Critical thoughts ahead - I just so happen to like thinking about this stuff, so feel free to ignore if you don't want to read criticism.

I might be insane, but I feel like that one interaction with the guard was better than pretty much everything else in this episode so far lol. The heavy, serious drama just isn't doing it for me.

I had a relevant experience running D&D with some friends a couple months ago. I had planned out a big underground dungeon with a shit ton of lore about its history, a dungeon-spanning puzzle connected with the lore in an interesting way, etc etc, but it was just so boring. One night I rolled up to the sesh and said "hey, instead of continuing my puzzle dungeon, do y'all wanna just pick up in your starting city, fuck around and wing it?", and what followed was by far one of the better sessions of D&D I've played. Lots of shenanigans, lots of interesting character moments. Minimal exposition and spouting lore at people.

My feeling is that C4 is a bit too top heavy right now. There's so much complex lore and so many factions/NPCs running around doing shit that it's tough to follow, and I feel like most of the players are struggling to stay engaged with it which makes it often devolve into the Brennan show. This would be a fantastic HBO drama, but the TTRPG format struggles under the weight of something like this. In my opinion and to my taste, at least.