Still, the very design philosophy of Majora's Mask was way different than anything after.
I agree but I'd also say that this was likely influenced by the time crunch, it's a more compact game as they couldn't have their artists and programmers taking forever to create it. I've heard MM referred to as a happy accident a lot before but it just seems more true when you literally have its director saying that he never wanted to make a game like the legend of zelda