It's only true for Elden Ring in theory. In practice, you can't join half of them because you stepped into a region without first talking to an NPC three times across the map
If you take the warp gate to Caelid, yet are too dumb to realize that Gurranq is INSIDE the building (I didn’t notice the door right behind me) and not the giant Gargoyle out front…
Well in that case you will walk back to Limgrave and stumble upon Millicent about half way there. Easy peasy lol