Unable to even make my first character as computer overheats and shuts down.
I have a 1070 and have no similar problems in other games.

Changes to settings reset every time I reboot game, except for resolution.
I have tried turning of MSAA but this changes nothing.
Even changing to lowest resolution changes nothing.

Anyone else have similar problems?

Force Vsync. You're probably rendering 1k+ FPS on the opening screen.