Aonuma gives insight on Zelda: Breath of the Wild's different approach to dungeons

Coming from a Game Informer interview with Eiji Aonuma...

On dungeons in Breath of the Wild

“Way back in the day, dungeons weren’t all that big. They were rather small. But around Twilight Princess, they started getting bigger. We tried to cram in a lot of surprises for the player, or a lot of emotions, meeting other characters, or injecting story elements into it. But then we kind of realized, do dungeons really need to be that big? Do we have to cram that much stuff into it? We quickly realized that a lot of the fun was actually in getting to the dungeon, and so we focused on getting to the dungeon in this game. We wanted to create an environment where it is fun to find the dungeon in this large world.

Dungeons have always been like mazes, so we needed that compass to let the user know where the bosses were placed. But then, as you probably saw, you can kind of see the goal right away. You won’t get lost – you just have to figure out how to get there.”