There will be backlash with Zelda Wii. It's possible that there will be a lot. It doesn't matter how the game is designed, either.
I expect Zelda Wii to be very different from past Zeldas in some way, probably beyond its controls. Up to this point, there have been three schools of Zelda design: the old school (which uses combat and exploration as the primary source of difficulty), the 3-D school (which uses 3-D spatial reasoning as the primary source of difficulty), and the DS school (which uses logic-based puzzles and a gameplay dichotomy between overworld and dungeons as the source of difficulty). Zelda fans see how radically different each of these schools are from one another, and acknowledge that, over time, few games have changed as much as Zelda has. The schools themselves contain a lot of variation, too.
Zelda Wii, I expect, will introduce a fourth school of Zelda design - if any Zelda game does, then it will be this one. I don't know how the focus will change. You do't know how the focus will change. What form this change takes is not the poit of this topic. This topic is not for your speculation.
Any change in the Zelda franchise - while necessary - is going to be met by backlash from the fans. Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are the easiest examples of this: by many metrics fantastic games, they are still divisive amongst Zelda fans because they deviate from the core values of the previous two schools.
Zelda Wii will deviate from those values too, in ways we aren't readily able to predict. It will suffer from similar backlash - maybe not as much as the DS school, but certainly more than the 3-D school, which moved in exactly the direction that core buyers wanted at the time.
Are you prepared for the bickering? Have you hardened your heart against the wailing and the gnashing of teeth that will follow, regardless of its quality? Are you ready to ignore the entire internet while you play a game?
I am.
