You can tell a badly written story by the fact that no one knows wtf is going on because everything is vague, incomplete, incoherent, things contradict one another and so on. Just look at the forum - endless debates on "what the writer had in mind". A good writer writes what he has in mind, and then if you have a deep mind you get even more out of it. A bad writer writes a lot of mumbo jambo and throws a bunch of "deep" words in in order to create an appearance of depth and meaning. Positive example here is Tolkien - his works are the result of clear and powerful mind. You know who is fighting whom, why, and what are their goals. If you have a sophisticated mind, you can get out of it a lot more than someone who only sees battles and adventure. His works produce awe and clarity. PoE story has the opposite effect on mind.
So, that being said, can someone explain to me who is who in PoE because wiki is useless.
1. I supposedly promised something to Berath in PoE1. What exactly would that be and why is she still mentioning that? I played PoE1 a bit but I don't think I finished the storyline. I don't even know what Berath is about in any relevant way and as I said a wiki description of "oh that's a god of death / reincarnation / whatever" is by no means helpful in gameplay terms. These attributes are added to gods in some randomized pointless fashion, and thus for example Woedica seems to be a goddess of justice but she doesn't act like it at all, not in the least (bad writing is what it is).
2. What is Eothas doing? He wants to destroy the Wheel? Ok cool, and what does he want to achieve with that? I've seen countless pages written on this forum about that because no one understands anything (bad writing). So I'm supposed to make choices in an RPG game not knowing what it's all about? How can I side with or against Eothas if there is no story whatsoever? Gods don't explain anything because 'I'm only a Watcher so I don't need to know anything' (great writing), and Eothas also says "oh yea, you just let me do this thing and it's all gonna be great". Amazing approach, every justice system in the world should implement this. Forget witnesses and evidence, just go with the feeling and pick one side and rule in their favor.
3. What is Xoti about? Collecting souls in her lantern and trapping them there? Oh wait no, she's in fact freeing them! Spectacular writing, every totalitarian measure is introduced the same way - 'no no, we're not limiting your speech or freedom of movement, this is for freedom and protection!' Ok so what happens later? There are apparently some choices I can make with Xoti in the end, but what are those choices? Or do I need to let her trap souls whole game to find out in the end that she'll use them for some nefarious purpose? Why wouldn't I kill her right away and not risk it? And then I even read that, no matter what I tell her in the end, she might not listen to me. What?
4. What do I do with Eder? Oh that's right, I don't know, because I don't know who Eothas is and what he's doing. This guy fought against Eothas if I'm not wrong, and then if I'm not wrong it turned out that Eothas was doing something.. that's good? Whatever that is. And Xoti as a Priestess of Eothas is drooling all over this guy. Err, didn't he fight against her god, what am I missing here? Shouldn't she put Eder into the lantern?
Right now I'm leaning towards endgame choice "Eothas, destroy everything", but I have a feeling the writer would be back in PoE3 or PoE2 DLC's.