In Reply To #18
You may have a point, but I want to throw out what a gimmick-less Zelda might mean: New equipment and areas (and not in a halfhearted sense). In the three Zeldas that aren't run by a central gimmick, each earned item doesn't have a one-use-only policy attached to it. Each item goes beyond the dungeons, and you have to combine what abilities each item gives you, rather than focusing on one item, say, the Wind Waker baton, to guide your travels.
The glory of gimmick-less is the freshness and usefulness of the items, and how they can be used to awaken the secrets of varied environments. The creativity falls on making a stash of items that are new enough that can be used in a variety of scenarios. In an ideal situation, the world will be set up as one sprawling map like Zelda 2, where a number of valuable things are hidden off the beaten path. (IE: NOT the rupee-filled voids of Twilight Princess).