I usually take my time and pick over the dead (well, that sounded gruesome) for the experience and the odd sellable loot. But I was just trying to get through it so I could test out some things with the character in the first act. Sometime it looked like it was getting close but it never ended for me before either.
You mention you play on "normal difficulty". As far as I know that's the only difficulty setting so far. I'd love to hear there's some checkbox(es) somewhere to change difficulty level.
When I say I died I mean Z one-shotted me and I got the "Death saving throws" red skull and hand graphic over my body. So I guess we could pretend Lae'Zel patched me up somehow after twanging the transponder and before the cinematic shows me getting tossed around. Hmmm. Yeah.
I'd hate for deaths in the prelude to be permadeath. It's a just a flesh wound like in the movies. :-/ Of course Lae'Zel could have been found by her captors, patched up, and tossed in that cage while they figure out who to sell her to.
