit, I might have forgotten that.
And yes, there should have been more evil companions. As is, if you go full evil, you loose at least two origins (Wyll and Karlach), maybe Gale too, if you don't manage to convince him. You won't get Halsin, Jaheira or Minsc realistically and you can very easily loose Lae'zel and/or Shadowheart too. Astarion might stay, but I totally can see an evil character standing alone at the end.
I won't be going head over heel into early access, but all in all it was still a nice experience with the caveat, that a lot of of very important things that were pointed out, didn't make it into the game.
