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Aonuma on BotW: "it's OK if there's pocket of emptiness" "Getting lost is fun."

Falchion

Member
Vast emptiness to traverse can be powerful and fun (see Wind Waker), but it also has to toe a thin line with outright boredom. Hopefully they've found that perfect balance.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Reading some posts, some people seem to want every square inch of the ground to be covered with things and enemies.

Frankly, I think they're just (validly) concerned about Zelda ending up like a Bethesda RPG.

There's a middle ground between what Zelda already does and a game where there's a huge open world with nothing to do. I hope this finds that balance.
 
completely agree with Aonuma, some of my favorite "spaces" in games are "empty". he's really saying all the right things to make me want this title.


exploration is its own reward.

I'm not arguing that exploration in itself isn't rewarding. I just want to see awesome, hidden, cryptic secrets in empty spaces as well. But I'm sure we'll have those anyways.
 

The Boat

Member
Frankly, I think they're just (validly) concerned about Zelda ending up like a Bethesda RPG.

There's a middle ground between what Zelda already does and a game where there's a huge open world with nothing to do. I hope this finds that balance.

I had that concern, then I watched the footage. Of course, the rest of the world can be nothing like it, but so far, it really doesn't seem like it'll be anything like a Bethesda RPG.
 

CronoShot

Member
Finding something meaningful after exploring a "pocket of emptiness" is one of the most satisfying parts of open world games, in my opinion.

If there's something to find or do in every square inch of the world, it lessens the sense of discovery. To me at least.

That said, it does need to strike a proper balance between the two.
 

pringles

Member
I totally agree. Most open worlds are way too crowded. Too much noise.
Really to me it's about there being too much filler in most open world games.

Skyrim is very 'dense' but after a little while you realize there are only a couple of variations on the dungeons and they start to get really, really boring. If they cut the dungeons by 40-50% but made them all more unique it would have been such a masterpiece. A little bit of 'emptiness' is actually needed in open world games to create that urge to explore.. I want to see things in the distance and figure out how to get there.. in games like Skyrim/Fallout it gets a bit ridiculous at times because you can't walk 2 minutes without finding the entrance to a cut-and-pasted dungeon. It really reduces the sense of discovery and exploration.
 

Gin

Member
I am concerned that this game ends up with wind waker levels of map emptiness..

loved the sea idea - hated that there was hardly anything to do in it


I am not expecting every square inch of map to have something engaging for the player.. but also dont want it to be the total opposite as it was in Wind Waker
 

Timeaisis

Member
Sounds great.

Emptiness isn't the problem in open world games (I mean it is if there's a lot of it, anyway. It's engagement. Be that a lack of engagement through not clear objectives or desire to explore, disengagement from the churn and burn of filler content, or from being in the state of "just travelling" from point a to point b. BotW seems engaging all the damn time.
 

VariantX

Member
Miyamoto isn't breathing down his neck. Aonuma giving the middle finger to the Gamepad is evidence to this.

I think that has more to do with Nintendo as a whole have already acknowledged that the Wii U is done and there is no more need to push gamepad features into games. Also the NX's defining feature(s) may not revolve around a second screen input but something else entirely different
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
While I agree, I get the feeling a lot of people won't find emptiness fun.

I think a lot of it comes down to gaming time. People who are strapped for time to game have less patience for wandering around and exploring open worlds as they just want to get on with the quest.

I'm kind of their and prefer games where I'm mostly constantly in meaninful gameplay and/or story delivery. I'm not big on exploring virtual worlds. So I'm skeptical of this, especially as I'm even less interested in exploring stylized worlds than realistic ones.

Zelda games are all about the dungeons for me so I'm worried I won't like this as much as others.
 

Wagram

Member
I certainly don't want a Ubisoft checklist style open world, but his comments make me more worried than anything. Mindlessly exploring empty fields is not fun for me. It shows more of a lack of creativity.
 
I'm glad Aonuma understands this. Hopefully other devs pay attention.

- Some open-world games have TOO MUCH content and are too dense. That's a big reason why some players find them overwhelming.
- Some open-world games are too static. The empty space is not just empty...it's also bland, uninteractive and amounts to nothing more than time-wasting filler. More devs should realize that it is possible for even a pocket of emptiness and/or a barren pocket of land to still be engaging to the player (moment-to-moment gameplay).
- Some open-world games don't vary their landscapes and interiors enough. And some don't have enough verticality.

In Zelda: BotW, it looks like the world itself is highly engaging, interactive and immersive, both in the pockets of emptiness and in the areas with more life.

Getting lost is fun if the world is interesting. Getting lost is annoying and boring if the world is uninteresting.
 

aBarreras

Member
I certainly don't want a Ubisoft checklist style open world, but his comments make me more worried than anything. Mindlessly exploring empty fields is not fun for me. It shows more of a lack of creativity.

there is nothing more creative than "go there, kill stuff, come back, receive reward"
 
After having played Wind Waker I do remind rather sceptical of the approach that they are taking. IMO Zelda has always done more linear, well-structured and very detailed, handcrafted experiences better than just slapping you in the middle of a giant map with "tons of things" and ocean-sized pockets of emptiness.
 
I certainly don't want a Ubisoft checklist style open world, but his comments make me more worried than anything. Mindlessly exploring empty fields is not fun for me. It shows more of a lack of creativity.

There's things to find and do, the land is littered by over 100 shrines and core dungeons. If you just stand around in a field ignoring everything to do that's your problem :p
 

Quonny

Member
Again, this means nothing.

Lots of empty space = bad.
Lots of filler garbage content just to have content = bad.

There is a balance. We need to see the whole game to know whether they can strike that balance. They're saying the right things, though, I'll give them that.
 
I was with him until the "getting lost is okay" part.

I HATE HATE HATE getting lost in games, it's the absolute least engaging and frustrating experience imaginable. It wastes my time and throws the few hours I get to play video games down the toilet. Also incredibly amusing that he said that the previous Zelda games were designed to prevent the players getting lost because I got lost in the 3D Zelda games constantly. Definitely needed to streamline those.

But I am very pleased with how Breath of the Wild looks and I look forward to playing it today!
 

yyr

Member
I don't know about emptiness, I still remember one of the early complaints about OoT was that Hyrule Field was too big and empty.

I was one of those complainers. This was one of the reasons I never finished OoT.

But remember that Hyrule Field was just a flat piece of nothing. Compare that to this sprawling, detailed open world and it already looks more entertaining, even if we're just moving around. I still haven't played through a 3D Zelda, but this looks to me like it'll be worth the purchase on day one.
 

rhandino

Banned
Getting COMPLETELY lost isn't fun... but getting detoured and distracted can be VERY fun. It's why many people really enjoyed Skyrim even if they never beat the main story. They got lost, but they found plenty of things to do.
Basically.


I have 100 hours on the PS3 ver. and I only visited 4 towns and barely explored the main story so yeah, getting sidetracked exploring vast landscapes can be insanely fun.
 

Diffense

Member
Of course it's OK if there are pockets of emptiness. Just as it's OK if there's silence in music. Not only is it OK, it's absolutely essential for there to be any rhythm at all!

There is really no other logical way to design a game world like this except with obvious areas of interest and stretches of relatively less distinctive land in between. If you try to pack it too much, not only would it seem very artificial and contrived but the directedness of the player's actions would be diminished. With a properly designed world, the player automatically establishes a hierarchy of important places and less important intervening areas. This makes the world understandable.

Right now, just a cursory glance at the map reveals places you want to check out: Hyrule Castle, a large lake, the Temple of Time, a huge tower, a volcano, and so forth. Once you decide where to go, traversing the "empty" spaces between them becomes important gameplay. While these places won't compete in terms of visual interest, they will serve as connective tissue and hide lower level points of interest (secrets). This is how the player will feel they have "discovered" stuff they were meant to find all along by being drawn into barren-looking land on their way to large-scale features.
 

Anarky

Banned
I was with him until the "getting lost is okay" part.

I HATE HATE HATE getting lost in games, it's the absolute least engaging and frustrating experience imaginable. It wastes my time and throws the few hours I get to play video games down the toilet. Also incredibly amusing that he said that the previous Zelda games were designed to prevent the players getting lost because I got lost in the 3D Zelda games constantly. Definitely needed to streamline those.

But I am very pleased with how Breath of the Wild looks and I look forward to playing it today!

Are you Zoro from One Piece?
 
Green Tunic hints? Yiss! That one Reddit photo looked really cool.

My guess on how the villages/towns work:

1) Either you drive out the Guardians from an area, and the town becomes populated again (or you find people to fill the town).

or

2) The towns only show up through time travel. So, you're in the middle of some ruins, but once a Guardian has been destroyed or whatever, you can activate a spell og crystal to "restore" the town in a bubble of time.
 

Chaplain

Member
"It's OK if there's pocket of emptiness" only IF its due to game design, not if its due to hardware limitations (which is what I think is happening).
 

udivision

Member
Give me the space to shieldboard down a mountain,
Give me the space to set a field to fire,
Give me the space to tame and ride a horse,
Give me the space to do whatever.

Just because there's a pocket of emptiness, doesn't mean there's nothing to do.
 
Not used to the new Zelda name yet and I thought that meant Best of The Worst. I would love to see Aonuma on Best of the Worst.
 
Reading some posts, some people seem to want every square inch of the ground to be covered with things and enemies.

It depends on how its done. Skyrim is an inspiration, there are sparse points, but theres lots of things to do like camps, villages, cities, mines different quest lines and goals. How that translates into zelda is another thing.
 

tkscz

Member
"It's OK if there's pocket of emptiness" only IF its due to game design, not if its due to hardware limitations (which is what I think is happening).

Considering Xenoblade X, I'd say it's game design considering the story we know so far is that the guardians fucked things up.
 
I agree. It's okay if there's pocket of emptiness. It doesnt make sense to have the whole map filled. But it's not okay to have pocket of content. I don't want a barren world.

It sounds stupid, but I find that The Witcher 3's map has too much going on. Bandit camps, guarded treasures, monster nests, etc. I think the map should have been smaller and have way less of those locations. The emptiness is welcomed sometimes. It's my favorite thing about Wind Waker.
 
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