It's actually the opposite. For now we're doing some work on the staff's stories. We have a good production-based reason for it, it's because when we have more hangout scenes in the game it'll change the typical in-game day's pacing and we'd rather have that now so we can hit the right proportion between side content and Asterion's story.
There's also another reason, and it's simply that doing work on the side stories is very liberating creatively. It's giving us some fresh eyes that'll help when we tackle the next main story chapters.