So, 13 seconds footage for Zelda HD during 2015...

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Yes. 13 seconds.

That's everything we got during the entire 2015. But, why?

 

As you must remember, during March 2015, Eiji Aonuma, the person in charge of the franchise, announced a delay. Recently, Nintendo confirmed a 2016 release date after the delay (which didn't have any date).

But, why did they delay the new installment in The Legend of Zelda?

According to Aonuma, they found new mechanics during the development, mechanics that didn't come before because the new approach for this game: being open world.

 

But, wasn't Zelda open world before? Well, we don't know exactly what Nintendo means with this "open world" statement.

So, let's continue. Because of those new things added to the game, or in its case, changed, they cannot show the game during E3. It must really be something big for them to not be able to show it. What kind of content can they add to not be able to show it?

The first theory: they changed the artstyle. But, as the latest Nintendo Direct showed us, it didn't happen. Artstyle is the same.

Debunked.

 

Let's move to the second theory. Hyrule Warriors made them change the battle system. But, if what they changed was that, what was impeding them to show a new trailer con just environments? Towns, NPC's, dungeons, overwolrd? They can avoid showing us enemies or bosses and nobody would have complained.

Let's move on. As you can see in those 13 seconds footage from last month, we can expect some kind of craft system, as we saw a long sword and a different wooden shield. But that was somewhat expected since the first footage. Overworld looks similar to the original reveal, so unless they changed completly the level design (which can be avoided in a trailer, again) there's no point at not releasing footage.

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Now, let's compare to Skyward Sword development. As you may remember, during E3 2009 Nintendo showed this art for the next installment in the franchise:

 

As you may see, the artstyle is different. Eiji Aonuma waqs developing the game with another artstyle and with the Wii Remote in mind, but in deep development Zelda team added the motion plus functionality and needed to change the artstyle.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2010/01/06/zelda-sequel-confirmed-for-2010

One year later, Nintendo showed us a game with a completly different artstyle and Motion Plus implemented. All in one year.

 

So, that led us again to the same question:

One year later after the last Zelda footage, and confirming the artstyle keeps intact, what change are they doing to avoid showing us for an entire year?

Some of us has speculated about a release for the next system as the reason for the delay, but giving the benefit to Eiji Aonuma and his reasons to delay, what do you believe?