Ultima 7 in 1992 had a fully open world. Day/Night cycle, dynamic weather, you could literally pick up everything and interact with it. you could cook. NPC's would have a day night cycle too hwere you would find them at their shops during the day, in their house at evening, in the bed at night and your compagnions would abandon you if you would go into strangers house and steal stuff that didn't belong to you.
You could also finish it without completeing the plot.
The new Zelda looks incredible and fun and is definately something I want to play, but it does not do anything that hasn't been done before. One could even argue it strays quite a bit from it's original formula.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
- George Orwell, ‘1984’
