Pillars of Eternity 2 video examines city life

Dungeons are sometimes great and I guess dragons are OK every once in a while, but if I'm going to spend hundreds of hours in a fantasy world, I want to explore a big old city and mingle with its inhabitants for at least a few of those hours. Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention to Pillars of Eternity II [official site], but I thought its archipelago setting might mean smaller settlements and monster isles without any talkative inhabitants whatsoever. How pleasing it is, then, to see precisely the kind of big old city I want to visit in the latest update video. It's called Neketaka, a name I will always enjoy saying out loud but will almost certainly mangle the vowels of every time I write it down.

Is it OK to be really excited about Pillars of Eternity II if I still haven't played the expansion(s) for Pillars of Eternity I? I hope so because that's precisely the boat I'm in. And being in a boat is a big part of the sequel's appeal. Rather than plodding around a continent, your party (let's call them a crew; a party crew on a party boat) are sailing around the archipelago, and there's ship-to-ship combat as well as new ships to acquire.

And there's a city to explore and loads of ways to wind up or mollify the locals. Let's take a look at Neketaka:

The street magician segment has given me an idea. What if my party crew all get jobs as street performers - one of them could be a living statue, one can juggle, and maybe a fire-breather? - and forget about the main quest entirely. We need to find Neketaka's equivalent of the South Bank and claim a spot, pronto. And when the street performers guild starts muscling in our territory, we'll head back to Party Boat and make our escape. That's the plan.

This may explain why I never finish epic RPGs. I look forward to not finishing Pillars II when it comes out next year.