been thinking about why the new patch was boring
it was boring, yes, but what made it that way
its easy to say "it felt like nothing happened" but what does that mean
and I think, and I don'tt imagine you were paying attention the whole time because it did keep throwing around all these concepts you'd only know if you were familiar with the game, but I think it was lacking a few fundamental things that make a story interesting
there was very little intrigue - you already knew who's who, what's what, who's gonna do what and why. there wasn't a lot of mystery. augusta and iuno are fairly two dimensional characters and nothing they do is a surprise. there were moments where they could have been interesting, but they decided against it. for example augusta spends a lot of time during the quest resisting the whispers of leviathan, but nothing ever comes of it, it ends with her saying "lol no" and that's it
iuno is just kinda there to look cute and flirt with the protagonist
the blonde gladiator seemed like it could have been an interesting sideplot and it felt like they were building him up to turn heel, but that just never happens. he gets injured and thats the last we see of him, i think its even implied he died at the end of the quest. hes set up to be this ambitious rival for augusta who is like, the roman political faction's favorite child who is gonna usurp the throne from the apeman leader who took power from them by force
but that doesn't really happen. its also briefly hinted that maybe the gladiator is going to take the power augusta was refusing. that also doesn't happen

the actual villain of the plot, the sovereign, the weird goo demon, is basically an animal. it has no agency, it has no evil intent, it just exists to consume. and that actually makes for a pretty poor villain
rover was also kinda just there for the whole thing. he didn't really do much beyond his usual rizzing.