Yeah, I think I get where you're coming from here. I think the biggest thing for me has always been "how is this justifying using the same world again?" If it can do that - and I think it will despite my trepidation - then I will be satisfied. However, I still hold a bit of concern for it that I don't think is gonna go away through arguing - so I'm gonna leave this particular argument hereHonestly my expectations have been set since 2019 that the selling point is "another open-world Zelda". BotW was unique in being the first true HD open-world Zelda so TotK was never going to be unique or be able to market that as its one 'thing'. I mean how have been sequels to other open-world games been marketed? From what I can tell it's usually "this time it's bigger" "new environments" "there's a different story". And that's what we've seen so far. I still think the world is the connective tissue, again, but recontextualized with verticality above and below. Beyond the premise of an open-world, BotW didn't show much connective tissue in its marketing, no mention of Divine Beasts or the various tribes you have to save beyond brief glimpses in a story trailer two months before release, and that's probably what they'll do again.
I think it's fair to be disappointed by them reusing the art style and the world map. And I get it, six years. For what it's worth, I don't think they've done a good job at making it obvious "here are caves" "here are underground areas" "the traversal is entirely seamless", I can tell from analyzing the trailers but it's not made glaringly obvious. If this were a different dev team I wouldn't be this accommodating or apologetic but they've actively documented their process on how they designed countless iterations of BotW's map to make exploration feel fun, so while this game could be a fuck up, the probability of that feels low.
Either way, I've decided not to be so down on the game from now on. Legit just feels better being excited for it instead of arguing about it lol. Gonna get my pre-order in now (alongside Pikmin 4, I think).