I've heard theories that it was made this way to address complaints about FFXII being too open. If that's true, boy did they overcompensate. My impression is with the popularity of sandbox games that open ended world design is the current trend which strikes me as odd that they're fighting this hard against it. An it looks like FFIV whipsaws in the other direction again.

Personally, I'll take an open world, a lot of choices and a big database. I can do a little background reading.