The map is obviously condensed. […]
But we all know better. There's an implied distance here, and getting from point A to point B so fast is really a matter of our convenience. If it weren't the case, then there'd be even more complaints about that.
Do we know better? Everything we see seems to scale, from temples to houses to chairs to cups. Distances are measured precisely during combat, down to the decimeter. Considering how detailed the world is, why should we assume the space between landmarks is abstracted and condensed? The world feels small because it is.
I don’t think it’s just a convenience thing. Larian’s design philosophy seems to be to maximise content density. The flip side of this is that the world is distorted to cater to the player, creating a theme park feel.
BG1 had big wilderness maps between cities and crossing them felt to me like experiencing a vast world rather than just a chore. Occasionally intruding on wildlife gave the impression that the world didn’t exist for my benefit. Wolves in the forest didn’t have to tie into the plot, they were just predators in their natural habitat.
By contrast, most of the wildlife in BG3 are there for specific reasons. The two boars you see are part of dialogues and nothing else. The birds have things to hide, the cows have clues to give, the rats are secretly evil. Larian can’t make a squirrel without giving it a feisty personality.
In my opinion, that’s what’s missing from Act I: wildlife for its own sake. Not just encounters disguised as frogs.
