So, what would you like to see in the next Zelda? More items? Bigger boss battles? What?
Here is what I, personally, would like to see from the next Zelda:
Dungeons and Puzzles similar to OoT/TP
Let's face it, the Wind Waker really botched things up on the dungeons side of things. The game was great, but handing you the third pearl and sending you on that damn quest for the Triforce shards killed its awesomeness. It was just too easy. There was no effort involved in anything.
TP handled this much better. The game had lengthy and challenging dungeons, with plenty of fun puzzles (the block puzzles were a favorite of mine). Of course, TP's dungeons didn't really have the atmosphere that OoT's did. I think it was the excellent music in OoT that made each dungeon all the more awesome.
An interesting overworld like MM and tWW
My main issue with TP was that it had such a massive and simultaneously empty overworld. There were like 4-5 different Hyrule Fields, which was entirely unnecessary, and the towns themselves were filled with rather uninteresting characters to whom you had little connection.
With the next Zelda, I'd be fine if they had a large overworld again, I just hope that they fill it with tons of stuff to do. Make the overworld interesting. Give us a reason to explore its vastness, and give us interesting peoples with which to interact. This latter bit ties into my next point...
Interesting peoples with which to interact
Majora's Mask is, imo, the most interesting Zelda we've had yet. Termina was a town bustling with activity, and it was full of people that you constantly interacted with and actually cared for. Everyone in the town was always doing something, and they always had a reason for doing it. Of course, the limited time span of MM was the key thing that made this possible, but I'm sure Nintendo could figure out a way to implement this in a Zelda with no time limit. Or maybe they could just make a longer time limit. :P
Basically, I want another Termina. Hell, give me 2-3 Terminas (thus keeping things as large as TP). Just make the game 120 hours long, lol.
Anywho, the characters in MM were unmatched, and are sorely needed in the next Zelda. Of course, along with MM's awesome characters comes...
More (and more interesting) side quests
In Majora's Mask, you had plenty to do. There was a never ending list of things to explore, and tasks to accomplish. The game also gave you reasons to accomplish said tasks (remember that guy stuck in the toilet? You just had to find him some paper, lol). In the game, the lovable townsfolk needed your help, and you actually wanted to help them. It was great.
On top of all that, they gave you the Bomber's Notebook to help you keep track of the various things that needed to be done.
Harder and more numerous bosses
C'mon, TP had laughably easy bosses. In the next Zelda, I hope they make the bosses take longer to kill, and force players to use their wits and items to tackle the beasts, rather than just using some simple formula (usually consisting of [hit with item + hit with sword * 3]).
Also make the bosses more numerous. OoT and MM were full of mini-bosses that you had to take down before ever reaching the final boss, and some of them were really cool (Dark Link, Wizrobe).
The bosses should also be more interesting, like OoT and WWs bosses (Bongo Bongo? Wow).
A harder game in general
I died maybe once across both tWW and TP. I seem to recall dying a LOT more in OoT and MM, though that may have been because I was younger. I'm planning to replay OoT through TP in July, so I'll see how I fair then.
More in-depth combat/harder battles
Make the enemies harder to fight. And I mean make the smart, don't just make them stronger. You can do backflips, etc., so why not make you use them. Some of my favorite battles in any Zelda were from the OoT. Fighting the Gerudo Ninjas while trying to save the carpenters was a blast (especially if you tried avoiding hits rather than using your shield), and Dark Link was fun as well.
Conversely, giving you the ability to counter in WW made even the more challenging battles mind-numbingly easy. All you had to do was hit A at the right time.
More numerous and actually useful items
In TP, where were the hover boots? Where were the weighted scales necessary for diving extra deep? In TP, what few items you did have had very specific uses, and they weren't very fun. They had almost no uses in the overworld. In OoT you could at least mess around with stuff like the hover boots in the overworld, and the masks in MM were all types of awesome. In TP, for comparison, you have things like the Spinner. The Spinner is damn near useless. Why couldn't they have made it into a skateboard-esque device like the hover board in Jak II? It would've been badass coasting through Hyrule on that!
A more cohesive world
Make the overworld and dungeons blend together a bit more. They did this somewhat in TP, for instance the Lost Woods, the Temple of Time, and the Tears of Light bits, but for the most part when you were in a dungeon, you knew you were in a dungeon. In the next Zelda, I hope things flow a bit more.
I also hope the dungeons themselves aren't divided so much into obvious parts. Why must it always be, "Find this key, unlock that door, kill this guy, get boss key, find boss door, kill boss," ya know?
That being said, this is the part I care the least about, and I would be just fine if they stuck with the current dungeon formula, albeit fixing my other complaints (like more bosses).
Use the Wiimote to the best of it's abilities, but don't OVERuse it
Don't put too much emphasis on the Wiimote if the game would be the worse for it. I'm tired of gimmicky controls in my Zeldas. There was absolutely no need for Phantom Hourglass to use the stylus for damn near everything. They completely ignored half the buttons, and I felt like the gameplay was severely neutered for a game that should've been more advanced than OoT.
TP's tacked on motion controls were also somewhat bothersome, but I was fine with them overall as they never really became an annoyance.
Artstyle
For the artstyle, I think they should do one of two things: Either go back to cel-shading but make the game much darker and more adult like MM (if not even more so) rather than like the WW or PH, or else go with a cartoony 3D look ala the original Zelda tech demo for the GameCube (except different. That tech demo just looked wierd, imo).
Steal some stuff from Shadow of the Colossus!
Two things actually (and this may be a bit controversial, but I'm sure you'll agree once you read what I have to say):
1. Make Link more maneuverable like Wander. Let him jump from precipice to precipice. Let him climb all over things. That said, still keep the old gameplay intact. Let him do his backflips, etc. just like before.
2. Make some of the boss battles more epic. Picture this (taking into account my bit about making the dungeons flow better): You're wandering around a dungeon, trying to figure out what to do next. You hit blow up a wall or something, when suddenly the ground begins to shake. Seconds letter, the camera zooms out to reveal the entire dungeon lifting itself off the ground! The dungeon IS the boss, and you must figure out a way to take him down! It would be so damn epic.
Thoughts?
(mostly)
