What do I even call this? Stakes-Whiplash?

Also, why are NPCs who just spoke to me in the previous scene a 100y walk away and I have to walk over there to continue to conversation?

The games like 50 hours long, we don't need this padding.

</rant>

You're telling me I just punched a mountain in half, but now I have to go collect sand and talk to npcs in areas I already cleared?

Nobody else is able to run errands? What am I keeping entire colony of magic-capable survivors for?

That's what I was thinking. A Timeline with two float tracks.

Like this maybe?
I'd argue it's kind of sub-optimal because you would need to update the array and Values track separately, but it do be doing the thing.

Gamedev is largely existing in a weird flux state until suddenly it's almost ready.

Thennnnnn that last 10% of work takes longer than the first 90%.

Was 90% sure this was gonna be a advert for Factor

Looks like my first attempt to modeling a spaceship in Blender back in like.... 2009.