No. I read in some interview that time advances only when you leave a district or complete an objective in them or something like that. You have time to explore and do stuff.
Time pressure in gaming only really works when it's immediate. A racing level you have to complete in 3 minutes is fun ... a long form game where you have to complete 8 convoluted levels in 24 hours, not so much. You'd end up either rushing levels, hurrying past content that would be worth seeing if you weren't so stressed, and finishing with 10 hours to spare, which is hardly thrilling; or taking a more measured approach, then realizing you only have 4 hours left on the last 3 levels, which are supposed to take 3 hours each, so you might as well just quit.
That's what I'm saying - despite the fact that the timer can be totally negated by mass-spamming the hourglass thingies (and I got the recipe fairly late into the game, many people can get it straight away), 90% of the negative comments in Mooncrash letsplays and reviews on steam basically revolve about "muh timer" and how it hurts people's enjoyment of the game (which is basically built around it, but they don't get it somehow). I guess, Arkane devs took that impression into their hearts
Exploration and time limits are antithetical: exploration works best when you can freely waste your time "exploring" the world which is very hard to do when the game is telling you to hurry up and you don't know the real level of urgency.
Most people don't want to test the level of urgency because it kills their immersion hence a catch-22: either they check the hidden timer and it ruins their immersion or they don't check, they rush the game and in the end they feel unsatisfied because they could not explore properly.
Also it's funny that you say you don't understand the complains considering that the hidden timer bothered you so much that you had to "check" its urgency level for yourself
How so? The game world is persistent (apart from various environmental hazards / power/ transportation issues), you can explore to your hearts content within the time limits, going to another zone / changing exploratory strategies if it expired. Some people are just afraid of timers regardless of what they do and how they work, that's it, no rational explanation needed. Also, there's difference between goals-based exploration and mindless TES-like hiking (it'd be actually great if there were some sort of slow timer in the original game that was tied, for example, to O2 generators or power plants of the station, but it'd be even less palatable for people who like turtle-paced 'explorashun'). Just imagine you could just slowly search for the key card to the janitor room, it'd kill all the suspense and tension.
Sounds like the title of some random shovelware.
Every time you die and restart you lose your gear and abilities and have to acquire them again. Until a certain point in the story which allows you to keep them after death.
