To speak just to plot, I think there is one direction they could move towards next.

In this series, we have yet to even hear whispers of the Triforce. What was previously a central pillar of prior Zelda games has fallen by the wayside. So, the Triforce can come back.

In Tears of the Kingdom, we learned interesting facts about how dragons are made. We have three dragons who have been there since Breath of the Wild: Dinraal, Farosh, and Naydra, who correspond to the goddesses Din, Farore, and Nayru, who created the Triforce. Presumably, these “goddesses” were people once, who ate secret stones and turned into dragons, and they could be key to unlocking the mysteries of the Triforce. If we can un-draconify them like we did Zelda, it would be interesting to have these entities be actual characters in the story.

As far as threats, it’s hard to say. Could bring back old man Demise if they want to stick with the progressively scary Ganon line of villains, but they could easily bring in someone else new or old as well.

Assuming we get a third game in the botw run, I would love to see link travel back to early Hyrule like Zelda did. Nintendo could use the blueprint of the depths ruins as the backbone for a thriving Zonai civilization. Aboveground would be a truly wild Hyrule similar to what the depths are now. No sky islands as this would predate their creation. Instead we could have a ‘dive’ feature that lets us visit an ancient Zora, spread out in the waters in and around Hyrule. All new characters (except maybe Raru and friends), but many characters could be ancestors of current characters so they would be familiar in some ways. I would love to see the ability to tame monsters, more complex Zonai devices, and yes, perhaps real dungeons.

Also I could even see a fourth game in this series that totally turns all of the formula on its head. It would actually star Zelda, and she would travel through time to different eras of Hyrule. We’d get to see areas and dungeons from ocarina of time, twilight princess, skyward sword and even many of the 2d titles, redesigned with botw graphics and controls. The focus of the game would be for Zelda to help Link. She must stay out of sight, navigate dungeons to place keys, compasses, maps and/or key weapons that the link of that era will need to defeat whatever evil he faces. I think this would be super cool.

I would like it if their next game would be more traditional 2d style, something akin to Links Awakening. Personally I like both the 2d and 3d style games, so alternating between the two would be great.

For the 3d games I’m not sure for the direction they should take, but I think a blend of the open world style combined with the more traditional dungeons would be great.

Assuming we get a third game in the botw run, I would love to see link travel back to early Hyrule like Zelda did. Nintendo could use the blueprint of the depths ruins as the backbone for a thriving Zonai civilization. Aboveground would be a truly wild Hyrule similar to what the depths are now. No sky islands as this would predate their creation. Instead we could have a ‘dive’ feature that lets us visit an ancient Zora, spread out in the waters in and around Hyrule. All new characters (except maybe Raru and friends), but many characters could be ancestors of current characters so they would be familiar in some ways. I would love to see the ability to tame monsters, more complex Zonai devices, and yes, perhaps real dungeons.

Also I could even see a fourth game in this series that totally turns all of the formula on its head. It would actually star Zelda, and she would travel through time to different eras of Hyrule. We’d get to see areas and dungeons from ocarina of time, twilight princess, skyward sword and even many of the 2d titles, redesigned with botw graphics and controls. The focus of the game would be for Zelda to help Link. She must stay out of sight, navigate dungeons to place keys, compasses, maps and/or key weapons that the link of that era will need to defeat whatever evil he faces. I think this would be super cool.

Although I might be in the minority, I hope that they try to make a story-centered game like Twilight Princess. I loved how deep the characters felt and the atmosphere so much. I think they could mix in more story telling and maybe even some kind of friendship/affinity system with NPCs. I don’t think it would interfere with the core mechanics too much.

I think they need to find a way to merge the BOTW open world with the more traditional structure of Zelda games. The issue is that those two philosophies are sort of at odds with each other, with BOTW and TOTK not wanting the player to be locked out of anything while exploring the world while the traditional structure has you unlock items throughout the game in order to solve puzzles, which there are much fewer of outside of dungeons. It can work though, if Wind Waker is any indication with its side islands.

They’ll make a movie

I like the idea of more open world games, would still like the dungeons to be a bit stronger, though totk was an improvement. I think a return of the great sea is a natural extension and could give an opportunity for different powers that would be more helpful on the open ocean, kind of like how ascend was a natural complement of caves and the depths. I think keeping autobuild and ultrahand and extending it further to boats or maybe even airships in the endgame would be really neat. Could also see them building on time powers even more. Maybe a return to termina?

In the aftermath of TotK, the world is in a sorry state. The sky islands are falling, violent quakes closed the access to the depths, and embers of darkness (fragments of the secret stone last held by Ganondorf) have fallen to the land and created fields of distortion where the present world has been over written by a section of the past. The worst are the dungeons, where the fragments empower new boss monsters.

Link and Zelda team up together to restore Hyrule with the new gameplay gimmick being the ability to swap between them. Link as a swordsman and Zelda with time powers (some inspiration from Bioshock infinite’s Elizabeth).

I’d like to see a version of Viscera Cleanup Detail game but a pre-mission where you navigate a perilous dungeon from all the Zelda timeline games, setting up all the traps and puzzles before Link comes by to complete it (hoping you don’t fall victim to the traps you are setting up), as well as a post-mission version where you are cleaning up all the gore and dismembered body parts and pottery shards and misc etc that Link has haphazardly hacked-off with his sword or left behind on his adventures through the dungeons.

I’d like to see more open world games for sure. How about along with that, we get some 3d re-imaginings of the original Zelda and Zelda 2? The graphics could be similar to that of the remake of Link’s Awakening.

Multiplayer shrines, spin-off game.

I’d like to see a tighter Zelda/Link fusion, where Zelda’s time powers are weaved more into Links combat.

A hard game where Link dies and dies and dies, but Zelda keeps rewinding time and bringing him back to life, where he learns from his mistakes (similar to PoP:SoT).

As the game progresses and the combat gets harder, Link gains the ability to slow down time in order to better plan his attacks as they happen. He’s not moving super fast like the Flash when time is slowed, for he is slowed down too, but he can simply react better; dodge a sword by anticipation, plan a jump off an enemy’s head with better timing, turn a dodge under a weapon into an attack in the same stride, all the while preserving his momentum.

By the end of the game, he can literally stop time, and he does so endlessly at the game credits, as its the only way to free Zelda from her time prison. Zelda and Link effectively switch places, and the next game is Zelda trying to free Link

I feel like they did everything they could open world wise with TotK, would love something smaller with more focus and detail like Majora’s Mask again.

We need a 4-swords adventures with the BOTW/TOTK engine