After working through the beach section I arrived at the town gate and was greeted by the wizard. I then saved and exited the game. At that stage we had not entered the town.
When I later restarted the game and loaded the save both characters had completely shifted location. Roderick was already in the docks area - alone. Scarlet was in a completely different beach area on the other side of town on the wrong side of a locked gate!
The start seems to have improved a little but still seems quite weak. Presumably, there will be an opening cinematic (not yet included) which will set the scene as to why we find ourselves stuck on a beach, very poorly equipped for the task ahead, picking up seashells and talking to a clam. It still felt like an unpromising start, especially as there seemed to be an intention for the drunk soldiers to at least partly accompany us to town, and then maybe chicken out at the prospect of an orc fight? If that was the intention it didn't run properly.
What happened was that one soldier from the bridge started following us - instead of them taking us as they had suggested. Then after the fight was finished the remaining couple of soldiers simply wandered about and one made a random comment accusing somebody who wasn't there of cowardice. Initially neither of the remaining solders would talk to us either, but after much clicking I eventually managed to get one of them to fire up and give us a few scraps of information.
There was no ability to examine the fallen orcs let alone check their bodies for useful equipment or loot. Even if nothing usable was found, at that early stage I would hope to be able to at least check out the first proper victims in some way.
The first impressions a player gets at the start of a game are really important. The opening scene has a lot of necessary jobs to do - not just setting up some part of the story and acting as a tutorial/settling in period, but most importantly to hook in the player and build up some enthusiasm and anticipation for the journey ahead. So I think Larian needs to do a fair bit more work on the opening few minutes to get the tone right. To me at least it still felt pretty flat and buggy. But I'm sure they have more improvements planned yet.
At least the wizard showed up at the gate and filled us in with a lot of useful information. That was a great plus!
