| RolStoppable said: XCX's characters (specifically the inhabitants of NLA) are so far from believable that the things you've mentioned don't really do much more damage. I don't believe that video games are a good, let alone excellent, medium for storytelling because almost all games are an example of the contrary. But let's stay with XCX specifically, what would have been that easy workaround? Because every sense of urgency should be gone before the player has completed chapter 6. |
Ideally, pick a different narrative entirely. The decision to implement a story where the player is consistently told they need to hurry felt like a questionable choice to me when it was originally introduced, but something I assumed they would resolve fairly quickly. Six chapters later, I wish that was the case. All that would need to be done is just remove the timer aspect from all of it. Say that the lifehold has the power to sustain itself for years, and your problem is fixed.
With that said, even if we are dead set on keeping with this narrative exactly as is, the next step would be to simply remove the mandatory side quests from before each mission. That way, the players who want to go out and do lots of side questing before they reach the end of the game can do so, and the players who want to get immersed in the game and play as if they were in the story themselves can do so as well.
But, even if we're tied to mandatory side quests for some other arbitrary reason, have all of the sidequests be at least tangentally related to searching for the lifehold. Change them from "finding someone's cat" or "helping some guy get a date" to "help test new software that will expedite the process of finding the lifehold." Some of the affinity missions do this well and I can see how they're related, such as the probe placement. Others, however...don't.
