But will there be as much to do? The plateau seems like Bokoblin Land and absolutely nothing else. There's also not yet a NLA equivalent, which was my favorite place in Xenoblade X.
In actuality, this game takes all of the problems I had going from Xenoblade to Xenoblade X and multiplies them expontentially. Both BotW and X are super open world, and I feel that everything suffers because of it. However, X had NLA which I loved exploring more than any other area, so my fingers are crossed for anything half as good as NLA.
In general, settlements are my favorite places in every game. Skyloft, Frontier Village, NLA, etc. I don't like exploring nearly as much as like chilling and talking to NPCs in a town.