I woke up too early and in my attempts to regain lost couple hours of sleep I caught a thought that perhaps it would have been much better if the Netherbrain proved itself completely autonomous right at the end of the Act 2, not Act 3 when we deal with the consequences of it in literal couple of minutes.
Act 3 severely lacks any real tension and only Orin with her attempts to spook everyone tries to do the job... but that's literally it. You don't feel the real danger, you don't feel that maybe it would be better to hurry before everything goes nuts, before you reach the point where no one could do anything with the actual threat. And now imagine what fun it would be when you not only have to deal with Gortash and Orin but also with the now active and independent Netherbrain with also completely infected city in every corner. Or you could actually now become allies with those remaining two avatars of the Dead Three (as the Netherbrain's independence seem to require one of the Three lost) in attempts to not make everything worse. Just anything that feels like the actual end of the world, not screams and fires for five minutes before everything goes back to normal again like it's a usual tuesday.
But no, even Gods are absolutely absent (for like, two exceptions, really), they don't care, when the threat of illithid's new empire is actually super dangerous to them as well as it can absolutely lead to their demise. Enjoy your little city walk I suppose... Nothing bad is going to happen anyway.
Not to mention! That we saw ourselves that there is standing a whole fucking army of the Absolute cultists by the end-gates of Act 2... And then later they are only mentioned a couple of times by the random refugee NPCs. A whole fucking army just completely disappearing somewhere to the background to never actually bother anyone and to never really appear, again existing only somewhere at the back of your mind for a moment or two.
Act 1 then would have been with the anxiety of the soon inevitable transformation if you don't find the cure or clues of what the fuck is going on (even though it feels much, much lighter in release version of the game rather than it was during EA), Act 2 shows you the cult, the heart of the Absolute, the curse of lands of shadows, and Act 3 of Netherbrain and why it's so freaking dangerous.
...maybe now I will be able to sleep back.
