Not exactly a bug, but almost certainly unintended behavior.
After feeding Gale three magic items, there is the option to ask him what he would do if he were to be kicked out of the group. He talked a lot about the Absolute in ways that indicated he knew what that was beyond something connected to the tadpoles and the protection of the artifact…which was all quite confusing with no options to ask him what in the bleeding hells he is on about. 7 hours later, I hit the mountain pass and all of a sudden “protection of the artifact” makes sense and the bit about the Absolute only vaguely does; it appears to me that this interaction with Gale is happening at least sometimes before the player has encountered enough about these plot points for what he says to make sense.
For the record, I haven’t gone into the Underdark, haven’t done anything with the goblins beyond passing through the Blighted Village, have stopped the druid ritual but have not found Halsin, and have had no interesting long rest camp visitors (I played a bit of EA and remember a dream figure showing up pretty early before).
Then again maybe Gale knows *way* more about our particular situation than he is letting on and Larian is not letting us ask him directly about all this stuff he just casually mentions as if the player already knows about it.
