Unrelated to the opsec, why is a SpongeBob Movie premiering on Netflix? Isn’t Nickelodeon Paramount?

One RPG that does a really great job of circumventing this is Morrowind. Early in the story there are several natural breaks where the PC is encouraged to do side quests and immurse themselves in the world. Once the main quest gets going it starts to take precedence, but the world ending threat builds slowly at first.