yeah, more dungeon and old bosses.

plus someone commented on travelling by sea. that would be cool even just by going point to point. and train. side task to build stations and tracks!

I like these ideas. All 120+ shrines in BotW used the same aesthetic. It would be nice to explore different environments in a dungeon setting, and I would much rather have a smaller number of larger shrines than a larger number of smaller shrines.

While there were a lot of fetch-quest type requests in BotW, there were also a good amount of substantial sidequests like re-building Tarrey Town (even though the segments within that quest were pretty much fetch quests besides).

I might be in the minority on this one, but one of the big things missing in BOTW was progression tied to abilities/items. I don't want to be able to access the entire map right from the beginning of the game. Make certain sections of the map inaccessible without a hookshot, for example. Slowly open up new, more difficult/interesting places as your character grows. And tie this in with unlocking dungeons, which there should definitely be more of. Don't give me every ability at the beginning of the game.

I know this introduces linearity but I feel that open world games have become a dime a dozen these days and I like a little more structure in my Zelda games.

Yeah, I would prefer that as well, I don't think Zelda should be sandbox open-world, instead more of narrative driven semi open-world.
To add insult to injury, climbing, the way it's implemented, makes it even easier to bypass most of natural obstacles or passages guarded by tough enemies, so even that as usual way to nudge player into certain direction and story progression is negated in BotW.

This is a good post. I like the open world nature of BotW but I do miss reaching specific heart pieces with the proper use of key items. Perhaps a compromise could be made where certain items and heart pieces could be obtained only by using certain key items. Nintendo need to reboot the system though Skyward Sword while a very good game seemed a tad uninspiring to me in terms of its puzzles and dungeons. Skyrim also sort of elevated the standard for the fantasy action RPG...though I still hold Ocarina and Twilight as my fave Zeldas ever, closely followed by Majora's.

It's been used as far  back as Gold and Silver, and skipped most games until the most recent ones, Sun/Moon/Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon.  It effects t hings like certain wild Pokemon and NPCs only appearing at certain times of day, or access to some events or when some Pokemon evolve.

Or an interesting and bold move would be making it so nobody could talk! No voice actors at all!

(I played BOTW with Japanese voice acting on, I switched to english for a minute and when Zelda opened her mouth I wanted to die.)

Did we play the same game? Breath of the Wild’s soundtrack is no doubt one of the best - I’d argue the best in the whole franchise.

World of Warcraft has (or had) it and for the 3 years I played it I only saw the world in daylight when I could play in the weekend... I will forever remember WoW as a dreary dark world.

For the next Zelda I would like more dungeons and underground areas to explore.

That would re-introduce some of the major problems that past 3D games had. Notably, the “find the needle in the haystack in order to progress” stuff that plagued the 3D series since Ocarina of Time. The difference is that the much larger size of the game map would compound that problem meaning lots of people getting stuck due to simply not being able to find something - this already happened in much smaller Zelda games making going to Gamefaqs or quitting the only two steps for anyone who didn’t have several hours to work on trying to figure out one thing - part of the beauty of Breath of the Wild is that everything felt like progress, and if you felt like you were stuck at any point, you could skip it - come back later when you’re better equipped, or ignore it altogether since there’s a ton of other things you can do to build yourself up.