I’m a few days late, sorry, but the games only tie together thru the side characters like the shy girl that likes Link and the young but actually old science girl. And Sydin knows you.
TotK doesn’t reference anything at all about the BotW story other than those types of things. It’s basically a brand new game.
The caves alone are impressive. They didn’t just add them, they carved out where all the water comes out of the landscape and made those caverns too.
I played a little of BotW after and i was curious if a waterfall had a cave in TotK. Turns out it has an entire system attached to it. And they did that across the entire map.
Cool! Hope you enjoy!