You edited something in after I did it seems. GoodLol yeah I meant to make it a separate post but I forgot the forum combines them, good job you missed it lol.
I've basically finished the lake area except for stuff that was locked out. I also did all the side content I could find in the other place
I'm also opening all chests I can
So it'll probably take me like 40 hours to finish this, huh?
40 hours including the majority of optional content, sure. Most people, like me, are leaving a fair amount for after the story. The final parts of the story aren't as high level/ as difficult as quite a lot of the optional content. So the side stuff is the real end game. You'll find out about all that anyway.