The world is ending but here's a side quest - will RPGs ever solve their urgency problem?

Why is it that in a role-playing game where the stakes are usually 'the end of the world', the end of the world always has to wait for us to finish our sprawling to-do list first? There's no way you've never encountered this. I came across it most recently in Dragon Age: The Veilguard , which, after a thrilling end to Act One, effectively...