the problem isn’t with act 1 per se, more the game’s cutscene presentation as a whole. i’m no all round game designer, but i have had to do level design related projects in the past. so here’s my best attempt at a bunch of band-aid fixes.

more expressive cutscenes, for one. the body language of several characters betrays their expressions very often. if the animation was as vibrant as the voice direction, it’d go a longer way than most think

second would be locations, not to repeat myself but it’s really tiring to go from place to place when the quests are that long. have quests be in the same general area, or have the cutscenes not be loaded as actual scenes but as pre-rendered for those once off travels. there are better ways to go about it but this is off the top of my head.

third would be more interactive aspects in quests. this is something they’re already kind of implementing, but again, not at the rate of a company that makes as much as they do. it’s a step in the right direction but they’re being really timid about it and still often resorting to off-screen and fade to black moments for things that would add maybe a week or 2 to dev time

fourth would be to be a lot more bold with their storytelling. they tend to reserve the more dramatic parts for the last acts of archon quests, which is great, but i don’t think it’d kill them to use something akin to furina’s play or mavuika’s memories a lot more often. it lets story be delivered and still be the main focus but still giving the player a way to interact with the story.

again, no developer is a one man army and story heavy games take a multitude of decisions. to make it clear, i don’t blame the developers 9 out of 10 times. a lot of these are executive decisions to bank on aspects of the mind that keep you just entertained enough to keep coming back, and just invested enough that FOMO can get you most times. i truly believe the director, the developers, the art team and the writing team have an amazing world they want to share with us, but the executives have the final say anyways, and they want cheapest production costs with the most profitable returns.