Honestly this game was such a huge leap from Skyward Sword that i am just happy to see Nintendo address every single issue with that game. Part of me just want to say Nintendo is back and that they nailed and brought the franchise back from a downward spiral. But yes there are improvements to be made like the menus and they should expand the combat in the next game and improve the voice acting. However this was as good as i could of possibly hoped for. Prior to its releases i went and replayed every single 3D Zelda game when i got to Skyward Sword i had a gut feeling that Nintendo will somehow mess up their next entry but to my absolute amazement they didn't not by a long shot. Considering this is the same company that in recent times made Federation Force and Starfox Zero. It is almost a miracle the game turned out the way it did i just hope Nintendo does not lose track ever again with their franchises and build upon Breath of the Wilds foundation in a meaningful way.
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Eiji Aonuma thinks that he can top Breath of the Wild. How?!?
- Thread starter Cerium
- Start date
Honestly I think it's a Zelda spinoff the more I think about it.
I know he said it was a new IP, but the way it's worded almost seems to imply it's Zelda related:
It seems like he's going to make a compromise between the 2 requests to make a "new IP" in the Zelda universe.
I hope I'm wrong though.
It would be interesting, certainly, I'd just personally prefer a completely new IP from him.
Only time will tell I guess.
No game is perfect, and even though I really do love Breath of the Wild...it has things that could be improved or corrected.
Like maybe don't show that reddish Moon rising cutscene while I'm in a boss fight with a horse-man on a mountaintop about to hit me with a blade to the face, and I'm trying to time a dodge for a flurry rush. Maybe I don't like that pulling out of that cutscene completely killed me, and I had to restart right as their health was nearly gone.
Like maybe don't show that reddish Moon rising cutscene while I'm in a boss fight with a horse-man on a mountaintop about to hit me with a blade to the face, and I'm trying to time a dodge for a flurry rush. Maybe I don't like that pulling out of that cutscene completely killed me, and I had to restart right as their health was nearly gone.
Jack The Nipper
Banned
With a game that is more OOT but with new features, in depth dungeon design and new aspects of world creation that just aren't always forrests or fire. New way of traveling that isn't invented or something known, a way of connecting it together with some new traversing options, rather that be panzer dragoon style on steroids or whatever. Something new though
No more BOTW though please.
No more BOTW though please.
Thebullfrog
Member
On the other hand, if you had gotten that killing blow in a couple seconds sooner, he would have respawned with the moon and killed you anyway, so there's that.
No way I want more OoT after this.
CrazyHorse
Junior Member
You want SS 2?
This is a game design mechanic that works flawlessly and with great precision (although for know I have a large stock of weapons and never run out of them, this is a bit too easy)
Gross
After playing a few hours, I'm surprised that I haven't been bored of the shrines yet. Still, their presentation should be more different and integrated into the world. In addition, I should be able to ride any steed I want. Get the voice acting from B to A grade. etc. etc.
And don't heed any advice about returning to the OoT formula... just get really large dungeons with indoor and outdoor segments and you're golden.
And don't heed any advice about returning to the OoT formula... just get really large dungeons with indoor and outdoor segments and you're golden.
Considering some of the weapons have bonus skills they could have had a weapons combining system.
They should make a BotW prequel. 'The Legend of Zelda: Champions of the... something'. Same but modified map. Four player CO-OP starring (minor post-plateau but early game spoilers)
.
It'd be an interesting Majora's Mask like sequel, and I'm sure interesting puzzles could be made with that format.
the Divine Beast pilots, and detailing the construction of those machines
It'd be an interesting Majora's Mask like sequel, and I'm sure interesting puzzles could be made with that format.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
It could easily be resolved by giving you good (for the current progress), but not very good weapons that never break and have only better weapons break. Technically, this is the case due to the bombs, but I have been fighting solely with bombs for a while already and let me tell you: That's less than ideal.
Density is already a metric relative to the size of the world: Content per "squared meter". I agree that the world is denser than in many other open world games and certainly denser than the liquid wasteland that is Wind Waker's ocean, but there is still a whole lot of pure traversal going on, where there is nothing but scenery.
More, but way less complex.
Maybe I'm just not far enough into the game, but for now (I have done 28 shrines so far), only few puzzles could puzzle me for a short while, none for any longer. It is not as trivial as Wind Waker, but the puzzles are easier than in TP and SS and since the fights are significantly harder, this changes the balance a lot.
They could just allow enemies to follow you when you are climbing, there is no good reason why the player has to move at a snail's pace when climbing all the time. In fact, in Assassin's Creed, which has quite fast climbing, you can still easily be shot down from a building when you try to escape by climbing.
What do you mean with complexity of "Puzzelda" (I guess Puzzelda refers to SS & TP, which were quite puzzle-oriented?) that got in the way of fun? Do you mean the puzzles themselves? That would appear a bit strange to me, considering they are the core gameplay of Zelda and even now with the least puzzle-oriented Zelda since NES days, they ae the prime differentiator between Zelda and open world rpgs. Also, the puzzle complexity was very local and did not come down to learning a lot of systems, that otherwise only serve as ventures for busywork, because forging / crafting is certainly not a mechanically challenging task itself beyond the initial learning curve of the systems themselves which I consider a bad investment of mental ressources, when contrasted to the complexity in puzzles, where learning the rules has a way more favourable "investment of internalisation" : "challenging and interesting use" ratio.
Though I don't think this necessarily yields SS2, considering I count SS among the ten best games ever made and the best Zelda game, I would not be opposed to an SS2. The changes I suggested would certainly not be sufficient to make an SS2, because the non-linearity and exploration aspects in BotW are not significantly touched by my recommendations, but both were miniscule in SS (which I think was a mistake wrt. reception, though one likely required to be able to establish the overworld puzzles properly).
As others have said, remove the weapon durability.
People can tell me how it "adds to the tension" till they're blue in the face and it won't make me like the system any more.
It's just over done, some weapons feel like they're made out of glass with how they break so quickly.
I love that there is different types of weapons though, which prove useful for different situations.
People can tell me how it "adds to the tension" till they're blue in the face and it won't make me like the system any more.
It's just over done, some weapons feel like they're made out of glass with how they break so quickly.
I love that there is different types of weapons though, which prove useful for different situations.
How?
1. Better engine with a stable framerate. BotW might be the single best argument against Nintendo's under-powered hardware philosophy we've seen to date, but even still this is a Wii U game ported to the Switch and that is abundantly clear in how it runs in docked mode. An engine built for the Switch specifically that an make full use of the higher clock rate they've recently opened up for portable mode will go a long ways to making for a more enjoyable experience.
2. While BotW is a hurricane sized blast of fresh air into the franchise there are some gameplay elements that feel rather punitive. Rain preventing climbing for one example. Simple refinement and a bit of community feedback can take this even further.
3. The world could absolutely use some additional filler. Not tons of meaningless fetch quests but more hidden areas with something meaningfully worthwhile tucked away in it. That could be good loot relative to the area, an interesting NPC interaction, etc..
4. The last bit there leads me straight into the next point, and something I bet Aonuma is already pondering: increased NPC franchise. Zelda has long played with their NPC routines and schedules based on in-game time of day and various other events but it has never had a world as large as BotW to do so in and that is a largely untapped vein of interactive content. Flesh out the world with traders and the like moving between villages and if the right time sequences all coincide maybe a trader gets attacked along his route. If you happen by you can save him mid-attack, if not it seeds another NPC conversation in both departure and arrival villages about his absence, leading you on a rescue mission. Or maybe you rescue him before even meeting those towns and instead he gives you the location of where he was going and you have a friend in town upon arrival. The intricacy of this kind of web isn't something we don't see in other games because the technology isn't there, we don't see it because the attention to detail is generally lacking. Nintendo in general and Aonuma in particular is not lacking in attention to detail. They've shown that in the world interactivity of BotW but that base can be carried over.
5. Most importantly people need to remember that this is basically Nintendo's first foray into open world design while Aonuma's first in full HD game production, adding that it also basically changed platforms late in life. It took as long as it did in large part because of these factors, not just the final product itself. Nintendo has very clearly experienced the same HD growing pains as all the rest of the major developers did during the start of the PS360 era, but unlike the rest of the industry Nintendo has maintained their commitment to prioritize quality over release date. They're really only just now finding a firm footing in HD game development and open world design.
I also would like to say that I think the notion that BotW represents a major departure from the Zelda franchise misses what the Zelda franchise has, at it's core, been about. The first Zelda was very much the exploration rogue-like of it's time. Link to The Past was one of the largest, most interactive real time game world's of it's day. Ocarina of Time was the same. We saw a multi-generational stall as the PS1/Saturn/N64 > PS2/Xbox/GC transition was needed simply to beautify 3D gaming and then Nintendo effectively sat out hardware progression until the Wii U. Had Nintendo actually stuck it out in the hardware race I'd wager that the follow up to Twilight Princess would have been more BotW than Skyward Sword and released in 2011 or maybe 2012. This is the direction Zelda was always going to evolve into once hardware allowed them to escape the OoT template.
1. Better engine with a stable framerate. BotW might be the single best argument against Nintendo's under-powered hardware philosophy we've seen to date, but even still this is a Wii U game ported to the Switch and that is abundantly clear in how it runs in docked mode. An engine built for the Switch specifically that an make full use of the higher clock rate they've recently opened up for portable mode will go a long ways to making for a more enjoyable experience.
2. While BotW is a hurricane sized blast of fresh air into the franchise there are some gameplay elements that feel rather punitive. Rain preventing climbing for one example. Simple refinement and a bit of community feedback can take this even further.
3. The world could absolutely use some additional filler. Not tons of meaningless fetch quests but more hidden areas with something meaningfully worthwhile tucked away in it. That could be good loot relative to the area, an interesting NPC interaction, etc..
4. The last bit there leads me straight into the next point, and something I bet Aonuma is already pondering: increased NPC franchise. Zelda has long played with their NPC routines and schedules based on in-game time of day and various other events but it has never had a world as large as BotW to do so in and that is a largely untapped vein of interactive content. Flesh out the world with traders and the like moving between villages and if the right time sequences all coincide maybe a trader gets attacked along his route. If you happen by you can save him mid-attack, if not it seeds another NPC conversation in both departure and arrival villages about his absence, leading you on a rescue mission. Or maybe you rescue him before even meeting those towns and instead he gives you the location of where he was going and you have a friend in town upon arrival. The intricacy of this kind of web isn't something we don't see in other games because the technology isn't there, we don't see it because the attention to detail is generally lacking. Nintendo in general and Aonuma in particular is not lacking in attention to detail. They've shown that in the world interactivity of BotW but that base can be carried over.
5. Most importantly people need to remember that this is basically Nintendo's first foray into open world design while Aonuma's first in full HD game production, adding that it also basically changed platforms late in life. It took as long as it did in large part because of these factors, not just the final product itself. Nintendo has very clearly experienced the same HD growing pains as all the rest of the major developers did during the start of the PS360 era, but unlike the rest of the industry Nintendo has maintained their commitment to prioritize quality over release date. They're really only just now finding a firm footing in HD game development and open world design.
I also would like to say that I think the notion that BotW represents a major departure from the Zelda franchise misses what the Zelda franchise has, at it's core, been about. The first Zelda was very much the exploration rogue-like of it's time. Link to The Past was one of the largest, most interactive real time game world's of it's day. Ocarina of Time was the same. We saw a multi-generational stall as the PS1/Saturn/N64 > PS2/Xbox/GC transition was needed simply to beautify 3D gaming and then Nintendo effectively sat out hardware progression until the Wii U. Had Nintendo actually stuck it out in the hardware race I'd wager that the follow up to Twilight Princess would have been more BotW than Skyward Sword and released in 2011 or maybe 2012. This is the direction Zelda was always going to evolve into once hardware allowed them to escape the OoT template.
Vital Tundra
Member
What is this garbage list???
More dungeons, better shrine presentation, and control options are all that really are a good idea. Weapon breaking is a great mechanic whether you like it or not. Most of what you said removes what make Sure BotW so interesting.
Personally they could...
increase melee combat options
Increase control rebinding
increase dungeon amount
bring back some items like the grapple hook
Add the ability to stable other animals.
Those are my only real gripes so far or what exactly I would like expanded.
Weltall Zero
Member
How about hell no?
whatevermort
Member
I love it, but the no climbing during rain is so fucking stupid. They want me to explore, but then it rains, and I can't. I'm stuck waiting for the rain to end. Madness.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Weapon breaking is a shit mechanic whether you like it or not. See? I see that we disagree here and certainly not everyone is going to agree on just one list, specifically weapon breaking is something many people here said though. Also the random effects preventing progression (i.e. predominantly rain hinderin climbin), which is among those points you dismiss as shit is probably even the most asked for change over the posting smaple I have seen.
Give me a reworked version of BotW's map with some tweaks here and there in the game play...where I play Zelda. Link is just the other hero left in slumber you can unlock and play with after you beat the game.
Also, I'm kind of astounded at the people that don't want the map as big and would like everything to be more dense. There's a sense of place you can't evoke without the sparse feeling every once in a while as you travel.
Also, I'm kind of astounded at the people that don't want the map as big and would like everything to be more dense. There's a sense of place you can't evoke without the sparse feeling every once in a while as you travel.
If only they excised the cutscenes completely. Could have really been something.
Its a bad idea to play Zelda games for the story. Story has usually gotten in the way of enjoyment in the previous games and i am hopping Nintendo keeps it to a minimum in the next entry as well.
I don't understand why bomb which are like REALLY bad damage wise is your "best" way to fight. The weapon moblins have are already better and there is ton of them. Actually i have difficulty to stock all my favorites weapons. That's more the problem !
Really, the fact that you have to constantly change even for bad weapon is really good to me, and good weapon with good durability mean that you still want to only use them "when the time is right" since it's still breakable.
Just try to play differently ?
Depend, on the first travel, there is so much stuff to do tot he right or the left that i can't even just do a straight line with my horse for too long. Yeah, sometime there is nothing going one but as far as i'm concerned, it's more for the "diversity" than anything else.
The opposite for me too, TP was like one of my least favorite ZElda because of how easy the puzzle were. Wind Waker at least had the two lasts dungeon (wind and forst) and even Skyward Sword sometime puzzled me since there puzzle were quite new. And here, in Breath of the Wild, i have a hard time figuring out some solution and some time even find some way to "cheat the puzzle".
Also, we have to think what is a puzzle. There is some tower quite hard to attain and for me, it's a puzzle on itself, which is the better way to go ? How can i avoid some of the stuff ? I think one of the way BOTW is harder puzzle wise than some Zelda is that we, outside of Shrine, often don't really know when it's a puzzle or not. A lot of time i'm thinking "was it the way i was supposed to resolve it ?" even in Shrine actually. The fact the puzzle of BOTW can be solved in multiple way make them feel somewhat richer too.
The problem with puzzle difficulty is that it's way harder to understand than battle. I have a hard time with BOTW, you have a hard time with TP. It's not "really" Nintendo fault, we just have different way to think...
I think it all come down to the endurence metter, from where i am, i climb quite fast, i also boost myself with elixir quite often, i can jump because i have a lot of stamina too and even special equipement for climbing. Because of that, i'm way faster to climb than at the beginning. Aonuma had to reward the player for visiting the huge world, heart receptal just wasn't enough, having the endurence jauge is a very good way to do that as i really feel an evolution in my character.
But yeah, at the beginning it's a little frustrating, not a perfect solution at all.
To be honest, i loved SS for the story but also because the main gimmick of the game mean that all puzzle were very different from what we saw before. Some objects were really cleaver (like the beetle thing) and for me, that was the mean interest... For the rest, it felt like "more of the same" to be honest. The way BOTW do things is waaaay different. you already have all the tool, you just have to think about it, it's not just an open world, i would describe it as an open puzzle. It's a lot different than before... Even more than SS... Which i like.
I agree more enemy variety would be nice. Even between different enemy classes, many behaviors are the same.
SpiceMelange
Member
You're doing something very wrong if you have to resort to bombs. This game rains weapons non-stop.
What does that affect in practical terms? They carry more powerful weapons? Take more hits to down?
mugurumakensei
Member
Yep, the density of the world is kind of balanced as is for the difficulty of enemies. After a tough encounter with a moblin group, I can take a breather and relax as I'm exploring.
ShadowFox08
Member
I'm a bit worries for the next Zelda. They got the open world exploration down, but I wonder how they will deal with the world and characters.
How many times will we be playing as Link saving hyrule and zelda with the same landmarks (kakariko village lanayru/gerudo desert, death mountain etc). We've done that that for every 3d console Zelda game except for Majora's Mask. Can we break away from the defeating the evil ganondorf in hyrule thing? Its getting tiring, and almost as bad as Mario having to save peach and defeat Bowser?
Would actually be cool if we could play as Zelda or ganondorf also.
How many times will we be playing as Link saving hyrule and zelda with the same landmarks (kakariko village lanayru/gerudo desert, death mountain etc). We've done that that for every 3d console Zelda game except for Majora's Mask. Can we break away from the defeating the evil ganondorf in hyrule thing? Its getting tiring, and almost as bad as Mario having to save peach and defeat Bowser?
Would actually be cool if we could play as Zelda or ganondorf also.
Mihos
Gold Member
Honestly, I think everyone understands all of that, but in short, it simply isn't fun for us.
You would have just as much luck convincing me I like lima beans.
I like doing the same story over and over again because i think it tends to act as a social alegory for its time period. What was 2007 like? Check Twilight Princess. 2011 check Skyward Sword ect
Mind clarifying? I don't see it.
Although I do think the story in BotW can get pretty meta and self-aware at times.
dampflokfreund
Banned
Kind of disagree. Zelda always had a good story for me and there is atleast one huge plot twist.
mrhyderager
Member
Übermatik;231515805 said:
It's gonna be YUGE
and the Mexicans are gonna pay for it.
Fantastic post, and well said.
Aonuma can indeed surpass BotW, but Nintendo has to provide him another leap in hardware beyond WiiU & Switch.