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.
Isn't this how the "world" is, though? Your apartment and office are small "maps", which most likely contain "reused assets".
BG3 contains a lot of FR content, but with everything so close together, it doesn't feel like a "world". And it breaks imersion and logic in some cases. I want to feel the distance. If we can load a giant map like this in a way thet travel looks seamless, nothing stops to do the same with paper world map and a number of small locations.