RPG DOES NOT immidiatly equate to expiriance points, turn based battles, and screens and screens of menus, though that is what many people think of when you say RPG.

Role playing is about playing a role, which means having choice over the development of your character and the events of the story.

I do think that a more subtle move into the RPG genre could work very well. Keeping the battle system and EXPLORATION (NOT leveling up) for character growth (as in, searching for heart containers and new wepons instead of level grinding), but have a wider range of wepons and armor that do differant ranges of damage/offer differant ranges of protection. An in-depth magic system that allows for control over spell growth (yes, like Final Fantasy, thats not nessicarally a bad thing) would also be nice.

I guess what a RPG is really about is having a character that isn't eactaly the same as everyone elses at the end of the game. I don't think that this would be bad for the Zelda series.