That sounds like a lovely plot idea, and that's coming from someone who has yet to play a mage, even. Oh, how I long for the days where linear pathways were not met with such stalwart disdain...
The only hurdle I see with lessening the size of the fourth game is that -- and yes, once again I'm going to bring up marketing, but the truth is, this is where a lot of decisions in the AAA game industry are made -- there's been a trend to out-Skyrim Skyrim left and right this past few years, and it may be considered a risk to have DA4's big pitch be, "we're smaller than Inquisition." If it were decided that enough could be conveyed to the average consumer about how much thicker with rich content DA4's zones would be to offset the potential negative connotations (however ill-conceived they might be), then it'd be a gamble BioWare would perhaps be allowed to make, but right now, in the current landscape, it's all about bigger, bigger, bigger. Gotta go bigger.
I see several avenues for 4, including perhaps having just two to three zones, but having players spend separate acts of the game entirely within them. Minrathous in the center of a truly sprawling map for one of them. BioWare can market the game as more TES-like, more TW3-like (without saying as such, of course) in its granting of player agency on a gargantuan playing board, and in a way it'll also be somewhat DA2-like, just, done far more in-line with what many gamers are now seeking. You could begin as a relative nobody, but become embroiled in Tevinter's politics, the probable antics of a certain wolfish persona, the demands of the Qun, so on, so forth.
In this fashion, the developers can spend all their resources perfecting the sidequest storytelling of their more unified game spaces to the level of, say, DAO, or something closer to it in any case. They can also bypass direct statements on DA4's size, insofar as all questions on the matter can be deftly reflected with, "these are very different types of open world environments." Mike Laidlaw has stated that DAI didn't get the story balance right in the open regions, and that Jaws of Hakkon is a step in the right direction; I really wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate decision going forward is to just make a couple of really, really huge, diverse, and dialogue-rich spaces for players to get lost in.
Keeps the AAA industry's current "regulations" on RPGs satisfied, and has a higher chance of keeping the old-guard BioWare diehards a bit more accepting of things. You're close to the goings-on of Tevinter and the main plot at all times, but there are a million billion collectibles out in those fields, too.
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Quit holding mages back! Release the Anders! 
Nicely done!
