I think that in particular being directed to the temple is a good idea because not only do we meet Withers there, and that's the area where meeting him makes the most sense, rather than him just randomly finding us, but it's also, structurally, a good extended tutorial area. It gives us the chance to interact with traps and people, it's an opportunity to explore, and it serves as a place where we get to see in small part the kind of flexibility that the game expects of us, ie, the multiple ways to enter the temple and deal with the stuff going on within. Good games are all about subtly guiding player experience. Even Breath of the Wild, a quintissential open world game that people praise for how open it is, uses its design to subtly funnel players to the easiest divine beast first. Sure Tav could think that investigating the temple for supplies is a good idea, but we the player might not, even assuming we find it. It's the job of the dev to help direct player's sightlines to interesting stuff. I think the game is bad in general at providing rationales to explore, but in a let's play I'm watching, the player really just missed out on not only the ruin, but Gale himself until the 12th episode.
