If the islands in the map image released were all connected instead of being islands, and the map zoomed into slightly, the map would look no "smaller" than Kalos, Unova, or Sinnoh.

The problem people are having is that their idea of what "islands" are like is probably literally derived from stuff like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker where islands are depicted as isolated dots of land that can be explored in full in just a matter of moments, and maybe never visited an island that wasn't something in some lake somewhere.

In relation to an individual human being, most actual islands are fucking gigantic.

I live on an island that has a four major counties situated on it, a railroad network, a six lane freeway running end to end (not to mention a second four lane highway as well), and it would take about 4 hours with GOOD traffic to drive the entire length, and that's assuming a driving speed of at about 65 miles per hour, though obviously the road isn't a literal straight line so the MPH doesn't automatically equate to the length of the road.

People can basically live their entire lives on this island and really only leave because they feel like it, I've only seen maybe 20% of it and I'm someone who goes out of their way to visit parks and go hiking and go to events in different towns and shit.

And it would take maybe FIVE OR SIX of the island I live on to amount to the land mass of the SMALLEST of the major Hawaiian islands upon which Alola is based.

You guys need to calm down and stop making up shit to complain about before we've even played the games.