I do agree that they are not doing anywhere near enough world-building; the world, its situation and its lore need a lot of work put into them to more fully share it with us and expose us to it in a variety of different ways that should hopefully feel organic, even for people unfamiliar with the setting. I agree that they are not doing that well enough yet at all.
There's some extent I have difficulties being
too harsh on Larian for playing fast and loose with Forgotten Realms lore. Indeed, I tend to think of the FR lore as being somewhat of a big joke. Compared to fictional universes like that of Tolkien or George Martin, which were built by a single person with a single vision, the FR universe is a messy mish-mash of things that get piled up on by every new writer.
Also, while the writers probably try to avoid contradictions that are too blatant, retconing happens (in my definition of it). The game designers and writer have this very particular idea (somewhat ridiculous, imo) where, when the rules of the tabletop game change, they make major world events to go with it (Time Of Troubles, Spellplague, Second Sundering). When they want to add or remove deities, they hand-wave that X becomes an aspect of Y, and later they split again. Abeir is split from Toril, then comes back, then goes away. Asmodeus curses all Tieflings to be from his lineage, but then this is no longer mandatory.
This being said, within their single, stand-alone, FR game, Larian is effectively a single writer. They can and should care a lot more about the world-building in their game.
As someone with prior knowledge of the FR lore, a tendency to spend time on the FR wiki to fill gaps in my knowledge, and having heard the pre-EA promotional interviews, I knew what Tieflings were and that they have fled a now-returned Elturel. But this is not explained at all for new players.
Also, when Larian drops teleportation portals that are part of the world (not just a QoL thing for the players), they should consider the natural consequences.
Here's to hoping they work on this during EA.
