For me games like Skyrim proves that you can make the biggest, prettiest, deepest, most detail-rich adventure game ever, and it's still not quite Zelda. Sure, there are some obvious (well not to some people, depressingly) differences, but some people literally think "well why get Zelda when Skyrim is the biggest, grittiest RPG out there?"
The problem is that it's not that simple at all. Zelda's gameplay is based around puzzle solving, by figuring your way through dungeons and exploring Hyrule which is such a diverse world, full of color and surprises. It's also always been a more compacted world.
I was talking about this in the reviews thread about how I don't think Skyward Sword should be frowned upon for not having these big gigantic overworlds. Zelda is not some sandbox game. Hyrule has almost always been a series of varied but interconnected areas that make up the grand scheme.
Arkham City, for example, had a pretty good sized open world, but I found it to be boring and dreary. I suppose that's the idea, considering the nature of that franchise-- and even correct, but it wasn't for me. Oblivion was massive, but I never found it to be environmentally engaging. It was nice to look at, at the time, and I did get into it, but it wasn't like playing A Link to the Past for the first time, for example, and being truly wondered by the place.
The areas I'm seeing in Skyward suggest a more compacted and efficient experience much like the older Zelda titles. I care not about having a big massive overworld in a Zelda game, or even a big open Hyrule Field for the sake of having a big open environment. I know I started this post talking about the differences between Zelda and Skyrim but I wanted to elaborate why I feel that Zelda should have a different style when it comes to how the world is laid out.
So yeah. For me Zelda is still doing it right. Everyone else is scrambling to create these gigantic worlds, and that's great, I like that. But it's not Zelda.
Took it from my backlog. Back then I didn't notice any differences in the first Dungeon, so I stopped playing. Now after all this time, I forgot most of the designs so I still can't tell if there were differences so far, lol. I'm currently halfway through the Forest Temple and there were two courtyard like areas almost Ico-style I was completely unfamiliar with. But perhaps I just forgot about them.
