I don't know who Laura Bailey is.
I really think it depends on the diversity of the world, and the kind of gameplay involved. For the former, large game worlds like Skyrim are okay with me because there is enough unique locations, vistas and characters to encourage exploration... it's a big world, but you can tell that each square foot has been groomed by the programmers. For the latter, a game like Just Cause 2 might re-use alot of the same assets so that nearly every town looks the same, but the large, samey landscapes don't matter a whole lot since you are blasting across the map in all sorts of high-speed vehicles.
I think a good example of the kind of "too big" worlds that I don't enjoy are games like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed: they are beautiful to be sure, but the world is just so bland... with the exception of a few unique pieces of architecture, you cannot distinguish one street corner from the other in AC.
From what we've seen so far, I think the Rockstar guys are capable of making a large world that will work. One thing that I've heard from the previews is that the game revolves around "heists", so outside of big missions there will be smaller missions building up to it... one of my problems with the original San Andreas was that it just kept getting bigger and bigger and every mid-to-late game mission had you traversing half the countryside to get to your destination. From what it sounds like, smaller missions will be more evenly distributed throughout.