[wisty]

Partly the jank is just a cost thing. Even major studios struggle with branching and merging stateful quest lines in game. I guess From picked a system that is cheap, robust, but kind of annoying for players, who forgive it because they otherwise love the game.

To some extent it's a design decision maybe. From makes games that are harsh and unforgiving, but not too harsh - you can mess up bits of quests but not end up unable to get an ending (afaik) which kind of matches the gameplay (harsh but not rage-quit inducing).