Larian has been crystal clear about their intentions. In almost two years of patches, they have consistently spent development time on their priorities, and made their vision of the game obvious. Larian is not making a D&D game! They don't like 5E, so they took a few pinches of the PHB and sprinkled them over a mountain of DOS graphics and scripted teen drama.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven patches in a row, shame on me.
I don't know if I would say that they don't like 5e. I'm sure they like D&D 5e well enough. However, I think it was easier to implement a hybrid 5e system because, well, DOS 2.
I'm playing DOS 2 for the first time and am seeing now why so many thought BG3 was DOS 3 especially at the beginning of EA. My goodness. SO many gameplay elements from DOS 2. It was like they took that game, tweaked it with some 5e elements and released it for EA because, well, it was easier.
I'm noticing:
- food heals
- bedrolls allow you to sleep (Side note: What the heck! Even DOS 2 let you camp on the game map with bedrolls, and they didn't let you rest with enemies nearby! I'm just saying.)
- lots of dramatic actions and special abilities. The spore elf fortifying herself reminds me of druids wild shaping.
- surfaces are vital to combat - like you can't win without them
- barrelmancy
- camera won't let me freaking look up. When zoomed in, I can't see where I'm going
- advantage of high ground is critical to combat
- backstab
- lots of items (but they all seem to have purpose, giving me hope yet for BG3s endless supply of absolute junk
- campfires you find in various places that you can light just for fun but they really do nothing
- surfaces... Did I mention this already?
- chain system - which I might add is WAY worse in DOS 2. Ugh! I can't get them to ever separate
- individual stealth - the giant bushes crack me up. It's like a Looney Toons cartoon.
- stealth cones
- no day/night
- companions who treat you like inferior trash. Not even trash. Inferior trash. And you don't have options to make witty comebacks.
- party of 4 and "Sorry. You're full up" comments when you try to add another
- have to constantly ask party members to leave and then ask others to join - so no quick switch companions
Now take all this and slap some basic 5e mechanics to it and you have BG3 EA prior to patch 1. 7 patches later, it's looking less like this and more 5e, but it's certainly still got a TON of the above and plenty of missing 5e mechanics.
But, come on. You try taking an engine and reworking the whole thing to accommodate an entirely new rule system. That can't be easy.
My point? It REALLY seems clear to me that it has nothing to do with whether they like 5e or not, and whether it's impossible to translate tabletop to a video game. I think it all boils down to it was just plain easier and more cost efficient to take DOS 2 and tweak it a bit to make it fit some sort of quasi-5e gameplay. Then, because certain things were more dramatic and volatile, they made other things, like shove, more dramatic and volatile to try to compensate to fit their DOS 2/5e mechanics hybrid.
On a positive note, I am finding myself not minding DOS 2 gameplay mechanics. It works for their world. It takes some definite getting used to, but it works well for that game. Geez. I had to do several fights multiple times to get the hang of combat. The first fight took me out like 3 times before I realized I could steal a fireball scroll from a dead corpse and create a massive fiery surface to kill the voidwoken bugs. I could not beat them otherwise.
