Sounds like he's taking some more western influence than we thought. Wonder which ones. Already seen link w/ a larger sword, which could imply more western rpg elements, like finding various weapons. Will be really refreshing to play something brand new again. Can't wait. Media blackout, here I come.
I don't think that'll be the thing that crosses over. If anything, it'll be the ability to tackle dungeons in more than one order. Ocarina let you do a few out of order, as did ALttP and Zelda 1. Just do something like the ice cave, which is a mini dungeon with no item requirement to enter that unlocks an item that you need to enter another dungeon. Makes every dungeon roughly 1.5 dungeons and lets you tackle them in any order, as long as you find the corresponding mini dungeon. That's another possible solution to tackling in any order without having to rent.
Any order at all, however, means no difficulty progression and locks dungeons to using only 1 item, which is a problem. A better solution might be dungeon 'clusters' where you can only do 2 or 3 at a time before moving on to the next 2 or 3. This way cluster 2 assumes you have all items from cluster 1 and can as a whole be more difficult than cluster 1. Same with cluster 3, which knows you have all items from clusters 1-2