Fantasy stories become interesting because of differences in cultures, species, powers. If everyone is the same, then there is no discussion, no conflict and no reason to read a story, watch a movie or play a game.
All of your points are fair and valid and I agree with every one. This pre-release is just a demonstration that Larian Studios has no intent to rock the boat of the popular cancel culture and has no interest in providing any interesting lore or unique interactions that cater to lovers of high fantasy. It feels like a disproportionate amount of care and attention is instead being spent on romance and other content leading up to having sex with your companions than anything of substance. It's all very disappointing.
I had a similar problem with lore on my first playthrough. I didn't know what a "tiefling" was and was only exposed to devils as evil with the whole thing in the realm of hell. I wasn't sure what was up with all of the devil people in the druid enclave and had to Google it; this simply isn't explained for people who aren't familiar with the current generation of lore.
Why they are at the druid encampment at all didn't make a whole lot of sense while reading up on the lore. It's as if someone rolled the dice and that's the race that landed there. You could easily swap them all out for human and nothing of value would be lost. In fact, it would only improve upon the whole scenario.
With the lack of any world building worth of care that I should have for them and their shallow reason for being, I found that the entire village served a greater purpose as fodder for exp and loot.
