in bg1 and bg2 you can set auto pause when certain things happen like an enemy is seen or your weapon is busted for example... he is basically saying bg3 should be more like the old bg1&2 games i.e, based on the old infinity engine that people stopped using because it had major ram issues and doesn't offer current controller keys

the fact is modern hardware | software has changed but I still support his right to complain about that change :)

I haven't narrowed down how to know if a title will have proper pausing available for the single players or not. Using the Steam platform's search filters, it does seem to be a more recent trend where a lot of gaming studios that build "co-op" titles just aren't considerate towards their single players at all. That certainly can't be said for all "co-op" titles, though. More and more gaming studios, too, are just giving lip service towards their modding communities now and not providing any *real* support there. For DOS, DOS2, and Baldur's Gate 3, it seems that even with Larian's development team tripling in size still didn't find them capable of building an engine that can support real pausing options. Even their mod communities have found it impossible to create real pausing options for any titles built with these engines. The only tools that I've been able to find that work to pause any of these titles correctly are external hacking utilities. They do seem to work for the purpose, though, and are even able to provide pausing for the 170+ hours of cutscene content in Baldur's Gate 3. Huge props towards the creators of the Infinty and Aurora game engines, though, for being more considerate towards your single players!