Going back to Zelda, a good way to incorporate the steampunk idea is to offer time travel in a way much grander than that in OoT. If you could swap between the traditional fantasy setting and a steampunk setting set hundreds of years later then you can do it without really "betraying" the traditional Zelda style.
I think a problem Nintendo has is that they clearly don't play other companies' games and certainly not ones on non-Nintendo systems. In a way that allows Nintendo to be creative since they can think out of the box more freely. But it becomes a problem when new ideas are introduced to the industry and are so well accepted that Nintendo not being influenced by them makes their games seem archaic. Zelda is supposed to be very ambitious and part of its appeal is that it tried to give us a world that felt more real than a standard videogame level. During the N64 years Nintendo was at the cutting edge regarding this and OoT was probably the most impressive videogame world ever at the time. But now games like GTA or Uncharted have introduced a lot of ideas that really make a videogame world feel alive and Nintendo is probably as ignorant of those games as you could get. Skyward Sword isn't a generic game but it does not stand out as particularly ambitious (part of that is the archaic hardware it's on). I still want Zelda to feel like Zelda but I think Nintendo has to do some research to figure out what would make Zelda a truly ambitious title in today's day and age. The fact that they're six years behind the rest of the world because of the Wii makes it worse.
I want them to make Zelda with the goal of making the best game of all time. But to do that they need to be aware of where the rest of the industry has gone so they can improve and top it. It feels a little too much like they're just making a more polished version of what was ambitious on the N64.
Why does it matter what the rest of the industry has done, that doesn't have anything to do with Zelda games. You mention GTA and Uncharted but those games play nothing like Zelda games so why should Nintendo care what they do? The only Zelda style games that have been made in the last decade are Okami and Darksiders, and many would argue that neither series surpasses Zelda.
Once again, these post show why the Zelda fanbase on the internet is the worst fanbase period. They pretty much want the series to become a clone of another series instead of actually being a Zelda game. The games people mention Zelda should be more like are nothing like Zelda games, which makes comparisons pointless. Who gives a **** would GTA, Uncharted, Skyrim, Assassins Creed and Demon Soul are doing. None of these games have the balance of combat, puzzles, exploration in the way the Zelda series does which makes statements that Nintendo needs to make Zelda more like them completely pointless.
Plus Skyward Sword was the most ambitious Zelda since Ocarina of Time and has done more to change the series then a game can without turning the series into a completely different genre. Skyward Sword completely changed up the overworld design, where they're all more like dungeons now instead of straight paths like the previous 3D Zelda's. Even Majora's Mask which you like to mention was still a mostly straight paths for it's overworld. The actual min-dungeons in that game that you like to mention were actual mini-dungeons locations that were seperate from the actual overworld.
They completely changed up the combat system, where it's much more strategic now since you have to aim at the right area's of enemies now in order to defeat them and the enemies will block and change the area's you have to hit them at. Even using the shield was changed up were you have to block at the exact moment an enemy attacks to block or deflect, or else your shield will get damaged and eventually break, leaving you defenseless. Unlike previous 3D Zelda's where players can just block forever until they get the moment to stab.
They also changed up dungeon design as well where the dungeons have a lot more action and puzzles going on per room then the previous 3D dungeons, and they designed dungeons to make more use of all the items, unlike previous 3D Zelda's where the dungeons were based around almost entirely around the item you found in the dungeon. Plus there's the Beetle item that opened up a whole new set of puzzles never seen before in the series since there had never been a flying item in the series before.
Seriously, to say Skyward Sword wasn't ambitious is completely false. Just because it wasn't a clone of a different popular series on the PS3/360, doesn't mean it brought a lot of new things to the series. Just because Link still wears green and swings a sword doesn't mean it's still the same game as Ocarina of Time.