How much freedom do you get in this game?

[Gale]

Obviously a very open ended question, so i'll give some preface. For instance can I just go sod off and forge weapons for 30 hours then go back and do some quests, or will things start to become locked or become impossible to do because i've waited too long? Obviously this game isn't skyrim, but like in skyrim can I literally ignore the main story for an indeterminate amount of time and go explore craft and what have you, then go do the actual story?

[Hans CakeStealer]

The first hour is basically story telling with 90% being cutscenes after that you can do whatever you want

[Steve]

Once you've got past the intro/tutorial (about 30 mins) you are free to do as you wish and go where you like.

[Kashra Fall]

Forging weapons for 30 hours would require a lot of foraging and acquiring materials, but yeah you can do it. Once you get to the open world, you can fight who you like, steal what you like, do what you like, but everything has consequences, even the positive things.

[Fluxuous]

Haven't played too much yet but the last game's freedom was basically in the form of "your goal is set and unchangeable but go about accomplishing it however you like." Repeated throughout each story quest, and the game would always tell you a few ways you could accomplish it, but there are also a number of methods that the game doesn't explicitly tell you about and you have to be lucky to find them, or clever to figure them out. And you're usually told if something will proceed without you, best advice is, for sidequests, complete them as soon as you can after accepting, and for main story you're usually told when there's a time pressure "meet me tomorrow" or "be here in a few days" that sort of thing.

[Gale]

Thank you all very much, this is what I was hoping for, I really appreciate your responses! :3 I haven't played the first game in a long time so I just couldn't remember and either way I would eventually buy this game, but I remember really wanting to explore in the first one but I just didn't and regretted it, but I couldn't recall if I just got sucked in and just got lost in the sauce or because I couldn't XD

[Ethan Tokes]

Massive freedom after tutorial.