It may be more successful to make that style of game, but it would alienate fans of the traditional style of the game like myself.
As of approximately Ocarina of Time (if not Zelda 2), Zelda games have been a lot more "on rails" in the sense of a well-defined path of progression that is difficult to break (generally because of the need for some artifact or some plot-point to develop that opens the next path point). BotW gave me a clear directional hint (key for modern game design; we're well past the point where most players lack patience for "Here you are; I won't explain the rules; try not to die" game design), but if I wanted to ignore the hint and go run off into the sunset or try to rodeo a Lynel in my shorts with three hearts, I could.
> or try to rodeo a Lynel
Taming one of the toughest non-boss enemies in the game, starting at 2,000 HP and ranging up to 5,000 HP.
> in my shorts
No equipped armor/clothes, meaning no reduction to damage if hit
> with three hearts
Early-stage, just-started Link. In tandem with "in my shorts," every hit from a Lynel in this condition would be a one-hit kill. Beyond that, it's implied that Link in this condition might only have access to the most primitive weapons (around 25-30 HP per hit before meal/potion bonuses), though even assuming the absolute maximum damage doable from even the best weapon with the best consumable bonus (~110 HP), you're looking at landing 19 hits on the weakest of these guys without being touched.
It's doable on speedruns by advanced players who've gotten a hang of all of the game mechanics. Fixermark's point is more that BotW gives you the option of embracing this sort of masochism should you choose, but it includes a predefined soft-path should you not.
But I'd argue that BotW was the most popular Zelda game ever, so while it did upset some of the fanbase it brought in more new people than it lost in traditionalists.
With Pokemon, they already have multiple branches of games running side-by-side. I would think that if they did an open world game, it wouldn't be part of the main franchise but rather its own new branch.
A new line of games would likely give them more freedom to break away from the typical formula as well (e.g. not gym-based progression).
There's some stuff in there for long-time fans and more precocious/deeply interested kids (all the competitive stuff), but the single-player campaign has always been for grade-schoolers.
I understand why they did this, given that it was the launch game of a new handheld platform, but it felt limiting from a design perspective. Most of the puzzles just weren't that challenging and the dungeons were rather lackluster instead of being big events.
It's an interesting situation—breakable weapons has the greatest impact at the beginning of the game, when you haven't yet found sources for your favorite weapons. On the other hand, it has the least gameplay impact at the start of the game, since the weapons that you find early on are weak, uninteresting, and easily replaceable.
So like I get what they were going for, but I don't think they hit the mark with the mechanic; it's most annoying when it matters the least, and by the end of the game, when you've got your katanas and glowing chainsaw swords and whatnot, it barely matters at all.
> Wind Waker has a dungeon with 100 levels of enemies, and it's actually fun to start the game up just to play through that.
Breath of the Wild has a similar dungeon in the DLC, and actually the breakable weapons makes it even more interesting. You lose all of your weapons at the start, so you can't just take in your favorites, you have to improvise and make do with what you can scavenge as you go along. You also don't need to worry about saving your best weapons because you can't, as you'll need them all, and what you have left at the end of the dungeon will disappear anyway. Or when you lose; I'll admit I haven't beaten it yet.
And those are just the ones that aren't pokemon-themed skins over arcade games like pinball.
Zelda is a quite different as they've done a lot less with other mediums than the core series (they still tried ofc, but it hasn't been nearly as effective or impactful). Also BotW is closest we're going to get to WindWaker, the greatest of the Zeldas
I like open-world games (e.g. Far Cry 5), so I enjoyed Breath of the Wild, but I'd agree that it felt like functionally a completely different style of game altogether. It's a distinct genre, so I'm surprised that they went that route.
Some fans of the traditional style. I've been playing Zelda games since the original, and Breath of the Wild quickly became my favorite.