[jdonaldson]

Zelda series has always been a showcase for great low level aesthetic gameplay design choices. I love how they handled simple things like grid-based movement : https://dev.to/robotspacefish/game-studies-link-s-movement-i...

I feel like the dungeons in BOTW all resemble the rooms in Portal. I.e. they feel highly artificial and contrived. However, this lets the player focus on the puzzle itself, rather than worry about the story at that moment. The puzzles there really force you to "get good" at a particular maneuver the game requires of the character. Rather than getting an item or advancing a world event, the player's reward is simply to suck less by accomplishing the task.

Plus, let's be honest, Zelda's story is really pretty fungible. The linear progression was mainly due to hardware limitations rather than aesthetic choice.