Your opinion is cool and all but where is this "developer point of view"? What you wrote could easily come off of any random gaffer (and it actually did... and possibly more in depth).
Anyway... I couldn't disagree more about the world being too big and/or empty. Sense of scale is especially important in an adventure, the game has tons and tons of meaningful content (not sure i have to make a list if you played it in depth) and it certainly didn't need ubisoft bloated shit to get better. In fact, even your complaint about the game falling in typical shortcomings of other open world titles totally lost me, because even when you approach two "similar" places the environment and the tools you have always allow for a different approach, which is NOT what happens in other "similar" games simply because their gameplay and level design don't usually even begin to offer you this kind of possibilities. Maybe you simply didn't bother to use them? I also don't get the comparison with 2D games lol
If anything, the achievements on level design in a world of this scale should impress you as a dev more than it does to normal users because you actually know what it means to do that stuff from the scratch.
The complaint about the game pausing when you change your weapon from the quick inventory is especially silly. It's so fun getting fucked by a Lynel while you're deciding what weapon you want to use next, right? And seeing how often they break (or how many of them you can carry with you when you expand your bag) it would be sooo well balanced if that happened 2-3 times during particularly long fights.
And finally, the part about the shrines. They have a similar look that they even bothered to justify with the lore, so it's completely believable that the basic aesthetics are the same between all of them. As a dev though you should know that Nintendo probably didn't think it was reasonable to hugely prolong development times (which were already ridiculously long) to do this, and spend more on more artists for more time, when the key aspect (
the different puzzles that you could do at almost any point in any part of the world) could be done anyway.
Again, your post feels like an user being dissatisfied with some aspects of a game (of a genre he doesn't like in the first place), most of which are debatable to say the least, more than a dev chiming in on design aspects and stuff like that. I'm leaving this thread disappointed
What you say is true and it's why so many praise this open world. But I want to throw this out there, while you are finding interesting things to do in the world is it better than the stuff that filled zelda games before?
In past zelda games you had insane variety, totally new gameplay mechanics in every single new location. One minute you could be in a jousting match, the next riding a canoe down a river shooting arrows, or next in a mini game soaring through the air popping balloons, that's just random crap from TP. Every zelda game has tons of unique things happening.
In BOTW it's the same few korok seeds, enemy encampments that repeat, shrines are 50/50 some great and unique some are repetitive or super simple. Because you have the same abilities the entire game you really don't actually do new things that often. This world is so big it should be the most varied zelda game of all time. It should have the most unique moments, the most enemy variety, the most cities and I feel it has some of the least of all that. What it does have is the most beautiful world and great gameplay but the stuff in it could be so much better.
Oh c'mon man, i thought our discussion from the other day was getting somewhere!
And BotW is full of those minigames you mentioned.