I think a major fear that many of us had when Breath of the Wild was still being presented as Zelda WiiU was that the game might be too vast and full of nothing to do.  We had seen these incredible vistas and lush meadows and were worried this would just be scenery to run past as we went from quest to quest.

Instead, what we were given was a world full of 900 korok seeds acquired through various mini games, animals to tame and ride, and an assortment of flora and minerals that could be used to cook, create potions, and upgrade your clothing/armor.  Needless to say, wherever you go in the BOTW map there is something to gather, a puzzle to figure out, an animal to hunt or ride, and a shrine to unearth.

So what will that be in this sequel?  In all the trailers I have yet to see a gatherable item.  There are no shiny flowers, weapons, fruit, etc.  Is this intentional, either because those items will be added in later via random generation or because they are holding that bit of info back? 

Personally, I'm a big fan of collecting things and crafting.  It makes every step throughout the world feel worthwhile.  Even if you scramble to the top of some peak and find nothing of significance, the additional weight of flowers, gems, and fruit to fill your pack makes it all have felt worthwhile.

What do you think?  And what do you hope for?  This mystery further accentuates how little we know about the actual gameplay and gameplay systems in Tears of the Kingdom, which is both exciting and frightening. 

They've shown very little gameplay, so I don't think we should take the trailers as indication.

The way I see it is like this:

From what we've heard of Breath of the Wild's development, I really get the feeling that most of the game's development was dedicated to really getting the foundation right, the engine, mechanics, physics and all that. When Aonuma came out in that video saying they had to delay the game because they just started having fun with it and started coming up with loads of ideas, to me it seems like that's when they really started to figure out the story and develop the shrines, Koroks, divine beasts, enemy bases and weapons and just about everything you do. So of the 5 and a half years between Skyward Sword and it, probably only 3 years or so were dedicated to actually filling out the world with stuff to do.

The gap now to Tears of the Kingdom is over 6 years, and to be fair some of that time probably wasn't spent in active development, but from everything we've seen, it's clear that it's using the same engine and reusing a lot of the basic mechanics and physics, as well as reusing the original overworld. So that's 6 whole years where all they did is fill the world with new content.

I hope they realize we need more variety of interesting things to find. Breath of the Wild starts feeling small when you realize that the suspicious looking thing in the horizon is just gonna be another Korok. Ideally we'd be able to find all sorts of different things, Koroks and shrines can stay, but it'd be awesome to be able to come across more different enemy and boss encounters, mini-dungeons, who knows. But whatever they do, I think the content is going to be a lot more interesting and lot more, than Breath of the Wild. It seems inevitable really.

I think there will be similar collectables and some new kinds. Spider-Man: Miles Morales used a near identical map to the first game but had some different kinds of collectables. Granted, it's a different dev and Tears of the Kingdom is a much more ambitious sequel. But I'm just giving an example.

The sky is the limit.

I'm with mZuzek on this one, it'll be similar to BotW, but more. Maybe, I'd say probably, they won't literally have more Koroks and Shrines, but similar things. I mean, the Koroks already are basically the same type of things as the Gold Skulltulas, Seashells, Bugs or Maiamai or whatever. What's sure is they've been holding back an enormous pile of info, we might as well not have seen any trailer at all. I do have the feeling they'll have progression be a bit more structured than BotW, because the lack of real, varied dungeons was one the biggest complaints about it. Variety in general was a bit of a complaint. Not linear, but some areas that are only unlockable with certain items for example, but I don't know maybe not.

Also I'd like to say, scenery is content. Running past it and looking at it is part of the experience. I don't necessarily need random stuff thrown in in every nook and cranny. Having to journey from destination to destination makes a world feel larger and more immersive.

Anyway I'm not and I wouldn't be concerned about any of this. I mean, when has the Zelda team not delivered?

This thread reminds me that we will probably get a Tears of the Kingdom Direct in early 2023 and I can't wait to see it. We've been shown so little of the game apart from the fact there's floating islands everywhere now. There's bound to be tons of info to reveal pre-launch to hype us even more.

And I can't wait to ignore it in a hopeless attempt to dodge any more information before the game releases.

We need more activities, missions and sidequests. I get that the world is recovering after a cataclysmic event, but still, it felt quite barren a lot of the time.

This is a good point too. The emptier your game world is, the more impactful your content can get. I think Shadow of the Colossus is a pretty good example of that. Obviously Zelda isn't Shadow of the Colossus and it should definitely be looking for a different balance with more stuff to do, but it doesn't need to have twice as many Koroks to prove that it's a "bigger" sequel.

Personally I just really want the content to be more varied. I don't need the act of finding something to be more common than it was in Breath of the Wild (hell, it was pretty common already), I'm just hoping that when I do find something in Tears of the Kingdom, it'll consistently be something unexpected or at least something I haven't seen dozens or hundreds of times before.

Not so much a response of the new Zelda, but Breath of the Wild:

For me the experience that made Breath of the Wild was the fact that I could go in any direction and that would be my adventure, my story. Breath of the Wild is also a great example of how a game shows a deep and captivating story can be told through the medium of gameplay and virtual worlds, and not just through words. There were so many nice places to stop and just kind of live for a while.

With the new Zelda, I’ll admit, what they’ve shown hasn’t grabbed me. I’m hoping there’s something more to it, and the fact they’ve spent so long on it makes me hope it’s another Breath of the Wild where they’re pushing out the time because they have so much more they want to put into it, and not a Skyward Sword—where they pushed out the time because it was so hard to get its features to work (kinda) right.

Fingers crossed.