I think TotK dropped a lot of hints about not playing it like BotW, but most probably didn't pick up on it. I made the mistake of exploring a lot on my own and ended up skipping several of the quest stories as a result. When the world is so large, you really need a GPS for your map to constrain your path. It's kinda hard to tell the user "this time is different, follow the guides" when it seems so familiar a place.
There was a lot of effort made to ensure there was guide based content posted online immediately upon release, but this assumes the user will go looking for it.