I get the frustration here because this pattern has basically repeated across DOS1, DOS2 and BG3, and from what I’ve seen it is less about whether the idea of a living world is possible and more about how much simulation depth survives the trade off with production scope, voice work, cinematics and scripting complexity, so I would not personally expect a sudden leap into fully scheduled NPC ecosystems even in the next big Larian style project, more likely it will stay selective and authored rather than systemic everywhere; on a different note I sometimes end up checking lighter interactive browser experiences like
https://pokiesman1.net/free-pokies/ just to compare how different games handle randomness and systems design in a much simpler framework, and it actually highlights the contrast between controlled simulation and fully dynamic worlds pretty clearly, so overall I would temper expectations and assume incremental improvements rather than a full “world simulation revolution” this time.
