I wonder how many people here talking about exploring did find the chest above the crash site? The one for which the game even gives you some exp in addition to it's contents.
Yes, the map could use
a bit of expanding, but not in old-Bioware-games style or TES style. None of those fits the gameplay and the story.
And talking about everything being "turned up to 11". We do not have that everything, we have pretty much the one thing - Absolute's plot moving - and a few little details along the road. Going by the list from the OP post:
Tiefling refugees who just popped in from Avernus
Minthara the Drow leader of the
Absolute Cult wants them dead for some reason.
Some datamining suggested that originally Zevlor was going to join the cult, then changed his mind.
Druids who are missing their leader and in the middle of a shadowy takeover
The druids leader went to investigate on the
Absolute Cult activity. We can't yet tell if Shadow druids has something to do with the Absolute or they just used the opportunity, but either way it's logical.So the Shadow druid part probably is not the part of the Absolute plot, but pretty much the collateral damage.
A goblin war party being controlled by Absolute fanatics
Welp, it's says itself: the Absolute.
A town wiped out by said goblins
A village, not a town. As already said by other users: that's not the goblins handiwork and the village wasn't wiped recently, so it doesn't even count.
Another town that was just burned to the ground in the middle of a drow kidnapping plot
That's not a town, that's just one Inn.
When the last time you saw a town? (joking) And... those drow were sent by same Minthara the Drow leader of the
Absolute Cult.
A tiefling on the run from Avernus, being pursued by corrupted paladins
This is the second thing which so far looks like just some collateral damage. The tiefling escaped Avernus by the Nautoloid related to the Absolute, the paladins got corrupted during Absolute minions attack.
A githyanki search party with a dragon
The search party pursues the artifact that got on the Nautoloid related to the Absolute.
Two otherwise normal brothers, but their sister has been taken in by a hag
The one and only thing so far that looks like just like it happened to be there, nor part of the Absolute plot, nor collateral damage.
The absolute circus of potential party members that you can recruit
...
And then a mindflayer ship crashes right into the middle of it all
The ship defenetly not crashes in the middle of it all, if you consider the party members a part of it all. They were on the ship. But anyway… the ship was expected by the
Absolute Cult to be in the Area. It just happened so that it couldn't reach it's destination intact.
So what I'm seeing is a holy war at it's early staging, not many different things happening.
