Growing apathetic about once loved series

[Ronnie]

42 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

BOTW is structurally very similar to your typical Ubisoft open world game, going so far as to steal the Towers mechanic wholesale.  The "checkmarks" are all hidden, but it's really not all that different.  It's still copy/paste busywork.  Every encampment is the same randomly generated guff, it just isn't specifically pointed out to you on the map as a checkmark waiting to be ticked off..

But the towers didn’t unlock a million check marks of things to do, all it did was fill in the map with the landscape. It was up to you to go wherever curiosity took you. Very different than a Ubisoft game where you have to climb a tower to be pointed towards things to do or collect. To be honest having read about how they designed the game the towers seemed more to give players a vantage point to glide down from than to actually do anything mechanically. 

Edited January 11, 2023 by Ronnie

[Ronnie]

1 hour ago, Julius said:

but I feel like if you want to get the most out of Breath of the Wild, you really just need to let go and go with the flow of the game. There's so much intricate nuance to the open world's physical design of its terrain (no doubt thanks to MonolithSoft's work) which can lead you from one end of a region to the other just by following the most subtle of design hints - be it a set of trees, a different coloured set of flowers, the way a hill or cliffside strikes you visually, the curvature of a path - that I think is incredibly underrated.

This might sound like a small thing but I'd hear people talk about how the first thing they did in the game was run from tower to tower and 'unlock' the whole map, but to me this misses the point of the game. Stuff like that is fine in a game like Spider-Man or similar where towers are just a means to unlocking stuff to do, but in BOTW I feel like it would take away some of the magic of exploration, which is the whole point of the game. People are of course free to play games whoever they like, but it definitely feels like the designers didn't intend for that to happen and it's something Mark Brown from Game Maker's Toolkit has spoken about before, how players can optimise the fun out of a game.

As for your point about subtle cues in the design, absolutely. I found it very jarring going from BOTW's openworld to another where it's crystal clear the design just isn't up to the same standard. Some games are of course like Read Dead 2 and I imagine Elden Ring too, I'm still yet to play that.

1 hour ago, Julius said:

Just to add to what @Ronnie detailed in his post - honestly, all of which I find myself agreeing with - the fact that there are empty spaces in this game, I feel, is kind of the point? Shadow of the Colossus learned from Ocarina of Time what Breath of the Wild then learned from Shadow of the Colossus: the importance of quiet in the spaces between gameplay. 

Oh and 100% this ^ too. There's a fine balance between 'empty' and having areas of wilderness and I think the game walks the line perfectly for what it sets out to achieve. 

1 hour ago, Julius said:

At least on here it seems like the others who enjoyed the game as much as I did (or maybe even more so) went in open to or wanting change, or just didn't have as much intimate familiarity with the series in a similar way to me. 

Like I said earlier, for me personally, I'd played 16 other Zelda games that did things a certain way. I'm more than happy to keep an open mind and for one instalment to try a fresh approach. 

1 hour ago, Julius said:

if I had to critique it as a game and as a product, against what it was aiming to achieve (which really is what I think a review should be doing), I think it's an 8/10, there's just so much room for improvement for me in its myriad of systems and plenty of room to experiment further, but it was an amazingly strong first step for what it was trying to achieve. But as an experience? 10/10. Nothing came remotely close until Elden Ring last year, and in turn I feel like there are some things TOTK could learn from Elden Ring in the same way that Elden Ring clearly learned from BOTW. 

That's a really good way of putting it. A great game (with flaws), but a masterpiece of an experience.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Ronnie

[Sheikah]

BOTW is structurally very similar to your typical Ubisoft open world game, going so far as to steal the Towers mechanic wholesale.

Yeah, but like, actually it's not. Not in the slightest.

I say that as someone who has played tonnes of Ubisoft open world games. What you just said couldn't be further from the truth.

[darksnowman]

On 10/01/2023 at 9:02 PM, Sheikah said:

But this board in particular has a number of people who absolutely love game after game that Nintendo produce, regardless of how conserved the games were before. It doesn't matter if there have been several generations of games that play out very similar, some people don't like change, or rather become attached to what the series comprised.

@Ronnie largely laps up everything Nintendo churns out.  

23 hours ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

(Was the stamina system for climbing a new thing?) 

At the very least Skyward Sword had stamina for running. Can't remember exactly what other aspects it played into.

--------

Me, I don't have these "Ubisoft games", Spider-Man, Red Dead, Elden Ring and whatever as a point of reference. Literally just the Fenyx Rising demo. There's Lego City Undercover on the shelf here which I hope to enjoy when I get around to it however if I don't, I'll mention it.

So, I just take BotW as the next Zelda game. Great that they had the courage to unshackle themselves from the formula that Skyward Sword was a complete slave to, but it doesn't simply end with breaking from the formula. Like, I thought SS was too long already, so a game that takes longer doesn't automatically set my world alight (yes, Ganon can be defeated immediately...). There've been plenty of times I played an hour of BotW and felt like I made no progress. Just running, climbing, riding a horse which amounts to little more than pushing the stick and waiting (hoping!) to get somewhere soon. It just felt pointless a lot of the time. It's not a nice feeling when a game makes you feel the passing of time.

I haven't activated all the towers. It seemed like the thing to do in each region, then somewhere along the line, I decided they were too far out of the way. I did get a few more post-game. I don't want to live in BotW, I have Animal Crossing for that... which is another game that's become drawn out through the addition of extra steps in the form of crafting. Spending hours and hours on one game isn't necessarily the badge of honour it might once have been back in the day. Scale it back, hone it down (not to the point where it's walled-in areas like SS again). Do another Link's Awakening or Majora's Mask type entry. Give it some impetus.

Orrr maybe I'd be singing a different tune if I had a history with this genre I'd a) know what to do in BotW, and b) appreciate what it fixes.  

[Ronnie]

45 minutes ago, darksnowman said:

@Ronnie largely laps up everything Nintendo churns out.  

This board has those types of fanboys for sure, we all know who, but I'm not one of them, I've talked often how shoddy Pokemon games are and more recently their Sports titles like Super Rush, Switch Sports, Mario Tennis and the new Strikers are barebones and lazy releases.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Ronnie

[EEVILMURRAY]

On 1/11/2023 at 12:22 PM, Ronnie said:

As for stuff you could do, 120 shrines, 5 dungeons, lots of unique towns, lots of stables, lots of sidequests, enemy encampments, korok puzzles, overworld bosses, finding all the memories, and filling your compendium and other stuff like Eventide Island, the Lost Woods etc. What baffles me is people thinking the world is empty. It's not as artificially stuffed full of busiwork like a Ubisoft game, sure, but it was never trying to be that. It was trying to harken back to the original Legend of Zelda, placing you in a world and telling you to go have an adventure. 

I'd grab something sweet to take the bitter taste of this post away. I say this after reading what I've written and I feel this warning is needed.

Many of the shrines were repetitive, all the dungeons followed one main mechanic (Bop It until you pushed all the buttons), I couldn't remember how many time towns etc there were, an IGN page has about 9 with town/village in their name, obviously 4 of those will be the realm of the race that you get, lots? Compared to Ocarina etc, certainly more, but the scope of the world (for me) made them seem more sparse. Stables, true there were a fuck ton. They were great to warp to in times of need. 

Enemy encampments were so vanilla and unmemorable I found myself landing at some to find I'd already opened the chest there, so ran off.  Fuck the Korok puzzles, when you get to 50-75ish and you find out there's 900, no game is worth that kind of investment, even more so when you realise all you get is a golden shit as a fuck you for your time. It's been awhile since I've played an Assassin's Creed game, but I think if each Korok seed was on the map even they would go "fuck that's a bit excessive". I understand what they're trying to do with homage to the original Legend of Zelda, but I didn't like the first entry. I hated the near zero direction aspect. I hate massive handholding just as equally frustrating, a little guidance isn't too much to ask. Some Navi-style hints, not too much to ask

The compendium/album thing is a thing I've seen crop up in games recently too, spot this insect/bird/plant etc. I'm able to do this in real life but I don't because it's boring.

Honestly can't remember much about the side quests, I've clearly drunk too much since then, which I think is the real meat of what I've missed out on here. This is what I'm looking the most forward to when I replay this. Which I guess with Tears coming out soon I best get my skates on to refresh myself.

[Ronnie]

12 minutes ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

I'd grab something sweet to take the bitter taste of this post away. I say this after reading what I've written and I feel this warning is needed.

Many of the shrines were repetitive, all the dungeons followed one main mechanic (Bop It until you pushed all the buttons), I couldn't remember how many time towns etc there were, an IGN page has about 9 with town/village in their name, obviously 4 of those will be the realm of the race that you get, lots? Compared to Ocarina etc, certainly more, but the scope of the world (for me) made them seem more sparse. Stables, true there were a fuck ton. They were great to warp to in times of need. 

Enemy encampments were so vanilla and unmemorable I found myself landing at some to find I'd already opened the chest there, so ran off.  Fuck the Korok puzzles, when you get to 50-75ish and you find out there's 900, no game is worth that kind of investment, even more so when you realise all you get is a golden shit as a fuck you for your time. It's been awhile since I've played an Assassin's Creed game, but I think if each Korok seed was on the map even they would go "fuck that's a bit excessive". I understand what they're trying to do with homage to the original Legend of Zelda, but I didn't like the first entry. I hated the near zero direction aspect. I hate massive handholding just as equally frustrating, a little guidance isn't too much to ask. Some Navi-style hints, not too much to ask

The compendium/album thing is a thing I've seen crop up in games recently too, spot this insect/bird/plant etc. I'm able to do this in real life but I don't because it's boring.

Honestly can't remember much about the side quests, I've clearly drunk too much since then, which I think is the real meat of what I've missed out on here. This is what I'm looking the most forward to when I replay this. Which I guess with Tears coming out soon I best get my skates on to refresh myself.

I was responding to your post that 'there wasn't much to do'. You might not have personally enjoyed the stuff there was to do, but it was there.

PS: you were never supposed to collect all 900 korok seeds. It's why they didn't put a counter in-game + the prize for doing collecting them all. It was just a fun little activity as you roam around the world. 

Edited January 13, 2023 by Ronnie

[EEVILMURRAY]

42 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

I was responding to your post that 'there wasn't much to do'. You might not have personally enjoyed the stuff there was to do, but it was there. 

I meant to add "stuff worth doing". I had in my head the whole time writing that post but it never reached past the fingers.

[EEVILMURRAY]

Righto, I've gone through Breath of the Wild again. Unfortunately my opinion hasn't changed much. I found some of the shrines a bit more fun, I visited more than I did before (I'd like to say I did about half of them), saw some things I'm sure I hadn't seen before. Did the Tarry Town thing, took the beasts on in a different order, still left Camelmon last because fuck Thunderblight Ganon, but I did get the Master Sword beforehand this time so it wasn't as much of a challenge. I did more quests, took pictures of stuff and still I don't get what made this game so great for everyone.

Fuck having to swap clothes when doing certain things. Fuck cooking. Fuck Lynels. Fuck weapon durability. If anyone is interested in a special edition of this game where the Master Sword model has unfortunately snapped (but I'm looking into pinning it so no one will ever know), I can hook you up.

I really hope Tears is better.