As I said in another post, at the very least Larian should do a better job of forcing us to rest the first time, where we get the cutscene showing us that the tadpole isn't as urgent as the game and other characters previously implied. One way to do this is to give all our characters an exhaustion level or two after we rescue Gale or Lae'zel. Our characters had just been kidnapped, restrained in pods, implanted with a mindflayer tadpole, fought our way out of a ship, and then fell out of said ship. It's perfectly reasonable for our characters to be tired.
A mechanical incentive to sleep would fit the story better than
a.) metagaming, knowing that there isn't actually a time limit and thus you can freely rest
b.) companions just stating that they are tired, when all they really want to do is talk to you
In subsequent days, perhaps companions could voice disapproval at resting unless at least one of the party members has a level of exhaustion? Which would be acquired either 30-60 minutes after the 2nd (or 3rd?) short rest or 3 hours after the previous long rest, whichever is first. This would be an incentive to not long rest spam, but wouldn't entirely prevent it.
