On the topic of "close in the distance", I think it's telling they chose to use the cheesy, corny vocal version over the actually appropriate ambient/atmospheric version for the zone music. After all, that's all most of EW was, shallow emotional manipulation sacrificing a (somewhat) coherent storyline in the process. I still keep thinking about just how different in tone SHB was from EW. SHB will tell you to your face that "something's wrong here" and "maybe there's more to the ancient/hydaelyn conflict than we realise" only for endwalker to go "haha not really, they bad, we good, updoot me when I return to sharlayan pls". It feels really really weird. Also, I only just saw this thread tags lmfao they're hilarious