tl;dr friends sound like lazy gamers who want a skyrim game to hold their hand as they become "the big dick hero" without any true effort on their part.
Or i'm just an asshole. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not everyone can magically see and understand everything and connect the dots as fast as others so maybe I'm wrong and the game doesn't properly inform you, not for me to decide though.
DoS1 had a more straight forward story, you were on the hunt for a murderer. The story was right there in your face and you knew it right away.
DoS2 is just a different start, you aren't supposed to know the whole story right off the bat and we might still not be getting it all because they want to keep what is maybe the tutorial hidden for now, which would contain more context.
But I think they don't need to straight up tell you that you need to escape the island, if they did that it ruins the story of Fort Joy. You are clearly not in a great position when you start, if you don't guess prisoner real fast than frankly there isn't much hope for ya.
From the start you walk up to the camp, the two magisters spot you and you learn that someone named Dallis is up ahead and pissed off, you get there and clearly you can tell she is very powerful and someone important, if you read the text between her and atusa you can see that atusa doesn't agree with what is happening on the island and she is killed for it and you can see that she is also a magister just like the others you see.
So that tells you that something bad is happening here and that begins giving you the thought that maybe you should get outa there, the how though requires you to really pay attention to some npcs like Gawin who will inform you of the teleportation gloves of which you can use to get inside the castle and escape by sneaking out, or killing kniles, etc and as you explore the fort you can see what they are really doing and why you should escape or why the idea of you escaping is a good one.
