Aonuma on making Zelda: Breath of the Wild 'open air', continuing to surprise the player with future installments

The following comes from a Nikkei Trendy interview with Eiji Aonuma...

On Zelda becoming an "Open Air" game with Breath of the Wild

“When I first created a Zelda that’s played with 3D in Ocarina of Time, what we put our attention on is: To cope with how we were still not familiar with 3D yet, we show ‘routes’ so that you could progress forward without getting lost in even broad worlds.

At that time, I thought that was the right thing. However, as we stacked on the series, ‘not getting lost’ would produce feelings of blockages like ‘cannot do anything but that’ or ‘cannot run away’, so more and more people felt dissatisfied with that.
‘Open Air’ are words that really liberates us from those ‘feelings of blockages’. You can freely explore a vast world connected seamlessly, and you can progress to find out your own ‘answer’. So I think if there are 100 people ‘experiencing’ it, there will be 100 ways [to progress].”

On overseas reaction to Breath of the Wild and the series' future

“First of all I think the point that ‘this is a Zelda’ is big. It’s a series that has been continuing for a long time, if I am to put it in words then perhaps everyone would have thought it’s not that simple to do a ‘reform’.

It’s not an easy thing to be able to answer expectations of all our users, but through this game, I recognized again that the significance of continuing to create the series is right there, so in the future I’d like to repeat doing “great fusses*” and provide ‘surprises’ that exceed everyone’s expectations.”

* Translator’s note: Originally Aonuma said すったもんだ. When this is checked in a web dictionary, it could mean the following: Confused (situation), Great fuss, Much wrangling.