People you meet will react to your race, class, and background, both positively and negatively, so the choices you make when you create your character have some meaning beyond personal preference and what you want your hero to look like. The Dyrwood is fairly multicultural, and I’m glad Obsidian didn’t go down the road of making racism a big part of their world, which is a fantasy trope we've seen before in modern RPGs. There is, naturally, some animosity between certain races and factions, but it’s rarely at the forefront.
Instead, the cultural tension comes from a controversial science called animancy, which involves the manipulation of souls. When your hero arrives in the Dyrwood, a mysterious curse called Waidwen’s Legacy is causing babies to be born without souls, which becomes an important part of the main quest. Animancers are convinced their work will put an end to the curse, but others think it’s an affront to the gods.
This mirrors the battle between science and religion throughout our own history, although animancers do a lot worse than tell people the world is round and clone farm animals. They implant animal souls into children, power automated war machines with them, and perform all manner of bizarre, ungodly experiments that, understandably, have given them a bad reputation.
