I really want to bring attention to this Hands-on preview by IGN because there's quite a few nice quotes by Aonuma in there about the game. http://ca.ign.com/articles/2016/06/...-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-hands-on-preview
On filling the world with things:
Dungeons having only one entrance:
On getting lost:
On Rupees:
Choosing the subtitle for the game:
About towns and NPCs... and the Green Tunic:
On filling the world with things:
“We talked a little bit about the idea of density, how dense to make this big world,” Aonuma explained. The team realized that filling the vast landscape with things to do and explore would be a lot of work. As the team experienced moving around on horseback or climbing up to a high place to paraglide down, they realized that their desire to see what's ahead of the next horizon grew. At the same time, the team realized some moments should be subtle as you explore. “We realized that it's OK if there's pocket of emptiness,” he said.
Dungeons having only one entrance:
Aonuma told us that, despite the non-linear format of the overall game, dungeons will still have only one entrance. “If there were multiple entrances it would be very confusing,” Aonuma said, “but how you get to that entrance is very different this time around.”
On getting lost:
While developing Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Aonuma said he noticed something that never occurred to him before: Getting lost is fun. “In previous 3D titles, I thought that getting lost is a bad thing,” Aonuma admitted. Due to hardware restrictions, most 3D Zelda games stitched together a bunch of smaller made worlds with an entrance and exit. “Getting lost in those small worlds, it's not a loss of what to do but it's more of a directional loss,” he said. “I see the exit, you're going to end up at the same exit, but I can't figure out how to get there.”
“It's actually fun. It's a sense of discovery and as we're developing this, I thought to myself, "Maybe this is what it means to create a big world, to find out that getting lost is OK.”
On Rupees:
“Rupees do exist,” he said, ”but the reason for their existence is a little different this time around. As you saw it's not about going to cutting down grass and collect rupees or find them in treasure chests but it's about collecting things and going to sell them and then using the rupees you get to buy new things.”
Choosing the subtitle for the game:
Nintendo isn’t afraid to emphasize how different this adventure is from its predecessors, even in the game’s name. “Even the subtitle itself is different from previous Zelda titles,” Aonuma said. In past games of the series, he explained, Nintendo would use item names like Skyward Sword or character names Twilight Princess as the subtitle for a new game. For this project, Aonuma worked closely with Nate Bihldorff from Nintendo’s Treehouse over the span of many months before they landed on the name, Breath of the Wild. ”It took a while,” Bihldorff said, “We talked a lot about plot points and items and characters, but what we kept coming back to was that the world itself is really the soul of this game.”
About towns and NPCs... and the Green Tunic:
He also wouldn’t talk about towns. “I can't share too much about villages because to tell you how the villages work, they're interconnected to the story and overall world.” Thankfully, Aonuma did tell us the upgrade path for equipment is “very Zelda-like” but that’s it. And what happened to Link’s green tunic? “I don't know... I wonder,” Aonuma said with a laugh.