Which is better - Majora's Mask or Breath of the Wild?

Nanis23 posted...

Screw those open world games with no real goal

Lucky for you, BotW is very blatant about what the goals are.

The only goal BotW actually gives you is to go fight Ganon, same as always. Just substitute the usual Zelda adventuring with however much aimless wandering you can put up with.

Keltiq posted...

Breath of the Wild is the only open-world game I've ever enjoyed, for what that's worth. The world is far less empty than MGSV's, or FF15's, or any other open-world game I've played (admittedly I haven't played Skyrim but that's because I hated Oblivion so I can't imagine it's that much better).

I think focusing on what "advances the story" is a mistake, because BotW is not a game about plot. It's a game about setting . It's about learning how the world got this way, about learning about the surviving cultures. It's about looking at the architecture of the Lanayru Promenade and realizing that it's one of the only structures with representations of Loftwings, meaning it's one of the oldest man-made things on the whole map. It's about finding the Eighth Heroine buried in snow in the Gerudo Highlands, wondering how and why such a massive statue was moved so far. It's about finding the burned-out husk of Lon Lon Ranch and feeling like you want to cry. It's about walking by Lake Hylia at night and seeing a massive shining dragon and watching it in awe. It's about building your own town in the wilderness and feeling hope that, no matter how bad things get, people can come together and make it better.

I'm a fanatic for environmental storytelling, so maybe this kind of stuff doesn't resonate with other people, I dunno.

I mean that's fair, to me though I just wish there was something more to dig into after that environmental story is revealed... It just feels empty outside of it. It's why I think breath of the wild is initially an amazing experience, but I found lacking about halfway through. I felt I'd kinda seen everything at that point.

iiaattgg posted...

When did this change? This is one of the core foundations of the entire board and im not okay with the development

When he realized not everyone had the same opinion on women and minorities as him

Keltiq posted...

It's a game about setting.

I don't think this is true which is largely why the game felt empty to me. Or rather, it felt on the same level as audio logs in Bioshock or something.

Yes, the world is huge and detailed and interesting, but you're not actually inhabiting it. You're just passing through, like a tourist essentially. The game is designed so the vast majority of the world you see once and NEVER return to, because that would just be infeasible. If you're someone who's playing the game for 200+ hours then sure, you'll get there, but you need 80+ hours just to see everything once already, to even BEGIN feeling comfortable in the world. When 15 hours in you've only touched a 10% sliver of the map at most, it feels really discouraging. The collectathon style content structure makes it even worse (compared to something like SotC or GTA which clearly does not encourage you to turn over every stone).

By far the best parts in BOTW were the distinctly non-touristy sections - the towns and the house you can buy and such. Even returning to a place 1 time and makes it feel much more real. MM is a game entirely made of areas you go to at minimum 2-3 times, sometimes dozens of times in Clock Town. And every aspect of the design is detailed enough to make those repetitions meaningful. That's way more interesting than passing by one spectacle after another, clearly placed there by the designer for you to have that 1 cool moment and then that's it.

foolm0r0n posted...

When he realized not everyone had the same opinion on women and minorities as him

Right but that still doesnt compute

It wasnt that he didnt know that most people had different opinions, vlados charm came from the fact that he was geniunely confused that they did

foolm0r0n posted...

GTA which clearly does not encourage you to turn over every stone

Speak for yourself! As long as the menu tells me I don't have 100% I need to turn over those stones! (or use a guide because that's impossible)

foolm0r0n posted...

I don't think this is true which is largely why the game felt empty to me. Or rather, it felt on the same level as audio logs in Bioshock or something.

Yes, the world is huge and detailed and interesting, but you're not actually inhabiting it. You're just passing through, like a tourist essentially. The game is designed so the vast majority of the world you see once and NEVER return to, because that would just be infeasible. If you're someone who's playing the game for 200+ hours then sure, you'll get there, but you need 80+ hours just to see everything once already, to even BEGIN feeling comfortable in the world. When 15 hours in you've only touched a 10% sliver of the map at most, it feels really discouraging. The collectathon style content structure makes it even worse (compared to something like SotC or GTA which clearly does not encourage you to turn over every stone).

By far the best parts in BOTW were the distinctly non-touristy sections - the towns and the house you can buy and such. Even returning to a place 1 time and makes it feel much more real. MM is a game entirely made of areas you go to at minimum 2-3 times, sometimes dozens of times in Clock Town. And every aspect of the design is detailed enough to make those repetitions meaningful. That's way more interesting than passing by one spectacle after another, clearly placed there by the designer for you to have that 1 cool moment and then that's it.

You must really love the Trails games.

I continue to wrestle with open worlds in general - I feel like I hold them to a standard that almost no games actually meet, but I do often still enjoy the ones that fail to meet that standard. It just feels like they can and should be so much more, you know? I feel like "open world" games fall into one of three categories pretty reliably:

The actual immersive world - Feels truly lived in with recognizable significance, relationships, consistency and maybe even politics between both yourself and all of its residents. The world is dripping with things to do, actually interesting characters to interact with, quests to undertake and meaningful rewards (read: wholly unique rewards if not completely new branching stories) for exploration. (I honestly haven't played a single game that feels like it meets this standard outside of New Vegas, which I hold as the one truly good open world game. I'll note that a big miss of mine is having not yet played The Witcher 3, so maybe there's hope!)

The grand tour - The world has a very clearly thought out structure and may even be breathtakingly beautiful, but is obviously designed to just lead the player through and marvel at stuff with little if any focus on making you feel like you actually belong and have a real connection with it. Rewards for exploration are typically meager, self-created or copy/pasted. In some more extreme cases, going out and exploring actually has very little purpose if a side quest isn't pointing you to that particular nook or cranny. This is the open world equivalent of being on vacation, IMO, you're just seeing a ton of cool stuff and moving on without a second though, as foolmo said. (Your BotWs, FFXVs, Xenoblades, Assassin's Creeds, Bethesda FO/Elder Scrolls and such of the world go here)

The sandbox - Not really a true structured "world" so much as it is a big ol' map that can accommodate everything that's going to happen in the game. Exploration is de-emphasized to the most it can be, and the open nature of the game exists basically purely for the sake of immersion and being seamless. The most fun you can have in these games between missions and mini games is usually just causing chaos and messing around. (Your GTAs, InFamous games, Just Causes and weird cases like LA Noire all go here)

Mac Arrowny posted...

You must really love the Trails games.

I played like 10 hours of the one with Estelle and it was really cool but too slow. I'd really like to skip all the combat.

pjbasis posted...

Speak for yourself! As long as the menu tells me I don't have 100% I need to turn over those stones! (or use a guide because that's impossible)

GTAV's 100% is mostly missions and requires very little stone turning. Nothing comes close to getting all shrines, let alone all koroks.

foolm0r0n posted...

I played like 10 hours of the one with Estelle and it was really cool but too slow. I'd really like to skip all the combat.

Did you not play the PC version with turbo mode?