
Originally Posted by
Shurrikhan
Tbf, I still don't get why the trolley was made a huge deal of. We used it for all of, what, 30 meters, at roughly walking speed, and then just walked from there?
Feels more like we needed a magic rock to depress a floor-switch than an actual trolley.
That is basically what we needed...but the purpose of that section was to give room for specific character development as a lead-up to the major events that happen after getting past the gate.
The reason for our delay in that area realistically could have been anything, so long as it served to set the stage for what came next.

Originally Posted by
MomomiMomi
Just about everything in Il Mheg and the western part of Amh Araeng falls into this. Please enlighten me how the Nu Mou are important to the story.
There are quite a large amount of busywork quests all throughout. In every zone you get to you have to go do tedious, meaningless tasks. The kobolds. Finding the "keys" to Titania. The magic trolley that allows us to get through a gate that we could have just jumped over.
Without those interactions, you'd have a straight shot to whatever big problem/antagonist you're facing in every area you go to...and that's boring. A "story" where you just go straight to the big boss is no story at all.
Like this game has been doing since it started, it takes the time to show your interactions with various groups in the world the writers have created, allowing for character growth and character moments along the way - the kinds of things that end up making stories special to read, watch, or experience.
Also, in this particular expansion, a major part of the story is how you've managed to bring so many groups of people together to work toward a common goal to save their world...and that story beat falls completely flat if you don't actually go and do things that inspire the people. Kind of important that all that happens, and it's not going to happen because you waltzed through and jumped over a gate.
Arguments like yours remind me of those complaints about movies where people say "Well why didn't the characters just do this other thing that would have solved their problem/not caused an issue?" and the answer, obviously, is that if they did that then there would be no story.