Some of you might remember that Nintendo announced The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker 2 back in 2004, but that Twilight Princess wound up taking its place. Now we know more about what the Wind Waker sequel would have been like.
The new information comes from an interview with Wind Waker's design manager and enemy designer Satoru Takizawa in the Japanese edition of The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artefacts (translated by Nintendoeverything). He reiterates that two of the reasons for moving to a more realistic look was that they couldn't come up with an exciting new feature for the Japanese market, and that the American market seemed to want a more realistic, mature Zelda game. Their original plan was to continue the cartoony look, but with a larger focus on land-based action:
"...Wind Waker 2 would have taken place in a more land-based setting, rather than on the sea, so that we could have Link gallop across the land on a horse. But Link's proportions in Wind Waker weren't very well suited for riding on horseback, he was too short, and an adult version of Toon Link did not seem appropriate either."
They wanted Link to fight while riding, but these problems made that impossible. This left them without a new feature, which lead to a big change in development to what became Twilight Princess.