Lizalfos were fast and aggressive; they attack on sight and that low-down dash they do is very quick, they just don't chase you so far as to become frustrating. 

OOT's scope really was well beyond any other game at the time it had some flaws in it but the sheer ambition of what they pulled off made up for it as the wasn't any game like it, it's funny because M64 became the template for 3D game engines while OOT became the template for 3d games.

Pretty much; back in 1998, the sense of adventure, scale, and sheer epicness was unparalleled, it really did feel like the video game equivalent of something like The Lord of the Rings. It wasn't until BOTW that the series recaptured this feeling that it was pushing the boundaries of video games as a medium.

Honestly, as someone who played both TES: Daggerfall and Might & Magic VI before OOT back in days, I found it to be a charming game, but actually nowhere near the scope of those two games. Not the same genre, but if we're talking pure adventure, scale and exploration it was severely lacking compared to them.

Admittedly, console and PC gaming were quite apart in those days, so I doubt many console gamers had a chance to experience these PC games, so I can see where this line of thinking might be coming from.

I meant not so much literal scope (though Hyrule Field was freaking massive by the standards of a time when in most games things popped in or faded into fog 5 meters ahead of the player) but the feeling of scope it invoked through its broad and varied world, larger-than-life story beats, and just the vibe of an epic quest to save the world.

I agree completely, if we're talking strictly about action-adventures. Yet, if we're talking about RPGs, they were doing that for quite a long time before that.

Granted I didn't play as many PC games as I did console games, but I just didn't feel like a game like Daggerfall gave quite the same sense of epicness as Ocarina.

Daggerfall is massive world with so much to do and ways to do it - it is however Bethesda game, so story is as always...passable at best. I was not big fan of it, though I had fun with it. Depending of how you define epicness, I'd say it fits that category, though my go to open-world RPG franchise back in those days was M&M.

Well, like I say, I was referring more to the feeling of scope/epicness, which isn't really clearly defined or quantifiable but comes down to an individual's perception of the combined impact of things like atmosphere, world, story, music, etc.

SS remaster apparently was hinted at by Aonuma at some event, for those who haven't tried SS it was the game in the series that pushed for a changed in approach such as reducing focus on dungeons and introducing new aspects such as crafting and upgrading items as well as making NPCs and set pieces more naturally integrated. SS used a more compact structure that was more closer to Metroid and utilized a number of set pieces and was the game that introduced the Loftwing, some of the best dungeons were in SS it's also the earliest game in the Zelda timeline.

The director of SS would later return with his team to direct BOTW.

https://www.thenerdmag.com/legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword-for-nintendo-switch/