Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are both fantastic games - and Tears of the Kingdom really does feel (to me) like they just took Breath of the Wild, and added a few more years of dev time to it.
Where do you think Nintendo will take Zelda from here though? Can they keep with the same new formula? Should they? Will a more traditional game feel disappointing after this?
I don’t really know what I want myself. I think they should try something different though. At the same time, I can’t help but think I’d be disappointed if the next game was more similar to something like Twilight Princess. Have they boxed themselves in?
“I think at the very least, they’re going to turn this into a trilogy within the same Hyrule”
I dont think they can get away with this again. There isn’t enough space to expand on.
I mean, there’s the land around Hyrule, and also the oceans as I was hinting in my comment. Yona is also apparently from another domain, which could perhaps a sea based one? They could expand the current Hyrule via the rivers and lakes as well as an even further restored Hyrule, perhaps expanding some of the towns and villages. As for story, I feel like they keep hinting at the Triforce without actually implementing it fully, so maybe that?
Deeper depths or higher sky also seems possible, though I don’t think they’d do that, as much as they feel prototypical to some degree. Seeing the original home of the Zonai would be cool though, if it’s still there extremely high up. Perhaps a proper dark world? I know the Depths are a pseudo-implementation of that, but even so.