I think Dark Souls is not a fluke, it shows that when executed well (which very may be hard), it is additive. It makes things feel more organic.

From article : "Maybe one cave system has a place where it connects to a dungeon, which connects also to a basement in some guy’s house in the middle of nowhere."

This just sounds better than having the black and white delineations between spaces. Yes!

> Maybe one cave system has a place where it connects to a dungeon, which connects also to a basement in some guy’s house in the middle of nowhere

To an extent, tears of the kingdom really does do this a few places, but not enough. It really is fun finding new holes into the underworld from a cave, and using the caves to get into the shed in that one village or to the tower etc