"Here is a very urgent thing. We can't stress enough how urgent this is. Also would you like to do a load of pointless shit for these random people that have no bearing on anything?"

Lol every RPG ever. Though some pull it off better than others by somehow connecting more pieces back to the main quest.

I think CDPR have has this issue since the Witcher 3 tbh. They know how to make amazing story based games, with nice enough writing and characters, and some lovely grey area decisions where there's no real right and wrong, and then mar it with boring open world design.

Yes absolutely, although I don’t recall this being quite so egregious in the Witcher. But that was a long time ago, I may not remember it well.