I'm just waiting for some hack website to come up with an article titled "Ori Dev TRASHES Zelda" or something similar.
I absolutely love the game but I agree with most of your points except one, and that's the size of the world. I do enjoy the feeling of "emptiness" the game sometimes has, as weird as it sounds. I find it very relaxing to just ride across the land without having to "worry" that I'm missing out on content left and right, just looking at the game (it helps that I think the game looks absolutely gorgeous). I'm usually very tormented by the notion of having to "100% complete" every game but since this game is so big and so open that feeling never really sets in. Obviously that's a very personal thing.

thomasmahler said:

so that you already KNOW what you're supposed to do, since you've done that stuff before, but now we're upping the difficulty by a notch to test if you've been advancing in skill since the first time we challenged you.

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Again, you're thinking additively which is not the appropriate approach to take when dealing with a vast number of shrines. Having challenges that practically demand to be taken in a particular order works only in compact environments where the player doesn't have a billion variables to think about before eventually reaching the correct solution.

BotW is all about freedom. Freedom in choosing which direction to go in, so you have to make it so that players of all skill levels accomplish meaningful goals wherever you go. Secondly, the freedom of tackling an obstacle by using creativity and not necessarily in the pre determined fashion predicted by the developer is not only possible, but encouraged in BotW. It's a different philosophy, one that is preferred if you set out to make a game that wants to stay competitive in today's AAA market.

BOTW's Open World actually feels like a designed level in the majority of cases. I've never played an Open World game that had that feeling before.

To the OP : It's pretty stupid to have a "game dev perspective" if you don't talk at all about the intents of the authors of a game. You're just talking about "fun" and technical stuff but you don't have a single word on what these game design choices mean and are doing to the player's feelings. There's no analysis and it certainly isn't what I would call a "game dev perspective", it's just your personal perspective, limited to tiny details without trying to understand the game as systems, new approach to these systems compared to what Nintendo wanted to achieve (i.e. you don't build a vast open world to make a vast open world, you do it because this is a game about being lost in a hostile world where you'll be on an adventure, you can't do this in small spaces)
You're missing a lot, you are sometimes of bad faith and you don't talk about things that BotW does to change the open world standard design.

Jobbs said:

The horse system is a good example.

I didn't know how to tame horses initially, but I expected a deep system because of hype. I found a black horse that I thought was pretty and I was trying to tame it. If I snuck up and mounted it, it would attempt to buck me off. Initially I was trying to time my button presses to stay on, and kept getting bucked off. I assumed that since the systems run deep and everything is complex and realistic that I could tame him by repeatedly trying to mount him and that eventually he'd get used to me. No, that's not the case at all. All you need to do is spam the button faster and/or have more stamina.

Next: Bond level. I assumed you grew a bond over time by cooperating with the horse and getting used to eachother. Nah. I mean, that might work, but you can just force apples into its mouth for a minute until its bond level is maxed out. Because, you know, if you think something should work, it works.

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So strange to complain about this. It's a deeper system than any game of this sort has ever had, but because you can't literally play Horse Simulator 2017: Hyrule Edition within BotW you hold it against the game?

Horses have different characteristics/stats, some are easier to tame than others, as you say you can feed them so for example baiting a horse you want to catch with food makes it easier to catch, there's quite a few nuances to this small, small part of the game.

Just seems as though more and more complaints have started popping up about BotW that are sort of "well, it does thing better than any open world game in existance, but why isn't it even better?".

mStudios said:

A "10/10" doesn't mean its perfect, doesn't mean its the greatest game ever made and cant be beaten.

Its simple,

The game:

-Has a new brand formula(m) and it works out pretty well.
-It's better from the past title, specially if those games were good.
-The game, even with its new formula, has the same "feel" from the previous games.

The same applies to Mario Galaxy.

In my opinion*

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10 out of 10 just means to me that it is one of the greatest games that the reviewer has played.

I didn't play BotW yet, but that was still interesting read. My favorite open world game of all time remains Batman: Arkham City and one of the main reasons why is because of how small the open world was. It was insanely detailed, filled to the brim with activities. It made traveling very brisk and also made me get to know the whole map really well. I explored to see every single inch of that world.

I still enjoyed Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight, but they got too big. I could never be bothered to explore every inch of that world. I even got impression that AK's city was somehow less detailed than Arkham City's one, even though that's likely not true.

My only gripe so far, and I'm over 50 hours in, is the inventory management. Not a big fan. Too much to scroll through.

Also, please give me a Monster Hunter-esque armor set quick change. Sucks having to swap head gear, leggings, and body armor all the time.

I agree with Thomas's OP about the redundancy of the game. But not completely actually.

It's unfair to say the shrines are all the same and interchangeable when they have themed puzzle. You say it would be nice if the death mountain had shrines with fire. I don't know about that (i went here but it's too hot damn!) but i know for exemple the shrines around the bird's city are all about wind and have different type of puzzle.

Now i agree that the combat shrines are boring and all the same.

The game clearly has a way of filling the world with, indeed, a lot of repetitive patterns.

But i don't agree about the scale of the world problem. It's perfect. And more than that, it's the real star here. I think that's the soul and the genius of the game. Not the shrines, not any individual challenge, but that world, and the way it feels connected.

They say in the making of video that they used Kyoto to scale it, cause they knew the distances between things and if it would be right. And it's perfect. Things are far away and big enough to give you that exploration feeling, while never too far so that it's still a big playground (like Link to the Past at a different scale). And that world feels like a giant playground cause it's filled with level design. It's not procedural or random. Everything has been done by level designers.

It's the repetition of those somewhat simple and redundant things, like hunting, looking for mushrooms, finding kokoros etc.. that gives the game its flaw. I find the shrines somewhat simple and not that well designed sometimes, or repetitive, but i'm always SO happy when i find one and i'm like what will it be! That's the whole thing about the game.

It's not about the shrine in itself, it's about the joy to find that red light behind a rock after climbing the right way to reach a point with your stamina. The game is all about exploring and reaching areas.

orioto said:

But i don't agree about the scale of the world problem. It's perfect. And more than that, it's the real star here. I think that's the soul and the genius of the game. Not the shrines, not any individual challenge, but that world, and the way it feels connected.

Click to expand...

In the end, it's 'another game dev' s personal niggles with the game' and just that: personal niggles.

For me the world size has also been perfect so far. Its big and to some extend empty. Rarely though, there's always wildlife or resources around, even in 'empty' stretches. But it contributes to believability. Creating an open world where all settlements are closely huddled together with a small space serving as land in between being referred to as 'planes of whatnot' or some such, is just as unbelievable as the corridor and hub area world found in previous Zeldas.

Much more important, the game gets player agency in relation to the world size right. Don't want to run across the road, picking up every flower? Take a horse. Climbed up a mountain? No need to laboriously climb down again, the glider rewards you for reaching high spots with fast travel to all the points in the immediate vicinity. Don't want to explore every nook and cranny? Don't, it's optional. Have already traveled somewhere and don't want to go there on foot again? Teleport to a nearby shrine. And the shrines in themselves serving as both landmarks and exploration targets to draw your attention somewhere in addition to being teleport targets is very, very elegant. Not to mention that solving them breaks up the exploration pace with often neat puzzles and rewards you with means of improving Link's capabilities.

From a designer's perspective, I'm not sure I necessarily agree with the world in BotW being too large for its own good. I believe it does its job to let the player always have:
1. a long term goal (ie. reach ____ Village)
2. a few medium term goals (ie. climb that tower/access that one shrine along the way)
3. plenty of short term goals sidetracking him (look, a deer! and what's that hole over there for?)

By making the world smaller, they should have found a way to preserve this balance.

Maybe we would have lost some repetition, sure, but all the major landmarks would also be much closer to each other, moving even long term goals into the medium term and detracting from the overall feel of adventure and discovery.

I'm sure the vastness becomes significantly less interesting once the whole map is figured out, and after traversing it multiple times. Fast travel may help, and the abundance of traversal methods already at the player's disposal does too, but perhaps the designers could have come up with even better ways to move faster and more efficiently once there's less surprises left to be found in the later stages of the game: flying mounts, aquatic mounts, more buffs to make climbing and movement speed faster or to reduce slipping when it's raining, etc.

At the same time, one could also argue that, by the time you reach that point, you're probably either ready to go and finish the game, or being a completionist and thus prolonging yourself a game that is already over.

I find myself much more in agreement towards the clunkiness of the interface, with too many operations requiring menus and multiple steps that could have been streamlined easily, and the lack of ways to counter common annoyances (mostly rain getting too much in the way of one of the main mechanics, climbing).

Also, to keep advanced players interested in combat (instead of running away or abusing bombs to avoid damaging their stronger weapons), at least some limited equipment scaling for the enemies to keep up a little bit with the gear found by the player throughout the game. That would have been useful as well.

These, together with the main dungeons being far too simple (as cool as they are, being ), are probably points that, in my opinion, could (and should) be improved significantly in a follow-up game.

pringles said:

So strange to complain about this. It's a deeper system than any game of this sort has ever had, but because you can't literally play Horse Simulator 2017: Hyrule Edition within BotW you hold it against the game?

Horses have different characteristics/stats, some are easier to tame than others, as you say you can feed them so for example baiting a horse you want to catch with food makes it easier to catch, there's quite a few nuances to this small, small part of the game.

Just seems as though more and more complaints have started popping up about BotW that are sort of "well, it does thing better than any open world game in existance, but why isn't it even better?".

Click to expand...

I'm trying to explain why I think this game is an 8 instead of a 10. I have to spend time talking about all that it's missing and how some of the hyperbole around aspects of it were overblown to make that point.

I really liked playing the game, on the whole, particularly the first two days.

Jobbs said:

I'm trying to explain why I think this game is an 8 instead of a 10. I have to spend time talking about all that it's missing and how some of the hyperbole around aspects of it were overblown to make that point..

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To you. Then you go on to explain why it fell short of your personal expectations. But those are just that: personal expectations. With examples like the "horse simulation", which may actually be absolutely perfectly balanced in terms of complexity in relation to what it needs to achieve for others.

You must know that expectations are a bitch. They may ruin what is otherwise perfectly fine in your personal perception. Obviously other people's expectations where met pretty well by BotW with nothing too much in the way of letting them feel that it's a 10/10 game. Those feelings too are personal, but there's no point in arguing that they're wrong or right. Especially not pointing out by things that are non-issues to others, because their expectations let them enjoy them for what they are.

And in this regards, averaging over the review is actually a pretty useful aggregation under the assumption that scores are not biased: if the vast majority feels the game is about perfect and few people score it very poor, the game may have issues, that most people won't find to be serious. The still rather high average reflects that the likelyness of people liking the game is rather high. It does not invalidate average, "just good" or negative opinions either, but they're then outliers.

Well it's obviously a personal opinion as a game dev than just a game dev. Not all game devs like to make the same games. Not even sure what most of ubi likes to make with those open worlds. Not very artistic.

I agree 100% with the combat pausing and the UI changes that should be made. These are (imo) very simple things that should not have been released in the manner they were. Someone, probably multiple someones, had to have played it and at some point said "wait a minute, maybe if we try it this way..." How that didn't happen is beyond me.

Same deal with the rain. I'm just a player not a dev or anything and I'd be interested to hear your perspective on wtf they were thinking with regards to not being able to climb in it. How could they think this was a good idea?

Anyway aside from those complaints (and some others I already made a thread about) the game is absolutely amazing. I love it. One of my favorites so far in 30 years of gaming.

As for everything else, I'm not far enough into the game to really say. The size of the world seems absolutely massive to me but so far that's been fine. I'm only 3 areas deep into the game though so I don't know if the shrines are going to feel super repetitive to me or not. They certainly look the same so I could agree with cosmetic changes but at the same time I'm not particularly bothered by it. So far they've been more of a distraction to me. Like looking for Korok seeds is one, doing side quests is another, getting a horse was one, looking for gems/rupees etc to buy stuff is yet another...I probably will do all 120 shrines, but I don't necessarily feel the need to.


And I'll just spoiler tag the rest since it talks about a couple of the early game quests and isn't necessarily relevant to the topic. I wanted to point out a couple of small things that I thought were great with regards to the quests.

Jobbs said:

I'm trying to explain why I think this game is an 8 instead of a 10. I have to spend time talking about all that it's missing and how some of the hyperbole around aspects of it were overblown to make that point.

I really liked playing the game, on the whole, particularly the first two days.

Click to expand...

Fair enough but I think wanting/expecting some aspects to be deeper or more fully fleshed out is not the same as those things being "missing" when they are in fact missing from nearly every other game in existance other than BotW. I'd encourage you to watch the GDC talk about the game if you haven't and especially listen to how they talk about the balance between realism and playability. Increasing the complexity of for example the horses would very likely make it less fun and less playable. Removing the way time stops when you change weapons would make it more realistic and more difficult, but also make it less playable and fun.

In the end the game isn't really about one specific aspect of the game being extremely deep and complex, but rather the "multiplicative gameplay" that emerges when several different systems interact with eachother. This runs through everything in the game, which is why for example I don't agree with complaints about shrines all being the same. Just about every shrine has multiple different solutions, secret chests etc. And some of the shrines are just rewards for solving puzzles that are actually outside in the overworld, completely unique challenges. It's certainly far beyond what other open world games do with their countless minor variations of cut-and-paste corridors with some enemies thrown in.

SMgamer83 said:

Hi Developer! Another fellow developer here. I love the thoughtfulness of your feedback, as it's well written. I however feel like you are looking at it from the wrong player perspective, which is limiting how you can perceive the game. Please allow me to give you some rebuttal.



First, as a developer, you need to understand there are a LOT of types of players out there. You played the game to completion, which is something for an average game, is usually around 5% of your audience at best. Most players won't do everything in your game. This doesn't mean you need to make that 100% experience any worse, but it does mean you need to make sure the experience works for all player types. I'll get into that a bit more...



So, normally I would agree with you. I also personally HATE open world games. However, it's very important here to note that Nintendo's primary goal here was to make a game like Zelda 1, a game like Miyamoto's old experiences as a child exploring, a game where you are truly on an adventure. Exploring a large vast world. I don't disagree with your philosophy at Moon, but I do think player experience is being ignored if you have a hard and fast rule. In this case, Nintendo is focusing on pacing and separation, where they want the player to look around, choose a goal, journey towards that goal, then experience that goal. Each element of that player journey should be meaningful. If it was too short or dense, then choice paralysis can kick in, as well that part of the journey is no longer meaningful, and instead becomes a chore.


As a developer, I'm sure you understand the concept of limited resources, so the question comes is it worth that artists time, or that engineers time, and for what gain? So a small puzzle will feel a little different? That's probably not the best use of resources, that could instead go somewhere else.

In addition, as I mentioned about player experience, not every player is going to do every shrine. If 95% of your audience will only do half the shrines, is it that detrimental if a few repeat (and let's be fair, they don't actually REPEAT, they are just super similar...no different that certain stars in Mario 64 for example.)



So if I sound harsh, I apologize...but this is where you're missing that Nintendo design mentality. Each shrine was designed in a way that it could be your first. (I know, you're thinking Major ones wouldn't fit that bill.) But the point is if you had such a stark difference in difficulty, you risk ruining a players experience because they happened to stumble onto this particular shrine. Each shrine is meant to be about the same, and could be your very first.

The same is true with Korok seeds. They are meant to be a small thing to reward being observant. That's it. Not some series of challenges to overcome with a difficulty curve. It's clear that's why there are 900 of them...and why you hear most players go "Wow I only have like 40-60!" They are meant to cover a wide range of player experiences, so the likeliness of people finding a few is very high.


Same comments as before. I kind of agree with this one, but everything comes at a cost. When I saw my 3rd skull cave with a lantern hanging though, I wondered if it's a bit much as well. This could just be some small level design of making sure similar structure types feel different enough.


There's a lot in this one so let me try to break it down.
If combat didn't pause, it would likely be to difficult for a large audience. Again, Nintendo's goal is accessibility, and while I know it sort of "dampers the experience" for seasoned gamers, trying to imagine a less skilled gamer running from enemies trying to bring out the next weapon seems less than ideal for that audience.

Shield Surfing is indeed complex. I agree with that. As a developer though, pointing out the problem is 10% of the battle. The other 90% is finding a better solution. Thought?

And lastly I watched that UI video. While it starts off well enough, the solution is sort of specialized. The suggested UI that pops up would ONLY WORK for chest instances. If this UI popped up each time you tried to pick up a weapon, that would pause game play even more, which would be really annoying every time you accidentally picked up a stick. It does improve the chest opening part though for sure! So again, its a question of resources and return.


I haven't done enough to get a full grasp here, but overall I'd likely agree. These always seem like super optional stuff, which is why they never seem that meaningful.


You'd of course be right. Again, resources. Nintendo chose to focus on the WORLD, not the dungeons. I'd barely even call the beasts dungeons.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Knowing how GAF works, I likely put too much time into a response no one will read anyway. If you have any questions, PM me as I don't read GAF that often anymore.

Click to expand...

10/10 would read again.

MTC100 said:

I don't really get the hype about open world, I never was a real fan of it as it's basically always lying to the player. "see that mountain? you can go there" is what they tell you, in the end you often can't go there or if, then because you used some kind of glitch. I like the openworld of the Witcher, it's not too big, not too small but it still limits the player in where he or she can go.

Breath of the Wild is the other way around, the size seems too big but it doesn't tell you where you are allowed to go and where not, there are no invisible walls or unclimbable terrain that are holding you back. However, they are planning a rather big addon for Winter this year, perhaps they will fill some of this vast open world with more interesting stuff with it?

Click to expand...

Wait what? You want limits?

I have had zero issue with the size of this game. It's scaled perfectly for me so that I always have stuff popping up on the horizon that I wanna check out, but it still feels like I went through something to get there.

"Oh there's a ruin over there, I wanna check that out."
"Oh now there's a weird rock formation over there I wanna check that out."
"Oh look some boars. I need meat."
"Oh a chest underwater."
"Oh there's an enemy camp, I bet they have a chest."
"Oh that's totally a korok thing over there. "
"Oh I can see a shrine from here now. "


It goes like that again and again. It nails that feeling of adventure, loaded with breadcrumbs around, wanting to lead you different ways. Whether or not I find anything meaningful is kinda irrelevant. I find cool stuff often enough that I feel rewarded for the effort, but it's also not so generous to the point where it's not special.

Nice post, OP. I agree with most of it, the exception perhaps being the size of the world. I reckon it could be a little bit smaller, but I don't actually think it is detrimental to the game. It has enough content to feel interesting.

My biggest annoyance is weapon durability. I really don't mind weapons breaking when fighting enemies, but they shouldn't break when you shield surf or solve Stasis puzzles. I love surfing but rarely do it because otherwise I would end up with no shields, and Stasis puzzles end up being frustrating a lot of the times because the reward for solving them are usually not as good as all the weapons you lost in the process.

That being said, it is one of my favourite games in recent memory, and the physics engine is so much fun to play with. It success by allowing players to achieve the same goal in so many different ways that the game remains fresh even with all the repetition already mentioned.

Human Trashcan said:

I agree mostly on the shrines, there's little to nothing to differentiate them,

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This is objectively wrong. How does one type this with a straight face?

Shaanyboi said:

I have had zero issue with the size of this game. It's scaled perfectly for me so that I always have stuff popping up on the horizon that I wanna check out, but it still feels like I went through something to get there.

"Oh there's a ruin over there, I wanna check that out."
"Oh now there's a weird rock formation over there I wanna check that out."
"Oh look some boars. I need meat."
"Oh a chest underwater."
"Oh there's an enemy camp, I bet they have a chest."
"Oh that's totally a korok thing over there. "
"Oh I can see a shrine from here now. "


It goes like that again and again. It nails that feeling of adventure, loaded with breadcrumbs around, wanting to lead you different ways. Whether or not I find anything meaningful is kinda irrelevant. I find cool stuff often enough that I feel rewarded for the effort, but it's also not so generous to the point where it's not special.

Click to expand...

I couldn't agree with this more. I felt the same way.

OP, I understand that this is your opinion, and completely valid to you. At the same time, to me, your post comes across as one saying "I don't like open world games. Now, I plan to point out frustrations I have with this open world game, because I don't like open world games."

The world never feels too big to me. It takes a special kind of open world game to pull me in now-a-days, as I've become pretty burned out on them; but this game has hooked me. There is always something around that I'd like to investigate, and I never feel penalized for letting my ADHD tendencies take over and pull me in a different direction. I get the feeling that I will reach the end of this game and have only completed maybe 30-40% of the content, but I'm OK with that. This is my experience with the game, and I'm of the age and mindset now that, as long as I'm having fun, I don't mind if I miss content on my way to the end. I never want to get to the point where I'm frustrated, looking for the 900th Korok. I will experience what I experience on my way to Ganon, enjoying the freedom and exploration the extremely large and open world presents me with.

I guess I mean to say that, to me, it feels like free-form gaming. I'm creating my own story within the playground they've presented me with, all the while being drawn to the path the developers wanted me to take.

I'll agree with you about variety of shrines. Would be nice to have likd, a random cave entrance you stumble upon be a shrine, in keeping with the idea of discovery.

I'll also say a smaller world could have been more manageable, like maybe it would have allowed you to ditch the shrine alert, as you'd just stumble into more.

But really, the size I think was great actually. You only get the sense of discovery if not every mountain peak you climb has something on it.

NimbusD said:

I'll agree with you about variety of shrines. Would be nice to have likd, a random cave entrance you stumble upon be a shrine, in keeping with the idea of discovery...

Click to expand...

It's been a while, but i remember finding a shrine inside a cave i walked upon randomly on the side of a cliff (i removed the shrine locator sound effect so it came at a surprise).

Jobbs said:

Doesn't happen overnight.

GTA4 has a 98 mc. -- I remember when GTA4 came out. I remember the hype, and the "this game.." type comments for that game.

I can't speak for all people, but it certainly seems that a lot of people don't like GTA4 now. I'm certainly one of them.

Right now people are blinded by how amazing it is that a dog spins when you spin (but it can't fetch a stick) or saying "this game..." because a horse ate an apple but the excitement of simple, shallow, pointless interactions with a game do wear off eventually.


I mean we're in a thread made by a developer who was fairly critical of the game.

Also GTA4 98
MGS4 94

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Right now all the detail that Nintendo added can be appreciated by most and is the reason why the game has taken the industry by storm. It's the addition of all the small details that culminates to an experience like no other. It's all right, son, you can accept it.

Prefacing that I loved Ori, and didn't play too much of this game yet (about 4 hours, maybe a bit more)... But the "fun per inch" thing really annoys me as a mentality.

Sure it works work for a 2d game like Ori, or a more controlled, fast paced experience, but it's such a small minded way to approach the medium as a whole.

It's probably why modern open world games feel the need to fill their worlds with crap activities and just cram an "encounter" every other step, forgetting the very nature behind an open world being the sense of inhabiting a real space.

When I'm supposed to be lost in the desert, but I can't walk 20 meters without running into bandits, npc, monster nests, or whatever other little nugget of "fun" the devs think I need, I can't but wonder why they even bothered building and open world in the first place.

Let the space breathe, don't be afraid to leave the player to themselves every once in a while, it's OK to not be hyper stimulated at all times when playing a game.
Look at the larger picture and you'll see value in emptiness and value in silence.


It's really the equivalent of cramming epic climactic music for the whole duration of the song, without ever letting the silence and slower tempo take the wheel for a while.

For a proof of how this can work, just look at Shadow of the Colossus, that game literally has an "empty map", a massive one to boot, and it's one of the most natural, immersive and beautiful open worlds ever created, even with those crappy ps2 graphics.

I really am troubled thinking how someone with a "fun per inch" philosophy, could enjoy a Bela Tarr or Tarkovsky movie (or any other slow paced movie), and I would genuinely like to know if and why videogames shouldn't share with them the value of holding on to a scene, letting it breathe out for the life it has to give.

Not saying this to be a dick, but it's really a topic close to my heart, and I feel strongly about it.

A lot of the differences of opinions that I see comes from two schools of gaming, freedom versus guided design. Clearly the new generation of players are growing up on freedom, stuff like minecraft, GTA online, games where you make your own content. Many people seem to value that.

I grew up with the NES, it's all about specific level design for me. I want the developers to take me through an adventure. That said I love me some freedom in that framework and I always felt past zelda games had that balance very well. BOTW seems to really embrace the freedom just make your own stories mentality. Now it still has a lot more handcrafted designed stuff than most sandboxes so I commend it on that but not as much as it used to.

What seemed to turn off so many from the zelda in the past entries, forced gameplay sections that I guess they didn't like, or ridgid pattern of progression, are things I like. I see a ton of "I haven't enjoyed zelda in decades but BOTW has brought me back" and that's fantastic for them. Not so great for me. Interesting to see different tastes and priorities in play from different players and see how that shapes their opinion on the game.

The thing with BOTW open world, and I'm also coming from a position of disliking open worlds for the same reason, is that there's 2 mutually reinforcing elements that make the huge size work in it's advantage.

The first one is how dense the game world actually is. As most already knows, the game sprinkles every little inch with something. Shrines, enemy camps, treasure, koroks, resources you name it. This rewards the player for going out of his way no matter the choice he makes.

The second one, and this is probably the most important one, is the verticality of the game. Aonuma described the gameplay loop as trying to reach a vantage point, being able to absorb your environment and glide towards your objective. This builds the world naturally through obstacles and possibilities. Natural walls obscure your vision, closing in the world in on you. So what it does is nurture your sense of discovering by opening up the world once you climb different structures, the vast environment doesn't creat sensory overloads since from a vantage point you can quickly move to any point of interest. By structuring the movement in 2 parts, a high effort for low progress and a low effort high movement instead of the traditional linear uniform speed it breaks up movement in easily identifiable chunks which are valuable in and of themselves.

So these two elements intertwine to make for such a rich experience.

Boney said:

The thing with BOTW open world, and I'm also coming from a position of disliking open worlds for the same reason, is that there's 2 mutually reinforcing elements that make the huge size work in it's advantage.

The first one is how dense the game world actually is. As most already knows, the game sprinkles every little inch with something. Shrines, enemy camps, treasure, koroks, resources you name it. This rewards the player for going out of his way no matter the choice he makes.

The second one, and this is probably the most important one, is the verticality of the game. Aonuma described the gameplay loop as trying to reach a vantage point, being able to absorb your environment and glide towards your objective. This builds the world naturally through obstacles and possibilities. Natural walls obscure your vision, closing in the world in on you. So what it does is nurture your sense of discovering by opening up the world once you climb different structures, the vast environment doesn't creat sensory overloads since from a vantage point you can quickly move to any point of interest. By structuring the movement in 2 parts, a high effort for low progress and a low effort high movement instead of the traditional linear uniform speed it breaks up movement in easily identifiable chunks which are valuable in and of themselves.

So these two elements intertwine to make for such a rich experience.

Click to expand...

This says a lot of what I was about to say. I find climbing rewarding, and I love that the game encourages reaching vantage points to scour the landscape for places to check out. I love that I manually have to mark things on my map, and can tag the things that are *only* interesting to me.

Sure, if you feel like you have to complete everything to 100% the size of the world can be hugely daunting, I get that... but I don't feel that way very often.

The only Zelda game I've completed 100% actually is Wind Waker (all the photos, all sunken chests, all heart pieces, the works), and I took the time to do that twice.

And I think the density of the world reminds me a lot of Wind Waker, although it's obviously not as sparse as Wind Waker what with the hiding koroks. I know most hated the sailing in Wind Waker, so I know I'm speaking just from my own personal experience, but I *enjoy* the downtime and relaxation of riding Poni Braxton along the beaten paths as I head to a new location, or revisit a favorite one. I like that the game can be quiet and empty. I like taking in the sound of nature as we cantor threw a new area and I enjoy galloping through a place I've been before.

It makes venturing closer to the castle feel all the more threatening. It makes finding a new shrine, settlement or fountain all the more exciting.

Wind Waker has been my favorite Zelda until Breath of the Wild, and it was precisely because of those quiet moments.

Something about Breath of the Wild's world that hugely impresses me, is how on one hand it feels like every inch has an artists touch, yet how at the same time it feels alive and real in ways that Ubisoft's open worlds don't. The randomly generated landscapes, then littered with a uniform amount of stuff to do, don't draw me in, they drive me away.

I'll take a huge open world, with quiet peaceful areas contrasting the more densely populated sections, over Ubisoft's approach where the landscape is such an afterthought as to get recycled with a different coat of paint sometimes. That's how little many developers consider their landscapes.

Sailing off towards a distant island in Wind Waker is a moment I'll never forget, and it's something I hadn't really felt again in a game until Breath of the Wild.

Certainly the game has areas it could be improved. The UI complaints for example. The right stick should flip categories not pages. When you have too much stuff in one category it should expand downwards, not sideways.

There are some artificial things that break immersion, like being able to board a horse that's on the opposite side of the map by taking out a different horse from a stable. I wish they could have come up with a better solution than health bars for the enemies.

But this open world feels special and fresh compared to most others I've played, and I think it's precisely because they have wide open empty spaces. I understand the 'gameplay per inch' philosophy, but what Breath of the Wild mostly gives me is a feeling of setting off on an adventure to a far away object on the horizon, rather than the feeling of checking off boxes and following a set of missions.

I have my own stories. Other people have theirs. We are seeing different things and experiencing different things. I'm telling people who have played the game longer than me about places they haven't been to yet, and vice versa. Finding things up on conspicuous rock towers is rewarding, but so is finding shrines nestled into a hidden corner of the landscape.

It's the best game I've played, finally topping Resident Evil 4 as my favorite title. I didn't think I'd ever love a Zelda more than Wind Waker. Let alone love one more than RE4.

But I guess a lot of the games I love have that in common. Lots of quiet moments in between the higher highs. Metroid does it. Zelda does. Resident Evil does it (4 to a lesser degree).

It's weird playing a game that tells you where the final objective is right away, and basically says 'When you feel ready.'

It's a game I play at my own pace. From a designers perspective, I can see how that might seem like leaving a lot to chance... but that's the risk they took here. Knowing that people could miss entire chunks of gameplay by climbing over the side of a mountain instead of following the road.

But again, it gives us all our own stories. I'm not done with it yet. When I bore of exploring the world, I know where to go and what to do to finish the game.

And that seems like a huge positive.

This is a fantastic thread. Thanks OP...and to all those who agree, disagree, or fall somewhere in the middle. Awesome read.

As someone who hasn't even started BoTW yet, I'm having to be very careful not to read spoilers. So reading general impressions about the game design is how I get my fix for now.

With that in mind, way back toward the start of the thread one of the posters indicated that monster "scaling" became an annoyance for him as the game progressed because he had spent so much time doing all the side-quests (specifically with how archers had increased in strength enough to one shot him, but were still dropping relatively weak weapons as "rewards", resulting in the latter section of the game becoming a grind for him). In scanning through the rest of the thread I didn't see anyone else comment on this particular issue, tho it does seem like a core mechanic worth talking about a bit more.

Can anyone else chime in? It not only fits the theme of the thread as a potential way to improve the next iteration of Zelda, but has some importance to me as a person who will embark on this journey soon myself...and this potential systems "flaw" has me wondering if, perhaps, during my 1st play through I might be better off to *not* do every single side-quest...or maybe even skip the majority of them and stick to the main quest thru completion? This would seem to be a "problem" insofar as it necessarily reduces the amount of enjoyment received from letting wanderlust take over (my preferred method of playing open world games is usually to basically just wander aimlessly and ignore the main quest for dozens of hours until something kicks in and I decide "Ok, it's time to tackle the Big Kahuna"). But, on balance, if scaling is an issue I might prefer to save some/most of the side-quest stuff for a 2nd play through if it means I don't have to deal with as much grindy enemy stuff at first. I have no idea how "NG+" works in BoTW, but maybe it's better to wander all over and see every little detail, fight every enemy, etc...*after* finishing the main quest the first time?

I agree with the criticism.

BotW is amazing.

One criticism that I have is that some of the regular enemies seem to be tougher than some boss enemies.

Memorabilia said:

With that in mind, way back toward the start of the thread one of the posters indicated that monster "scaling" became an annoyance for him as the game progressed because he had spent so much time doing all the side-quests (specifically with how archers had increased in strength enough to one shot him, but were still dropping relatively weak weapons as "rewards", resulting in the latter section of the game becoming a grind for him). In scanning through the rest of the thread I didn't see anyone else comment on this particular issue, tho it does seem like a core mechanic worth talking about a bit more.

Can anyone else chime in? It not only fits the theme of the thread as a potential way to improve the next iteration of Zelda, but has some importance to me as a person who will embark on this journey soon myself...and this potential systems "flaw" has me wondering if, perhaps, during my 1st play through I might be better off to *not* do every single side-quest...or maybe even skip the majority of them and stick to the main quest thru completion? This would seem to be a "problem" insofar as it necessarily reduces the amount of enjoyment received from letting wanderlust take over (my preferred method of playing open world games is usually to basically just wander aimlessly and ignore the main quest for dozens of hours until something kicks in and I decide "Ok, it's time to tackle the Big Kahuna"). But, on balance, if scaling is an issue I might prefer to save some/most of the side-quest stuff for a 2nd play through if it means I don't have to deal with as much grindy enemy stuff at first. I have no idea how "NG+" works in BoTW, but maybe it's better to wander all over and see every little detail, fight every enemy, etc...*after* finishing the main quest the first time?

Click to expand...

Uhm, but the enemies don't scale at all? At least I didn't even notice that during my playthrough. Is this actually a thing in the game? I know that with the weapons I have now, if I go to the earlier areas, I can basically one shot every single enemy there, no problem. I also upgraded some of my armor to the max and take very little damage whenever I wear it... So I'm guessing the guy meant scaling as in: "In certain areas, the enemies are stronger than it otehrs", which isn't scaling at all. If you're in an area where enemies are too tough for you, it's a slight nudge that you might not wanna be in that area just yet.

Outrun said:

One criticism that I have is that some of the regular enemies seem to be tougher than some boss enemies.

Click to expand...

thomasmahler said:

Uhm, but the enemies don't scale at all?

Click to expand...

Game scale, it's said in the official guide (It's based on how many enemies of a specific type you've killed before a blood moon.). A lot of advanced played met silver the monsters which're hardest form of their race. Bosses don't scale though.
Even weapons scale, they gain more bonus effect.

Memorabilia said:

This is a fantastic thread. Thanks OP...and to all those who agree, disagree, or fall somewhere in the middle. Awesome read.

As someone who hasn't even started BoTW yet, I'm having to be very careful not to read spoilers. So reading general impressions about the game design is how I get my fix for now.

With that in mind, way back toward the start of the thread one of the posters indicated that monster "scaling" became an annoyance for him as the game progressed because he had spent so much time doing all the side-quests (specifically with how archers had increased in strength enough to one shot him, but were still dropping relatively weak weapons as "rewards", resulting in the latter section of the game becoming a grind for him). In scanning through the rest of the thread I didn't see anyone else comment on this particular issue, tho it does seem like a core mechanic worth talking about a bit more.

Can anyone else chime in? It not only fits the theme of the thread as a potential way to improve the next iteration of Zelda, but has some importance to me as a person who will embark on this journey soon myself...and this potential systems "flaw" has me wondering if, perhaps, during my 1st play through I might be better off to *not* do every single side-quest...or maybe even skip the majority of them and stick to the main quest thru completion? This would seem to be a "problem" insofar as it necessarily reduces the amount of enjoyment received from letting wanderlust take over (my preferred method of playing open world games is usually to basically just wander aimlessly and ignore the main quest for dozens of hours until something kicks in and I decide "Ok, it's time to tackle the Big Kahuna"). But, on balance, if scaling is an issue I might prefer to save some/most of the side-quest stuff for a 2nd play through if it means I don't have to deal with as much grindy enemy stuff at first. I have no idea how "NG+" works in BoTW, but maybe it's better to wander all over and see every little detail, fight every enemy, etc...*after* finishing the main quest the first time?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty close to the end, and I can't say that the enemy scaling mechanic has once impeded on my progress. A lot of that has to do with the traversal options that allow you to straight-up skip out on most combat, and some of it has to do with having a lot of combat options to make things easier, particularly with the ranged options that open up with the elemental arrows (especially ice and shock) and finding bows that can fire more than one arrow at once. There are other things you get that I won't spoil, but needless to say, you get a lot of options to make combat work to your advantage in large groups or in one-on-one situations.

By and large, the higher tier enemies also carry better equipment and drop more monster parts and even precious gems, so there's some good incentive for engaging with them.

Right! In Wind Waker, one of the most unforgettable moments for me is getting the sail in Outset Island and setting sail towards Dragon Roost. A cynic can view it as just boarding the vehicle that will automatically carry you to the next destination, but that understanding betrays what Wind Waker is all about. Being on board the Red Lion, hearing the wonderful ocean score, having the seagulls fly next to you as Dragon Roost slowly reveals itself on the horizon, towering over you in a blink of an eye. What this does is fill you with a sense of wonder around what other surprises will this ocean hold throughout your adventure.

Personally I see the original, link's awakening, majora's, wind Waker and breath of the wild all share a similar structure.

Boney said:

Right! In Wind Waker, one of the most unforgettable moments for me is getting the sail in Outset Island and setting sail towards Dragon Roost. A cynic can view it as just boarding the vehicle that will automatically carry you to the next destination, but that understanding betrays what Wind Waker is all about. Being on board the Red Lion, hearing the wonderful ocean score, having the seagulls fly next to you as Dragon Roost slowly reveals itself on the horizon, towering over you in a blink of an eye. What this does is fill you with a sense of wonder around what other surprises will this ocean hold throughout your adventure.

Personally I see the original, link's awakening, majora's, wind Waker and breath of the wild all share a similar structure.

Click to expand...

Exactly! That sense of adventure hadn't been touched for me until Breath of the Wild.

My favorite moment in Wind Waker was on route to some distant objective, having a storm roll in, and that moment the clouds break, along with the music.

Chaos17 said:

Game scale, it's said in the official guide (It's based on how many enemies of a specific type you've killed before a blood moon.). A lot of advanced played met silver the monsters which're hardest form of their race. Bosses don't scale though.
Even weapons scale, they gain more bonus effect.

Click to expand...

Do blood moons become more common? Because I had a tar load in the last play session, including more than one in a single night, which I didn't think was even possible.

Yeah, enemies definitely scale. There might be some areas near the Plateau where they'll stay more beginner friendly, but near Hateno Village I saw as the Bokoblins in the woods nearby upgraded from like 1 or 2 Blues and a handful of Reds, to 1 or 2 Silvers then a Black or two and maybe a Blue.

The had Blue enemies and a Blue Lynel when I first entered it, then when I had done nearly everything it had all Black enemies and a Silver Lynel.

plagiarize said:

Do blood moons become more common? Because I had a tar load in the last play session, including more than one in a single night, which I didn't think was even possible.

Click to expand...

That's a bug, I think. Restart game to fix.

thomasmahler said:

See, I don't wanna get into that discussion since just saying: "Well, it did that bad thing better than all the other games that relied on that bad thing!" isn't gonna get us to the 'perfect game', since it's still based on it doing a bad thing after all.

All these open-world terrain-based games suffer from the same lack of content full of areas that you just walk past that no designer ever touched. This is why I have 0 excitement when developers like CD Projekt Red (which I hold in high regard!) already proclaim that their new game will be '8 times bigger than the last huge game we shipped!' - The only thing that does is that I'm now worried that there'll be even more emptiness within that world where I'm doing nothing but traversal. I think No Man's Sky has shown everyone nicely that bigger doesn't mean better unless you can produce the content necessary to make 'bigger' actually be worth it.

It's the job of designers to take empty, boring content and to make it fun. The more empty, boring content is left in the game when the game ships, the less fun the game is. That's not a question of art, that's just a question of mechanics and design.

Sure, you can try to make it more fun by giving the player cool movement mechanics, which Breath of the Wild certainly does and sure you absolutely need the ebb and flow and you don't want every single inch of the world to be cluttered with stuff, but there's a big gap between "every inch is cluttered with stuff" and "huge patches of emptiness" and what you need to do there is to find the perfect balance between the two, which I would suggest Breath of the Wild hasn't found. So yeah, there absolutely are large patches of land in Breath of the Wild that I'm sure were just never touched by a designer, where literally all you do is holding the analog stick forward, where you don't look at cool vistas or wonder what's behind this or that hill, where you KNOW that all you're supposed to do here is to just deal with the fact that you're playing an open world game and you're supposed to just hold the analog stick forward.

That in itself is NOT fun.

I'm not judging this game based on it being an open world game, allowing myself to only strike comparisons to other open world games. I'm judging this game by the merits of good game design and ANY game that has content where you're doing nothing but making the character move, not even jump or climb or interact or look at something interesting for more than a minute is flawed.

Click to expand...

To you. There are plenty of people enjoying the hell out of exploring every inch of BotW, myself included. I very rarely feel frustrated or bored because I always have a personal objective in mind, such as "reach that mountain" or "investigate that ruin", and there's a never just one clear path so there's a challenge in creating the best one. And invariably, once I arrive at said destination, there's another point of interest I notice that I make my new objective.

All the criticisms you have of the open world are completely valid, but I don't think they account for the fact that many people very much enjoy what you do not.

thomasmahler said:

Uhm, but the enemies don't scale at all? At least I didn't even notice that during my playthrough. Is this actually a thing in the game? I know that with the weapons I have now, if I go to the earlier areas, I can basically one shot every single enemy there, no problem. I also upgraded some of my armor to the max and take very little damage whenever I wear it... So I'm guessing the guy meant scaling as in: "In certain areas, the enemies are stronger than it otehrs", which isn't scaling at all. If you're in an area where enemies are too tough for you, it's a slight nudge that you might not wanna be in that area just yet.

Click to expand...

They do. The more shrines you do (I think that's the trigger) the higher likelihood of encountering tougher enemies in groups. So a group of 8 base level bokoblins turns into 4 base level, 3 mid level and 1 elite, all with a slightly different look. If you notice at the beginning of the game, most enemies have 13-50 hp, but near the end they average much closer to 100-300 hp, even the easier enemies.

thomasmahler said:

Uhm, but the enemies don't scale at all? At least I didn't even notice that during my playthrough. Is this actually a thing in the game? I know that with the weapons I have now, if I go to the earlier areas, I can basically one shot every single enemy there, no problem. I also upgraded some of my armor to the max and take very little damage whenever I wear it... So I'm guessing the guy meant scaling as in: "In certain areas, the enemies are stronger than it otehrs", which isn't scaling at all. If you're in an area where enemies are too tough for you, it's a slight nudge that you might not wanna be in that area just yet.

Click to expand...

I think they're talking about how as you kill more of the same type of enemy, stronger varieties are spawned. Like the Red > Blue > Brown > White progression for the different enemies as you get deeper into the game. A red version of the enemy is easy at the end game, while the white version should provide some type of challenge

EmCeeGramr said:

Yeah, enemies definitely scale. There might be some areas near the Plateau where they'll stay more beginner friendly, but near Hateno Village I saw as the Bokoblins in the woods nearby upgraded from like 1 or 2 Blues and a handful of Reds, to 1 or 2 Silvers then a Black or two and maybe a Blue.

The

Spoiler

Coliseum area, which seems specifically for farming high end monster parts and gear

had Blue enemies and a Blue Lynel when I first entered it, then when I had done nearly everything it had all Black enemies and a Silver Lynel.

Click to expand...

I believe it's state in-game that

Timeaisis said:

They do. The more shrines you do (I think that's the trigger) the higher likelihood of encountering tougher enemies in groups. So a group of 8 base level bokoblins turns into 4 base level, 3 mid level and 1 elite, all with a slightly different look. If you notice at the beginning of the game, most enemies have 13-50 hp, but near the end they average much closer to 100-300 hp, even the easier enemies.

Click to expand...

Ah, so it's tied to Shrine Completion? Had no idea. I could see this being the case, but I never had the Champion's Tunic on for long enough to see the actual values. I was thinking of just raw enemy variation color shifted up a rung.

On the topic of scaling, I not impressed with how I think they handled shop Arrow restocking and faeries (where the game refused to offer more at all, even over weeks of in-game time, if it felt I had too many). Don't you fight against me, Hyrule innocents!

Ultimadrago said:

I believe it's state in-game that

Spoiler

killed enemies will eventually upgrade over Blood Moons. Though I never tested to see if it only happened to ones defeated in the past or just groups on a whole whether they've been killed or not.

Ah, so it's tied to Shrine Completion? Had no idea. I could see this being the case, but I never had the Champion's Tunic on for long enough to see the actual values. I was thinking of just raw enemy variation color shifted up a rung.

On the topic of scaling, I not impressed with how I think they handled shop Arrow restocking and faeries (where the game refused to offer more at all, even over weeks of in-game time, if it felt I had too many). Don't you fight against me, Hyrule innocents!

Click to expand...

Bokoblins offer a pretty striking example of how their health increases per tier:

Red=12 HP
Blue=72 HP
Black=320 HP
Silver=720 HP

I can't remember the numbers offhand, but Lizalfos are even more crazy on that front. I think the only enemy that doesn't rise so dramatically are the Lynels, though that seems like a small act of mercy considering how much more difficult they are than every other enemy.

I disagree with the world being too big. I just recently discovered a new village after 2 weeks of playing and I'm still finding previously unexplored territory. I love it. To each their own I guess.

EmCeeGramr said:

Yeah, enemies definitely scale. There might be some areas near the Plateau where they'll stay more beginner friendly, but near Hateno Village I saw as the Bokoblins in the woods nearby upgraded from like 1 or 2 Blues and a handful of Reds, to 1 or 2 Silvers then a Black or two and maybe a Blue.

The

Spoiler

Coliseum area, which seems specifically for farming high end monster parts and gear

had Blue enemies and a Blue Lynel when I first entered it, then when I had done nearly everything it had all Black enemies and a Silver Lynel.

Click to expand...

Is it also easier to find better gear in chests then? I think I've noticed that.

Similarly, do opened chests reset during blood moons?

bachikarn said:

Is it also easier to find better gear in chests then? I think I've noticed that.

Similarly, do opened chests reset during blood moons?

Click to expand...

Well, one of the big examples of loot scaling is right with the Hinox necklaces. At where I'm at in the game, it's all Royal equipment. You can combine that with Modest/Major Strength shrine respawns and kit yourself out with great gear for relatively small effort.

I agree with most of your points. I tend to think of BOTW as Galaxy 1, where they had core basic ideas that shaked the formula and when they implemented them we found them really really good (exploration focus, physics and chemistry focused puzzles, shrines, dynamic weather (I actually like rain, it makes me reconsider my approach or start a fire and wait), wildlife hunting, cooking, better combat).

I think the goals of the sequel would be:

- New reasons to discover the world. Right now we discover it to find shrines, reclaim memories, collect korok seeds, hunt and collect animals and food, find something interesting (a dragon, a mini-boss, a new village, etc..). This is a lot, but you can build on it which would only make it better.

- Enemy variety. Bokoblins AI is amazing but I want more enemies rather haven ten different versions of five or so enemy types.

- Mini-boss variety. Imagine going around the open world and discover fifty different mini bosses rather than Hinox and Talus over and over. Make beating them more rewarding.

- More unique identity. BOTW has one in terms of setting (guardians, divine beasts, shrines), artstyle, and characters (Zelda, the king, the champions) but the next step is more original music tracks, new races, etc.

- Wildlife variety and natural habitat. I really hate the goats and wolves because I see them every ten minutes. They're everywhere. There's plenty of animals but for some reason I feel that they're not a lot, since that many of them are not restrainted to areas.

- Shrine-like concept but where the design is related to the area that you are in & maybe the puzzles too. That would make the areas even more memorable.

- Better dungeons with better final bosses. And maybe optional smaller scale dungeons similar to the Yiga Hideout that you can discover.

- Find a way to incorporate items (or more runes) in or outside dungeons without breaking the "do them in any order" goal. Maybe make them required in that dungeon but optional yet helpful outside of that. They help with providing a sense of progression.

- Enhance combat. Introduce skills that we can learn in different villages that make combat deeper than parry+flurry rush+sneakstrike, more weapon types that are only in available in specific places, more different enemy patterns and faster combat. All of these will help with feeling a progression as well.

- Only the first 5 Korok seeds puzzles are interesting. The rest are totally not, since you're doing them over and over. Think of a better implementation that is still doable.

- Better mini games. I didn't play a single mini game that I really enjoyed. I hated the horse jumping one.

And of course
- More story and significantly better voice over. Make it optional if you want as with the current implementation but hire good writers and make the people of this world think of other things other than the champion that died 100 years ago. Everyone in this world talk about him all the time.


Looking forward to the Galaxy 2 of Zelda

Yeah, thinking about what the next main Zelda game could be based on this template is very interesting - I'll add some of my own thoughts later, I agree with most of what you already brought up, TZ

And I agree that it feels a bit like Galaxy 1, where they changed the formula, but certain things aren't quite as polished or figured out yet. It's hugely to Nintendo's credit that they finally deviated from the old 3d Zelda formula and did something new here, but there's definitely a ton of room for improvement.

In some ways, one of the projects that we're working on will clash with Zelda if they're doing what I think they should be doing with the next one... So maybe I should just shut the hell up until we release our own game

**THIS POST WILL HAVE SPOILERS IN IT. WE ARE DISCUSSING THE GAME POST-COMPLETION***

Having finished the game recently (not 100% that will take weeks\months without a guide) I disagree with a lot of your criticisms.

I'll start with the things that I do agree with.

thomasmahler said:

Also, the combat shrines... They're literally all the exact same. Seriously, nobody was able to come up with something more interesting here? You have 3 different enemy types in those shrine, but they're literally all the same: You walk in, a single enemy spawns and you need to defeat that enemy in order to complete the shrine. Not once did I fight multiple enemies in there, let alone more varied types - It's always the same walking guardian types. Couldn't Nintendo have mixed it up a bit more by putting a walking guardian AND a flying guardian in one of the combat shrines just to make things a LITTLE more interesting? That design decision was baffling to me.

Click to expand...

I probably agree with this more than anything else you said. I was hoping that the combat shines would step up the difficultly not just with the weapons and health the enemy had, but with multiple enemies, changes to the terrain\hazards, hot\cold environment, attacks and coordination, immunities, etc. They had all of these tools available to them in the overworld and in several shrines, but they didn't utilize them here, which is disappointing.

thomasmahler said:

Dungeons: One of the reasons why I LOVE Zelda is because Nintendo has some of the best level designers in the industry working for them. Even though games like Skyward Sword or Twilight Princess get a lot of shit today for following the same old Zelda formula, the dungeon designs usually are just genuinely well figured out. They're less sprawling and open than they were in the 2d Zeldas, sure, but they're still brilliantly designed. The 4 Breath of the Wild Dungeons felt pretty short to me and I breezed through them in almost no time. Variation within the dungeons is also not as well figured out as it used to be. You see, Zelda usually did a good job sectioning the dungeons into Puzzle Zones, Combat Zones, etc., so if you're stuck on a certain puzzle, you can go to some other area and fight some enemies... not so here, since the dungeons here feel like one big puzzle and if you don't know how to solve it, you're just shit out of luck.
And in the older Zelda games, everything got varied up once you got the dungeon item and had to re-traverse the dungeon using the item you just acquired to put another twist on the dungeon designs. That is obviously not the case here - Nintendo did try to put a little variation into the Divine Beasts design by allowing you to 'control' the Divine Beasts, but if you break down the dungeon design of Breath of the Wild, I'd argue that Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess had way better designed dungeons.

Click to expand...

This I can agree with if only for the length and variety of the dungeons. In case anyone hasn't played through all 4 dungeons they all have the same format once you are inside:

1. Get the map\controls for the Divine Beast
2. Get 5 Terminals activated
3. Activate main terminal and fight the Ganon-Blight.

There are little secrets to find in hidden away chests but it would have been better to have them modify this formula more drastically for each of them.

1. Make one a pure traversal puzzle manipulating the beast
2. Make one riddles with battles instead of puzzles
3. Make one "environmental" based on manipulating the weather (Lighting storms to draw electricity, rain for water gathering\control, sun\clouds to change temperature)
4. Make one the traditional "find the terminals in the maze".

Some things I think are subjective, or I experienced completely differently than you did:

thomasmahler said:

Generally speaking, I thought the world was too big. I'm generally not a HUGE fan of open world games (and yet I have to admit that BotW is definitely the best open world game I've ever played), simply because I'd never want to design a game that way. I think it's wrong to start with a huge landscape and then try to shoehorn a ton of content into it versus building really strong content in smaller chunks and then putting it together to ensure that every inch of the world truly feels well designed.

If you're not a game developer, here's a bit of info on how these open world games are built: You usually start with a large terrain and sculpt the landscape, then you fill in the landscape with content. This video gives you a basic idea of how these worlds are crafted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozXYKpUugd8

So, throughout my entire time playing the game, I couldn't shake the thought that Nintendo must have decided on the size of the world at the start of the project and couldn't back-paddle afterwards simply because the world is made out of one huge terrain. Most Terrain engines don't allow you to easily modify and change sizes once various parts have already been built, since scaling the terrain would affect everything you've already built (again, I'm not saying Nintendo didn't have more sophisticated terrain tools, but that's my simple guess since the world feels way too large for its own good).

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I think the approach to making the landscape and then "filling it with stuff to do" is a perfectly valid way to approach an open world game. After all, that is how an actual civilization\world would arise. Landscape is shaped by weather\tectonics. Wildlife migrates to the area via land\sea\air. Higher intelligence beings migrate to places based on exploration\hardship\economics and setup a town or trading post. Based on the culture of the higher beings the landscape is affected in different ways. Some would seek to completely exploit and subjugate the land, devastating wildlife. Others would seek to live in harmony with it, barely touching the surrounding areas. Approaching the design in this way also lends to the "believability"of the world. Distances between towns feels natural and real. The places where the various species\races are established make sense for their environment.

thomasmahler said:

The same is true for the Korok Challenges: Most of these are completely mindless and similar: Find a certain rock in the world that stands out, pick it up, a Korok appears. Put a rock in the right spot in the middle of a ring of rocks, boom, a Korok appears. Jump into a ring of flowers in the water, a Korok appears. Shoot some balloons, a Korok appears... Rinse and Repeat. You'll do these exact same challenges DOZENS of times. Again, I'm guessing Nintendo just saw that their world is too big and they had to put in a lot of these repetitive, not very fun little challenges in order to at least have SOMETHING in the world instead of just traversal followed by more traversal. Why have such a huge world if you then have to fill it with repetitive content?

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I can half-agree with this in terms of variety (the solutions are reused a bit too much). But the approach to Korok seeds, in my opinion, is not to "fill out" an empty world, but to give a small reward to players that go off the beaten path and interact with the world in ways that show you are exploring. Climb a huge tree on top of a mountain, sure here's a korok seed. Complete a circle of rocks, seed. Check out a strange formation of some kind, seed. etc. "I wonder what's up on that rock, maybe I can see something interesting or odd from there. There's a rock up here that's out of place... probably a Korok." That's why less than half of the seeds are "required" if you want to max your inventory, they don't expect people to find all of them or hell even a quarter of them.

thomasmahler said:

Quests: Here again, the game suffers from the same exact issue all Open World games have, meaning, most quests are just variations of fetch quests. You have literal fetch quests in there that are as simple as "NPC tells you to bring item X to it, quest completes once you do that", others are a little more clever, but overall, a hell of a lot of the side quests feel pretty menial and boring. A really good Quest was Eventide Island (The Robinson Crusoe inspired one), but those are few and far between... I have a few quests left open and have little to no motivation to actually finish all of them.

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While I kind of agree with this in principle, it's odd to expect people to not act like people. People need things. You agree to help them out as a favor or in return for goods and services. That's how stuff works in real life. What I found though is that half of the "fetch" quests were already done by the time I accepted them (I already had the items or the ingredients to make the item) simply because I was already exploring and gathering them on my own. The only ones that I've found to be silly or tedious is when someone asks you to gather huge stacks of items. I'm looking at you Hudson. 50 fucking stacks of wood? I guess I'll mow down a forest real quick. 5 frogs? I got'em right here. Ingredients for a recipe, got'em right here.

And lastly the things I completely disagree with:

thomasmahler said:

So why do I think the world is too large? Because of a lack of varied content. That's always the problem with Open World Games - What good is a huge world if large parts of it are fairly empty with nothing for you to do? I'm honestly sick and tired of developers proclaiming that the world of the game they're building is x times larger than the world in their previous game - That's only a great thing if you also scaled up your team by a lot in order to be able to fill that world with super fun content, which is most often not the case. Me just having to traverse longer distances that a designer didn't even touch doesn't mean the game is more fun, in fact, the opposite is usually true, which games like No Man's Sky have proven very well I think. Just running around in boring areas with little to no interactivity is just not fun.

I do think Nintendo did a good job giving you movement tools like Shield Surfing, Paragliding, Climbing, etc., but a hell of a lot of time in the game is spent just traversing through the terrain by holding the analog stick forward, running, climbing while always keeping an eye on your Stamina bar - and that in itself isn't the most fun you could have. Often times you have to run 5-10 minutes from one place to another doing fairly menial tasks like running and climbing just to arrive at your goal.

And that's also when Fast Travel comes into play, since having to do that once is bad enough and developers know that you want to quickly get to the fun parts, so they allow you to skip large parts of the Open World. But the irony here is... if that's your design process, then maybe your world shouldn't be that large in the first place?

At Moon, we have this 'fun per inch' principle - If we have the player just running for too long without any varied interactivity and fun content, then the level design is probably not great and should be reworked. We always try to put as much interactivity and diverse challenges into every inch of the worlds we're building as possible. We usually build hundreds of levels and then only use the levels that we feel are really fun, the rest gets cut and out of the good stuff we build the actual world. That way we know that there are no 'empty-feeling levels' - Everything needs to be well designed, all the stuff that feels empty should be improved or cut. Obviously there are always 'transition zones' between certain levels, but even those should be fun to traverse through or interact with. And again, that is often times not the case with open world games, the 'transition zones' usually end up being huge and empty... Simply compare that to how Zelda 1 or ALTTP were designed: Almost every single screen in those games is packed with secrets, enemies, objects you can interact with, etc. - There's barely a screen in those games where all you do is holding the analog stick into a direction without any other possibility of interactivity. And interactivity is where the fun comes from, interactivity is what games are all about.

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I cannot for the life of me understand how you could play through this game and come away with the conclusion that there isn't enough varied content. It's baffling to me. Just the list of terrains is bananas:

Desert, Plains, Canyons, Rivers, Waterfalls, Castles, Mountains, Forests, Jungles, Towns (Multiple cultures), Lava\Magma, Ruins, Beaches, Tundra, That crazy looking Bone-like terrain, Complete Darkness, Fog, Blinding Snow and Sand, Lands of Perpetual Lightning, Giant Mazes. This world has *everything*.

I also can't agree with the "hold forward and watch your stamina bar" criticism. You are the one making the choice to simply "run forward or climb" for 10 minutes, blowing by everything that is going on around you. Trees with apples and mushrooms, bugs in the grass, fish in the river, hills to use as lookout points to assess pathing and obstacles, enemy camps and patrols, ruins with treasure, ore to mine and collect, wildlife to hunt or mount (if they are large enough), light shit on fire and fly, push rocks over cliffs, etc.

The weather keeps you on your toes too, changing the way you can move\climb, the equipment you can use, the armor you should wear, the food you should collect\cook\eat, the direction you can fly, use bombs, make campfires, etc.

As for the "fun per inch" principle, I don't think an open world has to constantly bombard you with shit to do for it to be entertaining. BotW has an ebb and flow structure to it where there is breathing room between "encounters" of varying sizes and intensity. Intense moments of combat are broken up by more leisurely strolls through grasslands. But these "low points" are not "empty". There is rarely a point in which you can literally do "nothing", See my previous paragraphs.

Reading this makes me imagine a person who goes camping and complains about shit to do. You're in nature for fuck's sake, you're literally surrounded by an innumerable number of things "to do".

thomasmahler said:

Let's start with the Shrines: All 120 shrines look exactly the same. The actual puzzles and challenges in there are usually really well designed (apart from the horrible Motion Controlled ones, these shrines are just horribly bungled in my opinion), but I do think the game would've been better if there would've been more variation within the shrines to make them more memorable. Wouldn't it have been cool if the shrines in the Death Mountain Area would've been themed around fire and exploited all the various ways you can interact with fire in the game? Wouldn't it have been cool if the Death Mountain Shrines actually looked more like they belong in that area? Instead, all the 120 shrines in the game are completely interchangeable, shrines that are in the Death Mountain area could just as well be placed within Gerudo's Desert, etc.

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If all you are looking at is aesthetics, then sure, they all "look" exactly the same. But even that is consistent with the world. They were created by a intelligent, religious monk-like race of people who worshipped the goddess Hylia. It's like complaining that Buddhist temples look too similar. Of course they share aesthetics!

There are area-themed shrines. The Death Mountain definitely had lava and fire themed shrines. There was also a "steep cliff" based one that is also thematically consistent.

thomasmahler said:

Enemy Camps: Again, most of these are just the exact same setup. Yes, sometimes the enemies are a little tougher, but I'd really like to know how many of these 'Skull Structures with Bokoblins next to them' are in the game - My guess is dozens. Beat a few of the enemies, the chest unlocks, done. The same setups are then again scattered many, many, many times throughout the open world without any variation in challenge. In general, enemy variation was also a bit of a disappointment to me: For a world this large, it very much felt like there's barely a dozen different enemy designs in there. We have Guardians, Bokoblins, Keese, Octoroks, Lizalfos, Lynels... And I have a hard time naming more off the top of my head after just having finished the game. Again, that would've been fine in a smaller game, but for a game of this size, it becomes a bit of a drag that you always have to fight the same types of enemies that are only varied in color, but not behavior.

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Let's list them off.

Guardians (Turret, Broken Walker, Walker, Flyer\Drone, Smaller Shrine size)
Bokoblins (Red, Blue, Black, Silver, Undead)
Moblins (Red, Blue, Black, Silver(? I haven't see one), Undead)
Keese (Regular, Fire, Ice, Electric, Swarm)
Octorocks (Land, Water, Rock)
Lizalfos (Regular, Fire Breath, Ice Breath, Electric Horn, Blue, Black, Undead)
Wizzrobe (Fire, Ice, Electric)
Lynels (Red, Blue, White)
Hinox (Red, Blue, Black)
Small Talus (Regular, Ice, Lava)
Talus (Regular, Ice, Lava)
Blight Spawn (Flying Heads, Eyes)
Molduga

Assuming I didn't forget any, that's 13 major types with 48 different varieties, not counting the one-off dungeon bosses and Ganon.

Enemies most definitely differ in behavior. The stronger versions of Bokoblins tank hits to hit you, Larger groups of them swarm around you. Archers snipe you and call in reinforcements when they spot you. Moblins of higher levels dodge your bombs as they chase you. White Mane Lynels have devastating AOE explosions, and the jump-attack with the AOE shockwave. Fights with them in larger areas have them use ranged attacks more regularly. Electric Arrow versions can rain down arrows from above, etc. Lizalfos hit in the water will tend to stay there and snipe you with a water attack. Fire and Ice Breath versions will put more distance between you are use those abilities to harm you. Octorocks have varying behavior, the land ones will freak out and run around like crazy, the rock ones will dodge every damned arrow you shoot at them. Wizzrobes of higher levels will summon storms of lightning\ice\fire.

thomasmahler said:

Combat / Controls: This is the most baffling to me, since I think the controls are quite a bit too convoluted. The Quick-Weapon switching with the 'Dpad' is all kinds of weird to me (the game pauses while doing that... really?) and breaks the games flow, the combat in general is just a notch over the traditional 3d Zelda combat, things like Shield Surfing require the player to press 3 buttons... all of that makes the game feel a bit less polished than what you usually expect from a Nintendo game. Regarding the UI in general, Brad Colbow made a great video about improving BOTW's UI that I 100% agree with:

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I don't understand the criticism here. You can pause the game and switch weapons at will, at any moment. This just gives you quick access without having to navigate though a larger menu. If anything it keeps the flow going better than having to open a menu to equip a new weapon when it breaks or if you run out of arrows or have the wrong arrows equipped from your last fight.

The combat in BotW is enhanced by the multitude of approaches you can take to a given fight. Fire arrows instantly kill Ice enemies and vice versa. Flying in from above, dropping a bomb and landing with a drop-attack from high up causing a shockwave. Distract enemies with an arrow and sneak up on them. Wait until night when they sleep to get sneak-strikes. Blow them up with barrels. Push rocks on them. Hit them with metal crates\rocks.

Shield surfing is a completely superfluous addition that is there purely for fun. I beat the game without ever using it. Slopes are more easily conquered with flight and it doesn't eat my shields durability. I know there is a competition in the Hebra region, but I haven't done it yet. It's 3 buttons so you don't do it unintentionally. R + X + A in midair is really hard to do without meaning to.

The video you linked is great. I agree with pretty much the whole thing. He was wrong about one aspect (If you drop your currently equipped weapon the next weapon you pick up is automatically equipped), but that's probably just an oversight on his part.

Conclusion

I wrote some pretty strong words in response here, hopefully I didn't offend you. You have the right to your opinion and I respect it, but I just saw so much stuff in here that I disagree with vehemently that I had to respond.

Ultimadrago said:

Ah, so it's tied to Shrine Completion? Had no idea. I could see this being the case, but I never had the Champion's Tunic on for long enough to see the actual values. I was thinking of just raw enemy variation color shifted up a rung.

On the topic of scaling, I not impressed with how I think they handled shop Arrow restocking and faeries (where the game refused to offer more at all, even over weeks of in-game time, if it felt I had too many). Don't you fight against me, Hyrule innocents!

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I know I'm very hype on this game to an annoying degree, and think it deserves all the praise it's getting, but I think the two biggest design oversights are the inventory management system and the fact that arrows are utilized for literally everything but there's no easy way to restock them. I bought 100 yesterday and ran out pretty quickly doing shrines (it seems like every shrine you need a few). Either enemies need to drop them all the damn time or there needs to be a way to craft/restock 100 or something at a campfire. Hell, give me unlimited arrows and then just limit stock of elemental ones. Or do a Estus flask thing where I get 100x every time I rest.

It's these small issues that annoy me the most. But again, not enough for it to affect the overall experience. The open world, as I previously noted, I really, really like.

Timeaisis said:

I know I'm very hype on this game to an annoying degree, and think it deserves all the praise it's getting, but I think the two biggest design oversights are the inventory management system and the fact that arrows are utilized for literally everything but there's no easy way to restock them. I bought 100 yesterday and ran out pretty quickly doing shrines (it seems like every shrine you need a few). Either enemies need to drop them all the damn time or there needs to be a way to craft/restock 100 or something at a campfire. Hell, give me unlimited arrows and then just limit stock of elemental ones. Or do a Estus flask thing where I get 100x every time I rest.

It's these small issues that annoy me the most. But again, not enough for it to affect the overall experience. The open world, as I previously noted, I really, really like.

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Arrows make combat and solving puzzles easy. I like that they are very limited. Puzzles usually have a harder solution that doesn't require arrows e.g. Activating switch with bombs or flying to them and hit them, burning leaves with torches that are hidden in the shrine. I recall a few that really required them.

I feel that it's part of the game to utilize your equipment in an efficient way as well as responding to the situation that are beyond your control. It's also encouraged you to go fight the bokoblins where you can find a bunch of arrows usually.

Lots of people hate rain too, but I like it. It make me reconsider my approach or cut a tree and start a fire. These things what makes the open world feel more real to me.