"You have been waylaid by enemies" was a defining feature of the original games.
I concur, yet I think it's sadly high time to stop referring to the
Baldur's Gate games when looking for inspiration to improve upon this new game and just treat it as a new D&D game set in Forgotten Realms.
this, unfortunately - it was always an oh shit moment when you heard the narrator go 'you have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself'
there was always the risk of stumbling across a random mob of monsters, or getting caught while fast traveling that required you to manage your resources and learn that certain areas contained more dangerous enemies that were best avoided, particularly at low level. i think the nature of act maps and some of the early balance work larian has implemented works against the idea of random encounters being a thing tho as larian has scripted most events and seems to be balancing around those - frankly, these are two things that also frustrate me in terms of game design. it may not be the final case, but not being able to travel back to the act 1 area seems overly restrictive and the og games never imposed such zones of play that i recall. also, in terms of scripted encounters, i feel like most dialogue interactions have at most 3/4 outcomes regardless of what companion is with you, what pc you create, or what your end goal for the encounter is, with one of those options normally just being attack and fight it out
