They're being thorough? They could have done all the things we've been doing, going through the village, checking out the old sights, maybe they went to the Underdark, then back again, then decided to go to the old temple. All while being sneaky to avoid the goblins, drow, and gnolls, oh my, who have been running rampant.
Travel time and distance is going to be the soft under belly of a lot of stories, especially when we're living in a world without any clear concept of time, or distance. We have one good standard of distance, 10 days from Elturel to BG, 10 days for a caravan of refugees along a well travelled road.
Going a foot per mile is not what I was getting at, the distances don't have to be uniform. Let's say it's a half-hour to go from the beach to the grove, a day to go from the grove to the village, and a week to go from the village to the temple. It's like if you have a node map, but worked into a diorama-esque play area.
Whatever the case, it's confusing, and isn't helped by not having any kind of passage of time mechanic.
It will be interesting to see how, or if, there's going to be a travel mechanic from map area to map area, or if it's going to be like DOS where all travel events were dictated by the story. So far the only map transition, going to the Underdark, has come with a cut-scene, but nothing definitively saying how much time passes. It's the same with the other cutscene, travelling by boat to the forge area, and it's possible that the elevator in the Grymforge goes very near to Moonrise towers, likely the same area travelling the broken road goes, and possibly the Creche route.
