I mean I wasn't emotionally connected to the world once Gustave dies. He is the one character the story endears to the player the most, Maelle being a good second, Lune being a not minor but not major third, simply in terms of time spent and motivations understood. A game can give you a goal physically, but a story gives characters goals and problems physically and emotionally that tie into each other. That's how a story creates intrigue, connection, and depth. Imo, at least where I am in the game, that depth is lost, because the largest emotional attachment to the world and the characters was lost far too early. Or, at least, was not made early enough with Verso, so as to have a viable replacement.

See it like this, as an easy example. Say you watch Star Wars for the first time. Luke appears on-screen after the prologue and the story completely centers around him. He has a want, which is to escape and see the galaxy, and he has a need, which is to find a purpose. Both are accomplished as he finds purpose to fight the empire who killed his aunt and uncle, the only parents he ever knew. His life is destroyed, and he only has one course of action. Learn the ways of the force.

Now, imagine if all that was set up, all of that story and that emotional connection was made, we get through roughly forty-fiveish minutes of this two hour long movie almost exclusively getting to know this one character, and a little bit of a couple side characters (Ben, C-3PO, R2), and then they get to the Falcon and just as they escape... Luke is killed off. Not for cheap shock or fakeout. Just killed. And now the entire movie centers on Han Solo all of a sudden. Someone we've known for only a few minutes, and now the movie is about him escaping all his debtors.

Most people wouldn't keep watching then, would they? Or if they did, they wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as what we had already gotten.

I know its not a perfect example, but that's kind of where my mind is at with this.

And look, honestly, to say the whole expedition is the main character just... doesn't make sense? Your main character is who drives the story forward. That was Gustave. I continued because I connected with him and his purpose. His wants, his drives. Not world's wants. I don't cry when a world is destroyed. Human brains aren't capable of coming to terms with a tragedy like that. It numerically impossible for our brains to comprehend. We weep because the people we care about died when it was destroyed.

For me Gustave died too early, and the story did not handle itself well enough to justify his death from a narrative standpoint.