So, I might have changed my opinion a bit during recent playthrough - not whole 180d., but closer to 90d.. I don't think it's great, but it's not as big of a problem then I thought it was, or it used to be (for couple patches now I have been mostly skipping dialogue, so it is difficult for me to gauge how has the writing developed.
Nettie makes it clear that our tadpole is not changing us into mindflayer. Helsin states that attempt to remove tadpole could trigger the change, and we need to proceed carefully and understand the magic behind before doing anything. As such, at the very least, I think the game makes it clear to the player, that they can take all the time they want. Does it make it reasonable to playercharacter to chill out? I don't think so, but I think there is more to support this behaviour then I originally thought/was the are launch.
I'm just going to quote myself :
Even if players trust that sentiment/belief (and not everyone will), there's still the issue of having to long rests an abnormal/illogical amount of time to unlock all scenes that trigger at camp (tadpoles, Raphael, and all companions scenes). That and the fact that having some companions in the party prevents certain scenes with other companions from happening. Which prevents further scenes from happening. [snip]
So again, even if we accept that as enough, even when trying to do all quests/side-quests, the amount of time one needs to long rest to unlock all the different cutscenes is disproportionate.
Plus, there's still the issue of missing content if we long rests "too late" (or not at the "main" camp).
I ran into this problem and I have never tried to avoid long rests. Just trying to do long rests when I'm out of juice or when companions complain about it.
Doing that isn't enough and leads to missing dialogues.
Not good, in my opinion.
