I can see why you'd find that aspect of the plt to be really engaging, but I will say for my part that part of the reason reason the story doesn't work for me is that I don't feel like I should be caring about the main bad guy yet. Thus far I feel like the only relevant conflict is getting rid of the tadpole (I haven't been able to get into the underdark yet so maybe things change down there). Everything else that's going on with the cults and what have you feel too...almost tangential I guess. I can't help but think about it all through a lense of "how do I get rid of this tadpole?" I don't feel invested in the world at all so all the other stuff going on, I don't feel long term investment in it. And part of that is because thus far, it feels as though every plot thread we get involved in ties itself up. Outside of the tadpole, nothing we've gotten involved with is our problem unless we make it our problem. Once we have the tadpole out, there's nothing that's going to compell my character to keep getting involved in any of this. Once we've gotten rid of the tadpole we're not gonna have to worry about the cult. We have no real indication of how far-reaching they are on the surface, and as far as act one tells us, we can just leave and go back to wherever we came from because we have no idea where we're from and it may well not be anywhere close by. Nothing in act one makes me feel like once the tadpole's gone, I have any connection to anything in this unnamed area. In fact it feels as though the game specifically wants me to not think about this region once I leave. And I don't even have any sense of what's beyond this region either. The promise of the game is going to Baldur's Gate, but what's in Baldur's Gate? Why is it a place I should be excited to go to? The game hasn't told me.

With the Pathfinder games, I very deeply care about every place I am. I feel invested in its fate and the people there. It doesn't matter who the villains are or if I the player can see them coming - you know who the villains are in WotR explicitly from the start - because it matters to me to stop them from harming this place I care about and the people I care about. With BG3, once I've solved the problems going on *right now* I can just move on and not have to worry about it anymore. And at that point, why should this place matter to me?

Let me give another example from another game. Pillars of Eternity. In that game the framework plot is kinda similar to BG3. You have something wrong with you that will kill you if not solved, and in trying to solve it, your quest is intertwined with a mysterious cult that you have to fight against. I ADORE Pillars of Eternity because just from the word go, it gives me a world to care about. Even though I'm also specifically an outsider to the region there, I'm offered an opportunity to expand on why I'm going there. The village of Gilded Vale is kinda like this region in BG3, in that it's basically an opening region for you to explore for a little while before the world opens up to you. But the first permanent party member you meet there is a guy who's lived there his entire life pretty much, and his story is intimately tied to the story of the region. If you care about him, you care at least a little about the region. Also the people you meet there are just local villagers. Regular people who-crucially-live there and you have to deal with the intricacies of their mundane lives. You care a little bit about their plight and difficulties, and the big quest of the region really matters to them. You also don't realize that you're on a ticking clock yet, so you don't feel any pressure to rush as you deal with the local politics.