I ran into a certain area while exploring. It was exceptionally easy to get to, I wasn't even trying or had any inkling that I was getting someplace special, it looked and felt like everything around it. There seemed to be a lot of puzzles but I couldn't figure out how to do any of them, I couldn't even figure out what the game was asking from me for them. There was an NPC there alluding to what I needed to do but I couldn't figure out how to accomplish any of the steps.

After spending entirely too much time beating my head against it I relented and looked it up and it's part of main story progression and there's nothing I can do there yet.

I'm pretty annoyed because I feel like my time was wasted and that this was entirely preventable. There's precedent of both being able to do things super early if you find them and also gating stuff behind access for later. As far as I could tell there was no indication for that area that I was unable to progress in it. It's a game about go anywhere do things in any order, they at the very least should have gated it behind something obvious that made it clear I wasn't ready to access it.

Just there being an NPC there telling me "hey yeah here's what I need" was enough of a lure to convince me that it was something I could figure out, maybe if there was just nothing to talk to or interact with I would've given up and moved on faster.

It's a game that gets this shit right so often which is part of why it didn't occur to me that maybe I needed to leave. Pretty disappointing.