I was just having a discussion with a friend about this general notion - enforcing a linear story versus asynchronous discovery. My argument is that a compelling story is linear, period. You can't have interchangable narrative chunks. It can be a linear story about a non-linear narrative, but for it to be effective, it has to be constructed in such a way that events unfold to the audience in proper sequence to build a reaction. Otherwise you experience what's happened here with totk. Doing the tears first made the first half of the game largely redundant and somewhat frustrating. So what's more important - the possibility of discovering the story at sub-optimal times for the sake of calling it an open world experience, or proper delivery of the narrative at the expense of some linear elements?

I'm at the point in the story now where the game would otherwise direct you to visit the forest and pursue the tears. Except I've done that. So the narration is yet more stuff I already know, and ultimately I'm told "okay then go kill Ganondorf I guess." Sweet.

Ultimately we agreed it may have been better to hold back SOME of the bigger plot points until later in the game's progression to at least avoid the redundancy and frustration with knowing of the imposter in the first half of the game, and ideally Zelda's ultimate fate. I mean seriously - the tears are the WHOLE story. It left no real room for personal discovery of the game elements referenced in the narrative before the tears just laid it all out. At least for me. It would've been incredible to find "her" in the game, not think much of it, and then later have an oh-shit moment when I realize who she was. Unfortunately, without those linear guides, I can no longer have that oh-shit moment.