I think it has less to do with time, but that Larian wanted to make it impossible to make the wrong choice.
Thats why tadpoles got rewritten to pure powerups, so that player can't lock themself into a path by overusing tadpoles 50+ hours ago. And thats why the emperor has no own motivation and instead always just reacts as you expect it from him. So when you do not trust him hes untrustworthy and so on. You can never make the wrong choice.
And thats one if the main reasons why act 3 is so bad.
I agree with you that this seems to be the main issue. It feels especially jarring because the rest of the game doesn't really work that way.
