>>715804945
It sounds like a shitpost but the unironic and literal reason is that the developers publicly admitted they realised they had been dragging their feet with moving the actual story forward and way too much of the backstory was stowed away in places 95% of the players didn't care to look
After nearly five years they realised that their audience can't read their minds and know what their long term plans are, so they needed to come up with some detour region to try to wrap up the story before we head to the Snezhnaya and meet the final archon