That's a bit different.  No character seems to know that the lake is in anyway connected with the goddess.  That knowledge has seemingly been lost.  Here, they're specifically talking about the goddess.

Except the latter two are RPGs Zelda is an adventure game, the bulk of the gameplay in Zelda games has been puzzle solving, exploration and clearing dungeons. Go play or watch the first Zelda game for reference, Towns and NPCs are not central to the franchise experience unlike the games you mentioned.

I'm down for whatever. If they is a reason behind it, they can make it work and contribute towards a unique Zelda experience.

Shame, for me towns incentivate exploration. I always felt that Zelda needed more, not less or none.

Oh please, this is just false, there has already be confirmed that there are villages in the game and they are in some way interconected with the world and the story, I remeber months ago they were talking about how your actions in the game would have pretty big changes in some places of the area in a way the world would feel very dynamic, I'm pretty sure villages will have that dynamism they were talking about.

Will be interesting to see what happens. No companion makes sense due to the stone you get, but perhaps the villages have a TP-esque twist on them in that they need to be "cleansed" of something before you can interact with people there? In which case it makes sense why we couldn't show them, as it would be story related.

Adding stock to that is this "Ganon Fog" or whatever it's called surrounding Hyrule Castle. Let's see. Highly unlikely there will be no settlements...just perhaps not many.

Sounds kind of sad and stark.

Lonely Link, wondering around looking for people. Well, that does happen often in the games anyway doesn't it?

Just a bigger emphasis.

The voice is your sidekick. They just got lazy and decided to not give him a model or anything
And yeah, there are towns in the game. I honestly dont mind either too much, but it depends on what the story tries to do. I like the idea of Hyrule without civilization. Very good imo.

Bill Trinen via Aonuma live translation has confirmed that there ARE TOWNS IN THE GAME. There are plenty of NPCs and you'll learn their stories. Thank God.

Oh ok. Bill just confirmed on the Treehouse livestream that this is false.
There will be towns and NPCs, they just took it out of the E3 build to not spoil the story.

(So this rumor might be based of a misunderstanding, with a bit of goodwill..)