Welp, I had a good look into the pre-rewrite universe, and oh my, it perfectly explains a lot of the writing inconsistencies. It seems as if the rewrite was done WAAAY too late into the dev cycle, which also accounts for why Act3 is so filled with side content yet the main plot and how the characters fit into it is shallow, while characters that were added way later - Karlach, Emperor and Durge mainly - are underdeveloped. It's a shame. Its one of those giant "what could have been" scenarios, but something clearly upset the vision and they'd need another 1.5 years in EA.
After playing this game for almost 300 hours at this point, I have faith they can do it and I love the game, but critics were certainly very quick to praise the delivered product.
