It was new technology, 3D was a fairly new concept in gaming in the mid 90s. But it took so long to get properly implemented. You have super mario 64, gex enter the gecko, lemmings 3D. I am wondering if it was a business decision and not the devs who pushed for a free roaming camera, since it was clearly not a satisfactory result gameplay wise. Because at the same era, you have games with fixed camera angles that are much better experiences overall.
My beef with BOTW is I can't use my sword/shield/bow while looking at what I want to look at. It's either or. I wish those could be remapped to the R/L
Might be something you can do on Switch 2 pro controller with GL/GR at least?
I can't speak for BOTW but the remap capability in the NSO Classics is such a massive improvement that I'm finally playing N64 games on it.
I kind of hold out hope that maybe maybe it's a sign Nintendo is finally pulling it's head from its ass when it comes to letting us change controls.