To be honest I'm less troubled about the 'confined space' as much as how fake it feels. It feels like it is made for a game with each location having a purpose. I know this might sound stupid at first, but you can read the game designers expectations in every tube you walk through or set piece with an encounter. In BG2 from what I remember and definitely in Pathfinder Kingmaker or Pillars of Eternety you also have 'sets' for quests, but they have small maps so the whole doesn't feel like a themepark where you go from attraction to attraction that's around the next corner waiting for you.
One issue that is digging into me more and more is how the map feels more like a maze than a world. Open fields and forests could create an effect of random encounters and more of a feeling of exploration - and can increase replayability - but instead this map feels like I'm navigating a maze to get to different areas and my guess it is to force encounters which is never ideal. There is a web of routes that narrow and hit bottlenecks to force events. I'm hoping that later areas are much less constrained than the first area has been.
Both +1, perhaps I should lower my expectations at this point
