Since I don't intend to really respond to one of your points, I'll put this in a spoiler
What I think happened:
They didn't knew if they could get Irenicus' VA until quite late in development, so therefore there was a completely different story arc, in case they don't. (Andrew Foley said that)
The initial Dragonspear campaign was about 5hrs long, and then they decided to add much more stuff to it. My guess, basically all the crusading/the actual Dragonspear campaign. (Trent Oster said that)
And even tough the Dragonspear campaign plays quite nicely, it is in the end like TotSc. A nice another adventure, but no bridge to BG2. Realizing that, they came up with this idea of the trial and how you escape it and just slap the canon party of the BG2 start on you for last minute of SoD. Makes no sense at all and is about the laziest explanation you could come up with.
So to sum it up: IMHO there is no deeper explanation for what you see happening at the end and I highly doubt, that this mess will somehow be resolved by future content.
Considering those circumstances in the development of the game, I think it's really not surprising that there have been a lot of threads heavily critisicing this end. Because that's what you are bound to get, if you approach a story that carelessly. You lose track and focus of your own story.
LoveViconia
Member Posts: 196
Comments
I'll put this in a spoilerWhat I think happened:
They didn't knew if they could get Irenicus' VA until quite late in development, so therefore there was a completely different story arc, in case they don't. (Andrew Foley said that)
The initial Dragonspear campaign was about 5hrs long, and then they decided to add much more stuff to it. My guess, basically all the crusading/the actual Dragonspear campaign. (Trent Oster said that)
And even tough the Dragonspear campaign plays quite nicely, it is in the end like TotSc. A nice another adventure, but no bridge to BG2.
Realizing that, they came up with this idea of the trial and how you escape it and just slap the canon party of the BG2 start on you for last minute of SoD. Makes no sense at all and is about the laziest explanation you could come up with.
So to sum it up: IMHO there is no deeper explanation for what you see happening at the end and I highly doubt, that this mess will somehow be resolved by future content.
Considering those circumstances in the development of the game, I think it's really not surprising that there have been a lot of threads heavily critisicing this end. Because that's what you are bound to get, if you approach a story that carelessly. You lose track and focus of your own story.
Edit: Unspoilered by OPs request