I'm not sure what's going on but I'm curious to know how is something like that blowing you guys away? Unless you have never played a Bethesda game in like 15 years. There are a good few other games that do that as well i.e. change NPC habits during night and day.
I'm playing the game right now and liking it but I haven't seen anything in this game that I haven't seen and experienced before already...atleast as of yet.
Lots of people quoted you but I'm gonna take my stab at it.
The main difference between Zelda and Bethesda RPGs is that Zelda is actively not trying to be an RPG. This means some superficial changes like a deliberate lack of experience points and "levels" so to speak. But the way the world is designed and the mechanics themselves are far more palatable to an action-game format.
For starters, the lack of icons makes the game feel more free-flowing. You don't explicitly follow the icon that says "bandit camp", you just happen to find it. On top of this the game has many un-RPG micro-puzzles scattered throughout the world that give you any one class of reward. The game having many classes of reward gives the game a certain kind of mystery. Sometimes it's Rupees, sometimes it's craftables, sometimes it's a piece of equipment or a weapon. None of it is unexciting filler items like "socket this into your weapon for +2% chance of poison!" There's
heft to each treasure you find, not just a drop in an ocean of numerical rewards that many open-world RPGs fall under.
The open world is also decidedly different from many other open-world games. It's not like in GTA where the whole "see that mountain? You can go there!" amounts to you just driving to that mountain. BOTW has an element of traversal and verticality that makes getting from point A to point B a more involved affair. Nooks and crannies can make your traversal easier, or there are frequently obstacles deliberately put in front of you to make you go around them. In every corner the geography engages you. The climbing mechanics coupled with the reward-everywhere philosophy means that not only do you have the ability to go to "that mountain", but chances are high that there's something once you get there. Tons of times I do a random thing and climb a random tall object or building just to get a vista only to find a reward on top.
Combat is also far more action-y than your average open-world RPG. It's similar in style to The Witcher 3 in terms of action-oriented gameplay, but BOTW lays several Nintendo-esque twists on top of that. Environmental objects that can help or work against you, and many enemies with behaviors explicitly created to interact with certain elements of the world. With several tools at your disposal, if you manage to "game" the systems just right you can make really quick work of enemies that are far more powerful than you. And because the game is about player experiences and action-y systems, the game is happy to yield to you in those cases. None of that "yeah well but you're level 10 and he's 50 so yeah just wail on this guy for 10 minutes or leave cuz those are your options pal".
In short, the game is far more action, reward, physics, and game-driven than many other open world games, RPG or otherwise. It's why details like each character having a daily schedule resonates far more in this game than it does in Bethesda games, because while Beth has fallen into a certain mold and subsequent games tweak said mold, BOTW has built into its systems a certain level of physicality. Everything is funneled into high-level concepts of exploration and immediacy in combat, more about you interacting with the world with your "gut" (lemme just use this wind to set this entire field ablaze) rather than min-maxing some esoteric numerical system.
