Well they need to collect more then mcguffin so they can go north to the ice dungeon/town and look for the rings of plot importance. Or they can go west for the crown of plot importance and deal with the jungle dungeon are first. So they would be given information about what town and hazards, and what they pick does change where the battle takes place. So there are consequences to what they pick. They don’t have perfect knowledge

In the small scale it is there because unless they split the party they can only go one way at a time. They can only explore one room at a time. that why the the choice is there.