It's a difficult balance to strike between "overcrowded, feels like a set piece" and "empty, lots of space with nothing to do". But I do agree it should not feel like quests and content are jumping at the player. Makes it feel artificial.
Two ways I can think of to make a map that's spacious and not boring at the same time:
- traversal is fun in itself (better suited to other [sub]genres)
- the "empty" environment is interesting and/or pretty by itself
The latter, I think, could be used in BG3 (that is, if map is subject to change). With BG3 visuals, beautiful, visually interesting environments shouldn't be a problem and "empty" space is an opportunity for some (subtle!) environmental storytelling.
(Enemies being neighbours always annoys me in games. I know it's unreasonable to ask for realistic scale, but hearing "the kobolds live to the south of our village" and discovering that it's a shorter walk than to the other end of the village is just... very immersion-breaking. This is one advantage of worlds with divided maps - you tell the player "the travel took 2 hours" and suddenly the distance becomes very believable.)
