Scoobes on 22 October 2012
Ok, Zelda OoT can be credited with a lot, but comparing it to GTA? You might as well say that Elder Scrolls: Arena influenced both GTA and Zelda as it was the first open world game... and it had a day-night cycle.
GTAIII was influenced by the previous two games by simply bringing it to a 3D environment. Driver 2 probably had far more influence than Zelda considering it was one of the first 3D sandbox games where you could actually exit the vehicle. GTAIII was an evolution and refinement of that concept, and it took off because they finally had the power to make it work.
