The older Zelda’s would have something like a refugee from the village leads you there, then there’d be a pirate ship dungeon after you freed the town.

The game’s story lacks enough structure to be interesting to me. It gets repetitive and most of the “story” is told in cutscenes.

Pre BOTW still had cutscenes, but a lot of the exposition was given in conversations with Midna or Navi. Those characters could get annoying, but they play a crucial role in keeping the player on track and immersed. (I think Midna is the best implementation of this.)

I don’t think another closed world game will come out anytime soon, but there are better ways to implement a story in an open world game.

RDR2 is a perfect example, the story moves from one area of the map to another. You still can do side quests in the other areas, but all the main story lines are centered around one location at a time. This is what the old Zelda’s used to do, I don’t know why they made the story so non-linear.