Breath of the Wild took a somewhat novel approach to open-world in that it filled the game world with lots of interesting landmarks, then gave you lots of movement options and just let you explore on your own.
In particular, because Nintendo took a risk and introduced this novel concept into an established series, it had a big audience and enough budget to really show off that this concept works.
That’s why lots of gamedevs took inspiration and steered their open-world games into similar directions.
Breath of the Wild took a somewhat novel approach to open-world in that it filled the game world with lots of interesting landmarks, then gave you lots of movement options and just let you explore on your own.
In particular, because Nintendo took a risk and introduced this novel concept into an established series, it had a big audience and enough budget to really show off that this concept works.
That’s why lots of gamedevs took inspiration and steered their open-world games into similar directions.