My thoughts aswell ...
Larian was talking about 1000 NPCs in city of Baldur's Gate ...
Concidering that even NPCs in Emerald Groove, that have nothing to say, have 5-10sec "cutscene" telling you basicaly just "hello" ...

That would mean up to 10.000seconds ... meaning almost 3hours of, well basicaly nothing.
Sure 177 still seems like a lot, and i want to believe it will feel like a lot ...
But still, concidering it all the same level of quality would be a bit stretch. :-/