I'm certainly expecting more than FF XV, that's for sure
But I'm not expecting a fully explorable city.
In one of the released screenshots, where the main character is looking at the city from far away, you can see that the crystal is a .png image.
It's not being rendered in real time. Which means that you wont be able to reach the city without getting a load screen that'll swap that .png image for an asset made with geometry.
I expect to be able to explore a small, closed chunk of that city
Again, I compared it to FF XV because they teased Altissia but delivered 5 houses to explore in total there in the final game
Suret, FF XV development was a mess. But even in FF VII Remake, the FF that probably had the most talented staff at SE and huge budget, still delivered small pieces of Midgard to visit
I'm playing Forbidden West right now, and so far I haven't seen anything as big as Novigrad from The Witcher, for example. And the city here seems even bigger than Novigrad.
I don't expect Square to deliver a fully explorable city
Yeah I expect something like FF XII, but that would be such a dated design choice, imo
Since then we had so many huge open world games with big cities. Going back to loading screens for entering/leaving small hubs would be a bad look.