>>713463152 (OP)
BotW overworld and NPCs, but with item progression replacing the foraging crap. Then bring back dungeons, but do something revolutionary with them.
If I was designing the games, I'd have open world dungeons. Meaning, they're not locked in unique areas. There's a giant underworld where all the "dungeons" are linked together through a system of waterways, caves, caverns, etc. (Like the cartoon). And you can go into any dungeon you want in any order you want. Sometimes you will hit a roadblock and need to come back to a certain dungeon later. But you're allowed to go in them at any time. Like in Zelda 1. If you want to go into the hardest dungeon first and work to get the Mirror Shield early, you can do that. If you want to go into dungeon 5 first and get the boomerang early, you can do that.
Items should also have multiple uses. By going and getting the mirror shield early, it has some uses in earlier dungeons. And makes progressing faster/easier. You're rewarded for experimenting.
