I like to thoroughly explore areas - I go down one path, then when it looks like I might be about to progress the story ("What's that? Werewolves standing ahead looking like Plot? Not yet!") I backtrack and explore other paths. I make sure I go down every path and gather the loot or whatever is there.
The massive areas in this game are a maze of interlocking pathways and it seems you can even cut through areas off the path too... The lack of logical routes to follow means that fully exploring an area is going to be an absolute nightmare, if not impossible... and yet I know I'll probably try anyway, and have a nervous breakdown because of it.
Please note, this is not me criticising the game - it looks like an amazingly realistic living world BW have created. This is mostly just me lamenting my own lack of self-restraint and mourning in advance all the countless hours I'm going to be wasting in this game just to find "leather boots x1" or a random sprig of spindleweed... and still missing a bunch of stuff anyway.
It's pretty much all dependant on how the environments are designed.
If exploring and area will be an absolute nightmare then that means that the environments are badly designed.
If you want an example of a game Series that does Exploration pretty much perfectly you have to look at the Risen series.
Piranha byte games are not very popular in America, since they tend to have less actionoriented combat, less engaging stories and are missing the funds to implement expensive features like cc.
But if there's one thing they absolutly excel at it's making exploration as fun as possible.
They have huge expansive areas that you can explore, but it never gets tedious, because they always give you a point to return to.
There is always some kind of road through the area. it might be an actual laid out road, or just a path through the forest or something. But there is always some kind of path everywhere and the interresting bits and pieces to explore are layered around that. So you walk down you path around the island and see an interresting cave. You go explore it, find some loot, then return to the path and walk along.
The cave might branch of into being it's own kind of path, but if you take your time to explore the whole cave you will return to the path you started on and go along on your adventure. Additionally there is always something to find. If you see something to explore in a risen game you WILL find something there. It might just be a few gold pieces or a few herbs for alchemy, but it might also be the rare piece of a legendary weapon or a schematic to craft new things. There is always something and exploraiton is always rewarding.
That makes exploration incredibly fun and it never gets tedious even after hours of exploration.
Basically if Bioware does the areas and exploration rewards well, i doubt you will have a problem with exploration getting tedious.
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