Aonuma: OoT was restricting, the BotW format will continue

[mαrkαsscoρ]

Aonuma finds Ocarina of Time format “a bit restricting” now, will continue with Breath of the Wild & Tears of Kingdom format

The Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma recently participated in an interview with Game Informer to celebrate the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which is another fine adventure…

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Not exactly something I wanted to hear, any thoughts?

 

[Gorozoron]

Sad thoughts.

 

[Fraxinus]

But how exactly should this be interpreted? I don't want to jump to the wrong conclusion, but it's not quite the statement I wanted to hear either. I kind of always took BotW to be a gimmick ("of the wild"), that would be reabsorbed into the evolving blueprint for the series. I don't want it to stagnate on this, but I guess we won't know exactly what is meant by this until the next game is announced.

 

[MW7]

I think there is still lots of room for variation. Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword all did a lot of experimenting with new mechanics and ideas even if Ocarina of Time was the blueprint. Tears of the Kingdom is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild so it has a lot in common with it, but the next game could be very different.

 

[thePlinko]

“Zelda was too much like a video game, I only want to make non-games.”

 

[A Link In Time]

Tears of the Kingdom is better than Breath of the Wild so the Zelda team has clearly learned some things from their first attempt at an open world game.

The abilities are better, the shrines are more clever, the dungeons are themed, and the bosses are more unique. Plus, the sky islands and depths add more environmental variety.

My main complaint is that memories are back. I have no idea who on the team thinks they're a good idea. They're not.

I also wish we saw more classic Zelda items return. I miss having a hookshot.

I find it hard to believe we won't see some new games in the classic formula considering these open world games take so long to develop and they'll run out of old games to remake eventually.

 

[Azure Sage]

I'm happy to hear this. What I'd really like to see is them continuing to reinvent the wheel, using BotW and especially TotK as a basis. Open world with a linear storyline and progress gates would be acceptable to me. TotK is almost that, anyway. I just wanna see them keep being inventive. I want them to keep building off of themselves in the amazing ways that TotK has been building off BotW and still have some wild fun along the way.

 

[DJ Twitch]

He sounds like he's referring mostly to the open aspects of gameplay, which isn't really news; BotW was established as the new norm for Zelda before it even came out. The only thing that would have made them reconsider this direction was if TotK failed financially.

 

[Turo602]

It's funny how for so many years I've seen Zelda fans complain about Zelda games being too linear and praising games when there was more choice and freedom involved. Then Breath of the Wild happens and suddenly people want Zelda games to be more restrictive again.

I loved Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker and while Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword get a lot right and even excel in areas where the others might not, I've personally always taken issue with their extremely linear progression and closed off design.

For me, Breath of the Wild felt like the kind of game Zelda always wanted to be but couldn't due to the limitations of the times. It may have come as a shock to many, myself included, just how different an experience Breath of the Wild was to previous entries that got complacent with a successful formula established in 1998. But so much had changed since then and in the midst of games like Assassin's Creed, Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, and Red Dead Redemption, Zelda was doing the same exact thing it did in 2006 that was iterating on a game from 1998, but with motion controls.

Breath of the Wild was a necessary reevaluation of the series and while it may have been lighter on structured gameplay and an epic narrative, what it did bring to the table far outweighed what it had lost because nothing was set in stone yet. Breath of the Wild was merely a foundation for what could be, and we're seeing that today with Tears of the Kingdom.

As long as Breath of the Wild's unconventional approach to specific elements doesn't completely eliminate the series' more traditional aspects, I see no problem with the direction the series is heading in, nor do I see why they can't co-exist without the need for the series to take a few steps back for the sake of nostalgia.

Tears of the Kingdom is already proof of this with the inclusion of dungeons and shrines, unique boss fights and enemy variety, and a stronger emphasis on story while still allowing for the complete freedom and exploration of its world. Is it the perfect mix and balance of the old and new? Maybe, maybe not. But it's still a sequel to Breath of the Wild and there's no reason to believe that future entries won't strike a better compromise that brings out the best in both to create the ultimate Zelda experience.

 

[thePlinko]

So I guess we’re just going to ignore the fact that there is literally nothing that OoT did to restrict the player that wasn’t also present in Z1 or LttP to some degree, as well as the fact that BotW has nothing in common with Z1 whatsoever. I guess whatever Aonuma needs to say to sell more copies of “totally a Zelda game guys we swear.™️”

 

[5teelPriest]

The only thing BotW did that OoT had restrictions on was let you do dungeons in whatever order, solve puzzles in whatever manner, and climb things. You can make a game that follows the general formula established by ALttP and OoT while also making dungeon order malleable. ALBW was a good example of this. As far as solving puzzles in whatever way you want, I think that's a bigger gimmick in BotW and TotK than anything else. Why is that considered to be a strict positive? Would you get as much satisfaction from a crossword puzzle if you filled it out with just random letters? It's okay to have an actual solution to an obstacle in the world. And in a lot of circumstances, it's better that way. I think the same way about climbing and freedom of movement in general. The lead up to the Zora Divine Beast in BotW would be a lot more interesting and engaging if you weren't able to just skip the whole thing. If anything, I think the format employed by BotW and TotK are more restrictive than anything established by previous games. With this format, you can't follow a meaningful, overarching narrative with consequences in the world and you can't have unique puzzles with progression in complexity and difficulty. With the old format....you can't skip the game by launching yourself into the air and flying to the boss. We really threw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

 

[thePlinko]

The only thing BotW did that OoT had restrictions on was let you do dungeons in whatever order, solve puzzles in whatever manner, and climb things. You can make a game that follows the general formula established by ALttP and OoT while also making dungeon order malleable. ALBW was a good example of this. As far as solving puzzles in whatever way you want, I think that's a bigger gimmick in BotW and TotK than anything else. Why is that considered to be a strict positive? Would you get as much satisfaction from a crossword puzzle if you filled it out with just random letters? It's okay to have an actual solution to an obstacle in the world. And in a lot of circumstances, it's better that way. I think the same way about climbing and freedom of movement in general. The lead up to the Zora Divine Beast in BotW would be a lot more interesting and engaging if you weren't able to just skip the whole thing. If anything, I think the format employed by BotW and TotK are more restrictive than anything established by previous games. With this format, you can't follow a meaningful, overarching narrative with consequences in the world and you can't have unique puzzles with progression in complexity and difficulty. With the old format....you can't skip the game by launching yourself into the air and flying to the boss. We really threw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

Not even the lack of a dungeon order is a good comparison between BotW and Z1. Z1 still had a very specific dungeon order, and actually locked you out of doing certain dungeons before others. For that matter, you can do most of the adult dungeons in OoT in any order as well, with the only real restrictions being that the forest temple has to be first and the water temple has to be relatively early (hell, if you manage to figure out how to cross the desert without longshot not even that). The formula as we know it was absolutely invented by Zelda 1, the games in between that and OoT just slowly refined it.

Apart from that, I couldn’t agree more. I think that the series absolutely needed a change after SS, but that doesn’t mean that completely ditching the formula was a good thing. You don’t burn your house down just because you were sick of the way the drapes looked, you just redecorate a bit. The formula was there for a reason, and that reason was because it was fun and unique to Zelda, and now that that’s gone theres a void left over.

I think that the worst part about this is that the series absolutely had both the need and potential for a new gold standard to replace OoT in the same way that OoT replaced LttP. A game that keeps the overall structure, but instead of one off gimmicks it opts to refine the norm. Instead of doing that, though, they just opted to make a game that has literally nothing to do with Zelda whatsoever and said it’s the new norm. If I wanted an open world game where the progression was tied to a stat system as opposed to Zelda’s item based approach I would play literally any other open world game ever.

 

[MW7]

Not even the lack of a dungeon order is a good comparison between BotW and Z1. Z1 still had a very specific dungeon order, and actually locked you out of doing certain dungeons before others. For that matter, you can do most of the adult dungeons in OoT in any order as well, with the only real restrictions being that the forest temple has to be first and the water temple has to be relatively early (hell, if you manage to figure out how to cross the desert without longshot not even that). The formula as we know it was absolutely invented by Zelda 1, the games in between that and OoT just slowly refined it.

You actually can do Fire first because the only eye switch in the Fire Temple leads to the dungeon map, and you can also just climb over a gate instead to get it even though it's not required. A long time ago I did the math and came up with 274 unique orders to complete Ocarina of Time's dungeons and minidungeons, but I just double checked and think I didn't know at the time that the Bottom of the Well is optional so the real number would be around 500 different orders to complete the game. I don't want to guess on the math, but I'm pretty sure it would be less than double what I came up with before. https://zeldadungeon.net/forum/threads/dungeon-orders.27937/ This is all entirely without glitches as glitches allow you to do literally anything in Ocarina of Time.

 

[thePlinko]

You actually can do Fire first because the only eye switch in the Fire Temple leads to the dungeon map, and you can also just climb over a gate instead to get it even though it's not required. A long time ago I did the math and came up with 274 unique orders to complete Ocarina of Time's dungeons and minidungeons, but I just double checked and think I didn't know at the time that the Bottom of the Well is optional so the real number would be around 500 different orders to complete the game. I don't want to guess on the math, but I'm pretty sure it would be less than double what I came up with before. https://zeldadungeon.net/forum/threads/dungeon-orders.27937/ This is all entirely without glitches as glitches allow you to do literally anything in Ocarina of Time.

Oh yeah that’s right. That just proves my point further.

 

[Turo602]

The entire point of Zelda 1 was exploring the unknown and figuring out how to progress on your own. It is an early example of a non-linear game and can be completed without ever touching the sword. To say Breath of the Wild has nothing in common with this core concept that is the very foundation for the series has got to be some of the most disingenuous sh*t I've ever read to try to discredit BotW from being a "real" Zelda game.

Zelda 1 is a notoriously difficult and cryptic game and therefore, the series became more and more structured with obvious paths and solutions. This formula proved to be a success and little by little, non-linear exploration and progression became less prevalent while other aspects were given more attention. Breath of the Wild literally embraces its roots far more than any other game in the franchise because it dared re-examine the evolutionary path the series took which consisted of iteration after iteration with a new gimmick attached.

It wasn't until Breath of the Wild when they finally realized that they could do so much more now than they were able to then that could better realize the very idea of The Legend of Zelda without abiding to arbitrary conventions that have long stagnated the franchise. It's why the overworld in Zelda games have been long criticized for being big empty spaces to make traversal from point a to point b feel more grand, like the Great Sea in Wind Waker and Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. Kinda makes it clear why Skyward Sword went the direction it did with its dungeon-like overworld.

But a simple re-examination of one tiny aspect of the franchise could have easily remedied this problem and it's one of the better aspects introduced in Breath of the Wild, cooking. Why have hearts randomly drop from enemies and cut grass to replinish your health when you can add a whole new layer to the experience by foraging the land for ingredients and hunting animals so you can experiment with different recipes that grants various amounts of health and player buffs? Just like that, the overworld has become more interesting because it now serves a purpose to the player and it could just as easily be applied to past entries to make up for their shortcomings. But of course, that will be breaking a long established convention that matters so much for some reason.

Non-linear exploration, world interaction, and player ingenuity were all important concepts when The Legend of Zelda was being developed on NES and through the years, these elements have either disappeared, been dumb down, or remained stagnant while emphasis was placed on point a to point b exploration, lock and key progression, and item specific puzzle solutions. Yet somehow these games are considered "real" Zelda games while Breath of the Wild is not, despite taking a lot of these elements to new heights by simply re-examining and reapplying them.