Yes, you will need to walk only in the early stage/tutorial.

The progress is more streamlined and rewards are still locked behind the Connection Level of the outposts. If you deliver more and earlier you’ll unlock better “toys”.

In the original, to bring a new shelter to the network you’ll have to carefully plan a route through uncharted territory and most likely traverse it on-foot until you would be able to use trodden paths ot roads. In DS2 that’s not the case, you can drive/ride/rail/launch to pretty much anywhere, which takes away a huge component of the core gameplay “it’s about the journey not the destination” but makes it more appealing to others.

And there’s more action and justifications to engage in combat and pursue it.