I don't think we've evolved past the fundamental philosophies of games like these. Execution wise sure, but not at the heart. Honestly what made the BK games and others of its ilk, for me at least, was the joy of exploration and the journey. Feelings like that aren't passing fads, it's a part of human nature. I suppose maybe the error with this game was the same error that Nintendo was making in it's post-OoT Zeldas, missing the forest for the trees. Interestingly enough, I think Breath of the Wild is as much a philosophical successor to the BK ideology as anything today. It's a game where the act of discovery is the driving factor, and the quests and collectibles are simply a means to facilitate and direct that discovery. Don't just make A and B and C and D interesting, make the lines between them interesting as well. Which I guess is just a roundabout way of saying good level design is as important as it has ever been. The open world design I think is also a natural evolution that, as stated in interviews on that game, comes simply because we are no longer technologically constrained to hard-gated subsections and rooms. Make the transition from A to B to C to D as unconstrained and natural as possible. If your game is about exploring, then let the player damn well explore. It's one of the little details from Guild Wars 2 that lit a fire under me more than anything, those jumping puzzles. Where so many games before that put up invisible barriers and obviously hand placed sheer cliffs, this game had so many spots that not just allowed but ENCOURAGED you to go out of your way and take in the world. Not to beat a dead horse, but Zelda does this in two major ways. For one, the aforementioned collectible reward, skinner boxian but still gratifying in the sense that it was worked for. EDIT: And I guess i should mention that BotW's collectibles differ crucially from a lot of others in the collectathon genre in that A. they're gotten in the course of the normal gameplay loop, again driven by exploration, and B. they have a tangible effect of further facilitating gameplay, not existing simply for the sake of existing but giving you better weapons, more health, more stamina, which means more exploring. For two, the view itself, not only for the innate beauty of the world design, but also for the vantage point it provided to see other points of interest to facilitate, you guessed it, more exploring, importantly again in a game that ALLOWS you to explore in such a fashion. People cheese up cliffs or on top of buildings in games like Skyrim or Fallout not because haha we broke the game but because exploration is always the most fundamental driving force behind any of these open world games.
IDK at this point this post is kind of meandering but blah. Also I'm sure Super Mario Odyssey will bring a ton more to this topic when it comes out later this year as others have pointed out.