How to Design an Open World Zelda Game

"There's no big picture that I had to cut other than it being open world," says Zelda creator. "I like the possibility space is opening, expanding up too quickly for design and my brain explodes" The game has a 12 by three grid with various constraints on what you can and cannot do. It sounds like all of it fell into place in a way that just sort of kind of worked. But there are small things he'd abandoned such as enemies having ticking timers or level-based combat.