to me it felt like they wanted to essentially do an aerial version of Wind Waker's sea but forgot to do anything interesting that actually makes the air interesting - especially since being in the air adds verticality to the mix, a problem WW didn't really have. too much space for the sake of technical ambition, too little of anything in it that makes it worth all that design effort. for all the criticism the sailing of WW gets nowadays, half the fun was the random treasures, secrets, encounters and little isles you discover along the way as a way of immersing you into the flooded lands.
the fact that it took until Breath of the Wild for there to be a dense Hyrule with detail everywhere and more than just enemies bundled in mob encounters bothers me. Twilight Princess had size, but no real oomph to the attempts to make itself bigger than Ocarina of Time since that bigger Hyrule was filled with a lot of nothing.