Board 8 > Zelda: Breath of the Wild

(+) Yeah! (+)

So I'd say I might be, eh, halfway through the game. I'm kind of more ambivalent about it though? Like I love Zelda. I've played every single other Zelda game and love most of them. But I think I kind of miss the old formula.

Currently I got the Master Sword and defeated the Water and Fire Divine Beasts. I'm ready to go after the bird Divine Beast. But... I dunno. I'm not feeling it as much. I don't know when I'll be equipped enough for Ganon, but this honestly feels like the first Zelda game I don't want to 100%. I'd done it for every one GameBoy/SNES onward. Just don't feel like I really want to here.

Am I alone here? Is there something I'm missing? Help me like this game more.

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I didn't truly have fun until I stopped caring about the divine beasts and just started exploring. If you don't have any interest in checking out areas of the map you've haven't seen yet then yeah I'd just power through.

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I feel the same way.

I think most people like it because it's one of those games that let you goof off with a lot of freedom, but I never really got the appeal of those.

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Games overrated and not that fun but i definitely dont miss the formula

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You're not alone, but you're certainly in the minority. And that's fine. Not every game is gonna appeal to everyone. If you don't like it by now, I doubt much is gonna change if you keep playing. If you're really determined to finish it, maybe just focus on the story elements and then take on Ganon?

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It changes genres and you don't like the new one as much is probably the most objective answer. Getting 100% would be a nightmare because of the scope alone by old zelda standards.

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skullbone posted...

I didn't truly have fun until I stopped caring about the divine beasts and just started exploring. If you don't have any interest in checking out areas of the map you've haven't seen yet then yeah I'd just power through.

See, I don't really have an interest in exploring because for the most part there's just a whole lot of nothing everywhere. Like after I beat the bird beast, I have enough cold protection that I can go and explore the area up north but it's kind of like....... won't it just have a lot more of nothing there? Even beating up random Bokoblin strongholds seems pointless since all they offer me are more weak items and occasionally something decent.

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Well if youre chasing 100% better be prepared to take several hundred photos, collect 100 of various bugs for sidequests and find almost 1,000 Korok seeds. I certainly wouldnt do it if you already feel eh about the game because the extras are just tedious padding.

I never liked the LoZ 3D formula so this was by default the best 3D Zelda.

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swordz9 posted...

Well if youre chasing 100% better be prepared to take several hundred photos, collect 100 of various bugs for sidequests and find almost 1,000 Korok seeds. I certainly wouldnt do it if you already feel eh about the game because the extras are just tedious padding.

I mean like, a reasonable 100%.

Even doing most quests seems like too much. Like there's one where I need to catch 10 warners of each type or something and I'm just like... damn, I just don't care.

I may end up just settling for each shrine or something.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Zelda Fan Cycle!

Not really. I started playing it like 2 hours ago and got distracted by something or other and never went back to play it because I didn't feel so inclined.

So it's more like... I was ambivalent about it before and now I'm just not really feeling it as much.

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Also, slipping when climbing when it's raining is the biggest pain in the ass.

Like I shouldn't have to wait until it stops raining to keep climbing. God damn.

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Thats because the sidequests are insanely boring fetch quests for the most part. Its almost always go find me X amount of object Y or at least nearly all the ones I found were. Theyre the kind of quests only people with severe OCD would bother with and the rewards arent worthwhile

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Also, slipping when climbing when it's raining is the biggest pain in the ass.

Like I shouldn't have to wait until it stops raining to keep climbing. God damn.

This is the actual worst part though. I swear to god it rained 80% of my entire playtime and literally always when I was halfway up some huge climb

BotW has incredible mechanics but yes, a very "nothing" and bad open world. People seem to get confused about why the game is good and that's why it's ended up so overrated.

Now if BotW2 takes all of those mechanics and shoves them in an actually good framework, then we might have a true GoaT on our hands.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Also, slipping when climbing when it's raining is the biggest pain in the ass.

Like I shouldn't have to wait until it stops raining to keep climbing. God damn.

Lightning is worse imo

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Game's alright, has some good highs but plenty of lows too that are downplayed or just ignored way too much

but it had been way too long since the last proper 3D Zelda for them to release one that tosses so much of the formula

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Oh god the rain is the worst thing about the game. It happens way too often and is far too debilitating

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You can still climb when it's raining but it's very slow. You have to do a jump immediately after Link grabs with his 2nd hand to prevent from slipping. You'll still slide when you jump but it's net progress.

And yeah there's no good reward for exploring which is the main problem. You have to really enjoy exploring for exploring sake instead of expecting a reward for doing so.

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Like I wanted to go to a point where I could go get a memory. I don't know what I get if I get all the memories, but the old man told me where to find another one. But I have to climb up high. But then it starts raining and I actually tried to climb like twice and I got literally nowhere before I ran out of stamina.

What am I supposed to do? Go do something else and forget about this or just wait around for the rain to stop? Like ugggggh.

I think my problem is that exploring, for the most part, isn't rewarding unless you're finding a shrine. I have no reason to do anything but ignore the bokoblin camps, it takes so many Korok Seeds to upgrade now so I just go do it if I happen to see them. Going to do sidequests, as mentioned, gives you next to nothing.

I would love to get a badass item or a badass new weapon, shield, or bow or something as a reward. Or even a new... uh, technomagic thing. I just got all these technomagic things and none of them are particularly interesting and it feels like a chore to really use them a lot of times. But instead, oh I got 50 rupees. Or a weapon with a 13 attack rating. Cool, all of mine do 27+ except for my utility ones like a torch and leaf.

I want to explore and do stuff, but it just feels like a total waste of time for what you get back for it.

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Menji posted...

Lightning is worse imo

I can at least still fight if it's lightning but equipping stuff that isn't metal. You LITERALLY cannot climb at all if it's raining. You actually need to just stop.

Also I hate combat shrines. The fights wouldn't be so bad if they didn't take so long without wasting your good weapons to get through them at a decent pace.

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Getting all shrines was good enough for me as reason to explore. I was also trying to get as many Koroks as possible without boring myself to death, at least enough to get the final reward.

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Build a fire and pass the time when it's raining.

Sounds like the game just isn't for you though which is really unfortunate. :/

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I loved BotW and still do, but the rain did suck. Only thing you can do is find an overhang, build a campfire and pass time until it clears up.

And there are several sidequests which give you pieces of armour. And a house! And the village building sidequest was a lot of fun.

But yeah, the shrines are where the game shines, so just focus on them if you want. The reward for doing all of them is neat.

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I feel like there was enough cool stuff to discover on the overworld that kept me engaged. Yeah, there were a lot of lackluster rewards, but I still found myself wanting to check what's over that mountain, etc. Sometimes the "reward" was a cool environment or a shrine with a fun puzzle rather than the actual reward at the end of it.

Still one of my favorite games in recent memories.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Also I hate combat shrines. The fights wouldn't be so bad if they didn't take so long without wasting your good weapons to get through them at a decent pace.

What exactly are you saving the "good weapons" for if not for things like that?

I really think having fun in the game is all about your mindset.

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Okay, so I'll just ask I guess.

What are some legitimately interesting quests or good rewards I should seek out and where are they?

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I wouldnt even want to be rewarded with a cool weapon for exploring or questing because it would just break in 5 minutes anyways. BotW is pure exploration fun if you care for that, but if you want rewards for anything theres nothing there. The world is about 5,000 times bigger than it needs to be for what little meaningful stuff there really is. I guess they thought people would be too impressed seeing the pretty sights and wouldnt care its a giant sandbox with no sand to play with

Waluigi1 posted...

What exactly are you saving the "good weapons" for if not for things like that?

I really think having fun in the game is all about your mindset.

Regular encounters? Bosses that aren't kind of boring and repetitive?

It's difficult to have fun in the game if there isn't a sense of accomplishment in it. Getting a couple Korok Seeds isn't too rewarding for like 45 minutes of game time.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Okay, so I'll just ask I guess.

What are some legitimately interesting quests or good rewards I should seek out and where are they?

Off the top of my head in terms of just stuff I enjoyed doing:
All of the labyrinths (should be easy to spot on the map)
Eventide Island (bottom corner)
That marsh area with the mushrooms/lightning and the area north of the Great Hyrule Forest
Snowboarding (forget where this was)
Mount Lanaryu

The DLC shrine quest that you can do after beating all Divine Beasts is also pretty fun

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1. Get every tower
2. Get every divine Beast
3. Ballad of the Champions DLC if you care to get it (you don't have to)
4. Side quests that start in Hateno Village (I'm pretty sure this leads to Tarrey Town?)
5. As many shrines as you want to
6. Beat Ganon

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

See, I don't really have an interest in exploring because for the most part there's just a whole lot of nothing everywhere.

This seems to be the major divide in perception of the game

Some people view it as theres a whole lot of nothing everywhere, and some people see things that fascinate and reward them around every corner

Its such an interesting difference in psychological mindsets of what constitutes a reward that someone should study it
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Jakyl25 posted...

Some people view it as theres a whole lot of nothing everywhere, and some people see things that fascinate and reward them around every corner

Its such an interesting difference in psychological mindsets of what constitutes a reward that someone should study it

It's extrinsic motivation vs. intrinsic motivation, and it's quite often the subject of game design theory/analysis! Very interesting topic and BotW is indeed a particularly fascinating case study.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Okay, so I'll just ask I guess.

What are some legitimately interesting quests or good rewards I should seek out and where are they?

If you are asking this question, there's 0% chance you will enjoy this game, the game is simply not for you.

This game's design is to allow the player to have satisfying self-directed adventures. These are adventures where you look around, see something that piques your interest (something of your choosing), and you have an adventure making your way there. On your way, you'll have tiny distractions and mini-adventures. Eventually you'll make it to the destination, where your interest will be satisfied usually with some small reward, or something interesting. The reward wasn't important, it was the self-directed adventure itself that was fun--the navigating, the distractions, etc. (And to some degree, the managing of resources like consumables, weapons, HP...)

Then, you look around again, and decide your next adventure.

This is the thing that separates it from other open world games. In Skyrim, players wanted to see a cave, and have an adventure getting there...but it didn't work. You'd get into the cave and realize this cave is part of a quest, and you don't have the quest because it starts in some town across the map.

In World of Warcraft, players wanted to wander into West Plaguelands, but turns out that zone was 50 levels too high, and they'd have to come back 150 hours from now.

Even Zelda games themselves, did not allow for satisfying self-directed adventures. You wanted to sail to that island in the distance, but the invisible wind wall was knocking you back. You wanted to explore death mountain, but you needed the big glove to pick up the big rocks, so you have to come back in 6 hours.

Breath of the Wild had to make a LOT of sacrifices to achieve this goal. There can't be any areas that require an item from some other area, because it discourages the player from embarking on these self-directed adventures, if they get stopped saying "come back later". So unfortunately, there can't be any items that feel that useful, that feel like they're letting you do something you couldn't before. Like a hookshot or something. They can't give you a weapon that's impressively powerful, because then if you find it too early, every other weapon for the rest of the game is 100% useless--the game is instantly ruined.

To ensure there are a lot of self-directed destinations for the player to choose from, they had to go with Breadth over Depth in the content. There aren't that many things you'll find in the world that are shockingly interesting.

But you'll find hundreds of things that are kinda interesting. Yes, you've seen this type of korok puzzle before, but it's been 8 hours since the last one of this type, and this time was slightly different to solve.

They can't really give you quests with plot that interacts fascinatingly with the rest of the world, because this might be the first quest you're doing, or the 100th. So, most "quests" in the game might as well be "fetch quests" in most players' eyes, although I reckon in the developers' eyes, the quests are more of "inspiration" to go get you out in the wild so you start to get distracted and find your own adventures.

TLDR: To enjoy the game, you have to enjoy the self-directed exploring and getting pleasantly distracted. You have to enjoy the visuals, the resource management, the distractions, the feeling of adventure itself. If that part of the game isn't working for you, the game is just not for you.

That's my opinion!

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But yeah if you arent getting anything fun out of it now, nothing major is gonna change for you
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Xiahou Shake posted...

It's extrinsic motivation vs. intrinsic motivation, and it's quite often the subject of game design theory/analysis! Very interesting topic and BotW is indeed a particularly fascinating case study.

Thats neat to hear

I fall in the camp of feeling consistently rewarded by BotW. If I explore somewhere and find something, ANYTHING deliberately put there by the devs for me to find, thats cool, I feel like I experienced something new in the game.

And of course that only works if you think the actual mechanics of controlling Link are fun, and I think they are
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I tried really hard to get into it, but I didnt enjoy it at all. I kept waiting for that part where the game really started gripping me but it never came

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The smartest move was doing away with giving items mid-dungeon that are largely used once to defeat the boss and not much else, and instead giving you all your unlockable tools in the tutorial.

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Epyo posted...

~snip~

That was very well written and I agree pretty completely. That exploration was was everything for me. If I went to a ton of trouble trying to climb some mountain and there was a Korok at the top, it was totally worth it for me cause I was rewarded for my curiosity. Idk it all just works for me.

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Epyo posted...

If you are asking this question, there's 0% chance you will enjoy this game, the game is simply not for you.

Not even reading the rest of that post because this is false.

If I have objectives I can aim for, chances are I'll enjoy this a lot more so I don't spend an hour running around, finding a whole lot of nothing, and getting maybe 2 Korok Seeds for my trouble.

TheRock1525 posted...

The smartest move was doing away with giving items mid-dungeon that are largely used once to defeat the boss and not much else, and instead giving you all your unlockable tools in the tutorial.

But all of them are kind of awful. The tools are just... boring. I'd rather get a dungeon item that's used to defeat the boss in a really cool way than have to use nerfed bombs and puzzles where I have to grab and rotate something with the metal tool or traverse using ice blocks. Stasis is alright, but it's not exciting enough to really use in battle often.

I dunno, I'd rather have a spinner to beat up a badass bone dragon once than have to use an ice block in a mundane manner.

Honestly, what I miss and crave are the really specifically cool stuff in the Zelda games. Towns with a ton of personality in them. Areas and quests specific to quirky characters. Dungeons with cool themes that it feels like a unique experience each time. And I miss epic encounters with unique mini-bosses and dungeon bosses. The closest thing to real bosses are the Ganon Blights or whatever, and even they aren't tremendously exciting or anything and they look same-y. It also feels like there's hardly any enemy types at all, or maybe it's just that they're used so often they aren't exciting anymore.

To describe something I wanted to explore: I saw an island to the west of the Master Sword forest. I went through the forest and I'm like "Alright, I'm gonna go to that island after this because it has its own name and it looks cool." I go and do everything in Korok land and then leave and spend all this time floating and climbing to the island and............. nothing. Just nothing. Just a tree and a bunch of bones. I looked it up and it says there's nothing on this named island. I was let down. I would have been satisfied with even a Korok seed considering I had to put forth some actual effort to get there.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

To describe something I wanted to explore: I saw an island to the west of the Master Sword forest. I went through the forest and I'm like "Alright, I'm gonna go to that island after this because it has its own name and it looks cool." I go and do everything in Korok land and then leave and spend all this time floating and climbing to the island and............. nothing. Just nothing. Just a tree and a bunch of bones. I looked it up and it says there's nothing on this named island. I was let down. I would have been satisfied with even a Korok seed considering I had to put forth some actual effort to get there.

Ill admit, that specific island is fucking strange

Best theory Ive seen is that its a tribute to the island of the first dungeon of Zelda 1, but that doesnt excuse nothing being there
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You arent wrong about lack of enemy types. You see most of the enemies you will ever see on the Great Plateau. After that its mostly running into re-skins. The bosses are also very similar and uninteresting because of it especially when everything has the same weak point. It doesnt matter if its a random goon or a boss just shoot it in the eye/face to hear that swing Crit ping noise

Epyo made the best post in this topic.

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swordz9 posted...

You see most of the enemies you will ever see on the Great Plateau.

I dont think thats actually true

Maybe if you extend it to by the time you get to Kakariko Village
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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Not even reading the rest of that post because this is false.

Wow this is rude.

Just sell the game if you're not enjoying it. Stop wasting time trying to figure out why you're not enjoying it because you clearly don't care

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I think Epyo is being way too declarative in saying "this game is not for you" if you aren't into the idea the rest of the post lays out, but it's otherwise excellent for describing why I had so much fun with Breath of the Wild. I really enjoyed the game because it felt like such an open experience in a way that most games haven't really been able to capture for me up to this point. That feeling of a self-directed adventure really lands true for me - I played this game basically by looking off in the distance or at my map, going "hey, this looks like it might be an interesting place to try to get to," and then having to plan a route and enjoy the experience of actually traversing the terrain to get there. It's sort of like hiking, but with swords and monsters as part of the deal. The game for me consistently delivered enough things that were at least kinda interesting to make me feel engaged - I didn't need huge rewards or even any gameplay reward at all, sometimes just seeing an interesting terrain feature was enough for me to be like, oh, that's fun. But there were also enough big rewards - the fairy fountains, for instance, which I found via the discovery method of "let's see what's in this place on the map I haven't been to", were pretty big rewards that I was excited to find.

I dunno, just the feeling of existing in this world always felt like enough of a reward to me. I like stuff like being inconvenienced by weather and having to wait it out. It gives it this bigger feeling of adventure than I'm used to seeing in other 3D Zelda games.

skullbone posted...

Wow this is rude.

Just sell the game if you're not enjoying it. Stop wasting time trying to figure out why you're not enjoying it because you clearly don't care

The dude told me there is no chance I can enjoy the game because I asked where the cool shit is so I can enjoy the best of what the game has to offer.

I can be rude over that.

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I didn't like it when it came out and got about halfway through before giving up.

Played through it entirely during early quarantine just because and ended up having the same thoughts. Without echoing what many people have said already about various mechanics, it's just a boring game.

I am excited to play the sequel if they take the same game, beef up the amount of stuff in the world, and remove some of the more tedious things about it.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

The dude told me there is no chance I can enjoy the game because I asked where the cool shit is so I can enjoy the best of what the game has to offer.

I can be rude over that.

Don't ask a question if you're not prepared for the answer then

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