it's not really 8 games long is it. the number 3 was my biggest pointer when i looked at it in the store. any other game is a spin-off and, by the nature of spin-offs, is not supposed to be important. also, if you watch the intro to mass effect 3 that i posted in an edit to my OP, you can see that a well designed game will clue you in to past events as part of common courtesy.

in any case, I wasn't trying to criticise the story, I was trying to emphasise the lack of basic context. i'm talking about something like... how did goofy know the 'highway's are closed' ? let's just forget for a moment the gummy ship is not a car, and it travels freely through space, and let's focus on how he knows they can't move forward. let's forget the fact it shows the ship with the engines thrusting and so it looked to me like they were cruising forwards with no issues. how does goofy know? the game shows nothing like a blockage, no large obstacle they can't get past. not even a strange forcefield https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/4/4c/Q_forcefield.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140316130450&path-prefix=en not even any kind of display where he was reading the information, or a audio communication from some military force. and then sora just opened a magic portal. so there was no point of that scene, except for some kind of foreshadow, but they don't really give you anything. except for a bizarre moment where they flash the title of a game compilation on ps4. am i to expect advertising throughout the rest of the game? perhaps at some point further on in the game, they'll flash " final fantasy XV" or " deus ex mankind divided".

I hope you can see, I'm not being mean or trollish, I am genuinely flabbergasted.