MSQ Needs Further Condensing

[Iscah]

I would bet my last shirt that most of them will happily skip through all the cut scenes because they just want to start with the HW story. The CT series doesn't start with anything that makes it seem particulary important in the grand scheme of things either. By the time they reach ShB, most will have already forgotten what happened, if they even watched the cutscenes and paid attention to what this is about.

And I would bet that the people who skip through all of CT because the first cutscene seemed boring will also skip through a lot of other cutscenes. And they'd probably skip through it no matter where you put it in the narrative.

The sheer fact that you're required to do it should be enough to make people realise it's probably important to pay attention - and even if they skip the first few bits, they well may have had their interest piqued by the point we're opening up voidgates and fighting the Cloud of Darkness. If they haven't, they probably don't care by the time they hit Shadowbringers either.

CT happens at Lv50. That is just how the story is supposed to go. It also first gets called back to much earlier than Shadowbringers, specifically with Nero's reappearance in post-Heavensward. While the scene is written to work whether the player encountered him in CT or last saw him at the Praetorium, the intent is that you have been through CT already and it better explains why we're willing to trust him at that point.


Edit to add: If it's a concern that "even if they paid attention they will have forgotten by Shadowbringers", that would cause problems in numerous other situations as well - and probably with media in general. Characters and plot points do get brought back later, and while it's understandable that someone who played ARR five years ago might have forgotten a side story, I think I would be concerned for the memory of someone who played the whole game through in a couple of months while paying attention to the story, yet couldn't remember the events of CT at least well enough for things to become clear at the reveal.