Greedfall II: The Dying World is a prequel that takes too many backward steps

thesixthaxis.com:

The original Greedfall was a cult hit when it launched back in 2019, so fans were excited to find out a second game was being released into Early Access this year. A few eyebrows were raised at The Dying World being a prequel, but early announcements sold the idea of discovering how the island of Teer Fradee and its inhabitants dealt with the influx of colonial exploration. This wider aspect of depicting the impact of colonialism was probably the most interesting part of the first game so I was keen to explore this more. After a few somewhat frustrating hours with the game’s Early Access build, I was left questioning not the story being told so much as the changes made to the game’s mechanics.

The very beginning of The Dying World offers an attempt at transition from the previous game. You choose your character from a very limited creation process (and no option for baldness – at least not deliberately) and have a pretty exposition heavy conversation with a friendly member of the Alliance. You are soon interrupted and told to visit the village leaders to find out more about your destiny as a Sage and the initiation ritual you must undergo to fulfil this role. The first few hours play out as a tutorial that encompasses the initiation tasks and involve you exploring the island and  learning the basics of combat and investigation.

To complete the ritual you are tasked with two main objectives – find out what is causing a mysterious sickness in the village and also what is killing off the local wildlife. It is no real surprise that the answer to both is colonialism, but there are different approaches you can take to resolve them. While these largely revolve around which person you choose to talk to, I always welcome alternative paths in RPGs. Once you complete these initial tasks the story takes a pretty major turn that promises to explore a very different aspect to this world.

So far so good, but what I’ve described here is almost entirely storyline rather than