Nintendo posted an dual interview featuring The Legend of Zelda General Manager Daiki Iwamoto and Monolith Soft Director Yasuhiro Fujita. In the conversation, the duo looked back on this special collaboration between Nintendo EPD and Monolith and, right at the end of the article, Iwamoto expressed the desire for the latter studio to play a 'central role' in 'creating the Zelda series from scratch'. >Monolith Soft now has a system in place that allows them to handle everything from coming up with ideas in the early stages of development to incorporating them into the actual game, so we expected them to be more involved in the creative aspects than ever before. [...] I would like Monolith Soft to play a central role as a strong partner in creating the Zelda series from scratch. I hope that the know-how we have cultivated through our work together will further enhance the overall team strength of Monolith Soft, and we will continue to create unique series titles together. Personally as someone who immensely enjoyed Xenoblade 1 through 3, I'd rather Monolith worked on an original IP or a new Xeno title since I'm not fond of the direction Zelda has been heading in since BotW. I think BotW is where the combat and puzzles in particular took a nose dive in terms of quality, where it became more of a Skyrim clone rather than a puzzle/adventure game. With Xenoblade there's a lot of mechanical systems, sure. Although the fun with those games is breaking down the combat system, and abusing the elements given to you. 2 in particular had a really fun elemental system which made in the best when it came to combat. Unless the Monolith Soft Zelda plays completely different to what we know, I'd be disappointed if it's just BotW again like with TotK. sources: https://www.monolithsoft.co.jp/interview/dev01/collab-talk.html https://wccftech.com/i-would-like-monolith-to-play-a-central-role-in-creating-zelda-series-from-scratch-says-nintendo-gm/