I think I made that very same point about the change in Shadowheart’s location/dialogue undermining the reason to check out the temple a while back! Especially as it’s not clear why to me why the scene on the beach couldn’t be pretty much the same, saving some acknowledgement of our help.
I wouldn’t mind her saying something more about the ruins even if we freed her from the pod (I think she’ll still comment that we may need to find another way in if we interact with the door, but that’s it). But, that said, if she can think that they might be worth checking out given we’ve washed up with few resources, then I guess Tav (ie we) could just as easily come to the same conclusion independently. Especially if we happen to bump into to looters up top, who seem to have found something interesting.
And personally I don’t mind there not being a motivation to visit every part of the map every playthrough. Perhaps because I’ve now played enough of EA to more than satisfy my inner completionist, I actually quite enjoy just seeing where my travels take me if I just do what would make most sense to my character.
So, if I don’t rescue Shadowheart but don’t alienate her, then I’ll probably explore the crypt early as she’ll make a case for doing so, but if not then I might go in if my Tav is the kind of curious person who’d decide to check it out themselves, but otherwise walk past and only decide to investigate after bumping into Gimblebock and gang. I keep meaning not to go there at all, but in the runs when I’ve taken this approach I’ve always found it natural to visit at some point.
Similarly, if we meet with Ethel and ask for her help, or if we want to discredit Kagha, or get suspicious about Ethel if we discover the dodgy potion she gave Pandirna(?) and feel we should check that out, or overhear Ethel arguing with Mayrina’s brothers, or just get lost looking for the goblin camp (eg if we don’t have Sazza) then we have reason to head into the swamp, but otherwise we might not bother, at least right now. (I wonder, if we don’t deal with Ethel in act one, might we meet one of her sisters in Baldur’s Gate and, assuming that’s a quest we want to follow, end up revisiting this area and Ethel later on?)
And if we recruit Lae’zel then we might head off to the Risen Road early on the way to the crèche, and so discover the flaming inn. Or even if we don’t recruit Lae’zel we can find out about githyanki on the Risen Road, eg from the corpse in the Ogre building, and decide that they might be worth checking out if we know about their enmity with mindflayers, or because we saw them chasing the nautiloid so think they may know more about what’s going on. Or we can find out about the raid on the inn at the goblin camp, or see it burning through the telescope in the druid grove, and if we’re helpful souls might go check it out to see if we can help. Or finish cleaning the place out. Or, given I think we can find out at the camp that the purpose of the raid was to kidnap some Baldur’s Gate higher up (from the trader maybe? not 100% sure about that), who presumably was wanted by the cult for a reason, we might decide to go see if there’s anyone left there who knows anything about the cult or the tadpoles, or can help us get back to Baldur’s Gate. I think that the road to where we find the githyanki might also be the route we’d take if we decided to risk the overland route to Moonrise Towers in the full game, or if we side with Minthara and take her directions.
And once we head over the bridge to the road we find the hyenas and evidence of survivors of the gnoll raid on the caravan, and so might decide to seek them out, and depending on how that goes, we might also get directed to Waukeen’s Rest.
I can’t recall if there’s anything pushing us to investigate the toll house on the Risen Road, other than investigating the gnoll attacks (which we may or not decide to do, but may be more likely to do so once we realise the tadpole connection from the Flind Warlord). I have a feeling the toll house might be one of the targets for raids by the Absolute’s forces on Minthara’s map, which would indicate it as a possible area of interest, but am not sure about that. There’s a blocked exit from the map due to a rockfall near it, but I don’t know that anything is yet pushing us to head off in that direction.
But in general, I’m actually pretty happy that there are a number of things that might encourage us to explore different areas without this being shoved in our faces, though as always I’m sure improvements could be made.
