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 Nintendo makes a third game based off the BOTW map, I would love to see an expansion of towns/villages. One thing I was slightly disappointed by in TOTK was the lack of new villages. I’d love to see a revitalized castle town as well as repaired villages that were once in ruins. Maybe in that way the third game could have more focus on the different npcs and side quests like Majora’s Mask. I think in that way it would help the world feel more alive and we could see progress on the return to Hyrule at its heyday.
A revitalized castle town is probably the natural next step. We had the world in ruins (BotW), society putting itself back together (TotK) and logically we’re approaching some sort of great Hylian restoration that will take place in the third game.