Idea for a Zelda game, incorporating what BotW did well and addressing things it was faulted for

The title for this idea is The Legend of Zelda: The Veil of Prophecy

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The Setting

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Like Breath of the Wild, it takes place in a vast open world. The world is divided into four main regions, each of which has a major city with unique cultures and aesthetics -- an industrial town, a wealthy city with tall buildings, an agricultural spread and a tropical paradise.

Each of those regions is doomed to destruction by a major natural disaster. The industrial town will be covered by a volcanic eruption, the agricultural spread submersed in a flood, the wealthy city brought down by an earthquake and the tropical paradise blown down by a hurricane.

By looking through the veil on a headdress known as the Veil of Prophecy, Link is able to see the before- and after-disaster worlds, but only able to traverse between the two through the passage of time forwards and backwards, accessing the timelines through chambers of time. He takes on the responsibility for preventing these disasters, and to do so he must travel to the post-cataclysm world and discover the times, places and causes for each disaster, which will then open an option in the chamber of time to travel to the time and place of the calamity to prevent them, and upon successful cataclysm prevention, open up the alternate no-cataclysm and post-cataclysm timelines.

The "saved from cataclysm" timeline, though, shows something bad about to happen to the whole kingdom, something that couldn't have happened if the cataclysms had happened, and which it becomes your responsibility to prevent at the end.

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Balancing the sense of open-world exploration and freedom against a sense of progression

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First, instead of handing you pretty much everything right at the beginning, abilities are broken up to be given out through the game, with each area having its little "metroidvania" of item gating and effectively-linear progression of items and abilities that do not depend on anything in any of the other progression branches.

Free climbing is only made available after obtaining climbing gear in the industrial area, which climbing ability is necessary to get to the next major plot point in that area, and while it is enormously useful and interesting through the rest of the game, isn't necessary to have anywhere else for anywhere that you'll need to get, and furthermore, the gating mechanisms should be complicated enough that it shouldn't allow you to sequence-break a different branch. (Perhaps this could be done with the stamina system, while disallowing you from consuming a potion or food while climbing).

In like fashion, you get a glider kite in the tropical area which you'll need to get to the next thing in the sequence there. In the wealthy district you obtain a spring-loaded grappling tool that can latch to most surfaces, with the option to let yourself down gently from where you've latched to. And in the agricultural center, you get the ability to swim freely without limits.

In addition to obtaining these "traveling tools," each progression branch will have:

• a physics-manipulating tool (suggestions: Hydromancy, which lets you pull a "Moses and the Red Sea" on any liquid; Geomancy, which in Cryonis fashion punches out a crystal from any bare dirt or exposed bedrock or shatters such a crystal; Pyromancy/Cryomancy, which lights any weapon you're using on fire / adds a freeze effect; Levitation, which works like attaching Octorok balloons but without being tied to inventory) -- addendum: use of physics tools is tied to a mana system with a generous enough recharge that it doesn't discourage dicking around with the tools but strict enough amounts to make it unreasonable to, for instance, kill an entire high-level enemy camp just by spamming Geomancy from a safe spot.

• A new, unique, permanent weapon that is both generally viable in combat and functions as some kind of puzzle-solving or puzzle-changing tool. (It gets equipped as a weapon like Breath of the Wild, not as a button-push action). (Suggestions: Ye Obvious Boomerang that hits like a sword but can be thrown in an arc path that returns to you with automatic catching, ye obvious hammer functioning like a heavy weapon with a shockwave ranged attack, a razor fan with fast cutting hits and a wide blowing ranged attack, ... basic idea is that they're dual-purpose with the design feeling like it makes sense in both roles).

• A new combat technique.

• A "Puzzle Box" dungeon with a central dungeon-shifting mechanic (imagine BotW's Divine Beasts, except that instead of manipulating the mechanism from the map, you can only manipulate it from the terminals and each terminal only handles one setting [makes for way more interesting macro-puzzle/navigational paradox design], plus unique aesthetic theming)

• A "lock and key" labyrinth (some of the more "classic" 2D Zelda dungeons -- no central gimmick, simple individual puzzles, the challenge is primarily figuring out the layout and figuring out the next "key" which in turn could be a literal key or some kind of MacGuffin, a piece of information like a switch order sequence or route through an invisible path, or an obstacle only clearable by the dungeon's "key item.")

• A "gauntlet" dungeon (doesn't have branching pathways or puzzles, just a series of escalating challenges, whether they be combat or platforming or climbing or flying or whatever)

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Balancing nonlinear play structure against an advancing narrative and gradually-more-powerful player

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This is a really interesting one to tackle. I've explored this before in multiple different game contexts (that one's archived, and they since changed the aesthetics which make it harder to read, so sorry about that) and it does indeed present an interesting challenge to the storytellers. Here are the main ideas:

• For the overall long-arc narrative, it's possible to have the main story points happen in the same order but, for most plot points, be entirely disconnected from the location where it happens -- that is, whatever in-the-present cutscene happens, you can have it happen at any number of locations by using the same people, same dialogue and same animations, but rendered on top of different scenery. Linearly advancing plot, no need to tie plot points to a specific location. You can have things happen in a certain order without requiring the player to do things in a certain order.

• Individual branches can have their own linear storylines disconnected from the other branches' storylines. Indeed, Breath of the Wild already does this, with short linear plotlines for each Divine Beast. The only problem with how Breath of the Wild does this is that the conclusion of each sub-plotline doesn't feel as satisfying as you might hope for.

• Add another story that doesn't happen in the present, with a specific order the events occur in but because they don't happen in the present the plot points can be discovered in any order. Again, the only problem with how it was done in BotW is that it's not as satisfying as some of you might have hoped for.

• If you've got an intended path for the player to follow but expect the player to do things in a different order, there's always the option of beef gating -- that is, the further you get off the path you want the player to follow, the tougher the enemies, puzzles and movement challenges get. Couple this with the main intended path also having a difficulty progression and you've afforded a great escalating linear challenge to wusses who won't try anything they don't feel equipped for, while also giving more courageous players the opportunity -- and rewards -- for demonstrating their advanced skills. (This, however, must be communicated to the player -- make it clear to the player that if an enemy seems unbeatable or a puzzle seems completely impossible to solve, rather than throwing themselves into it over and over again, they should try something else and perhaps come back to it later).

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Gameplay Systems

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Breath of the Wild's open-ended physics system and chemistry engine is a large part of what made it so great. Yes, we've had physics sims before, but always attached to linear gauntlet challenges, never to an open-world sandbox.

I think that aspect should stay.

The overall tone of the game is intended to make the player feel like a scavenger, hence replacing the "find some hearts" system with a gathering and cooking system and recovering health by eating, and also why weapons break -- for a scavenger, very little is permanent and you need to be ready to change your plans on the fly to take advantage of opportunities or respond to unexpected scenarios.

While the scavenger aspect was amazing in Breath of the Wild, I don't think it needs to be replicated for every future Zelda game.

But weapons that can be picked up, thrown and are breakable makes for interesting scenarios, especially when enemies can be disarmed and/or will go pick up other weapons. I suggest that this aspect of BotW be translated to use BotW's AI in this context, but for the player, picking up and throwing weapons should far more resemble Wind Waker -- they're hold-only, non-inventory weapons.

For health, having a system where you eat food to recover is far more immersive and less "game-ey" than picking up hearts from cut grass, broken pots and defeated enemies. At the same time, though, the way it gets used when playing the game, it can pretty much obsolete the entire health system, period, because your inventory is virtually infinite and doesn't decay, meaning all you have to do to win a difficult fight is get in some weenie shots to whittle the enemy down and then eat a whole bushel of apples every time you get hit.

I propose a balance -- keep the cooking system, but have a very small limit on the number of edible things you can keep with you.

I also propose a mana system as a use limiter for physics-manipulating powers, but mana recovers itself quick enough that using a power to initiate combat or solve a puzzle isn't discouraged but slow enough that you probably can't get away with the "spam remote bomb" method. I also suggest having a "heal" power that consumes all your mana to heal yourself to full health. No farming for health recovery, and mana recovery is slow enough that it's hard to use multiple times per fight.

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Enemies and Combat

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Another BotW complaint is lack of enemy variety. Personally, I see the biggest issue as the pattern on fighting all of them is essentially the same.

The AI on them is fantastic, each of them having awareness and interaction with the game's systems. Nothing in particular needs to change. What's needed is:

• A larger variety of aesthetically-unique enemies

• Enemies resistant to certain moves or combos -- i.e. ones that will always dodge whenever you attempt to hit them up close, ones that will recognize a combo and get in a cheap attack to break your combo (and you need to figure out how to avoid that one cheap shot), ones that recognize when you're locked on to someone else and will aggressively flank you when you do, enemies that tend to run away, enemies that explode when they're hit, etc.

• Enemies who are particularly vulnerable to a specific weapon for a reason that makes sense -- i.e. things that get flipped over when hit with the hammer vs things that can easily avoid the hammer, things that lose their armor when hit in the back, etc.

I mean, come on, we've seen examples of most of these in other Zelda games.

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Distribution and variety of rewards

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Besides the inconvenience of weather and breakable weapons, one of the most complained about thing in BotW is that the reward for every shrine and for finding every Korok is all the same -- a Spirit Orb and a Korok seed, respectively -- and most of the side quests don't have satisfying rewards.

To that effect, I propose:

• Putting "shrine-like" puzzles in the overworld, with a similar sort of "weenie" to draw attention to them (BotW used the characteristic orange glow for unsolved shrines; there are other ways of drawing attention, and I'd suggest these sorts of things should be a little more subtle), having fewer of them overall and having each of them directly lead to a Heart Container, Stamina Vessel or Mana Jar (increases your total Mana).

• Each area having some sort of craftsman who, after doing their side quest, can make improvements to specific pieces of equipment, to increase run speed, swim speed, climb speed, weapons, shield, etc. Side quests involve fixing their equipment in some way -- a multi-stage fetch quest (like the Biggoron Sword in Ocarina of Time), a single-stage fetch quest involving a difficult combat challenge, solving an optional mini-puzzle-box dungeon, or carrying a torches with special flames across long distances riddled with enemies (but protected from inconvenient weather).

• Making the reward for "Korok-like" puzzles some kind of rare ingredient for cooking and/or fetch quests (and when it's used, the puzzle resets so you can always get it again).

• Each area having some sort of "ownership quest" -- i.e. own a farm that generates food, own a bank that lets you store and loan out rupees for the possibility of returns, etc.

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• TL;DR

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The text describes a setting and story that balances nonlinear gameplay with a linear sense of progression and linear overarching narrative, describes new systems that offer variety and permanence and hopefully cut out monotony of approach, and optional content that feels rewarding. If you want to know any of it, well... it's a wall of text with hopefully descriptive enough content dividers that you can skip around and skim.

Edit: a little formatting