In an interview with IGN, Eiji Aonuma, series producer on The Legend of Zelda, touched upon a certain subset of the fanbase that yearns for the more linear structure of the classic games; something he seems to attribute mostly to nostalgia.
The last couple of Zelda games—Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom—featured a new open ended structure for the series. Given how very successful both games have been, it’s no wonder that Nintendo would wish to keep this going for future games. Aonuma even implied as such in a May Game Informer interview: “I think it’s correct to say that [Breath of the Wild] has created a new kind of format for the series to proceed from.”
As such, Aonuma sounds a bit perplexed in his IGN interview when some players want to trade the sheer level of freedom the newer games offer for something more constrained and linear: “It’s interesting when I hear people say those things because I am wondering, ‘Why do you want to go back to a type of game where you’re more limited or more restricted in the types of things or ways you can play?'”
He does acknowledge and understand why people would be nostalgic for the older games, but he also argues that even the more open-ended Zelda games still offer a “set path, it just happens to be the path that they chose.”
The future of the Zelda series is nebulous at the moment. After all, Tears of the Kingdom only launched seven months ago; the next mainline entry won’t be coming out for many years and while it won’t be a direct sequel, it’s bound to retain the open world structure.
Yet a cursory glance online shows that there are plenty of fans that would rather see the series go back to basics and build upon the linear structure seen in games like Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword instead.
One Reddit user, TheEndOfShartache, isn’t opposed to massive open worlds, but hopes future Zelda games won’t keep being “physics sandboxes” and drop other aspects like the degradable weapons and pseudo sci-fi elements. This is a sentiment Hokashin shares, who worries linear Zelda games may struggle to ever return: “I feel like a lot of people have begun to associate Zelda with sandboxy wackiness and running around like it’s Skyrim.”
