On paper I don't mind it anyway, it's actually a good thing as long as they bring back stuff like traditional dungeons and actually fill the empty game world with actual content. Now's a great time to for Nintendo to make another Wind Waker type game.
Nintendo should have seriously taken notes from Monolithsoft for open world design. They got them to do the field design for BotW and it shows with the flow of the world when you
aren't climbing or flying over everything. Monolith still worked on TotK, but not the main Xenoblade team that got borrowed for BotW, and I think it shows with how the world has no sense of flow (outside of the leftover botw stuff). Of course all of this is pointless when the game gives you the ability to climb and surface and to fly over everything right away, I hope they get rid of climbing and the paraglider in the inevitable next botw sequel.
Monolith's worlds flow so well its such a breath of fresh air. Xenoblade 3's story DLC has really enjoyable exploration that is also based around filling up a percentage, but its based on finding landmarks, hidden locations, crafting spots, harvest spots, loot chests, enemy catalogues, collectable catalogues (they finally brought the collectopedia back from X), unique monsters, and of course side quests, and all of this is tracked in a handy dandy menu for each type, and all of it hooks into the level up system, awarding points used to upgrade your party members. You also use the collected items from enemies and exploration for upgrading your equipment. All of this in just a 15-25 hour DLC expansion.
Xenoblade X has just as good level design for true open world, with it being designed around paths that you go through multiple times a playthrough, each time more equipped to explore further. You start out level gated by enemy placement, letting you explore one layer of the world, but there are places you can't reach, then you go back through with a Skell and you can access higher level areas and locations that were physically blocked, but you still can't explore the highest places, then at the end of the game you get a flight module and you can explore everything, gaining access to new locations even in the low level starting area. All of this with the exploration rewards that the 3 DLC has and exploring the world is fun and flows really well. If Breath of the Wild gated climbing like the Skell, and then gated the paraglider like the flight module, then you would have to explore the game on foot, then return and access the areas out of reach before, and then finally your reward for exploring the world horizontally and vertically is to fly over it all, but that would be restricting the player, which is a big no no to open air design.
I think the great plateau sort of fulfilled this, but they still let you climb stuff, and once you figure that out it becomes super simple. My first time through before I knew climbing was OP was really enjoyable, using the environment and it sort of felt like a survival game. I wish they leaned into survival aspects, master mode makes it harder and it sort of feels survival ish, but after the plateau it just becomes bullet sponge bullshit monsters, not true difficulty.
This should fulfill my legally obligated Monolith dicksucking for a while.
