Merely just actually implementing non-combat spells that actually do something puts it above most other D&D adaptations for world interactions. Larian's typical emphasis on giving you a goal and letting you find your own solution using the tools they give you is something that should be far more common in cRPGs. But it seems many people on this site consider this to be a very minor thing despite it being the very essence of tabletop roleplaying games.
And I have a bone to pick with this by-the-numbers storybook CYOA design in modern cRPGs.
Nearly all the interactions in pillows are placed there by the developers and easily accessible by the player. This isn't how roleplaying works... You aren't supposed to get a list of options to choose from, it's fundamentally
wrong. This is turning RPGs into CYOAs. It is a very frequent critique of AoD when compared to Fallout.
If the movie form is "show, don't tell" then the RPG form is "allow, don't show."
If, for a small example, I wanted to cross a small river in pillows without a bridge there would be a prompt to use athletics in the form of a button near the river.
If the same situation was present in BG3, there would be nothing there telling you "Hey, something interesting is on the other side!" like the athletics skill prompt. You'd use a teleport spell or perhaps jump(jump range is affected by STR iirc) while exploring.
The latter does feel more rewarding because it doesn't feel like there's someone holding your hand. It's a solution you created to a problem that exists.
Non-combat magic(& skills) definitely isn't a requirement for this but greatly adds to the kind of environments and problems that can be created. Fallout did this plenty without magic. There typically was no prompt telling you to do X, you figured it out on your own. I like to use the radscorpion cave as a most basic example. The game tells you to clear it out, but if your perception is high enough you can notice a weak point in the cave giving you a hint. Place explosives there, and you figured out a creative way to finish the quest. If this was a quest in AoD, it would just be a dialogue option. AoD was a good game but I really hated that CYOA stuff.
Pillows doesn't even really have non-combat magic(terrible world design here too, non-combat magic should be extensive) because it's such an afterthought. A few spells were retrofitted into text sequences but it's quite literally just CYOA.
