Err Fallout 4, Death stranding? And many others. A lot of games remember less because they don't add building and therefore not really any need to remember. It holds the game back for me. It would be much more immersive and fun to see all my 'experiments' laying around the land, and be able to build permanent paths and facilities. It's not holding the combat back, but that's not why I play anyway.

All of which don't have close to half the dynamic interactions as TOTK and only remember very minimal, for example most locations in Fallout are not seamless locations connected to the overworld so data in them is logged separately and the is not much to remember in them either after a while certain things despawn. On the overworld things are forgotten just like in TOTK, why do you think that F4 you can only build in certain locations without mods? Those are the dedicated cell locations that are scripted to remember.

What you are asking for is not possible for any game hence why AB ability is a good way to address it, want an example Skyrim had to have a memory management mod to allow numerous mods to work because some of those mods didn’t despawn their assets causing the game to crash no matter what your hardware was this is why original Skyrim modders could only use one set of hair mods.

Not much to remember in F4? 10 floor skyscrapers with lights and traps etc isn't much? Anyway good on the devs as it didn't feel restrictive to me building several huge towns across the overworld!

Skyrim remembered every item you displaced around the world. Which is why it started running so poorly on PS3 the more you interacted with the environment. But that is a hardware limitation, PS3 didn't have enough RAM. Hence Switch not doing it, also a hardware limitation.

The PS4 (original) also held F4 back as when I turned on the power to my animated sign fps would drop to below 5. (Optimizations and PS4 Pro later fixed it, still sluggish with 261 power generators) But it allowed you to build as much as you wanted (although to be fair I used a workaround to keep on building far beyond the regular soft imposed limit. The game never crashed though, just ran slower and slower) TotK simply doesn't record what you did, wipes it again after leaving the area.

Skyrim ran poorly on PS3 because the platform had split memory available for the whole game in general, X360 had similar specs but Skyrim and most games ran fine both platforms had the same Ram PS3 was just split. Skyrim and Fallout aren't the games you want to be arguing with as I know them well I've been modding them since release which is how I know that they're not in the same ball park.

For example Skyrim doesn’t remember everything it only remembers in designated cells like towns and interiors which many aren't seamlessly connected like TOTK, they are actually separate from the overworld so the game can remember those events as they aren't part of the whole open world. This is highlighted in the fact that when modders added items to these areas they found at some point the game would crash as the is a limit an example is the Bannered Mare a popular location to put newly added npc companions where adding too many causes crashes when you try to enter it, the location cell itself is not seamlessly in the world so the crash would not happen until you enter the Tavern while in the actual overworld the game was on a range limit and global timer so things despawned like in TOTK to manage memory this isn't a hardware thing this is basic developer approach even if you have the specs of a NASA super computer this would still be a thing as eventually the game would crash without it and the player wouldn't be able to progress in that save file. Fallout is the same this is why building settlements is restricted to certain locations. 

F4 runs poorly on PS4 not because of the platform it's because of the terrible game engine Bethesda has stuck with for over twenty years, F4 even has problems now on PC hardware well above the PS4. A ten floor skyscraper doesn’t even compare to TOTK's three layered world which is all seamlessly connected and has way more dynamic interactions it's not even comparable. 

"Button masher"

"Skyrim ran poorly on PS3 because the platform had split memory available for the whole game in general"
How is that not hardware holding the game back, the topic of this thread?

And how does a 10 floor skyscraper build from over 1,000 individual pieces or animated billboard build from 260 monitors with logic circuits for animation not compare to contraptions I have seen so far in TotK.

Anyway I've realized now TotK is about making temporary contraptions, not about building permanent stuff like in F4. Which to me is a minor downside, as it feels rather pointless building things that simply disappear again.

You don't need a NASA computer, just a smarter way to keep track of changes in the world. Indeed with dynamic cells and proper streaming of data assets. Automatically balancing the load based on density, reducing draw distance when too much user made stuff is around. But maybe it's a hardware constraint on how big the save file is allowed to get. You do need some place to store the data.
Dynamic interactions are a separate 'issue'. Not even Minecraft animates its whole world all the time. Stuff out of range can simply offload from memory while saving it's current state.

As for the topic, more RAM, more internal storage space, both would allow for more world persistence.

Because it's not hardware that held it back it was architecture, the PS3 reserved half it's memory for its OS and other things, 360 had identical specs and Skyrim ran fine this flat out shows hardware wasn't the issue.

You mean a ten floor skyscraper built on a set cell location in an open world that has only one layer and far fewer interactions, physics etc... And still despawns things in the same way in the overworld? Not even close to TOTK for example throw a grenade in F4 you just get an explosion that affects enemies and small items, throw a bomb in TOTK and trees get knocked over spilling any content, near by grass sets on fire that spreads which itself causes other interactions like creating warm air, burning loose ingredients or items which in itself can cause reactions with items that are dropped as well as affecting enemy behaviour and equipment.

TOTK is not just tracking what you build but all of these dynamic events which is why what you ask is unrealistic in a huge seamless world, F4 is keeping track of small things in a set cells with only the building aspects being the dynamic factor and those are locked to certain cells for the same reason TOTK limits remembering what you build only TOTK you can build anywhere.

They are being smarter you're being unrealistic the is no hardware that will ever deliver what you are asking no matter the ram, cpu etc... because everything that is logged down will take up memory and resources even when the asset is not loaded. I highlighted this with what I pointed out in Skyrim, the game logging down everything you have affected just leads to a constant build up of data that the hardware will have to juggle it's like filling up a filing cabinet the more in it the longer it takes to find what you need and the is a limit. What ends up happening is that you get a game that starts out fast and gets slower over time until a limit gets hit at which point the game can't run the smart thing to do is simply allow the game to limit, forget or reset a number of things. 

That's not true. The PS3 OS takes up the same RAM as the X360 OS, around 20-50 MB in the background. However, it has a split architecture where half the total RAM was VRAM and couldn't be directly accessed by the CPU. So the PS3 had to juggle the OS and the rest of the game in 256 MB while the X360 could split graphics, game, and OS between 512 MB as needed.

It wasn't the (modest to present-day standards) savefile size that caused the lag issues, contrary to popular belief, since most of it doesn't even load at once. It's just people playing the game that eventually led to the game fetching enough data when first loading to overflow an already-filled bucket.

The real question one should ask is: why are TOTK savefiles limited to just around 3 MB when, for instance, Minecraft can create a 2 GB save file on Switch?

I'd argue that it *is* indeed because of a technical limitation, to prevent users from building complex machines and overloading the physics engine (which coincidentally is Havok, the very same used in Skyrim and Fallout 4).

If the CPU had been able to handle more complex interactions (whether or not that would've been technically possible for the Switch to have such a CPU is another matter), it's quite likely that build permanence would have been a thing in the game, at least to an extent.

It's not true but then you proceed to say it's an architecture problem which is what I said? Okay...

You don't seem to follow what's being said it's not about save file size it's about the actual saved playthrough itself becoming unplayable because it eats up too many resources because of permanent changes it has to track. So again the is no hardware that will ever deliver this in a seamless huge open world like TOTK because this concept has a dead end flaw that the is no way around the can only ever really be limited or partial permanence. 

Go watch TOTK videos before you claim you can't build complex machines I've linked one recently in the Zelda thread. 

You can build ridiculously complex machines in TotK. Seriously huge stuff with a ton of moving parts that can even move fully autonomously.

The only limit to what you can build is the number of parts that you can carry with you or find in your close vecinity.