Haha, the funny part is that OoT completely held the gamers hand throughout the process.  They even put Navi in there as an in game cheat guide.

When I was a kid we played games up hill both ways and we liked it.

Edit: *sigh* that being said I must admit, I have zero interest in wandering around game worlds looking for where to go or what to find next.  It ran its course for me, I'm an adult now and exploration has taken a back seat to skill based gameplay.

And by back seat I mean I kicked that sumbich out of the car miles ago.

I have. There's always exceptions to the rule, you know

I'm talking in general. And also, Oblivion disappointed with its lack of direction. It had a huge overworld with a lot to do, but it was too big, and too unclear. I want some story behind it. I played for 40 hours and never went to Kvatch. When I did, the game corrupted soon after. I don't feel like I missed anything in the story, either.

BTW- At this point, I'd completed the Theif's Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood, and the Mage's guild was nearly done, and the Fighters, and I was level 30ish...

AGREE 1000%. Todays games always seems to have an arrow guiding you to the next location or mission, it's retarded! I hate it!

Are todays players really dumber? I don't think so yet they make games this way now.

As OP said, no mystery, no discovery, no thinking where to now. These are things that i really miss.

Is the positive buzz regarding Minecraft a reaction to this current state of games?  What exactly does Minecraft hold your hands through? 

Maybe this is a good place to mention the awesome series of games known as Submachine.
They are free to play, and I encourage anybody that likes a good puzzle to give them a try.
http://www.submachineworld.com/

pro-tip: do not attempt to solve the part called "Submachine Network Exploration Experience".
Not if you value your sanity...

(I tried, and it nearly killed me... no joke :P )

Me: Hey look, a puzzle :D
*tries to figure it out''
After 30 seconds.
Game: Use [insert ability] to solve the puzzle.
Me: -_-

They should give every game to option to turn ''cough'' hints off.
Some puzzles might be a ''bit'' too hard in games, I remember using a walkthrough back in the day when I got stuck for a few hours. That was years ago, now everything is handed to you on a silver platter most of the time.
These type are games are bad for your brains, give them some excersise you know? But the problem is, new gamers are now used to these kind of things, so are casual gamers, they're getting more lazy now.

In the future, video games are going to play themselves. You'll just press start, sit back and watch them go. Every so often, the game will ask you to press the "a" button to continue. Also, movies will actually be able to kill you. I'll still prefer video games to movies.

There could be an upside to that if the games would pay for themselves too..

Meh, don't exactly want to spend all my HP, inventory, magic points and stuff only to realiZe I'm on the wrong way... FF3 DS, 1st Zelda...
Don't want HUGE arrows telling me what to do either...
HALF HALF for me.