[Thought Experiment] Is Dawntrail's 7.0 MSQ Planned to be "Terrible"?

[Chasingstars]

(mostly; the first trip to Shaaloani's a dud)

Personally it was the second trip to Shaaloani where the story went worse, not the first. Rushed pacing where you don't even get to meet the inhabitants of Heritage Found before Zoraal Ja and Sphene's influence happened. Its meant to be some big game-changing moment, but instead its cheapened by the lack of proper emotional connection to what the territory was before. If the dome and solution 9 and the lightning storms happened to somewhere we already visited, it would be more weighted as we been there before. Such as when the various towers that sprang up with the lunar primals and lunar tempered, that was more impactful because those were attacks on established places that we had visited. If the dome appeared where Shaaloani was, not Heritage Found, that would have created a stronger narrative as we actually got to spend time with and learn from the people who lived there as the people met there would have aged 30 years and any who died well nobody would remember them except for the player and Erenville.

The closest emotional connections you can even have is Namikka, Wuk Lamat's nurse maid who is already middle-aged, and Cahciua, Erenville's mom, which we didn't even meet her before she became an endless as she was at best mentioned. Imagine how much more impactful the story would've been if we, for example, talked to Cahciua in our first trip to Shaaloani, then we met the robot she is remotely controlling there would be a stronger sense that she is fine because viera are naturally long-lived, only to then much more harder shatter that illusion the player has to reveal that she is an endless.