Right, that touches on something I've been saying elsewhere recently when everyone was falling over themselves saying they wished the release of Elden Ring was farther away from BotW2 so they could be inspired by it: they've already done versions of almost all of the things they could possibly learn from most of these games. They've had numerous takes on horse riding including combat, flying mechanics, seamless dungeons integrated into the overworld, labyrinthine open worlds, RPG mechanics, dungeons themed after all sorts of things, dungeon-like design in the overworld, gnarly 1v1 combat, etc etc.
That's not to say (obviously) that they cannot (or should not) learn anything new from other games that do something well or that they might never play or see something in another game that makes them go "huh, how could we use that", it's just that when people cling onto this idea of "oh if only they had played Dark Souls" or whatever is everyone's darling go-to, they often just want them to copy something and replicate it with a Zelda skin. All it really does is color in the context of what happens outside of their own desks, what works and what doesn't work well elsewhere. They don't need to have played ER, as the current example goes, to suddenly come up with the idea "hmm how about some cool caves" or "what if we do a big dungeon you can enter without a load screen". They've already come up with a version of this before. Whatever their initial idea for the game is will motivate whatever gets put in, and drive the focus in a certain direction. The hot thing that another game just nailed might not be that. Link probably won't have to shave because his hair keeps growing over time.
We don't know this but they could have all been playing lots of Assassin's Creed games during Skyward Sword dev and maybe that's how the wall-run came into the game? Or maybe they just expanded on the ledge-grab they already had because they wanted increased mobility. These might not be mutually exclusive. It would also be pretty bold to just assume they took a certain mechanic or whatever that is similar to one from a game we find out someone on the team has played.
I find it much more interesting when they actually share what inspired certain things after the fact, because very often it's not even coming from video games. And that is the trap many fans fall into when they forget how good video game designers work and how they get inspiration. Ideally it's stuff you take from the real world. That's why you ask veterans for advice and they tell you "go outside, experience stuff". Everyone knows the story about Miyamoto gardening and seeing the ants and going "hmmm what if video game!" and the thing with that is that it's not a "lol typical weird Miyamoto magic" - that's how good designers do their job.
I'm gonna stop writing now because I've gone off on a weird tangent now and I'm super tired and need to get up for work in 7 hours and I don't even know if this post is coherent so sorry if it isnt lol
We already agreed that Link's balls are gonna get the HD Rumble treatment.