For me, the sky was a very gentle reminder to take the game in calmly:

Every time I'd get caught up in chasing quests or routing my way to an important spot, I'd catch a sunset or an open field  view and it would just instantly dissipate any need to rush things or be methodical. It had an insanely soothing effect.

Ahh an AnyAustin video, where I do not have to fear spoilers of any kind. Because the subjects are based in a different realm of reality

8:52 "While the nighttime, y'know, sun is doing what it's doing, or the moon or whatever is the one that's at night." Flawless

In hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy there's a planet that has a perfectly boring sky so no one there ever looked up, and when they accidentally invented space travel, pierced the cloud layer and discovered stars, they immediately decide they can't tolerate the rest of the universe existing and start the deadliest war ever

I feel it worth mentioning that I save these videos for nights when I'm having trouble sleeping and they genuinely do help a bit.

Composer/game designer here - your points are all valid! I am actually pleasantly surprised that you notice and appreciate these teeny tiny quality-of-life design choices that game developers spend an insane amount of time tuning to make the gaming experience immersive. I can tell you 100% that the little piano phrases that get played during sunrise/sunset/moonrise are intentionally tweaked to give you that feeling of being part of a greater story. I actually never noticed that the obfuscation of sky islands was a subtle way to direct focus during gameplay, I am impressed that you mentioned this.

BotW: "What the heck is that over there?"
TotK: "What the heck is that up there?"

Also, the neat thing about the Depths "sky" is that it gradually reveals itself. You have to turn on the lightroots for it to gradually appear. So it's something you don't notice at first, until you go back to an area that has been lit up and you see it.

"Assuming you're not listening to a podcast while eating cereal and teleporting from shrine to shrine" wow you didn't have to expose me like this 💀

9:08 "Tell me… Do you ever feel a strange sadness as dusk falls? They say it’s the only time when our world intersects with theirs… The only time we can feel the lingering regrets of spirits who have left our world. That is why loneliness always pervades the hour of twilight…"- Rusl (The Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess).

I know they didn't think about this too hard, but long and pointed ears hemorrhage body heat. For more pale skin to be evolutionally advantageous, the amount of sun available to absorb vitamin D has to be considerably reduced. Naturally, more sun means more warm and more opportunity for long and pointed ears, but less sun means less warm and less opportunity for long and pointed ears but more pale skin. There are animals that defy this pattern like rabbits that sacrifice core heat for better hearing, but people shaped hunters are not among them. So how are there so many Hylians with long and pointed ears but also of pale skin? Look at the skybox, look at the weather patterns. So much of it obscures the sun, while also supporting the idea that Hyrule is over-all very humid and warm. Places in Hyrule that have little rain have darker skinned people, and places where there's a lot of rain have lighter skinned people. The weather patterns legitimize why Hylians look the way they look completely on accident just by weather patterns and an often cloudy skybox. I love that.

please start making video game essays on games you've never played. you would conquer that niche i'm certain

That parents analogy went so hard. that was wild.

Can you do a video on grass textures? I mean games have a lot of differently shaped and colored grass, some even have ferns! Grass in the foreground creates a much different feeling from grass in the background, and in a lot of games (ie Kingdom (the one with the horse and the beautiful pixel art)) you create the grass and it has large gameplay effects

I suppose why they might not've made rain clouds visible from above while diving is because they wanted you to see where you were going to land. I know for Wind Waker the devs talked about realism vs reality, where they wanted the ocean to "feel" real even if it didn't look realistic. Similarly, they might've wanted the feel of skydiving to take priority and having the entire screen blocked out by clouds when looking downward might've taken away from that.

this guy's gonna have millions of followers one day. hes got the it factor

One of my favorite things to do in both TotK and BotW is take pictures of the sunrises and sunsets and just vistas in general. By the end of the game, my album is just filled with pictures across the entire map of snapshots of my adventure, and as corny as it sounds, it makes it more special to me lol

6:34 what you're describing is theatricality. True artists DO think about how they can guide the thoughts, feelings, and actions of their audience and I do think that Zelda producers focus on it waaaay more than other video game artists. That is, in many ways, the goal of artistry.

The Skybox that dissolves in when the Gloom Hands come after you is also nice, lol. Too bad it's hard to find a nice place to look at it when you're focused on running away.

"The nighttime sun" is now entering my lexicon, thank you for this