Not sure what you mean about too much happening? You stumble across a group of refugees in a druid camp and the druids want them out because they are attracting goblins and danger to the grove.
He means, we have Richard Scarry's Busy Busy Faerun where you have numerous NPCs all in animation loops eagerly awaiting player intercession. As noted above, in an MMO where immersion is linked to experience this is acceptable because people are more interested in the game play than the story, but RPGs it needs to be done more tastefully as much hinges upon how authentic characters and environments feel and will directly influence how the player responds to them. You never want quest opportunities to feel like those assholes on the Vegas strip handing out escort adverts.
Are they? Are the druids performing the ritual really just waiting for you to interrupt them, or are they in the middle of casting a ritual? I'm getting this "in a SP game, the zones should be dead of anything not directly tied to a story" vibe, intended or not. "Feels like a chore" doesn't leave me feeling like there were too many NPCs in the zone, but more with the "I've done this so many times" vibe. I get that vibe a lot. I had that vibe a lot in Baldur's Gate, with over 110 completions, but there's that thing, I did it a lot of times, and introduced myself to burn out, to the point where BG 2 was less, although not a lot less... In Mass Effect, I'll get to certain points, 1, 2 or 3 where I'm like "dread, this again", and will save and log out and come back later. I get a lot of "I'm not ready to deal with this right now" moments, and none of them are the fault of game design, or being too busy, but simply because I burnt myself out.
The nice thing about my disability, if there really is one, is that after a few months, I'll forget all about what's coming, and can almost enjoy it like a new experience. Playing the Tomb Raider reboot games, I'd get to a point, and just stop progressing and do the little side missions, optional tombs, collections, etc. It doesn't have anything to do with "Busy Busy Faerun", not even in Faerun, just burnt out, or not wanting to deal with what's next. Nothing in the OP suggested anything like what you're saying here, and I get that from "after 10 times, it just feels like a chore".
