I didn't remember that everything was so close when I read books in the FR. Usually travelling means something and take time.
This is just one of those things that has to change for a game. Distance is not meant to be taken literally. It's just representative.
BG1 had big open, empty maps with lots of exploration. But it meant you just walked around for 10 minutes at a time without discovering much or even doing much fighting. Bioware was upfront about that being a mistake, and this was changed for the sequel. BG2 had packed maps where you only went a few steps to discover the next thing.
Books can gloss over distances. "They traveled for 2 days." And moments between the interesting stuff is filled with character moments and plot. In a video game distance is just filled with walking. That's boring.
Actually apart from the Witcher 3 i dont remember any game that had a big open world that actually felt to scale and was done right, like was noted here most games just use tricks which in my opinion is worse than what Larian have done here.
BG2 had a ton of areas true, but many were very small and didnt really feel complete, compare druid grove of BG2 vs BG3 for example, just drawing a map and creating a small location is kind of lazy in todays standards.
another examples is from PF:KM which i really liked, the map was huge and you spent hours of the game just traveling but the areas themselves weren't so big and many had reused assets.
So i the ideal would be what the witcher 3 did but since that is very hard to do with a game like BG3 where many of the resources are being spent on other things i would preferer it how it is now.
and as long as we continue to see more of the sword coast and the planes (hell, shadowfell and astral plane - i am looking at you ) i am going to be very happy
