Board 8 > Breath of the Wild is redefining open world games for me.

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's been a while since I wanted to explore just to explore. I'm pretty sure I've solved most of the game's objectives in an 'unintended' way and man it feels freeing.

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Awww yeah

That's weird, everyone else had a really typical open world experience with it

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foolm0r0n posted...

That's weird, everyone else had a really typical open world experience with it

that's weird, because it would have sucked if it were a typical open world experience for me

good thing it wasn't

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I think my favorite little moment so far is when I fought my first Molduga. Despite experimenting with remote bombs for some reason I was unable to get him to go after them and thought that he wouldn't no matter how many times I tried. So I ran circles around an explosive barrel until he chomped me and blew us both up, but guess what I have Mipha's Graces up ya bitch

Also doing a 3 Heart run and it makes the game far enjoyable than I imagine it would be otherwise. Supplies, usage of food, and being cautious matters a lot.

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Mipha's Grace is always ready

(except when it's not)

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Ready to roll!

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This basically sums up BotW and its fanbase

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyqs75BXIRk

BotW was a lot of fun when I was just running around the map seeing what I could get away with, once I actually started trying to accomplish things its flaws became pretty obvious though <_<

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foolm0r0n posted...

That's weird, everyone else had a really typical open world experience with it

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BotW would be a ludicrously amazing game if there was anything in its world besides... world.

The sheer fun of the sandboxy mechanics still ends up carrying it super far but man if there was anything of actual interest to wrap those around then we'd have an all time great on our hands. Hopefully that's what BotW2 is going to be!

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Xiahou Shake posted...

BotW would be a ludicrously amazing game if there was anything in its world besides... world.

What do you mean by this exactly?

I feel, like, almost completely overwhelmed with how full of stuff BotW's world and I'm just not sure like, what I would even put in there to make it be more

Climbing and paragliding around in BotW is bliss. You spend most of the game doing that but it's fun. And it makes discovering the little secrets placed throughout the world feel special. It has the most fun world to just look around and travel through since Xenoblade.

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There might be a lot of stuff in the game but you'll have seen most of it within a few hours. Enemy variety is really bad, you get all of your items in the starting area, and there are no real dungeons to speak of. I got bamboozled by the forgotten temple when I thought it was going to be a dungeon and just got a few rooms of Guardian spam

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There could be more enemy variety but I don't agree with the other statements. I'm always switching out weapon types to keep things fresh (elemental effects are fun) and the main dungeons + the shrine puzzles probably adds up to more puzzle solving content in total than any other Zelda game.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

What do you mean by this exactly?

I feel, like, almost completely overwhelmed with how full of stuff BotW's world and I'm just not sure like, what I would even put in there to make it be more

There's a lot of STUFF but not a good amount of variety. You're combing this huge landscape to find shrines and korok seeds and random enemy loot over and over and over it's fun at first but after a while it just becomes a blur.

The most memorable parts of the game to me weren't when I cleared my 50th shrine or scaled another god damn mountain. It was the more fleshed out parts - the Divine Beast quests, the few mini dungeons, the weirder side areas like the ruins or the giant maze or the survival island, storming Hyrule Castle at the start of the game, stumbling into new towns. Very rarely, you'd find a sidequest that is actually good! You know, the normal Zelda-type adventure stuff.

Put more of that in the game instead of a shitload of collectibles and loot grinding and I'd be much happier to explore the world.

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I just felt like the vast majority of the world is dotted with some kind of interesting feature of some sort - there's a ton of unique weird areas that you have to navigate for shrine quests, or places that you find that add up to more than just like a lousy collectable, like fairy fountains or weird NPCs hanging out somewhere - and also, like, maybe this is where we differ but I love finding interesting physical features just for their own sake, not every part of the world has to be like, super meaningful, sometimes it's fun to just find a little pond and maybe there's a korok seed or it's just a good spot for fish or herbs or something, like, I dunno - just running around the world felt like its own reward and I feel like if they had to cram every inch of the world with some sort of unique thing it would be distracting and also the game would've taken 3 more years to make, so, eh

Enemy variety could be better I guess but I never really noticed. I guess there ARE a lot of lizalfos. I wasn't really itching to be in combat all the time.

I'll be honest and say that I don't like the core Zelda formula very much (my favorite 'traditional' Zelda is MM which tries to be as different as possible) so I'm totally okay with BotW abandoning the previous structure. There's definitely room for improvement but what's there is already captivating.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

and also, like, maybe this is where we differ but I love finding interesting physical features just for their own sake, not every part of the world has to be like, super meaningful, sometimes it's fun to just find a little pond and maybe there's a korok seed or it's just a good spot for fish or herbs or something, like, I dunno - just running around the world felt like its own reward and I feel like if they had to cram every inch of the world with some sort of unique thing it would be distracting and also the game would've taken 3 more years to make, so, eh

I'm currently hunting for frogs to upgrade armor. I was chasing one and it ran away and jumped straight off the edge of a cliff to escape me. I burst out laughing at how funny it looked from the angle I saw it at - it was this weird little moment but I appreciated it. There's countless numbers of those little moments.

For me, in Breath of the Wild exploration is its own reward. I do appreciate when the game gives me rupees (I am eternally poor) or fast travel points or whatever, but I don't NEED it to create a meaningful experience.

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I'm okay with the core Zelda formula but I kinda feel like BotW has all the core Zelda stuff in it anyway aside from like, item progression, which I can live without

The complaints about there not being any dungeons is confusing to me in a game with four dungeons, I like them more than most of the dungeons in other Zelda games even if they're a little shorter and more compact

I do think the shrines could stand to be a little less repetitive and samey looking though, like it would be nice if there were like, just a few different color palettes to the shrines, maybe based on which part of the world they're in or something.

KamikazePotato posted...

I'm currently hunting for frogs to upgrade armor. I was chasing one and it ran away and jumped straight off the edge of a cliff to escape me. I burst out laughing at how funny it looked from the angle I saw it at - it was this weird little moment but I appreciated it. There's countless numbers of those little moments.

For me, in Breath of the Wild exploration is its own reward. I do appreciate when the game gives me rupees (I am eternally poor) or fast travel points or whatever, but I don't NEED it to create a meaningful experience.

Yeah, like, every time I went somewhere random I usually ended up progressing the game in some way, at least, either by opening up a new area or getting a bunch of money or important collectables or whatever, and like, I dunno, I just don't see how it's different from most other Zelda games which are generally the same kinda deal

I would've been pretty okay with BotW trying something different, except that there hadn't been a traditional Zelda in 11 years lol Skyward Sword and with it being almost universally praised and getting a sequel there's a decent chance we still won't get one anytime soon

whether that's a good thing or not depends on the person but me, I just want to play a new Zelda game

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Yeah the complaint about collectibles isn't one I understand too much. I'll say that from my perspective, 100% of the non-main-story content in Zelda games since LTTP is about collecting things you don't need that don't change the game in any meaningful way. The only deviations from this are MM, which creates meaningful stories around the side content, and BotW, where the collectible stuff is there to entice you to explore the world which to me is the real reward.

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I don't know how to say this un-snarkily but I just don't see Twilight Princess as the last game to properly take up the Zelda mantle, I feel like I would have to have an extremely narrow definition of Zelda games to say that and then not include Skyward Sword or A Link Between Worlds

I mean, I guess part of it for me is that Twilight Princess is also one of my least favorite Zeldas, so I just don't have any romanticization for that style really, my favorite Zeldas aren't the ones people like

Twilight Princes is probably my third favorite, which I think shows how out of sync I am with the Zelda fanbase as a whole. A Link Between Worlds is 4th and no one else cared about that a week after it came out.

(Also Wind Waker is bad and OoT and LTTP are average)

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I adore Wind Waker for much of the same reasons as I adore Breath of the Wild (although BotW does it better) so we do have to part ways on this one

Yeah if you like exploring just to explore then obviously the game is great for that. I just need more structure and meaningful content to engage with. But at that point I might as well play something else because it'd be a different game.

Paratroopa1 posted...

I'm okay with the core Zelda formula but I kinda feel like BotW has all the core Zelda stuff in it anyway aside from like, item progression, which I can live without

Item progression is important! Not only from a perspective of core Zelda (though it is a TRAVESTY that this climbing simulator has no hookshot) but from a sandbox angle, more items = more ways to interact with the sandbox. To me this is the weirdest choice they made by far.

The complaints about there not being any dungeons is confusing to me in a game with four dungeons, I like them more than most of the dungeons in other Zelda games even if they're a little shorter and more compact

I do think the shrines could stand to be a little less repetitive and samey looking though, like it would be nice if there were like, just a few different color palettes to the shrines, maybe based on which part of the world they're in or something.

The four main dungeons in the game were just the right combination of "shorter than usual" and "weird but cool new mechanic" to leave me wanting more. They're very good so of course I'd want a bigger focus on mini-dungeons. I liked doing the shrines but as you say they start to feel repetitive and disconnected from the rest of the game, just things you do to get your "piece of heart" equivalents and unlock fast travel points.

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I loved BotW, but I think BotW2 has a lot of room to improve on.

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KamikazePotato posted...

A Link Between Worlds is 4th and no one else cared about that a week after it came out.

see, I love that game and a 3D version of ALBW is kind of what I want

let me just buy all the fucking items immediately, give me a bunch of dungeons, and let me stomp around a more compact overworld wrecking shit instead of taking 10 minutes to climb a mountain to maybe see where the next shrine is

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I like the lack of item progression. The first time you play a Zelda game it's an exciting concept, because progression is fun and all that, but I'm tired of the formula by now and it has flaws. The trickle of items enforces arbitrary backtracking to previous areas and stifles dungeon design because it has to follow the formula of Enter Dungeon -> Play Through 70% Of The Dungeon -> Get New Item With A New Mechanic Now That Most of the Dungeon is Already Over.

It's part of the reason why A Link Between Worlds was so good. It gives you every item option at the start and straight-up tells you which ones will relevant io each dungeon, and the dungeons in that game are super fun because they get to take advantage of the items' gimmicks from the start.

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I enjoy the item progression for pretty much all of those reasons, so definite agree to disagree there

going back through Snowpeak Manor once I got the ball and chain to tear up all the enemies and obstacles I couldn't do anything about before was hella good

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It's a game that I play just to relax and just explore.
And it's great at it.
I turned off everything you could to not tell me where to go or where anything is.

Though I have like 400 korok seeds and have not seen that fat guy since about 100 hours or so ago (Which was release day...) Sometimes I think I had just imagined him.

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I like the fact that Breath of the Wild's world doesn't have a million and one things in it. That kind of open world structure is a bit overwhelming because there's like this pressure to go here, then there, then here, then there, and there's no time to breathe. With Breath of the Wild, everything's leisurely. You can start going somewhere, get curious about something along the way, and then get back to what you were originally doing, or just not. It's great.

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LeonhartFour posted...

I like the fact that Breath of the Wild's world doesn't have a million and one things in it. That kind of open world structure is a bit overwhelming because there's like this pressure to go here, then there, then here, then there, and there's no time to breathe. With Breath of the Wild, everything's leisurely. You can start going somewhere, get curious about something along the way, and then get back to what you were originally doing, or just not. It's great.

This is really well said, yeah. I agree.

The dungeons in the game arent even really dungeons. The process of getting into them is more fun than anything actually inside of them sadly.

LeonhartFour posted...

I like the fact that Breath of the Wild's world doesn't have a million and one things in it. That kind of open world structure is a bit overwhelming because there's like this pressure to go here, then there, then here, then there, and there's no time to breathe. With Breath of the Wild, everything's leisurely. You can start going somewhere, get curious about something along the way, and then get back to what you were originally doing, or just not. It's great.

I'm curious what open world games you've been playing that are overly dense with stuff because this sounds basically exactly how my experience with open world games tends to go.

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LeonhartFour posted...

I like the fact that Breath of the Wild's world doesn't have a million and one things in it. That kind of open world structure is a bit overwhelming because there's like this pressure to go here, then there, then here, then there, and there's no time to breathe. With Breath of the Wild, everything's leisurely. You can start going somewhere, get curious about something along the way, and then get back to what you were originally doing, or just not. It's great.

I see this sentiment all the time and I just dont get it. Different strokes I guess. You call botw leisurely, I say empty.

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I like exploring every inch of BotW. I'm focused on Korok seeds, so the game is really one big scavenger hunt for me. On top of everything else there is with it.


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I couldnt even imagine enjoying finding every Korok seed. I found like 55~ and then just skipped past others because I didnt feel like collecting them anymore. I guess if there werent like 1,000 of them some people wouldnt feel compelled to comb every inch of the empty map though. I also didnt think shrines had enough variety to bother with all of them either (did like 1/3 or less of them by the end)

As someone who appreciated Zelda 1 the most in the series before BotW, BotW was the game I always wanted
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Collecting 1000 collectables sounds like a special hell

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Jakyl25 posted...

As someone who appreciated Zelda 1 the most in the series before BotW, BotW was the game I always wanted

This is very me

Lopen posted...

Collecting 1000 collectables sounds like a special hell

Hey its only 900
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I feel it is more whimsical approach than most other open world games.( I love other open world games and BotW didnt redefine the genre for me.)

im also in the Zelda 1 camp

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Ya 900 of one thing and then NPCs will ask you to go collect 100 frogs, 100 lizards or other such stuff. Theres also like a picture catalogue for taking a picture of every weapon, shield and other such stuff too if you want even more mundane stuff to do!

Lopen posted...

I'm curious what open world games you've been playing that are overly dense with stuff because this sounds basically exactly how my experience with open world games tends to go.

It's more that sense of freedom that comes with the fact that there aren't a million dots and markers on the map for quests, NPCs, etc. It doesn't feel like the game is ever trying to tell me what to do or lead me in a certain direction, and I enjoyed that. I get why some people would find that sort of minimalist approach empty, but I loved it.

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swordz9 posted...

Ya 900 of one thing and then NPCs will ask you to go collect 100 frogs, 100 lizards or other such stuff. Theres also like a picture catalogue for taking a picture of every weapon, shield and other such stuff too if you want even more mundane stuff to do!

Game Theory: Is Breath of the Wild the logical endpoint of the N64 collectathon?

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Ive seen it described as Ubisoft tower system that reveals topography and location names, but instead of telling you where everything is, it makes YOU fill in the map
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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Game Theory: Is Breath of the Wild the logical endpoint of the N64 collectathon?

Finding every collectible rewards you with a pile of poop so its the ultimate joke
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