Pillars of Eterntity 2 is incredibly open world. The main plot is there, but it's the exploration and faction quests that are what you actually spend time doing.
My main gripe with PoE2 (and the later Elder Scrolls games too) was that the urgency of the main plot detracts from the freedom of exploration and the flow of faction and side quests. Morrowind was great about this: you get to Caius Cosades and he tells you to go do other things before he gives you your first orders. There are a few other stopping off points in the main story too. It makes the faction quests and just taking your time exploring make so much more sense.
Yeah, agreed. The story in PoE1 made way more sense in that sense. The game itself is just so amazing than I forgive a lot of the plot-related holes.
The worst part is that it's clearly set up for a third which will almost certainly never happen.
The de-protagonising is definitely a concern also, but I file that under the "Empire Strikes Back" approach (i.e the second can end on a cliffhanger (sortof)) which will all be resolved by the third.
I think it's more that they coln't decide if they wanted to make a follow-a-god-around-and-skype-with-some-other-gods-but-but-not-impact-the-story-yourself game or a pirates-versus-companies-versus-natives-faction-builder game so they just made both and released them as one. The exploration it has is not really the same as a TES game.
