If Larian wants us to take it slow, then they shouldn't have started the game so urgently. Instead they give us a big, scary ticking clock that they then have to walk back. And they're doing at best a mediocre job of that.
I dont really think they do ...
I mean, i obvously dont see into head of Larian writers, but concidering everything we have ... it seems to me like Larian dont really want to push us to anything ... they offer us options and let us play however we want.
Same model you can see with Long Rests ... it could be much more restrictive, easily ... but instead they decided to let us pick when and where we want to rest.
This is where I get into "I don't think rushing along is actually a valid way that Larian wants us play" stuff that I'd been hinting at above. Larian clearly wants to push us to rest less, and the proof of that is one glaring thing; the party banter system. If we want to engage with our party, we HAVE to take long rests and ignore the threat of the tadpole. Otherwise we are simply locking ourselves out of that content. And if we miss it in this part of the game, then based on how other games work (which is a valid metric to measure with because this is a part of a pre-existing genre and medium with its own conventions and tropes, and I don't think Larian has given us a reason to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're trying to do something super unique) we're likely gonna not see those plotlines develop in later acts.
Companion interaction is a big part of a crpg like this, and ideally you're gonna want players to want to spend time with those characters. They could have not tied companion scenes and long rests the way they have, but they did. It's a choice they made, and they made it for a reason. As a result, if you initially take the urgency of the tadpole seriously, you miss out on scenes that should on paper be things you want to see. Ultimately, where you see Larian trying to give players freedom, I just see bad writing. And Larian has given me know reason to think better of them and give them the benefit of the doubt. In fact they've provided several other instances of bad writing that make me more inclined to include this under that umbrella. To name a few; their failure to provide a breadth of dialogue options for our characters, something you've complained about several times; the fact that our created character is typically treated as just a rube for other characters to show off their characterization against; the seeming fact they don't seem to care about world building or providing the players with context; their permutation madness to try and make the mystery box work; and Astarion's bite scene if you let him drink too long and actually drain you. All instances of bad writing that leave me unwilling to give them grace on this issue.
Edited to fix quotes
