Living within and growing into an intricate web of prophecy recontextualized as the player existing within a world that’s more obviously clockwork than ever, navigating disparate and reoccurring skills and areas as your skill with them mirrors Link’s maturation into his role as the Chosen One. The reason the backtracking is almost never tedious to me is that the later iterations (silent realms, flooded Faron, timeshift stones on a moment-to-moment level) reward not just awareness but total mastery of shortcuts as well as your whole toolkit. It’s less impressionist in 1080p but no less beautiful, and the industrial elements clash vibrantly against the naturalistic ones in ways that effortlessly sell Skyward Sword’s dual role as a series prequel and a culmination of the Zelda identity. This game is world as dungeon as you navigate mechanics and mythologies and in that it almost plays as a companion to Breath of the Wild; where that game's designers show their hand only at the macroscopic seams of the world, this one's do so almost immediately and shove the granularity of the construction into your face for nearly the whole thirty hours (Skyloft is the major concession to Zelda formula, as are the Divine Beasts, conversely, in BOTW). So it's magical at times and numbing at others, but very accessible now and too good to write off anymore.