I never did Eventide. Discovered it early on, said nope, and only went back once but never did complete it.
Also never did the sword trials.
Glad that stuff was optional and not forced in a more linear progression style game. I just don't have the time anymore to sit down and dedicate to stuff like that where you can't save.
Then you discover the glitch which makes Eventide easier. Right before you land you drop your weapons and make the island a slaughter. You have to drop them before you put in the last ball that opens the shrine to keep them when you get your gear back.
I loved Eventide Island, I do wish there were a couple more completely unique experiences like that. The mazes were kinda cool but not as challenging as they seemed from the outside. Like maybe the map shouldn't show you the entire maze layout??
In order to maximize inventory space, you have to hunt down 400+ of them. And I constantly found myself needing more space. For all the things i could expand space for.
I played the early/midgame as more of a survival game than a hack n slash, so Link being limited and having to be scrappy was part of the appeal to me. By the time I stumbled across 100 seeds I had all the weapon slots I need, even if it isn't the max. I have no intention of looking for them or collecting them all, I already find them all the time without really trying. Getting any more weapon slots is just a bonus at this point.
Pretty close to the same for me. 90 seeds on the current playthrough, inventory isn't an issue at all unless I'm going on a surfing safari or something.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I feel like if you had condensed basically all the shrines into 4 big ones, and beefed up the "temples", had each of those give a heart, and then had a couple of the major rock climbing/exploring places give stamina chunks, I would have preferred that. I didn't mind the general emptiness. I enjoyed climbing all the towers to fill in the map, and exploring things. I just wanted the interactive parts to be more interactive.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
If you prefer being given a list of tasks and then doing them in order, then yeah, an open world game might not be for you. But I don't think this is a flaw in the game if you don't want to engage with it on its own terms. You have to play BotW like you actually are Link coming out of the cave and just seeing a big broad world out there and having to make your own decisions.
It's rather that all the things to do in Open World games is a checklist. Get all the things. That's . . . the point. At least for me. I just assumed anyone that played an open world game was interested in clearing the map, grabbing all the goods, etc. In effect, I am engaging with the world as I would if I were Link. I would try and get everything to beef myself up because that's . . . the point of an open world for me.
Sure, that's the end result of any rpg or adventure game of this stripe, when you have a final boss to beat. But if you're just concerned with the final state and not how you got there, you might as well just use cheat codes in all your games. Exploration, experimentation and discovery are all game mechanics, and when you just see a list of tasks to go and do, you miss out on all of those. There's also the empowerment of decision making, of writing your unique story (such as it can be in any video game). Not having the big list of icons on the map initially also forces players to actually pay attention to the landscape and actually look around for things. I know the layout of Hyrule better than I do just about any other open world game I played, at least partly because I had to actually watch where I was going and look for things, and not just head towards an icon. To me these are all things that personify adventure, and I think it's why ubisoft's flood of icons style doesn't really feel that way.
I do wish you could fill in the map by exploring. Rather than just bee-lining the tower, let me just ride around or climb and fill in the map that way.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
I thought the shrines were mostly OK, but I agree they got very same-y. I know playing this time I've kinda been skipping them (just activate for fast travel spot) and then going back later when I feel like putting up with them and they haven't been too bad. I think it would have helped if one, they didn't have a shit ton of loading to get into each one, and two, they didn't all look the same.
The best "shrines" IMO were the ones where you got to do a fun quest to just find them, then you just win once you go inside automatically cuz you already did the thing. But then I think a lot of that is me just wanting more story out of the game in general. I'm hoping botw2 delivers on that. I want stuff to actually be happening, not just a bunch of rando flashbacks that mean absolutely nothing to the current situation (yeah the flashbacks are nice bits of story, but you can sum them all up with Zelda and Link and champions walk around Hyrule, then they mostly all die for 100 years... I'd say the only one with any actual relevance is the last one you get for collecting all the memories)
If you prefer being given a list of tasks and then doing them in order, then yeah, an open world game might not be for you. But I don't think this is a flaw in the game if you don't want to engage with it on its own terms. You have to play BotW like you actually are Link coming out of the cave and just seeing a big broad world out there and having to make your own decisions.
It's rather that all the things to do in Open World games is a checklist. Get all the things. That's . . . the point. At least for me. I just assumed anyone that played an open world game was interested in clearing the map, grabbing all the goods, etc. In effect, I am engaging with the world as I would if I were Link. I would try and get everything to beef myself up because that's . . . the point of an open world for me.
Sure, that's the end result of any rpg or adventure game of this stripe, when you have a final boss to beat. But if you're just concerned with the final state and not how you got there, you might as well just use cheat codes in all your games. Exploration, experimentation and discovery are all game mechanics, and when you just see a list of tasks to go and do, you miss out on all of those. There's also the empowerment of decision making, of writing your unique story (such as it can be in any video game). Not having the big list of icons on the map initially also forces players to actually pay attention to the landscape and actually look around for things. I know the layout of Hyrule better than I do just about any other open world game I played, at least partly because I had to actually watch where I was going and look for things, and not just head towards an icon. To me these are all things that personify adventure, and I think it's why ubisoft's flood of icons style doesn't really feel that way.
I think the important point to say here is, I hope obviously, for you. I love the checklist. I'm not complaining about making the entire world a checklist. If I'm complaining about anything, it's that the items on the list don't exactly feel rewarding, but were required for me to (A) feel like I had beaten the game and (B) actually live through the game. I got in what experimentation I wanted to try out early on as I scoured the map for shrines as I got the towers first thing because I hate not having a map. Then I would hit the shrines on the way to the next tower by . . . marking them on the map and beelining for them.
I literally can't think of a better way to play. That's the way that makes the most sense for me. And when I could no longer find shrines, or quests, or whatever, I commenced with the great walkthroughaning. Because that's also what makes the most sense for me. And man, I missed a lot of things all around the map, things that sure, other people might have picked up on, but I didn't. I'll be honest . . . I'm not exactly observant in real life. There could be a gun fight and bank robbery happening behind me and I'd be like, "gee, that's an odd sound". So the fact that I missed a lot of things heading to where I meant to be going isn't surprising. I'm very very bad with subtle.
Thus why the map icons are much better for me.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Skyrim is an interesting comparison. I think Skyrim's most impressive feature is its 'underdark' (for lack of a better term). There's an entire, huge, underground realm filled with ancient machinery and what used to be snow elves. It feels like it takes up a good portion of the map. I was stuck in it for hours. It reminded me of the MJ-12 base under NY in Deus Ex. Something right under the player's feet, but easily missable. BotW doesn't have anything surprising like that.
BotW also doesn't have much in the way of interesting sidequests. Skyrim has the various guilds (the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild are standouts), all the stuff with the gods, finding all of the shouts, collecting all of the Dragonpriest masks, unique weapons, etc.
That said, I think BotW has better atmosphere. It feels lonely. Despite the bright colors, it feels sad. This is a world hanging on by a thread. From any place with a view you can see Calamity Ganon swirling around Hyrule Castle. His Malice infects the land and some of the animals, and the remnant of the robot army remains.
BotW also has a better main story. In Skyrim you're just some rando who happened to be at the right place at the right time. And while the story is big (dragons and, what, time travel or something?) none of it is personal. It's just things that happen. It didn't need to be you. BotW is largely Zelda's story. It's about her struggles, her fears, her courage. She's really the savior of the world - she saves Link, contains Ganon for a century, then creates the light arrows. And seeing her repeated failures and frustration makes the final victory all the sweeter. She fulfills her duty when it matters the most.*
Ultimately I liked BotW a bit more. Atmosphere means a lot to me, and I liked the loneliness and undercurrent of unease of BotW more than Skyrim's perpetual winter.
*I think BotW will focus more on Link because of this... Zelda's character arc is essentially complete, with the exception of, perhaps, trying to restore the kingdom back to its former glory, but I'm not at all convinced that is the direction she would go.
You utterly nailed it here, imho. Skyrim is about the player. BotW is about the characters.
I've done about 100 shrines and have enjoyed most of them, the only ones I don't really like are the motion control ones and the boring ones where it's just a "blessing" and no puzzle. The others I feel strike a decent balance between so easy that the solution is obvious and so obtuse that it's frustrating. None of them really made me slam my head but a few stumped me for a while. And more than a few made me feel clever when I solved them in an unexpected way. It's not Portal in terms of mind bending puzzles, but challenging enough for what it is. So yeah, I definitely don't consider shrines to be pointless collectibles, I consider them a core component of the gameplay. Like, I have 27 hearts and 2 full stamina wheels, I'm not searching for shrines because I need the stat boost anymore, I'm searching for them because I like the puzzles. That said, I do wish the combat shrines had more variety than "scout guardian comes out of the floor, uses the same 4 attack patterns every time". And they could use some visual flair, the shrines aesthetically are kind of boring and brown compared to the gorgeous overworld.
The korok seeds, ehhh they are literally everywhere. Not once in 180 hours did I actively search for them, I just stumbled upon 100-some-odd seeds essentially by accident. So that aspect of the game never felt grindy to me, I was never going out of my way to collect them, they practically threw themselves at me.
I started one of the motion control puzzles upright, and by the end of it I was hanging upside-down off the couch looking "up" at my Switch held over my head :razz:
I've never really understood complaints about combat/shrines/exploration not being 'worth it'. Those things are the game, not some chore to get through! Getting a different reward at the end won't change the fact that it seems you don't enjoy the core activities of the gameplay. Which is fine, not every game is for everyone but you seem to be concentrating on the wrong aspects here.
With BOTW2 I hope Link gets put in stasis and it's Zelda who does everything.
Time shenanigans! The Link that gets stasis’d is the one that woke up at the beginning of BotW, somehow! The Link that Zelda knew in her youth died fighting Ganon and her attempts to bring him back caused the darkness to be unleashed in the first place. Like back in Skyward Sword first place. Quick someone get the Dr Who writers on this.
I've never really understood complaints about combat/shrines/exploration not being 'worth it'. Those things are the game, not some chore to get through! Getting a different reward at the end won't change the fact that it seems you don't enjoy the core activities of the gameplay. Which is fine, not every game is for everyone but you seem to be concentrating on the wrong aspects here.
I'm trying to figure out how to state that having another 1/4 piece of heart or stamina isn't a reward, but I think what I really mean is, "4 shrines linked together to reward a heart of health feels less rewarding than the dungeons of previous games that would reward you with a new tool in each dungeon, yours to keep that expanded your ability to interact with the game, and everything being breakable except your 4 runes makes the game curve flatten and makes the entire game an exercise in doing tasks for no reward because a puzzle is a task to get to something, not a reward in and of itself; the reward is what you get for solving the puzzle."
Which, I mean, unless you're stating that BotW is an open world puzzle game a la Angry Birds where the 120 stages are the entire point of the game, I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I've never really understood complaints about combat/shrines/exploration not being 'worth it'. Those things are the game, not some chore to get through! Getting a different reward at the end won't change the fact that it seems you don't enjoy the core activities of the gameplay. Which is fine, not every game is for everyone but you seem to be concentrating on the wrong aspects here.
These two things are not mutually exclusive.
The game needed more well-thought-out dungeons. I liked the Beasts, large creature fights, and exploring.
The game itself felt like eating 30 small meals made entirely of sunflower seeds a day, one seed at a time, and the occasional mid-sized snack. No actual meals until Hyrule Castle.
I wonder if part of the issue wasn't an attempt by Nintendo to grapple with the Switch's semi-handheld nature. The shrines individually take about 5-10 minutes to complete. It's the kind of design I can think of someone coming up with when told, "you need to make something someone can pick up and play for 10 minutes, then put down and walk away form for the rest of the day".
I wonder if part of the issue wasn't an attempt by Nintendo to grapple with the Switch's semi-handheld nature. The shrines individually take about 5-10 minutes to complete. It's the kind of design I can think of someone coming up with when told, "you need to make something someone can pick up and play for 10 minutes, then put down and walk away form for the rest of the day".
It's a Wii U game. I'm not sure how much adjustment they made to it after they decided to port it to the Switch, but it'd have to have been originally designed with the assumption of immobility.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I hope we get some actual Ganondorf this time. And not just at the ass-end Twilight Princess style. I'd like a Ganondorf that actually takes part in the story over the course of the game, Wind Waker style.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I've never really understood complaints about combat/shrines/exploration not being 'worth it'. Those things are the game, not some chore to get through! Getting a different reward at the end won't change the fact that it seems you don't enjoy the core activities of the gameplay. Which is fine, not every game is for everyone but you seem to be concentrating on the wrong aspects here.
I try to cut the game some slack on this because it isn't fair to expect the devs to make over a hundred puzzle rooms that are going to feel interesting and worthwhile to somebody that has been solving puzzle rooms for multiple decades now. And a lot of those puzzle rooms have been in games which are intentionally much much harder than Zelda game puzzles because that's the point of those games. Zelda games do need a certain level of approachability.
Objectively, the puzzle rooms needed to not be the same bland recycled textures. They should've reflected the various regions you find them in so they feel like part of the world, not just something bolted on. Half or a third as many shrines with double or triple the design effort per shrine would've been much better, because the stupid number of shrines is way over into Ubisoft-grade collectible crap.
And if the shrines offered up world lore plus heart/stamina chunks instead of dumbass repetitive tokens? That would've probably turned around my whole opinion of the game. Shrine tokens were just an annoying middleman for real upgrades, so ditch that crap. And the one single most overriding thing I wanted out of the game was to find out about the setting and how it came to be. The game as it is gives you virtually nothing, which makes it feel utterly lifeless and dead to me. It doesn't even offer up decent environmental storytelling elements, just piles of nostalgic rubble and the like. No piecing together stories from bits of armor or where bodies fell, no poking through a ruin and realizing you're walking through the remains of an ancient siege, nothing.
So much of what I like about something like Fallout New Vegas is the mountains of explicit and implicit history. Little things like finding a old skeleton left by somebody killed by a trap, and warning the player what's ahead. Big things like digging through pre-war records to find out House isn't what he tells you. This stuff is just out there to find if you want to, and something that was desperately lacking in BotW. It also doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as Hyrule has been inhabitated since forever; there should be historical information all over the damn place, not a big chunk of geography where somehow every last scrap of writing is gone.
Thinking about it, one thing that's clearly missing are the archeological sites where they unearthed all of that ancient technology in the first place.
I can think of at least two fields of dead Guardians that you see and shortly thereafter, an NPC tells you the story of the battle that occurred there. The whole Akkala region had some of the best environmental storytelling in the game. I do think there could have been more "discoverable lore" overall, but there's a decent amount contained in the side quests and random NPC dialogue. In the sequel I'd definitely like to find more unique things that just exist for the sake of lore and not tied to any quest or collectible.
This is just complaining, but I would have enjoyed if each korok said something interesting when you found them. Nothing so important you’d force yourself to find them all, but if they knew a historical fact or rumour that’d be neat.
Akkala is a great region, for the record.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
This is just complaining, but I would have enjoyed if each korok said something interesting when you found them. Nothing so important you’d force yourself to find them all, but if they knew a historical fact or rumour that’d be neat.
Akkala is a great region, for the record.
The Koroks being all samey was offset by the adorable "oof" sound they'd make when you dropped the rock they were hiding under directly on their heads.
Yeah, you know you did it and you know it was fun.
I'm surprised so many people expected more lore from this, it already felt like it had more than any zelda game I can remember. They're usually pretty sparse in terms of actual writing and specific backstory.
I’m not really looking for the kind of knowledge that’d change everything, revealing the Hidden Lores of Hyrule, but you could just throw in some neat bits.
So, I’m imagining they’d say their line after the whole bit when you find them, so nothing changes unless you speak to them a second time, how about:
Near Kakariko
“You know Impa? Not the first person to be called that; it’s more like a title for Shiekah that serve the royal family.“
Ruins of Arbiter’s Grounds
“Do ya’ ever just think there might be other worlds? Sometimes, at the twilight hour, I think I hear someone giggling. Spooky right? ”
Central Hyrule
“It’s hard to imagine, but once a whole regiment took on those rusted Guardians over there. They... Well, they were very brave.”
Temple of Time
“Long ago people came here to worship the goddess. A sage made their last stand right in front of the statue. Every temple had a sage who dedicated their life to an aspect of the world; fire, water, all that sort of thing. It was different back then.”
Hebra
“It’s freezing! Who’d live up here? Nobody, that’s who!”
The Zonai are comparable to the real-world Aztec civilization in that they used largely primitive technology and weaponry but were highly advanced in terms of architecture and mathematics. Remains of their structures are littered throughout the land, such as the stone dragon near the Spring of Courage and the three gigantic maze-like labyrinths located in Akkala, Hebra, and the Gerudo Desert. It's possible to tell which structures are created by the Zonai because the tribe has its own unique spiral symbol that they plaster on their work much like the eyes found on Sheikah technology.
The description of the barbarian armor set in Breath of the Wild, found within the aforementioned labyrinthian mazes, states that it "bolsters your fighting spirit and raises your attack power" and that it was worn by "an ancient warlike tribe from the Faron region".
. . .
As the garb's name implies, the outfit is very primitive and reminiscent of typical depictions of ancient tribes. The Zonai clearly idolized their fighting prowess to the highest degree in their culture, and many of their animal structures located throughout Faron may be further evidence of this. Some structures resemble pigs, which represent power, since Ganon and the triforce of power has always been associated with it.
Is it weird that I want a game where you play as Ganondorf fighting against fate? I think it would be interesting for there to be a Ganondorf who didn't just embrace evil at the outset, but was manipuated into causing the harm he seeks to avoid, either by outside forces or by making the wrong choices at critical times. Person vs. Fate is one of the main forms of narrative conflict, and I think Ganondorf is a perfect vehicle for that kind of story. It would also be an interesting change to a formula that's around 35 years old.
A game where Zelda is the player character should come first, of course, but a Ganondorf game should also be a thing.
With the power of indie games I can see that happening one day, if you squint at the different names.
In this series I’d settle for a game where a new villain summons Ganondorf only to have him backhand the villain and disappear. He reappears across the map after every plot point, being ominous and brooding over the past. Eventually he turns up in the final battle to seal himself away with the new guy.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Is it weird that I want a game where you play as Ganondorf fighting against fate? I think it would be interesting for there to be a Ganondorf who didn't just embrace evil at the outset, but was manipuated into causing the harm he seeks to avoid, either by outside forces or by making the wrong choices at critical times. Person vs. Fate is one of the main forms of narrative conflict, and I think Ganondorf is a perfect vehicle for that kind of story. It would also be an interesting change to a formula that's around 35 years old.
A game where Zelda is the player character should come first, of course, but a Ganondorf game should also be a thing.
The Tragedy of Ganondorf? That sounds spiffy. Probably a bit more grim than mainline Zelda, but an interesting twist for sure.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Uh, mainline Zelda is “the apocalypse is coming, stop it!” Or sometimes “the apocalypse just happened, fix it!” All with various important people getting kidnapped/killed/turned into random things. Grim is definitely in their wheelhouse.
Not being able to pet the dogs (and ride them) is also something I expect in the sequel! Ok, so just petting the dogs.
Petting the dog just needs to be a baseline feature in games. There is a Twitter account based on whether this is something a game allows you to do or not for a reason!
Playing Mario Odyssey (saving this for now turned out to be a good thing for keeping my rabid desire for BotW 2 info somewhat at bay) at the moment and there is a very prominently placed dog wearing a hat early on that you can't pet. Luigi can pet his ghost dog in his game, but Mario can't take a moment to pet this dog that seems to want attention and is also helpful. And said dog is surrounded by sentient cactus people, so he is clearly avoiding pets from them. Luigi is clearly the better friend to mans best friend than Mario and Link, and again, to a ghost dog at that.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Not being able to pet the dogs (and ride them) is also something I expect in the sequel! Ok, so just petting the dogs.
Petting the dog just needs to be a baseline feature in games. There is a Twitter account based on whether this is something a game allows you to do or not for a reason!
Playing Mario Odyssey (saving this for now turned out to be a good thing for keeping my rabid desire for BotW 2 info somewhat at bay) at the moment and there is a very prominently placed dog wearing a hat early on that you can't pet. Luigi can pet his ghost dog in his game, but Mario can't take a moment to pet this dog that seems to want attention and is also helpful. And said dog is surrounded by sentient cactus people, so he is clearly avoiding pets from them. Luigi is clearly the better friend to mans best friend than Mario and Link, and again, to a ghost dog at that.
The thing is Luigi can only pet ghost dogs. He's too scared of normal ones.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
Uh, mainline Zelda is “the apocalypse is coming, stop it!” Or sometimes “the apocalypse just happened, fix it!” All with various important people getting kidnapped/killed/turned into random things. Grim is definitely in their wheelhouse.
I guess while that's fair, it's not like any Zelda game has ended with, "and now, tragically, you are the monster". Which is basically what I'd expect. Something like a better version of Gabriel Belmont from the Lords of Shadow games, or that Paladin guy that became evil in the Warcraft games.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I don't think a game focused on Ganondorf would have to end in a directly tragic way. Let him finish the story a hero, acknowledging that he had to actively make a choice and defy the memories of his past reincarnations to make a positive impact, and remind him (and the player) that future incarnations will also have a choice, and that many of them will make the wrong one. Bittersweet, yes, but not really tragic.
It could be a great story about overcoming generational trauma. A hopeful story.
And if the shrines offered up world lore plus heart/stamina chunks instead of dumbass repetitive tokens? That would've probably turned around my whole opinion of the game. Shrine tokens were just an annoying middleman for real upgrades, so ditch that crap. And the one single most overriding thing I wanted out of the game was to find out about the setting and how it came to be. The game as it is gives you virtually nothing, which makes it feel utterly lifeless and dead to me. It doesn't even offer up decent environmental storytelling elements, just piles of nostalgic rubble and the like. No piecing together stories from bits of armor or where bodies fell, no poking through a ruin and realizing you're walking through the remains of an ancient siege, nothing.
So much of what I like about something like Fallout New Vegas is the mountains of explicit and implicit history. Little things like finding a old skeleton left by somebody killed by a trap, and warning the player what's ahead. Big things like digging through pre-war records to find out House isn't what he tells you. This stuff is just out there to find if you want to, and something that was desperately lacking in BotW. It also doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as Hyrule has been inhabitated since forever; there should be historical information all over the damn place, not a big chunk of geography where somehow every last scrap of writing is gone.
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but the Creating a Champion tie-in book has A LOT of background lore included, such as maps depicting Hyrule as it was before Ganon's attack, the routes refugees took to escape, areas where battles were fought, and even a thorough breakdown of a battle at one fortress detailing the series of key events and movements of Hylian troops and Ganon's forces that took place during the battle. It's around the level of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting sourcebook.
I'm assuming all this lore was reserved for this book instead of in-game text because Nintendo didn't think kids would want to read the sheer amount of lore you can find in games like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dishonored, etc.
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Also never did the sword trials.
Glad that stuff was optional and not forced in a more linear progression style game. I just don't have the time anymore to sit down and dedicate to stuff like that where you can't save.
Steam: betsuni7
Pretty close to the same for me. 90 seeds on the current playthrough, inventory isn't an issue at all unless I'm going on a surfing safari or something.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Sure, that's the end result of any rpg or adventure game of this stripe, when you have a final boss to beat. But if you're just concerned with the final state and not how you got there, you might as well just use cheat codes in all your games. Exploration, experimentation and discovery are all game mechanics, and when you just see a list of tasks to go and do, you miss out on all of those. There's also the empowerment of decision making, of writing your unique story (such as it can be in any video game). Not having the big list of icons on the map initially also forces players to actually pay attention to the landscape and actually look around for things. I know the layout of Hyrule better than I do just about any other open world game I played, at least partly because I had to actually watch where I was going and look for things, and not just head towards an icon. To me these are all things that personify adventure, and I think it's why ubisoft's flood of icons style doesn't really feel that way.
The best "shrines" IMO were the ones where you got to do a fun quest to just find them, then you just win once you go inside automatically cuz you already did the thing. But then I think a lot of that is me just wanting more story out of the game in general. I'm hoping botw2 delivers on that. I want stuff to actually be happening, not just a bunch of rando flashbacks that mean absolutely nothing to the current situation (yeah the flashbacks are nice bits of story, but you can sum them all up with Zelda and Link and champions walk around Hyrule, then they mostly all die for 100 years... I'd say the only one with any actual relevance is the last one you get for collecting all the memories)
I think the important point to say here is, I hope obviously, for you. I love the checklist. I'm not complaining about making the entire world a checklist. If I'm complaining about anything, it's that the items on the list don't exactly feel rewarding, but were required for me to (A) feel like I had beaten the game and (B) actually live through the game. I got in what experimentation I wanted to try out early on as I scoured the map for shrines as I got the towers first thing because I hate not having a map. Then I would hit the shrines on the way to the next tower by . . . marking them on the map and beelining for them.
I literally can't think of a better way to play. That's the way that makes the most sense for me. And when I could no longer find shrines, or quests, or whatever, I commenced with the great walkthroughaning. Because that's also what makes the most sense for me. And man, I missed a lot of things all around the map, things that sure, other people might have picked up on, but I didn't. I'll be honest . . . I'm not exactly observant in real life. There could be a gun fight and bank robbery happening behind me and I'd be like, "gee, that's an odd sound". So the fact that I missed a lot of things heading to where I meant to be going isn't surprising. I'm very very bad with subtle.
Thus why the map icons are much better for me.
You utterly nailed it here, imho. Skyrim is about the player. BotW is about the characters.
I started one of the motion control puzzles upright, and by the end of it I was hanging upside-down off the couch looking "up" at my Switch held over my head :razz:
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I'm trying to figure out how to state that having another 1/4 piece of heart or stamina isn't a reward, but I think what I really mean is, "4 shrines linked together to reward a heart of health feels less rewarding than the dungeons of previous games that would reward you with a new tool in each dungeon, yours to keep that expanded your ability to interact with the game, and everything being breakable except your 4 runes makes the game curve flatten and makes the entire game an exercise in doing tasks for no reward because a puzzle is a task to get to something, not a reward in and of itself; the reward is what you get for solving the puzzle."
Which, I mean, unless you're stating that BotW is an open world puzzle game a la Angry Birds where the 120 stages are the entire point of the game, I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
These two things are not mutually exclusive.
The game needed more well-thought-out dungeons. I liked the Beasts, large creature fights, and exploring.
The game itself felt like eating 30 small meals made entirely of sunflower seeds a day, one seed at a time, and the occasional mid-sized snack. No actual meals until Hyrule Castle.
It's a Wii U game. I'm not sure how much adjustment they made to it after they decided to port it to the Switch, but it'd have to have been originally designed with the assumption of immobility.
I try to cut the game some slack on this because it isn't fair to expect the devs to make over a hundred puzzle rooms that are going to feel interesting and worthwhile to somebody that has been solving puzzle rooms for multiple decades now. And a lot of those puzzle rooms have been in games which are intentionally much much harder than Zelda game puzzles because that's the point of those games. Zelda games do need a certain level of approachability.
Objectively, the puzzle rooms needed to not be the same bland recycled textures. They should've reflected the various regions you find them in so they feel like part of the world, not just something bolted on. Half or a third as many shrines with double or triple the design effort per shrine would've been much better, because the stupid number of shrines is way over into Ubisoft-grade collectible crap.
And if the shrines offered up world lore plus heart/stamina chunks instead of dumbass repetitive tokens? That would've probably turned around my whole opinion of the game. Shrine tokens were just an annoying middleman for real upgrades, so ditch that crap. And the one single most overriding thing I wanted out of the game was to find out about the setting and how it came to be. The game as it is gives you virtually nothing, which makes it feel utterly lifeless and dead to me. It doesn't even offer up decent environmental storytelling elements, just piles of nostalgic rubble and the like. No piecing together stories from bits of armor or where bodies fell, no poking through a ruin and realizing you're walking through the remains of an ancient siege, nothing.
So much of what I like about something like Fallout New Vegas is the mountains of explicit and implicit history. Little things like finding a old skeleton left by somebody killed by a trap, and warning the player what's ahead. Big things like digging through pre-war records to find out House isn't what he tells you. This stuff is just out there to find if you want to, and something that was desperately lacking in BotW. It also doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as Hyrule has been inhabitated since forever; there should be historical information all over the damn place, not a big chunk of geography where somehow every last scrap of writing is gone.
Akkala is a great region, for the record.
The Koroks being all samey was offset by the adorable "oof" sound they'd make when you dropped the rock they were hiding under directly on their heads.
Yeah, you know you did it and you know it was fun.
So, I’m imagining they’d say their line after the whole bit when you find them, so nothing changes unless you speak to them a second time, how about:
Near Kakariko
“You know Impa? Not the first person to be called that; it’s more like a title for Shiekah that serve the royal family.“
Ruins of Arbiter’s Grounds
“Do ya’ ever just think there might be other worlds? Sometimes, at the twilight hour, I think I hear someone giggling. Spooky right? ”
Central Hyrule
“It’s hard to imagine, but once a whole regiment took on those rusted Guardians over there. They... Well, they were very brave.”
Temple of Time
“Long ago people came here to worship the goddess. A sage made their last stand right in front of the statue. Every temple had a sage who dedicated their life to an aspect of the world; fire, water, all that sort of thing. It was different back then.”
Hebra
“It’s freezing! Who’d live up here? Nobody, that’s who!”
https://screenrant.com/zelda-breath-wild-screts-zonai-tribe-faron-lore/
A game where Zelda is the player character should come first, of course, but a Ganondorf game should also be a thing.
In this series I’d settle for a game where a new villain summons Ganondorf only to have him backhand the villain and disappear. He reappears across the map after every plot point, being ominous and brooding over the past. Eventually he turns up in the final battle to seal himself away with the new guy.
The Tragedy of Ganondorf? That sounds spiffy. Probably a bit more grim than mainline Zelda, but an interesting twist for sure.
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Petting the dog just needs to be a baseline feature in games. There is a Twitter account based on whether this is something a game allows you to do or not for a reason!
Playing Mario Odyssey (saving this for now turned out to be a good thing for keeping my rabid desire for BotW 2 info somewhat at bay) at the moment and there is a very prominently placed dog wearing a hat early on that you can't pet. Luigi can pet his ghost dog in his game, but Mario can't take a moment to pet this dog that seems to want attention and is also helpful. And said dog is surrounded by sentient cactus people, so he is clearly avoiding pets from them. Luigi is clearly the better friend to mans best friend than Mario and Link, and again, to a ghost dog at that.
The thing is Luigi can only pet ghost dogs. He's too scared of normal ones.
I guess while that's fair, it's not like any Zelda game has ended with, "and now, tragically, you are the monster". Which is basically what I'd expect. Something like a better version of Gabriel Belmont from the Lords of Shadow games, or that Paladin guy that became evil in the Warcraft games.
It could be a great story about overcoming generational trauma. A hopeful story.
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but the Creating a Champion tie-in book has A LOT of background lore included, such as maps depicting Hyrule as it was before Ganon's attack, the routes refugees took to escape, areas where battles were fought, and even a thorough breakdown of a battle at one fortress detailing the series of key events and movements of Hylian troops and Ganon's forces that took place during the battle. It's around the level of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting sourcebook.
I'm assuming all this lore was reserved for this book instead of in-game text because Nintendo didn't think kids would want to read the sheer amount of lore you can find in games like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dishonored, etc.