Well I just remember in Breath of the Wild trying to do whatever shrine I came across and like a couple times it would be a "super hard" combat shrine, which just isn't practical to complete without some better weapons/armor/health. That meant, being driven towards the basically "easier" shrines along the path to a divine beast or something.
There are lots of things you can do at any point in time and it won't change much, different things that is, but I just see it as taking two paths in like capcom's Arcade D&D game, they both get to the same point, they have different stuff, you have choice, but it doesn't mean it's "open world."
Nintendo's "open world" in Xenoblade X and BotW just mostly means "very big spaces."
Anyway, I think most people here seem doom and gloom over the situation mostly, it's been 6 years now, I think the aftermath of the wrecking ball to Zelda that is Breath of the Wild is over now and I feel I understand it better now. It was listening to the nerdocracy, and cowtowing to their demands, not making the best game they really could I thought.
But now, I think TotK is definitely more linear than BotW, flows a lot better. I'm not done with it, but it has a lot less chaos. It's Nintendo making their own games again. Moreso, anyway.
It's weird, like I actually like what little regular sounding music there is in BotW better than the SS soundtrack, which is all well arranged and stuff but not like the melodically driven stuff of early Zelda IMO.
Basically, I have all of the classic Zelda games still above BotW, but now I put SS below it for being so agonizing for such a straighforward game, as well as Minish Cap which I always felt was a pretty frustrating experience. So I think they actually made some progress, in capturing "original" Zelda spirit, which includes some degree of linearity as far as I'm concerned.
And add to that Tears of the Kingdom being an improvement over Breath of the Wild and I actually feel semi-optimistic about "classic" Zelda, despite what Aonuma says. I mean, Nintendo has said all kinds of things about their games and directions, and then something else unexpected happens, so I think anything is possible.
I don't know, I just go back to what I said originally, I don't think Nintendo or any game company has it in them to just "break" their formulas by making big zones and more lateral options. They can say that, but the actual experience on the ground just doesn't feel as different as they say it's supposed to be.