What classic Zelda stuff do you want to return? Cos TOTK does apparently return to themed dungeons and bosses for a start. 

I'll take your word for it - as I said, IMO, Nintendo did a piss poor job at communicating improvements, and focused on new abilities. When I finally get to playing it, I'll see what and how much is actually improved.

I like physics in games, always have, especially when it's consistent and nonrestrictive, which wasn't the case in BotW. If that has changed in TotK, then great. Cause, what boiled down to almost exclusively using physics in combat, which was better avoided altogether in BotW, given how much unrewarding it was, does not count as much fun for me.

Game built completely around physics and its consistent logic is hard to pull off - BotW was not the one, TotK is not one either. The reason why I call them shenanigans is because they are mostly fluff, you can scrap almost all of it from BotW and I wouldn't care or notice it, cause ultimately it doesn't make much of a difference. If Ultrahand is mandatory for sky traversal, then from my POV that is ONE solution to the problem, no matter what contraption you make with it - replace that with classic puzzle, or predefined "LEGO set" vehicle and it won't make any difference, at least not to me - cause that's not what Zelda is about for me.

I liked Zelda at its core the most - semi-open world with gated item progression and A LOT of themed dungeons (LoZ had 9, ALttP 12, TP 10, to name a few).

To make a comparison - at one point I was arguing around here that Souls can be made as open-world and that it's probable next step for FROM - a lot of people were opposed, probably not being able to imagine such a game. Then we got Elden Ring, which was, more or less, what I was expecting them to do. ER is not flawless, and though I like it very much, I would take any Souls over it, given that it has lot of space for improvement, but in its core it remained Souls through and through.

I can vividly imagine modern open-world 3D Zelda with its core only slightly tweaked from its original roots. BotW is not that, and IMO it strayed too far away from its core. I don't know about TotK - as I said, so far I've only seen some of the things from 10-11 hours in, and what I've seen catered more to BotW players than to classic Zelda fans. Hopefully I'm wrong, those dungeons, as few as they are, are as good as classics and underworld holds lot of aces in its sleeves.

The problem is that the gated progression of classic Zelda and the open ended freedom of BOTW are at odds with each other, and the former sells 3-8 million while the latter sold 30 million in its first iteration, so Nintendo is naturally going to favour the one that sells more.

That said, the fact they're adding themed dungeons shows they are willing to appeal to fans of the classics, they just can't do so in a way that would contradict the new model's success.

That is true. I'm glad so many people get to play a game that by the looks of it is more of the things they enjoyed.

For me, BotW looks like it is going to be the last Zelda I ever play. Except for remakes. If TotK succeeds they will not go back to the formula used from the 1990 to 2010.

Yeah, that's the thing, I do think you can make Zelda that has gated progression of classic Zelda and be very open in exploration - there are games out there that have similar structure and I can certainly envision Zelda as one.
Of course, Nintendo will go for the sales and new market. After all, sales of Skyrim (game that is most likely one of the reasons that gave Nintendo kick in the butt to wake up for "new" open-world market), sold craploads more compared to something like Morrowind or Daggerfall, yet, creatively, it's inferior game compared to both. So, yeah, all those big guns will go for sales first, no doubt about that.
We'll see...I really hope I am wrong and that it'll surprise me...but since I didn't like BotW much (and liked it even less on second playthrough, on then obligatory "watching my ASD son play", which is luckily not necessary anymore) for all the reasons that other people liked it, and seeing (so far) TotK full of those same things dialed to 11, I can only hope that any of the stuff added to TotK that is supposed to cater to classic Zelda fans is enough to get me through it - cause BotW is only mainline Zelda so far that I have no desire to play ever again.

I don't really see how classic gated progression could be implemented without compromising the open-ended "go anywhere, do anything" nature of BOTW though. The two run counter to one another.

Do we have a Metacritic Review Prediction for this game up yet? If not, anyone care to make a prediction?

We should

I would say 98

Got my Zelda OLED Switch today. Looks great


Im guessing a 97 Metacritic.