Better Side-Quests
Side-quests were certainly not one of Breath of the Wild’s best attributes. They were there in plentiful supply, no doubt, but almost all of them boiled down to fetching items, and very few were strung together with any substantive story. That has to change next time around.
I think the lack of side-quests and the story to bring them to life actually directly relates to the lack of population I’ve mentioned above. Take away the towns and the people in them and you’re left with fewer characters and fewer meaningful objectives to give to players.
With larger towns full of more NPCs, there’d be a reason to pepper them with more vibrant and interesting characters to interact with, and in turn, more opportunity for story-telling through side quests.
With Breath of the Wild, Nintendo did an excellent job pushing the open world genre forward in meaningful ways in terms of gameplay experience, but storytelling and questing weren’t really a part of that. I’d like to see them tackle this facet of design in the sequel and show themselves capable of building an open world full of interesting narrative.
