The funny thing is they sort of already did that in Ocarina of Time, though to a lesser degree. You had Hyrule Field, and then you had the Death Mountain Trial and the Zora River leading up to the Fire Temple and Jabu Jabu... Those areas are structured very similar to the three surface areas in Skyward Sword, only naturally a lot smaller and simpler.

@ Bold: Yes please .

I'm really looking forward to this next Wii U Zelda. I think the last two games taught him somethings people want (Open world, exploration) and don't want (Linear). I'd also like some 2D/top-down elements incorporated into combat and puzzle solving. A little more action involving lots of enemies and some creative boss battles. Wrap it up it some very good looking somewhat realistic visuals and I will be very happy. Also, another vote for "more villages"! I thought the series was going somewhere with Zelda II... but then that stopped. Still waiting a few decades later.

Haha yeah I guess OoT already kinda did that =)

Just add a huge world to explore, with a lot of secrets in it - and no damn hand holding! Or at least, have the possibility to turn that shit off! Make the game none linear, and make the actual path to the temples an adventure in and of itself, and throw in a few more villages and interesting people in the world and you have the best Zelda ever created.

Yeah, I wonder why they've always kept the world small-ish... Maybe because of hardware limitations, but that's NO excuse this time around! Skyrim was biiiig, Hyrule could be even bigger (not saying that it should, just that it could).

Seeing as there were 6 towns in Zelda 2, I don't think hardware limitiations are the problem.  They've just kept Zelda as a "small-scale" epic since ALttP.  Every single villager and aspect of Hyrule has a purpose.  I think this is a mistake.  There should be lots of "filler", pointless NPC's and buildings and areas.  These should be there to add a sense of scope, and to make the relavant characters/objects/areas feel more important.  I would like to have a bit of a journey with Zelda, where you go to several new towns and solve there problems and move on to the next challenge in your journey.

I agree with almost everything you said, except that "There should be lots of "filler", pointless NPC's and buildings and areas"; that's not the way to go. Every town should have a purpose, and every villgae should have important NPCs - if only to give you hints or legends about what you should/could do. They could be the fast travel points on the map, and your base of operations in a certain area, where you can get equipement.

I appreciate the interest in more places to visit, but I think the designers need to be careful about adding too much stuff. The focus of any Zelda game, in my mind, should be dungeons. This is where the magic happens.

I like the idea of having lots of nooks and crannies to explore in the overworld, but I'm not sure if more towns and NPCs is the way to go. I don't really want the series to wander into RPG territory.

I have to respectfully diagree with you, Veknoid. I always go back to the original Zelda game as a source of inspiration for as to what a new Zelda game could and should be like. In its day, it was a huuuuge world! And the map you had was only partially revealed; there were places in the game that you had to explore yourself and map out. However, I always felt it was kind of... well, empty. The only people living there were some old men, and an old woman.

Exploration has always been a core aspect of the Zelda games; prime examples are the original game, Zelda II, OoT to a lesser extent, and Wind Waker.

I for one wouldn't really mind if Zelda incorporated some RPG elements. SS already did this, and I would like to see a further exploration of that as well. I don't want my Zelda to actually be a RPG, with leveling up and all that, but give us some way to costumize Link. All I want is for Zelda to take already established Zelda features (exploration, NPCs, costumization) and enhance them; explore them further.

Fair enough. The holy trinity for Zelda, to me, is exploration, problem-solving, and combat. As long as all three are well-represented I'll be happy  

I agree with most of the points you guys make.

I'm thinking Skyrim is where it goes overboard just for the sake of 'being big', so maybe that game isn't the perfect example. There's a lot of pointless areas in that game. In that I agree that they should be wary of such things in a Zelda game and that they should keep everything a bit more subtle. However, I also agree that there should be more stuff to find and explore.
Until now I think Twilight Princess's Castle Town was the best town they created. There's a lot of people there but most are scenery meaning you have to do some searching around. It looks like it's a busy town and the true center of Hyrule. The only thing it lacked is that you couldn't get into most of the houses.