I'm 3/4ths of the way through Breath of the Wild (As in I've freed 3 out of 4 Divine Beasts), with 15 hearts, 2 full Stamina meters, and the Master Sword. This game, is every bit as good as the reviews say it is! Absolutely incredible and fantastic in every sense of the words! It is now, in my opinion the Best 3D Zelda game ever made, and the Best Zelda period!!! While, I can't say for certain that it's my favorite (Skyward Sword left THAT much of an impact on me.) It's top 3, without a doubt, alongside Twilight Princess (Sorry, Majora's Mask).

So with that said, it's fairly obvious that this game took a very long time to develop and finish (Mostly because they wanted to make it a Switch launch title, otherwise I think it actually would've made the 2015 release for Wii U.) and it is easily the biggest, most ambitious, and expensive game Nintendo has ever made. So much so that I could easily vision the developers of the game being quite tired and relieved to have the game finally done and wanting to take it easy for a while.

My question is: Do you guys think that the Breath of the Wild formula is a one and done for now or is this the new foundational formula for 3D Zelda from now on?

The way I see, I think we'll get another 3D Zelda game for the Switch in about 2 or 3 years. But it'll be a classic styled 3D Zelda game (Ocarina of Time to Skyward Sword), that reuses the same assets and resources of Breath of the Wild as a means to save a lot of time and development costs and squeeze a little more money back from the huge development cost and process of Breath of the Wild while doing enough to stand on its own at the same time (Like Majora's Mask was to Ocarina of Time). Then we won't say another Zelda game again in 4 to 6 years afterwards when they make the next Breath of the Wild, open world styled game for Switch 2, or whatever system they're developing for at the time.

So, Zelda goes COD?

Outside the eventual top down or spin-off Zelda, no.This will be the formula going foward for a long while.

I hope not. It would take them another 5 years + delays to make an even bigger yet Open World Zelda...

Nintendo has stated on multiple occasions that it has been their vision since the beginning to have Zelda be a game about having huge worlds to explore. The first time they were actually able to attempt this was OoT, which they admitted was really just an empty field with smaller areas surrounding it. They tried again in WW, and again admitted that making 90% of the world an ocean wasnt the best use of space.

Now that they are working with the right tech to make actual full blown open worlds - Zelda is going to take its definitive form, and we could potentially see ideas that devs have been sitting on for decades. now that that is in motion - there is no way in hell they are going back

I sure hope so. They should make something a la Majoras Mask for the next one, reuse basically everything from BotW and give it a different setting (Termina*cough*)

I think it will be mixed. Open world takes too long to make imo so they will switch

It will alternate between 2D top-down and open-world Zelda. The OoT/LTTP formula is over, I think.

I am currently playing Zelda: A Link to the Past in SNES, and I think it is pretty much open world, so I think it already went Open world, came back and forth... So BOTW being open world doesnt neccesarly means Zelda will always go open world from now on.