A time limit would make people worry about missing content.
Yeah, but that's why the writing is just weak. The end-sequence didn't need all of the impending time-crises bearing down on it - so they should've either split the third act into an at-peace segment and a rush-rush-rush segment... or just not structured it such that the army is on the way and there's a sense of urgency. I'm still not entirely sure how you even arrive in the city before the army does, since if you try to leave Act II early the army is sitting right there on the pathway you take out.
I'm also pretty sure at some point, the army is defeated off-screen. When you first meet the trio of big bads, suave man says that he'll swoop in and save the day with his robots and be promoted to mega-president, which I think is supposed to be what happens. Somewhere between the outskirts of the city and the city proper, it seems like the entire point about the army fades into the background and is just totally forgotten about.
As for the companion quests, I liked Wyll and Shadowheart's, and Gale's wizard tower was a good puzzle.
I like a lot of the themes at play, but something about them just rubbed me the wrong way. Wyll's concluded in that really fun boss fight with the big twist-reveal... except that reveal doesn't go anywhere. You can mention it to Wyll's pops if you saved him (
he can throw those bomb-spiders), and he goes "dude no way" and that's kindof it. Shadowheart's has Nocturne, which is just the most absolutely insufferable bit of writing in the game - fuck me it's so bad. Like, the game has a drag queen character and the character is totally fine: in charge of some weird circus of oddballs, totally fits.
But the tranny, oh the tranny has to be super-special-awesome and actually has a kind heart of gold amidst
a heartless coven of assassins and killers worshipping a god of subterfuge, who is -really- thankful that everyone isn't deadnaming despite the fact that
they literally have a giant mirror that makes people forget whatever they want. And its been bestest-friends with Shart all this time and at no point did
that coven make use of the giant FORGET-THINGS mirror to, I don't know, make the idiot forget about Shart so they'd be prepared to murderize her like is supposed to be what everyone there has trained their entire life to do.
Lae'Zel's arc is really the only one that I more wholly enjoyed, but the problem is that her story feels so disconnected from the main plot - it's this thing that awkwardly runs parallel with it. You get these moments of character development sparingly, and her personality seems to do these giant whiplashes because they try to stuff all of it into a five-minute sequence amidst a thirty-hour act. It makes sense within the time frame for her to have those changes of heart, but they have to speed through everything just in case you visit the creche late into Act II. It's sortof like a repeat of a Garrus issue in Mass Effect 1: if you don't keep up with him the entire game and instead wait until the point in the game where he would reveal his companion quest, you can speed through his entire dialogue arc in one sitting and from there convince him to be a good cop or a bad cop abruptly. Talk to him after every mission and it feels like a little more natural of a progression, but it's easy to forget and get a rushed experience.
