After 20-odd hours I'm now convinced that a lot of the sky-is-falling stuff is basically nonsense in the big picture, and that in most respects it's a good game, and sometimes a brilliant game. Most of the stuff that's "wrong" with the game is fairly trivial (perhaps with the exception of the the PS4 graphics problems, but I can't speak to those), and easily fixable, or a matter of taste (about which, famously, there's no disputation) - except for ONE quite important problem that affects the whole of the game through and through, that I'm starting to notice.
So, ok, they've got this system where many of the the side-quests are supposed to be interwoven with the main quests, and affect the main quest. There's a kind of internal logic that flows according to where you are in the MQ (I think they call it the "token" system) that's supposed to introduce those interweaving side-quests at appropriate moments. THIS is actually what I think is a bit broken about the game, and not quite WAI, and I suspect it's actually the problem they've been most frantic about. It's a great idea in principle, and when it works it's great, but it's not working very well - yet.
I speak of the way that the player is constantly interrupted by side-quest requests, a non-trivial number of which call for quite prompt action, or even have specific timing requirements. It's starting to get really annoying, and it feels way overtuned. Maybe half a dozen times now, I've been in a situation where a bunch of side-quests come tumbling in one after the other at really inappropriate moments, even to the point where the dialogue for them is interfering with the dialogue for whatever you're currently doing - even to the point of there being a mini-cascade of them (i.e. you're engaged in dialogue for one quest, then another comes in, then another).
Now to my mind THAT's a serious problem that really breaks the sense of immersion that they're looking for. It's incredibly jarring and I think they've got to fix it.
An analogy is when you're waiting for a bus then all of a sudden 4 come along at once. Something's awry with the timing, and intuitively it feels to me like it's some kind of CPU bottleneck problem, where "go" signals are being temporarily stored so the CPU can deal with other things, so that a bunch of "go" signals are left cooling their heels, and then given out all at once. Or perhaps things are getting stuck in a loop and then the logjam is all being released at once.
