The liberty to go anywhere and do as you please is refreshing. Not sure if going against Ganon right from the start is a wise choice, from the gameplay yesterday quite a few were killed just by the guardians. Still thought you had to complete the four dungeons (think I heard some Treehouser say four) to lift the curse from the castle. But it does look like you get all of your Sheikah powers from the opening region, guessing the others should give you special items such as the glider.
Is the gamepad even used in the game? For the runes or inventory? It seemed like it was all on screen. Maybe the waypoints?
During the gameplays, the Treehousers disregarded those items info pop-ups by saying they only come up once... is that once every session (SS style) or every save file? Just put an option to remove them or just dump them on the gamepad.