I didn't use the wiki until 50+ hours in. You need to make your own goals. I started by making a thief and just stealing my way to the top.
You can fairly easily make money and skill up by just running around carrying and selling shit. Specialize your first characters, make the next companions workers.
It's very much a sandbox where you make your own story.
It's pretty common to have this as the only barrier. If someone got into my work PC they could easily take down a lot of critical infrastructure, if they knew where to look.
They're also fighting the whole of EU for the same reasons. We won't be getting Threads any time soon either