Maybe I'll beat you to the cake then, haha. I think that what makes divinity: Original Sin so friggin' awesome is the fact that - while you don't particularly have freedom of choice when it comes to the main quest - you do however have the biggest amount of freedom I've seen in any game in how to finish it.
Hopefully you'll get to play both games to completion sometime soon, they sure as hell deserve it!
I don't think I'll ever get the gaming time to go back to the first one. Hopefully I can play the second. The same thing goes for Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. I played quite a chunk of the first but I was thoroughly annoyed by the gaming system. I thought it was too complex for complexity's sake, it didn't add depth, it was just annoying. I saw they fixed that in Tyranny - which I absolutely loved - and I think they fiddled with it quite a bit for Deadfire as well. So I'm actually more interested in playing the second entries in both franchises from a gameplay experience perspective :)
Well, at least you don't really have to play the first to play the second, different time-lines, different stories. Good luck!