I had far too many keys in BG3 without each chest having its own. I can't imagine it adding to my enjoyment of Divinity to have a bunch of additional keys with no easy way to tell which "chest key" matches the chest I found fallen off a wagon.
That's just a symptom of BG3's terrible key system, rather than anything to do with the concept of keys.
Many other games do just fine with keys, with good labelling and auto-discard upon use to keep things clutter free.
In fact, the game I was playing when I was inspired to make this thread, Greedfall 2, has the vast majority of its locks also have a key. But I never once had any issues with key bloat or indiscernable key functions.
The beauty of the lockpick in Skyrim is that it could be used on almost any chest.
That would still be the case even with keys.
The idea is not to completely replace lockpicking with requiring a specific key, but to provide an alternative. So you don't feel forced to spec your character into lockpicking (Or have a token Thief character in the party), meaning if you choose to get lockpicking you can forgo keys. But if you choose to put skill points elsewhere, you can still access things, you just have to put a bit more effort into locating the keys (Possibly utilizing other skills like Stealth to sneak around and pick up keys from restricted areas or Pickpocketing to loot keys off people - Perhaps even Persuasion/Intimidation/Performance skills to coerce people into handing you the keys or you know... Murder)
Which is how it is in Greedfall 2 as well. While most locks do have a key, you can just ignore 99.99% of keys and pick the lock if you have the skill for it (There are still some specific quest related locks that can't be picked because video game tropes are gonna video game trope...). The option is there to locate the key if you don't want to spec your character fully into lockpicking just to be able to do most side quests and get most loot in the game.
