I've only played up until Talmberg in the first one. I jumped off the castle and broke my ankles and couldn't run from a guard so I called it quits.

The second game doesn't tell you anything either. The developers seem to want the player to figure out as much as they can by themselves.

My suggestion is do the quests until you get frustrated then just look up how to do it via a guide. For me that was quite often during my first playthrough (looking at you Tomcat). Many times the game will tell you how to complete something via dialog but it isn't clear what it's telling you until a second playthrough. Luckily the game autosaves at key moments during quests so you'll only lose an hour or three (lol not a joke) if you fuck up badly.