Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are both fantastic games - and Tears of the Kingdom really does feel (to me) like they just took Breath of the Wild, and added a few more years of dev time to it.
Where do you think Nintendo will take Zelda from here though? Can they keep with the same new formula? Should they? Will a more traditional game feel disappointing after this?
I don’t really know what I want myself. I think they should try something different though. At the same time, I can’t help but think I’d be disappointed if the next game was more similar to something like Twilight Princess. Have they boxed themselves in?
If the want to keep on the “freedom” route they could add mechanics to destroy/build the scenario. Destroying rocks in some TOTK caves gave me Minecraft vibes. They could allow players to dig anywhere. Also they could generate the world procedurally so we’ll move from the current each player experience Hyrule in a different way to each player actually getting a different Hyrule.
I personally don’t like much the Zeldas on the Switch. I’d rather get a more classic Zelda that follows the item-dungeon-item-dungeon pattern.