Take away my gamer badge if you want, but Breath of the Wild didn't feel like a Zelda game to me, it felt like a Xenoblade game.
It's not a bad game at all, of course, I just don't like it as much as say, Ocarina of Time or Windwaker.
I wasn't a fan of the lack of real dungeons, the small pool of enemies and the even smaller pool of bosses (Bosses are usually my favorite part of Zelda). It all got very same-y fast.
I usually don't like to complain about graphics, but I really wasn't a fan of Breath of the Wilds art style. There was very little texture or definition to anything, which made the characters faces look like a blob of colours sometimes. I usually love cell shading too. In my opinion, Windwaker did it much better. It probably helps that Windwakers character designs complimented the style.
It also sucks that Ganon was reduced to a generic evil purple cloud without any character other then "ROAR!". He was an interesting, intelligent and intimidating character in Windwaker (I know I keep using Windwaker as an example shut up).
I kinda miss when Zelda games had that Dungeons and Dragons kind of feel to its world, with uncanny things like redeads, wallmasters and deadhands living deep in dungeons that felt like no one had set foot in them in hundreds of years.
I hope the new Breath of the Wild is at least going to have some more variety than the first one.
EDIT: Oh, and the music. The Legend of Zelda series has some of the most memorable music of all time. However, BotW went for minimalist piano tinkling with no real memorable tracks. I struggle to think of more then one. Not saying the music was bad, but again, it just wasn't Zelda. Zelda music isn't supposed to be forgettable background piano ambiance.
your take is cold like little baby, watch this
link's awakening is the goat and all 3d zeldas are tolerable at best :I-was-saying:
Everyone jumping on the "Link's Awaking is a top tier Zelda game" in the past few years has felt really validating.
Counterpoint: you're not allowed to like things in slightly different ways than me.
Anyways I'm stoked that the new Zelda seems like it'll have some darker elements. I think my favorite zelda game might be twilight princess.
God yeah TP is so good, I have trouble picking a favorite but TP just slapped I need to replay that
I enjoyed Breath of the Wild a ton, but I definitely get what you mean. I do genuinely love the exploration aspect of it, but aside from that it feels very...shallow. Without the dungeons, it feels like there's no core to the game. I could have done with a few more towns too.
It's not the worst zelda game because there are simply bad ones and botw isn't a bad game. But it's a very mediocre game and lacks basically everything unique about the zelda series. This isn't a particularly rare opinion among zelda fans tbh
It’s not the worst zelda game because there are simply bad ones and botw isn’t a bad game. But it’s a very mediocre game and lacks basically everything unique about the zelda series
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.
This isn’t a particularly rare opinion among zelda fans tbh
When it first came out people were raving about it, so I guess people mellowed out.
When it first came out people were raving about it, so I guess people mellowed out.
I think this is because it genuinely broke the formula that was getting incredibly boring with open world games. The Ubisoft formula of linear gameplay presented in an open world format was tossed out in favour of complete and total player freedom, with the only linear story component essentially being a tutorial.
We haven't seen AAA devs tackle making a world where you can literally run straight to the final boss in the first 20 minutes of the game before. With nothing but world design itself deterring players from doing that. In terms of open world design and player-created emergent gameplay it's second to none.
This definitely comes at the expense of certain elements of traditional Zelda design though. Traditional Zelda design is predicated upon tools that Link collects functioning as linear gameplay gates, you can't progress to a certain area without a hookshot, you can't progress to the area where you would get the hookshot with a boomerang, you can't etc etc etc. This loop of "acquire new tool to unlock more progress" is not compatible with the kind of world where freedom is limitless. I agree however that more traditional feeling puzzle dungeons could exist but there's some serious limitations to design if you can't design the puzzles around knowing the player will have X tools when they get there.
I mean, we have. Morrowind can be completed without bugs in about 20min, even without taking the "back path" and avoiding the main quest (I think it's 7 min for that).
Less if you don't count the v1.0 alchemy singularity as a bug. You can just walk up, get keening and sunder, stab the heart with them before you die, and win.
Morrowind's devteam was only 30ish people, I don't think it's comparable to what we refer to as AAA. When they started work on Morrowind there were literally 6 people working at the company after a string of financial failures leading to them being acquired by Zenimax.
The fact it got made was a miracle of passion by its absolutely tiny team on the verge of the company ending.
That wasn't too unusual for a circa 2000 AAA game. Half Life had 30 People, Halo even fewer. KOTOR was about 30.
NwN1 did have 75, though, but it had the additional challenge of multiplayer persistent worlds and a whole DM game system, along with a new engine when Morrowind had one half made.
It’s not the worst zelda game because there are simply bad ones
which ones?
Four swords, phantom hourglass... zelda 2 lmao
As with any opinion about media I'm sure there are people who will act like I personally kicked their puppy for saying those games are bad though
Zelda 2's an interesting one since it was a dead end for design within the series, but did have some influence on other devs - Nihon Falcom's Dragon Slayer games ultimately took after it, as did Taito Corp.'s Cadash.
The Dragon Slayer series was a mainstay of Japanese home computers and didn't get much of a international run, but Dragon Slayer 2: Xanadu did get a spinoff known as Faxanadu that saw international release. Likewise, Sierra On-Line localized and ported Dragon Slayer 5: Sorcerian for english audiences using MS-DOS-based PCs.
Same. it was neat for a bit but the lack of dungeons got old quick and the shrines felt like they were included as to save dev time or space on disk. I don't regret playing it, but I came to it pretty late in it's life cycle and had already gotten the "open world with climbing" experience from conan exiles and some VR games (climbing is apparently easy to impliment in VR and fun, so lots of devs do it).
It also sucks that Ganon was reduced to a generic evil purple cloud without any character other then “ROAR!”.
There's a theory that this is intentional because Ganon will be
spoiler theory
the real hero of Tears of the Kingdom. Ganon and Calamity Ganon could very well be completely different entities, and it's backed up by a tapestry of the original hero very obviously NOT depicting Link but instead a red haired hero.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tearsofthekingdom/comments/12lkkuj/i_dont_think_ganondorf_will_be_just_a_villain/
A Zelda game where Ganondorf is the good guy and Link is the bad guy would be awesome as fuck. However, maybe the red-haired guy in the tapestry is Groose?
ARE WE GETTING A LEGEND OF GROOSE?!
I love BotW for what it is, but I almost judge it separately to the “classic” 3D Zelda games that came before it. They were so clearly going for something different that it’s almost comparing apples and oranges. But I’m a complete Zelda simp and have enjoyed every game I’ve played in the series lol.
I have a confession: the only zelda game I've ever played is a link to the past.
I don't like how all adventure games seem to be homogenising into clones of the Witcher 3. It's a design with some severe limitations, even when executed very well.
Have you played Witcher 3 and BotW? They’re almost nothing alike in my view apart from superficial shit like “guy with sword rides horse and fights things”
Seamless open world fantasy RPG where the main gameplay loop is exploring to fight mobs to level and find crafting ingredients, occasionally finding points of interest where you fight unique variants of creatures or go through small dungeons to get special loot, when you want to move on in the story you go to a big main dungeon or boss arena. See also Elden Ring and the two latest Pokemon games.
Seems pretty similar to me.
Nah, for me the traversal in BotW makes it a totally different experience than TW3. Climbing over mountains and gliding around is so different to riding a horse along a predetermined path. The Witcher is so story-dense as well, while Zelda aggressively is not. It’s side quests are also much more engaging. BotW’s shrines and dungeons are much more about puzzle solving than the Witcher where you go in and kill everything, or maybe talk your way through.
Yeah, calling it a "Witcher clone" isn't really accurate I'll concede, but there's a specific design philosophy to open worlds which I think first appears the Witcher 3 and now kinda saturates the industry. I don't think it's a objective improvement over older designs that are more linear but also more detailed and focused.
You are right that both have saturated the industry, but yeah BOTW rewards exploring while witcher 3 can be downright dull for long stretches.
You have a point with Elden Ring but are completely wrong about Witcher 3 imo. The main appeal there was completing the narrative content. Fighting random mobs was near-pointless, especially if fighting monsters that were a higher level which would be arbitrarily given 10xHP or whatever. The PoIs on the map were much more of a traditional "Ubisoft model" style open world.
Because Nintendo are greedy assholes. Just pirate that shit
i emulate the wii u version with cemu
both runs and looks better
All valid points but I know they'll have future games with the classic format of dungeons and stuff, so it doesn't irk me that this game has more bite sized stuff across landscapes. So I love it, it's either my favorite or second favorite with Ocarina- again it's hard to compare when the format is 50% different.
I bet even Tears is already gonna have some more deluxe dungeon areas.
Also, the thing I really loved is that they used the Zelda franchise to just suddenly butt into the open world RPG genre and just completely fix almost all the major issues with those games.
- Artificial zone barriers? Nope
- Hidden linearity? Nope
- Over leveling? Nope
- Boring travel? Nope
- The actual experience of playing and enjoying the game being completely anathema to the plot?* Nope.
*Looking at you GTA San Andreas, where you murder thousands of people to clear your name after being framed for a single murder.
*Looking at you every game with an established plot time limit that just mysteriously freezes for days weeks and months while you fuck around and play with bugs
*Looking at you every game where you need to save and/or avenge the death of your wife and daughter before you have a mental breakdown, but first let's fuck around and play with bugs
Seriously, they literally tell you in BotW that your quest is to become a badass and to do that by leveling up basically. The thing you intrinsically want to do and which is hardly even acknowledged in a lot of RPGs.
*Looking at you every game with an established plot time limit that just mysteriously freezes for days weeks and months while you fuck around and play with bugs
Tbf from what I recall it’s sort of implied that zelda’s seal is about to break and you should probably bear calamity ganon soonish before she gets her shit wrecked, but you can dick around for in game months before bothering lol (I know I did)
Yeah that is somewhat of a time limit but they definitely establish it's been working for 100 years and that there isn't a hard time limit, she just woke you up because it's getting difficult. And then they tell you explicitly to go travel about the world and get stronger so that you can kick Ganon's ass
A lot of games will open up with like, your kid getting hauled away or whatever and you're screaming with rage and then you dick around
A lot of games will open up with like, your kid getting hauled away or whatever and you’re screaming with rage and then you dick around
me playing fallout 4
after 6 ingame months of making settlements and collecting random crap i remembered that i had a kid lolYES and then all the voice lines are acted as if it's been 4 or 5 days
The Bethesda games are the perfect example of all the open-world stuff that Zelda threw on its head
If you talk to Codsworth for the first time after progressing a bit the dialogue will change. The sole survivor will be less raw about their spouse, and if you progress even further they will talk about the institute stuff. It is not the same, but it is a neat touch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUM8UqSX5wE
my character: "Where's Shaun you bastard!"
me: "who the fuck is Shaun? Oh it's the kid... i thought his name was Steve"
I kinda wish they could tap into that OOT/MM (Especially MM) general air of subtle, occasionally unintentional unnervingness again, but that was something very much rooted in N64-era design mindsets and tools.
Also I cut my losses and finally just shelled out the $40 for BOTW because waiting for a sale or a way to hardmod my switch probably wasn't gonna go anywhere in time for Tears
