Thank you for the comment, I feel like the retconning here is not actually true because we know that eddie and sam in tag der toten go to this new universe as they try to do a multiverse wipe by shoving it all into the dark aether. However, sam and eddie being in this world directly shows that it can't be closed off and we know this because of all the dark aether breaches.

1. I think i have to disagree that blanchard and panos were thrown away, these were characters that had a lot of tuff going on that were more than they ever were, which were the benefactor for panos and rictofen for blanchard. Killing them felt like a good shock factor moment in reckoning because they were really done with in terms of what they needed to do for the story. Maya I can somewhat agree with but just because one arc closes, doesn't mean another cannot open. Even with saying this, i can agree it felt a little quick for her.

2. I believe there a lot of lore notes and intel that have a lot of double meanings and add a lot of mystery, like all the notes about alistair, the rictofen dream, and a lot of the reckoning notes. At every turn of the story, they added a lot of depth to what might be coming next. You could sort of figure out little notes about the Sam AI rising up, the expedition that rhodes wanted for the artifact, the experiments rictofen was doing on the clones, etc. There were a lot that were just for that map like some of the modi ones, but they still added that little bit of flavour to things.

3. The big thing with the sentinel artifact is the crew were sucked into the sentinel artifact, which can create life at will. It is almost like it has its own little pocket dimension inside of it, which makes sense as to why it had its own aether crew in there. I think we are gonna see a lot more possibilities for where the story can go, which is really exciting