@superkenon: Even if they have different story explanations, I think his point is that the basic format of Zelda settings gets reused a lot.
A Link to the Past could've just been a one-time thing, with Hyrule/Dark World. But then several subsequent Zeldas keep reusing that same idea. Link's Awakening doesn't, but Koholint Island may as well be an alternate Hyrule, between the mountains at the top of the map, the castle in the middle, the watery areas on the right side of the map (though that's a bit of a stretch, I guess).
Then Ocarina of Time pretty explicitly borrows the whole "dual world you can switch between" mechanic, except it's time travel instead of good/evil (and frankly the part where Link can go back in time and become young Link again makes almost no sense). Twilight Princess also cribs this idea, except they couldn't even be bothered to flesh it out, so each "dark world" moment is just a one-time scripted mission (between that terrible fake dual worlds, and how lame the wolf form is, and all the delays Twilight Princess suffered, I really wonder how incredibly troubled development of that game was, because it feels like corner-cutting city). Oracle of Seasons and Ages both use the "alternate versions of the same world" in different ways as well. And then Link Between Worlds, while a great reimagining of the dungeons and dungeon bosses, is obviously reusing the entire layout of the map plus the light world/dark world idea.
Termina is actually "alternate dream sidestory thing" done right, in that it doesn't crib heavily from Link to the Past/Ocarina of Time in its structure or map layout. Instead of switching between two or more world states, you instead keep looping around the same 3 days and noting down what important NPCs are up to at various points. This is still actually a really original, underused idea, compared to the number of games that have a light world/dark world mechanic. Clock Town is this weird city state that has way more sidequests to do in it than Hyrule Castle ever has and has all kinds of interesting, non-princess-based politics going on around this festival that's supposed to be going on. It actually has its own interesting mythology with the Giants, and each region has its own culture.
Also, Wind Waker and Skyward Sword both deserve credit in offering a world that isn't based around flipping between two or more world states, and instead the unique hook is "Hey guys, you get to sail/fly!", respectively.
Anyway, I think I agree with @wrighteous86, in that Zelda recycles concepts a little too often (though I vastly prefer things like Link Between Worlds to the 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time). They should try to do more weird concepts like Majora's Mask which are just Link off doing weird adventures, instead of slavishly showing me Ganon stealing the Triforce and conquering Hyrule and somehow there is a dark world, for the 8th time.
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