Your entire comment reads as a refute of OPs criticism and an excuse for Meta’s actions. If you were agreeing with OPs criticism, you would typically use phrases like “only five years”.
Because Sweet Baby Inc is known for forcing a narrative and tokens into the writing, for the sake of diversity on the cost of quality of the story and the characters.
Where is the proof of this beyond speculation? I can’t think of a mechanism through which a consultant can force anything. Their contracts would undoubtedly have an NDA that would prevent them from sharing which of their recommendations the client acted on or not.
You made choices and got the results of those choices. The alternative results are different.
!There are multiple endings where Karlach survives in different ways. Shadowheart’s story has at least three possible outcomes, maybe more that I haven’t seen. This goes on and on for each origin character. Even NPCs you encounter in Act 3 are shaped by your choices earlier in the game.!<
Frankly, based on your description, it sounds like you made a bunch of lame decisions. There’s neat endings and then the middling one you got.
And? It would take a trivial amount of effort to spin up VMs and install the game on each. If I immediately tear the VM down after, I’m sure my cost would be covered by free AWS credits.