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Aonuma: OoT was restricting, the BotW format will continue

Joined
Feb 4, 2022
I'm just...going to repeat what probably a lot of people said already, I haven't played ToTK but: just make more dungeons, there's 120 shrines in Botw and even though not all of them are puzzles, you could cut a lot of them and make actual dungeons throughout this beautiful map? Maybe??
 

DivineDragoness

Bombergirl Xtreme
Joined
Jul 20, 2023
This is kinda discouraging for me, because I was feeling a little worn down after Tears of the Kingdom? Like, Breath of the Wild is my favorite game, but playing it so often made it to where the whole structure of TotK was a little too same-y for me. I found myself enjoying Skyward Sword a little bit more when I played that for the first time recently, probably just because it was brand new to me.

If the open world style remains, I think it'll be more refreshing when it comes back and isn't still directly built on the shoulders of BotW. Like, different art style, completely different map, things like that. It'll probably make my desire for a more SS-like game not be as strong as this time around.
 
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Ronin

There you are! You monsters!
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Location
Alrest
What is the point of calling a tried but true formula "too restrictive" whenever the gameplay in the modern interpretation is complete and utter jank? BotW tried to reinvent the wheel by becoming Assassin's Creed with a stamina wheel, and now TotK lets the player essentially put Legos together with extraordinary building options. All of the collective mechanics are truly impressive when applied to an openworld setting--launching Link straight into the skybox, for instance--but then all of the fun is sucked right out of it with one aspect in particular: traversal. Getting anywhere in this game is an utter joke, and that includes with all of the crazy builds, because let's face it, the vehicle controls play like something out of the Gamecube era.

Want to make something that's fast and can take you anywhere easily? Too bad, drain your battery in 5 seconds. Want to easily explore the Depths without worrying about the gloom? Might as well run straight into a wall that you can't turn out of because either the devs were too lazy, or Yunobutt's fatso self got stuck on it. Point is, if the mechanics of a "sandbox" don't allow you to have fun due to clunky gameplay, then why even bother immersing in them? Just give us the Master Cycle back, because even though it was an absolute resource drain, at least it was fast and behaved competently (discounting the idiotic eviction from high places, of course).

But surely the crafting was well done, right? After all, it's such a highly venerated part of the game, garnering universal praise from esteemed journalists across the globe, that nothing could possibly be wrong. Nope, turns out that the journos are paid hacks who wish to remain in Nintendo's good graces, blissfully unaware of the ironic incompetence between the two. Basic crafting controls are inverted, an unintuitive move that takes up more time than it should. Trying to position a log to a plank only for it to veer diagonally because of the pisspoor controls is exactly the kind of bass-ackwards thing you'd expect from "modern Zelda". Nintenstilldon't know how to keep up with the times.

Putting that aside for a moment, does the traversal from Breath of the Wild now extract bursts of sheer joy when ascending a cliffside? Has Aonuma finally resolved to tweak the gameplay so that it's not as much of a chore? The answer is of course a big fat Nope because quantity over quality. Climbing still sucks, rain still sucks, horse controls still suck, combat still sucks, the world continues to turn on its axis, and naturally weapon degredation is still a thing. What would you expect, Mr. Eiji?

The majority of these gripes could be resolved by connecting what made the past games so great with the contemporary setting. Items used to be a huge part of the adventure; nevertheless they were mainly relegated to puzzle solving or progressing in dungeons. Imagine taking that same principle and applying it to the overworld: A revised spin on the Hook/Clawshot that attached to vines on cliffs, cutting down on tedious climbing considerably. The Bunny Hood that could make Link run faster at the cost of slightly more stamina. A Lens of Truth that could reveal nearby secrets in the world if the player got lost looking for certain items. All of these are leaps and bounds better than the scarcity of originality that fusing random materials to your gear does not cure. Is it worth mentioning here that half the playtime might as well be menuing to find a certain material that isn't grouped properly? Put all the Keese eyeballs together, ffs.

Two games in and modern Zelda has fallen to the wayside. I'd rather take 6-8 formulaic dungeons over an entire field of unengaging puzzles affixed to a crappy crafting system, not to mention the poopy rewards of certain forest-dwellers. Make a world that's actually full of substance, one that is worth exploring with plenty of stuff to discover and interesting stories to partake in...instead of the rehash of a world that is still empty and lackluster. Third time will either be the charm or strike that places the series out of favor. And stop using a half-baked Mii creator to drop some of the worst turds [ie. Bolson] into existence. It's getting old.
 
Joined
May 4, 2014
Location
California
What is the point of calling a tried but true formula "too restrictive" whenever the gameplay in the modern interpretation is complete and utter jank? BotW tried to reinvent the wheel by becoming Assassin's Creed with a stamina wheel, and now TotK lets the player essentially put Legos together with extraordinary building options. All of the collective mechanics are truly impressive when applied to an openworld setting--launching Link straight into the skybox, for instance--but then all of the fun is sucked right out of it with one aspect in particular: traversal. Getting anywhere in this game is an utter joke, and that includes with all of the crazy builds, because let's face it, the vehicle controls play like something out of the Gamecube era.

Want to make something that's fast and can take you anywhere easily? Too bad, drain your battery in 5 seconds. Want to easily explore the Depths without worrying about the gloom? Might as well run straight into a wall that you can't turn out of because either the devs were too lazy, or Yunobutt's fatso self got stuck on it. Point is, if the mechanics of a "sandbox" don't allow you to have fun due to clunky gameplay, then why even bother immersing in them? Just give us the Master Cycle back, because even though it was an absolute resource drain, at least it was fast and behaved competently (discounting the idiotic eviction from high places, of course).

But surely the crafting was well done, right? After all, it's such a highly venerated part of the game, garnering universal praise from esteemed journalists across the globe, that nothing could possibly be wrong. Nope, turns out that the journos are paid hacks who wish to remain in Nintendo's good graces, blissfully unaware of the ironic incompetence between the two. Basic crafting controls are inverted, an unintuitive move that takes up more time than it should. Trying to position a log to a plank only for it to veer diagonally because of the pisspoor controls is exactly the kind of bass-ackwards thing you'd expect from "modern Zelda". Nintenstilldon't know how to keep up with the times.

Putting that aside for a moment, does the traversal from Breath of the Wild now extract bursts of sheer joy when ascending a cliffside? Has Aonuma finally resolved to tweak the gameplay so that it's not as much of a chore? The answer is of course a big fat Nope because quantity over quality. Climbing still sucks, rain still sucks, horse controls still suck, combat still sucks, the world continues to turn on its axis, and naturally weapon degredation is still a thing. What would you expect, Mr. Eiji?

The majority of these gripes could be resolved by connecting what made the past games so great with the contemporary setting. Items used to be a huge part of the adventure; nevertheless they were mainly relegated to puzzle solving or progressing in dungeons. Imagine taking that same principle and applying it to the overworld: A revised spin on the Hook/Clawshot that attached to vines on cliffs, cutting down on tedious climbing considerably. The Bunny Hood that could make Link run faster at the cost of slightly more stamina. A Lens of Truth that could reveal nearby secrets in the world if the player got lost looking for certain items. All of these are leaps and bounds better than the scarcity of originality that fusing random materials to your gear does not cure. Is it worth mentioning here that half the playtime might as well be menuing to find a certain material that isn't grouped properly? Put all the Keese eyeballs together, ffs.

Two games in and modern Zelda has fallen to the wayside. I'd rather take 6-8 formulaic dungeons over an entire field of unengaging puzzles affixed to a crappy crafting system, not to mention the poopy rewards of certain forest-dwellers. Make a world that's actually full of substance, one that is worth exploring with plenty of stuff to discover and interesting stories to partake in...instead of the rehash of a world that is still empty and lackluster. Third time will either be the charm or strike that places the series out of favor. And stop using a half-baked Mii creator to drop some of the worst turds [ie. Bolson] into existence. It's getting old.
Because the series started open world. You can go everywhere connected to land from the start. It'll just take longer and you might not make it, once tougher enemies start popping up.

Linear item gating started as early as Zelda 2. You need a hammer to take down the big boulders, a jump spell to get up tall cliffs, a raft to cross the ocean to the next continent, and a flute to dispel the river devil.

The series became increasingly restrictive as it progressed. Past felt so boxed in and the player was stymied by...rocks that anyone could easily step over, or pick-up and toss,without the need for strength enhancing gloves. Not to mention the dark world is very fragmented which made it irritating to navigate.

From then on most games were variations on that. Start game. Explore. Be stopped dead in your tracks by lack of items and plot points. Open up new area. Repeat. How is that not restrictive?

Skyward and Spirit Tracks took linearity to the extremes. Thematically for ST it makes sense to be literally railroaded. But why do you have to go up in the sky and then choose a save statue in Skyward everytime you want to go up to one of the 3 regions instead of traversing by land? That's dumb.

Windwaker and Worlds started heading back towards the series initial nature, but still had some restrictions about when you are allowed to progress.

Breath was the first to be closest to the original in a long time, but made decisions like tossing proper dungeons, introducing crappy weapons, and added interesting things like hunting, foraging, and cooking.

Tears brought back dungeons. But not having played it myself, I can't comment on it properly.
 
Joined
Jul 28, 2023
Regardless of whether or not one likes BotW's approach, I don't think anyone is surprised BotW will be the foundation of the franchise from now on.

What did surprise me is how TotK is quite frankly a bust. It was the definition of "You had ONE job".
The biggest gripe the fanbase at large had with BotW was that the main dungeons were bad.

And what does TotK do to fix that? Pretty much nothing.

It's just not believable that they had all this creative power and inspiration for over 100 shrines, twice, and couldn't string together a decent main dungeon.

The lack of items is not an excuse either. You get new abilities to complete those, so there's obviously a way to make them legit good.

Right now, that's my main concern. They haven't shown the ability to effectively build on BotW and resorted to all kinds of gimmicks on a direct sequel. It's been one game and people are already having the same kinds of discussions about how the games are formulaic and stale. That's a huge problem.

And don't get me started on the so-called "story" they had in this game.
 
Joined
Jul 20, 2016
Well I haven't read all the opinions but I find BotW and TotK to be semi-linear, it's just disorganized. You can't beat X enemy until you have Y strength which requires Z orbs to get whatever container which is best gotten after you do one larger dungeon and so on and so forth.

The really intense open world games like Minecraft still center around the primal goal of "power up." I don't know, I guess I just see the open world idea as a basic annoying trend of a kind that doesn't really mean anything or alter the primary game experience that much.

So as someone who leans towards liking the Ocarina of Time era, I don't think they're really giving up on the core formulas. TotK what I played was already feeling more linear than BotW.
 
Joined
Apr 20, 2023
Gender
Male
I've always thought that open world games mean less story and progression, seeing as anywhere is available to you, so there's no endgame areas that feel endgame, and that the story can be completed out of order (at least for TotK) and therefore cna be messed up and leaving the player not understanding things.

I do think a semi-open world game works best, allowing the player to explore a lot without restriction, but still have areas meant for early, mid and endgame. The story could still be linear or told in chunks, so the player can experience more of it without getting lost or seeing things out of order. I mean, going from chapter 1 in Harry potter to 2, 3 and then 8, 12 and so on kind of ruins everything.

Also, having the story be set in the past through those scenes restricts most of the story to that past, so there's less that's happening in the present and potentially less to happen in the future.

But I do hope dungeon items do make a return. I've always wanted items from 2D Zeldas in a 3d game, like the Roc's cape, those many rods they have etc.

Would very much like an instrument, too. It's fun to play.
And empty bottles, too. They're good. They could do 1 dmg and never break, too. Or maybe break and you can buy or find more.
 
Joined
Jul 28, 2023
I do think a semi-open world game works best, allowing the player to explore a lot without restriction, but still have areas meant for early, mid and endgame.
BotW did this well tbh.

It's clear that the Dueling Peaks/Kakariko/Hateno area is supposed to be early-game, Zora's Domain as early-mid, then Death Mountain/Desert as the late-mid game.

Central Hyrule and Hyrule Castle are obvious endgame areas.

Even taking into consideration the enemy scaling, I went early to Death Mountain once and Black Lizalfos were a lot more prevalent than I was expecting.
Ruta is supposed to be the first Beast based on a lot of factors, but the Zora weapons stand out as proof of that because of their stats.

The story could still be linear or told in chunks, so the player can experience more of it without getting lost or seeing things out of order.
It's kind of silly that TotK's memories are still tied to specific places. They should've made them progressive, as in, the first one you find shows the 1st cutscene no matter where you found it, and so on.

TotK's story is bad enough as is. Having game mechanics that mess it up even further is just bad design.
 
Joined
Feb 5, 2011
I'd say both can still work
Have a smaller group, maybe a different developer, go with the OOT formula, while the big boys follow BOTW/TOTK formula.
 

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