Honestly I feel like they just completely failed to convey the sense of emergency that really should have been there. The idea that Sphene wasn't willing to give us time to find a solution was fine, but we spend so long talking to people and not just rushing to stop Sphene it's like the writers forgot their own plot point.

The entire "We don't have time, we have to stop Sphene now!" only really felt like it came into play during the Alexandria dungeon, well after we shut everything down.

On the other hand, it would have felt honestly fitting if the people we interacted with (Wuk Lamat's mother figure, Otis, Krile's parents, Erenville's mom) were chosen to be there in the story specifically to slow us down, but the game never spells that one out, and not a one of them actually try to stop us in any meaningful capacity.