The RPS impressions make it sound like what Bioware tried (and ultimately abandoned) with Neverwinter Night's original campaign, the single or multiplayer adventure it shipped with at release.
So, NWN's OC was a very linear and generic adventure, pitting lowly heroes against ancient evils, with some paltry choice and consequence that hardly mattered. You could play it co-op, but that didn't really change much. However, originally, it was supposed to be a much grander, singleplayer, co-op OR competitive co-op game where players could play as a normal adventuring party
or secretly align themselves with the enemy, ultimately betraying their party in the end. Presumably it would've been similar to
Aribeth's arc in the OC, but was abandoned as Bioware had huge troubles developing NWN as a whole. (They had hugely ambitious goals in terms of custom content and multiplayer, including a dungeon master mode a la DOS2.)
There was a good article about it on IGN's Neverwinter Nights Vault, which is where I heard of it, but unfortunately they shuttered the site some years ago.
It will be truly amazing if Larian can step up RPGs like this. I'm particularly curious if it works while also playing singleplayer; I'd love to betray myself.
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