Supposedly the game takes place in the same Hyrule, so to spice it up there will have to be time travel or a dark world, which would be cool as the closest thing we've had to a dark world in 3D Zelda was Twilight Princess and the closest thing we've had to time travel since OoT was a couple of spots in Skyward Sword. I'd love to see a dark world or past world in a 3D Zelda on the scale of Breath of the Wild.

Changing puzzles based on an IRL timer sounds really ambitious, but also really amazing. I can only imagine how the speedrunners would find a way to deal with that. Sounds hard to do that to the whole overworld or every dungeon, but Skyward Sword had that last dungeon that let you slide the rooms around to connect differently, they could just do that, but take it out of the player's control. Do that for Ganon's castle and bam, super memorable final dungeon.

^^
Nice observation, I could see the house with the lookout tower near it being a nod to Outset Island, but the rest, doesn’t really match up.

Some interesting tidbits about Link's Awakening (NS) in an interview from Wccftech. Here's an excerpt: 

What’s been added to this version of Link’s Awakening for those who are already really familiar with the game? Is there be some sort of second quest or remix mode?

One of the key things we’ve done, is we’ve taken a look at the original game, and tried to find ways to refine it. We looked at the menu system, because if you remember from the original, you do spend quite a bit of time in the menus. We’ve been able to reinvent the menu process, so you don’t spend nearly as much time in the menus. Another example is the map screen — now you can manage a lot more things, and put reminders in there. For example, if there’s a stone blocking a dungeon you can’t lift up yet, you can put a marker down there and come back when you’ve got some extra strength. The enemies are also more intelligent. In previous games, you could run past them and they wouldn’t react, but now they know that you’re there. So there are a lot of things that change how you play a little bit.

Source

I've seen some crazy play times for BotW from you all, but can anyone top this grandma with Twilight Princess?

755 hours!

Source

it's been some two weeks or so since my younger son and I finished Outward (though we're still looking for things to do after we completed main quest). We played coop in local split screen (not my screenshot):

I'm not sure if I'd call it action-adventure or action-RPG, though it definitely has more of the second, but it is open world with some of the things that I like - no GPS, no marker where you are on the map, or quest markers (though you do get a map right away, which I don't like), everything having weight thus affecting your movemement speed and stamina, hunger/thirst/sleepiness, degradable health/stamina (as in not being able to have max even when restoring them, until you take certain potions/food or sleep), being able to catch cold/desease or overheat, degradable weapons/armour along with ingridients decaying, few legacy chests where you can leave one piece of equipment per chest for you next playthrough and lot of other neat things, along with some usual, like factions.

It's fairly good game, though not great by any means (it lacks in story and characters, skills are mostly only combat oriented, world needs to be populated more, more content, and lot of other refinnements...it;s samll dev, so hopefully there will be Outward 2 with those improvements), but I've thoroughly enjoyed playing it with my son due to ability to play a whole campaign in split-screen. Game itself has old school open world appoach, several seperated big areas that you can travel between at any time to you liking, given you have enough rations (which are quite easy to make or buy). Once in area you can both go your separete ways, but if you want to go into some sort of dungeon or any kind of structure that requires loading, you need to go together (good ol' "you must gather your party before venturing forth") - i guesss it's their engine limitations, since main areas are quite big and game has no problem rendering two separate screens.

Anyway, to get to the point, seeing trailer for BotW2 made me think that having posibbility of playing the game in such fashion would be really great - as Link and Zelda together. I'm guesstimating that Switch can pull split screen when docked at level of BotW visuals (though it would be only dynamic 1600x450 for each player if we go by BotW's resolution), but that wouldn't be that bad if there is an option to enjoy the game in such way...

My Xenoblade 2 game racked up a huge number of hours without me trying to. Assume I pushed the sleep button on console and didn't exit game. Next time I picked up game a few days later, played some and then saved it was like you have played 100 hours or something. Like, "Oh great, guess will never know how much i played now."

Makes it look like I'm addicted ot the game or something, lol.

Outward sounds pretty cool!

And co-op in Zelda has a lot of potential (I know my partner would be over the moon). If it couldn't be in the main campaign, maybe Nintendo could relegate it to a side survival mode--something like Rise of the Tomb Raider's Endurance Mode?

Fair point