Funny, related to your last paragraph, I saw a review of the new Zelda were the only downsides they found were "the switch hardware can't do more than this" and "this sets too high a bar for the next Zelda game" :)

Well, looking at the time it takes them to make a mainline Zelda game, the next one will not come out on the Switch, so it'll be easy to overcome that technical bar.

good to know, cause honestly the trailer looks.. kinda boring. I really liked Breath of the Wild though, so if this is similar in quality (or better) I'll probably get it.

IGN: 10/10 which is pretty rare. "It somehow makes the original feel like a rough draft." "It makes the original feel like a tiny world."

That's kinda crazy.

https://www.ign.com/articles/the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-th...

That's a weird comment because botw seemed huge to me, and this uses the same map.

Either way, picking it up today!

Breath of the Wild impressed with how vast everything was, but there was lots of empty space. It worked for that game don't get me wrong, it's one of my favorite games of all time. TotK is so dense with content and creativity that it does make the original feel empty and small in comparison. It's a lot like Elden Ring in the sense that you can just pick a direction you've never been in and you'll just stumble across interesting things within 30 seconds.

It's not exactly the same map. They did a lot of improvements to it and added a lot of depth, even ignoring chasms and sky islands.

It uses the same map, but with more depth — there are at least two layers I've discovered so far — original Hyrule and Sky Islands — and I suspect at least one more :)

The game is supposed to be boring. It's a walking simulator.

true. that franchise is doing consecutive home runs and that's an rare fact in itself.

Well, apparently they went the safe route (feature-wise) of adding more interesting mechanics (specially turning the world into a sandbox) and polishing existing ones. Pretty much like GTA after GTA 3. My guess is that they'll continue this trend by making the game richer and bigger...until they get a Zelda online game like GTA.