I never understood the complain about BG3 being slow. I don’t even understand what does it mean for a game to be slow. I remember some IBM era games with delays in feedback — that’s slow. BG1 is huge and full of empty wilderness. But it doesn’t make you go there. You can quickly main quest it without visiting like 80 percent of its locations. And boy will you miss a lot of fun doing that.
Imo this is not about balancing. It’s about ideology. How do you want players to interact with your world. Do you want to spoon feed them with entertainment, or you want them to act on their own, not being afraid that oh god they will miss that huge cinematic scene. The former ideology is what makes contemporary games dull cash grabs, while the latter what made BG1 a cult classic.
