As to the third bolded: I'm not sure. I'm thinking about SS, whose design seems to be the starting point for BotW as its antithesis. My hope is that the openworld has an unusually high degree of level design for an open-world, which I think is a possibility, given footage and previews. In that sense, it could follow from one of the core positives that "compactness" had on SS's design over its predecessors. That the world of BotW is a dungeon, in the sense that it should have that sort of dedication to level design, is a SS idea.
But it is not going to follow, by all accounts, on the very tight puzzle and gadget gameplay that reached its peak in TP and SS. Instead, they are introducing freedom into the puzzles and reducing the impact of new gadgets, to accommodate an open world, non-linear game. And that open world, non-linear game is very much not Skyward Sword 2. To varying degrees I could see it as the sequel to any other Zelda, but not SS.
And that is precisely why I have some concern as to how I'll take to it. I play Zelda for the building gameplay of the building set of gadgets and how they interact with a tightly designed world of puzzles, traversal problems, and monsters. The evolution of 3D Zelda was very much towards the tastes of someone like me. Whenever they talk about BotW, they say things that scare me and it is very much a game I'm hoping I love despite it not being what I wanted from Zelda.
The art, the characters, the towns, etc. have me hyped. The open-world/survival gameplay demonstrated strikes me as often neat but not squarely what I'd want. I'm going to have to get the game into my own hands and be won over that no, me being hyped because it is a new beautiful Zelda is not me setting myself up for disappointment.
I do expect that if there's a 'cycle' backlash against BotW that suddenly draws attention to what people remember fondly about SS, it's probably going to be the puzzle/gadget dungeon design, far more so than other distinguishing features of SS like the divisive motion controls or the puzzle-solving traversal of the overworld, especially as the latter is making a comeback of sorts on a larger and more connected scale. When SS came out, I remember thinking that its layout was the first in the 3D series to be reminiscent of the post-LttP 2D line, where just roaming around the map felt as much like "playing Zelda" as the dungeon crawling, and I get the impression BotW will scratch that itch.
This has been a concern that has been in play ever since ALBW came out: whether the skin of non-linearity really does anything to make the logic-puzzle rooms more interesting, or if they are still compartmentalized by item the way they always were. I've been dreaming of a dungeons-in-any-order Zelda for as long as I've played the 3D series, but obtaining key items in any order doesn't make a lot of difference if the puzzle rooms and dungeons are all developed in parallel in isolation from each other (like a good chunk of ALBW and indeed the back half of Phantom Hourglass, which you could in fact do in any order). Ideally, non-linearity would give us challenges that still feel
designed, but which are responsive to the player's chosen path and what has been accomplished thus far in the game. (The model for this I've always had in mind is the original KOTOR, where you have multiple well-defined scenarios and solution spaces that change depending on whether you encounter them early or late.)
Creating your own blocks with the Cane of Somaria didn't make LttP feel "less designed", so to speak, and BotW comes off to me as a 3D game practically built around the Cane of Somaria. But I hope that isn't wishful thinking. Even with the mastery of puzzle/gadget design on display in TP/SS, I always felt that most of the key items were too quickly discarded after their assigned dungeon, and I think when people ask for non-linearity what they really crave is a sense that their whole arsenal of tools still matters, and that asking themselves, "What should I use here?" is still an interesting question. In TP especially, often the question was not "What should I use here?" but "How should I use this dungeon's item here?", and that's the target when people describe the LttP/OoT format as predictable. (TWW broke out of this better than most, I thought, by making all of its items relevant in combat, if not in the puzzles.)
I get what you are saying, anyhow. It's easy to understate how TP/SS retained a capacity for surprise
because they followed a formula, and were therefore in a place to subvert it. I don't think BotW's design lends itself at all to moments like the misdirection in Snowpeak, where you see ice blocks everywhere and, following the formula, you're thinking the whole time you'll get Fire Arrows or a Fire Rod. And it's glorious when the LttP-throwback mini-boss drops the Ball & Chain, and you take a second to realize, "I get to use
that?"