in my opinion Wind Waker is one of the best Zelda games ever made. sure, there is a lot of sailing if you don't know what you're doing or where you're going but there are constant sea battles withh sea creatures, plenty of treasure to find, random islands to visit

I would argue that obviously when you're in an OCEAN you expect to have a lot of sailing to do. although incredibly different games, I think Shadow of Colossus and Wind Waker are similar in that regard- their worlds have a lot of space that has to be traveled for a reason

you don't jump in an ocean and magically have things every 2 seconds pop up, that would be silly. just like in Colossus the world is empty for a reason, both literally because you are in a mystical region of the world that has clearly had some form of devasation to it over time (likely from the Colossus's themselves) and because emotionally it is relevant to make the player feel alone and agains tthe world

Zelda U will be fine. Zelda games generally in terms of world size have TONS of content. in fact there hasn't really been an open world Zelda game yet so I don't understand the concerns

also OP you clearly have not seen much of or played Xenoblade X. its the opposite, in some cases there is TOO much in the world. you can't run anywhere on that map without running into a kajillion enemies and there's constant varying landscape. I oo agree that the world may be too large in a way but its not empty at all

Why the fuck should I especially after how long we've waited after delays.

One word: Aonuma.

Well, I don't know about Zelda because we've seen very little of it, but after spending 65 hours playing Xenoblade X, all I can say is: Man, I wish it was really empty sometimes! xD

I hope this is not an SPOILER but, have you played in Sylvalum and Cauldros? I'm scared everytime I need to go to sylvalum because it's really full of enemies everywhere and everything just want to fucking kill you! I spend half the time there running away from enemies who see me and start going after me, and then another one joins in, and another... it gets on my nerves, I'm level 46 and I die so fast there it's shameful xD

I'm ok with Zelda U being this empty, honestly. The game will have lots of things to do, that's for sure, but if it's so big, I wouldn't mind if it wasn't everything packed with enemies.

I still think that in Zelda U the problem will be at night, when all the freaks and beasts will come out to eat you :P
If you want to explore and enjoy the views while having little to none threats: daytime is your thing.
If you're looking for trouble and you feel like suicidal then it's night time for you.

Everyone wins.

True. Shadow of the Colossus used unconventional methods to control your emotions while playing the game. Especially with what little dialogue there was.

From what I've been seeing in Twitch, if Zelda U's Hyrule field is as empty as X's five continent, I wouldn't really mind. They can definitely do better though since Zelda U's world will be much smaller but more condense and will have more than one major town.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of the least empty open world games ever...

The first game had that problem to an extent.

Xenoblade Chronicles is the best game I played in the last 10 years by far. But the world IS empty because there is absolutely nothing to interact with and caves or buildings are very rare. In Xenoblade X this gets even worse due to the size of the world, the lack of cities to explore and the lack of an interconnected story. The world of Skyrim may be much smaller but it feels much larger than Xenoblade X because it is actually filled with tons of content (people, secrets, cities, villages, caves, buildings, underworld and many many more).

If the rumors are true, the empty and boring world and the lack of story were the reason for Zelda's delay. This is very likely because the game is supposed to use Xenoblade technology (Monolith Soft helped to develop Skyward Sword) and may even provide data packs. But in a Zelda game you usually can cut grass and dig holes in the ground, so the world will feel more alive because it allows interaction.