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I agree with the sentiment of making people open their eyes (reference not intended) to the fact that BotW has flaws and doesn't deserve to be called the objective masterpiece of the video game medium. It's most definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Ocarina of Time had this exact same problem, people overhyped it for years and then when people like myself who grew up with a PS1 later got a chance to play it years after its initial release, we wound up very underwhelmed by what was ultimately a "revolutionary for its time, but just a good but flawed game by today's standards".
At the same time, this guy is extremely incoherent and some of the things he says seem like they're really nitpicky and more personal gripes than huge flaws in the game's design. Like I wholeheartedly disagree with him saying that the game doesn't have charm or personality. The main story is certainly lacking (the most lacking aspect of the game IMO), but a lot of the NPCs have some pretty great dialogue, there's tons of touches like Link's animations under certain conditions, being able to play with dogs, etc.
When it comes to the game being overhyped, I think part of the reason is because, to a Nintendo-only gamer, they haven't seen a lot of the things BotW does before because Nintendo hasn't done them in their games, while other games on other systems have done many of these things before. The only other open world Nintendo game I can think of is Xenoblade Chronicles X, and the original Xenoblade to a lesser extent, and those are more RPGs than pure adventure games.
I'm personally satisfied with the overall package for Breath of the Wild and do want to see the series build on the open world Zelda concept and improve upon it, but it's by no means a perfect game. This guy doesn't do a good job of highlighting its real issues though.
BotW isn't overrated, it's pretty much the best Zelda game tbh.
The article seems to only have complaints about the story, which from what I've played has been pretty good for an open-world game. Gameplay-wise, it's incredible and really feels like what Zelda 1 wanted to be.
The fact I can just explore the world without doing any main quests and not get bored is a perfect sign they did an open-world right.
From my perspective Zelda going in this direction is the only thing that would actually get me to buy it. Is it perfect? No, of course there's obvious places where there's room for improvement. Could they have managed the story better even considering the open world setting? Sure, sure. But Hylia's blessing has the overstatement of BotW's quality caused a crazed knee jerk reaction in the opposite direction.
Thanks to a history of having to put up with reading whining involving the idea constantly, I have absolutely zero respect for the logic that if something was done one way before that doing it any other way is awful. Zelda's traditional puzzle design was forced, illogical, and had all the nuance of a crossword puzzle for five year olds. Zelda's traditional storytelling was decent when compared to other games from a company where major staff actively recoil at the concept of a plot but was nowhere near as good as the gold standard that Zelda fans try to hold it to. Breath of the Wild makes Zelda feel natural where your average Zelda game felt more like a computer input process than an adventure. Yes, of course I want to use this specific item to progress in this specific way even if it's a downright boring or irritating gimmick, especially with blatantly obvious gimmick dedicated objects that insult my intelligence, what would be ridiculous about that? /s
No one is saying Breath of the Wild isn't flawed. But it's essentially a reboot for the franchise, not in the gimmicky "we're going to tell the first game's plot over again only with prettier graphics and a worse take on the same gameplay, LOL" way, but in the sense of being a new gameplay style altogether. Look at Mega Man compared to Mega Man 2, or Sonic compared to Sonic 2. A brand new concept often takes a sequel to fully meet it's stride, and I strongly suspect it's the case here.
**** it. Make an ideal roster of a MHA fighting game
Deku
Bakugou
Iida
Todoroki
Pinky
Tsu
All Might (wearing power inhibitors)
Uraraka
Stain
Gran Torino
Momo
Tokoyami
First Nomu
Eraser Head
Kirashima (Plus Tesustetsu Tetsutetsu skin)
Mei Hastume
Jiro
Sero
Shoji (The Quad Arm guy)
Same I bought arms few days ago but lost interest however when I played punch out on the wii finished everything and kept playing it but Arms has something missing it feels empty.
I kind of doubt it personally unless they suddenly drop a Direct reveal today, Nintendo tends to ignore any non-E3 conventions when it comes to news and they aren't really spontaneous.
I agree with the sentiment of making people open their eyes (reference not intended) to the fact that BotW has flaws and doesn't deserve to be called the objective masterpiece of the video game medium. It's most definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Ocarina of Time had this exact same problem, people overhyped it for years and then when people like myself who grew up with a PS1 later got a chance to play it years after its initial release, we wound up very underwhelmed by what was ultimately a "revolutionary for its time, but just a good but flawed game by today's standards".
Yes, but you gotta contextualize things when looking at older games. Obviously a game made 2 decades ago isn't gonna hold up to today's standards, especially when it's the game that paved the way for many of the innovations that are now staples of entire genres. But you gotta give credit where credit is due. It's the same for any other medium, whatever has advanced the medium as a whole, deserves the praise it gets. And I agree that OoT is massively overrated, as it's certainly not the greatest game ever made, and it's honestly aged like Milk (Majora's Mask is my personal favorite - and I personally feel its much more deserving of the praise that OoT tends to get, though I also wouldn't call MM "the greatest game ever made" because it too feels aged).
Yes, some games are timeless, and others are more revolutionary. Typically it's the games that experimented and tried new things that will feel a lot more clunky and aged compared to the more timeless ones which tended to mostly refine on what was established. I don't think it's fair to judge older stuff on such a scale because it doesn't account for things like cultural impact and etc...
I agree that OoT is overrated, but I also think it's definitely one of the best Zelda games in the franchise, especially the 3D Zeldas. As it stands it's still Majora's Mask>OoT> and then everything else for me. And it's not the nostalgia talking for me either, as I didn't properly get into the Zelda franchise till TP came out (Minish Cap was the first Zelda game I owned and completed), and OoT and MM were among the last ones I played.
Things have to be given context, and in the case of BotW, it's brand new, and it's honestly not as great as many people are pretending it to be.
At the same time, this guy is extremely incoherent and some of the things he says seem like they're really nitpicky and more personal gripes than huge flaws in the game's design. Like I wholeheartedly disagree with him saying that the game doesn't have charm or personality. The main story is certainly lacking (the most lacking aspect of the game IMO), but a lot of the NPCs have some pretty great dialogue, there's tons of touches like Link's animations under certain conditions, being able to play with dogs, etc.
I don't think he's being nitpicky. To me it sounds like he's making a point relative to the rest of the franchise. He's saying "these things don't have charm, compared to how it was done before" and I totally agree. BotW definitely does feel like it's just going through the motions in many areas, and it lack the same degree of attention to detail and personality you would often find even in the most minute elements of the series. And he gave plenty of examples to back up his opinion, so it's not like I can disagree with his stance. Compared to previous games, yeah, there's a lot less emotional investment to be had with the characters and the world. Nothing really stands out. Especially compared to other games, and most notable other Zelda games.
When it comes to the game being overhyped, I think part of the reason is because, to a Nintendo-only gamer, they haven't seen a lot of the things BotW does before because Nintendo hasn't done them in their games, while other games on other systems have done many of these things before. The only other open world Nintendo game I can think of is Xenoblade Chronicles X, and the original Xenoblade to a lesser extent, and those are more RPGs than pure adventure games.
This is most certainly a problem I see with most Nintendo fans, and why I personally dislike and tend to avoid arguing with them. In short, this way of thinking can be summed up as fanboyism. If more people actually bothered to look beyond their favorite company, they'd actually start to see that many things that seem revolutionary to them, have been the standard for years now.
One great example in relation to BotW was in the article right there.
Climbing.
Assassin's Creed did INDEED do the climbing mechanic ages ago, and it integrated it much better than BotW, which essentially turns Link into Spiderman. But because most Nintendo fans haven't bothered to play Assassin's Creed, they totally turn a blind eye to this.
I'm personally satisfied with the overall package for Breath of the Wild and do want to see the series build on the open world Zelda concept and improve upon it, but it's by no means a perfect game. This guy doesn't do a good job of highlighting its real issues though.
I'm on the other spectrum here. I was massively disappointed by how BotW turned out after I beat it. I'd LIKE to see this style of play be expanded upon, but properly. BotW imo, sits at the opposite end of the spectrum of where FFXIII is. Rather than absolute linear corridors that basically play themselves out like an interactive film, BotW pushed toward the Open World end of the spectrum to the absolute limit, and wound up with a perfect example why absolute freedom and pure "go anywhere" Open World are as equally bad design as Linear Corridors. Scrapping the Zelda formula because it created progression in a game where they wanted to do away with any sense of progression was an absolute MISTAKE.
Simply put, personally, if future Zelda games are gonna continue to not have dungeons, and items, and bosses, and all the things that made Zelda what it is, then I'll simply accept that the series peaked during the SNES/N64 era, and not bother with future games.
Also, if you wanna see a well reasoned and detailed analysis with everything wrong with the game, imo, Joseph Anderson's video on it is on point:
For the record, I don't think BotW is a bad game persay, and I can see why people enjoy it. Personally however, it's the first Zelda game I didn't even bother to fully complete. Which certainly a step down from SS which I had to force myself to finish. But my stance on it is that I wish the excessive praise toward the game be done away with, because for one, I don't think it's fair toward other games which ACTUALLY have done great things to push the medium forward, and two, I don't want it to be a game to be copied by because of its success, should it happen to win GotY. Especially considering that BotW did nothing really but copy already tired OW tropes.
**** it. Make an ideal roster of a MHA fighting game
Deku
Bakugou
Iida
Todoroki
Pinky
Tsu
All Might (wearing power inhibitors)
Uraraka
Stain
Gran Torino
Momo
Tokoyami
First Nomu
Eraser Head
Kirashima (Plus Tesustetsu Tetsutetsu skin)
Mei Hastume
Jiro
Sero
Shoji (The Quad Arm guy)
All Might could be really interesting if his powerful form was a sort of temporary transformation that cost meter.
Like, if it was current All-Might where he can only hold it for a few seconds.
Thus the character revolves around building meter in his weakened state, being arguably one of the worst characters on the roster, to unleash his super powerful form where he's near broken. A character like that would certainly be interesting.
Bakugo and Todoroki would be really awesome to play as.
I think All-Might's sidekick, I forget his name, could make for an interesting character due to how unorthodox his powers are.
Also, the super-manly rock guy, and the Fat Guts dude need to be in. As well as Deku's Senpai (the dude who can phase through things), and his buddy the guy who can create body parts out of the stuff he's eaten. Both would make very interesting fighters.
I think BoTW was neccesary anyways in order to avoid another slew of linear Zeldas.
That said, I think it definitely can be improved upon massively to really get to the ultimate Zelda experience, but to say Nintendo hit the ball out of the park first try is overrating it.
I hope BoTW will still be an influence, but it uses the things Nintendo did right to truly breath a fresh air in the franchise by working towards a perfect hybrid between Lineair and Open World.
I don't think BotW is a perfect, 10/10 game, but I like it a lot. Granted I've never played a Zelda before, so I can't really compare it to previous entries.
It has flaws, but it has things it does real well.
Honestly if the next Zelda game just has "semi-linear main quest but a huge open world that has tons to do and discover outside of it" then it's already half way there to being a huge improvement.
The main reason the storyline and its related quests suffer in Breath of the Wild is because they were so smitten with the "YOU CAN FIGHT GANON ANY TIME" idea that there's no sense of progression or sense of urgency in anything. Everything is too isolated and episodic. It didn't help that only one of those episodes had an actually engaging story, while the rest were cookie cutter stuff. That goes beyond the open world design inhibiting the story, and is just a case of them not coming up with interesting narratives period.
If the game at least had a semi-linear main story, then they could write stronger arcs for characters. Like, for example, you help Sidon in Zora's Domain, and then after that, he moves about the world to a different location and ends up helping you with something else that might be required to get to Ganon.
Because Breath of the Wild didn't try to structure the story at all, there ends up being very little build up to your fight with Ganon. Especially if you actually did all of the main quests, because there is actually slightly more build up if you just go straight to Ganon because:
You do a boss rush of all of the blights before fighting Ganon if you haven't freed any of the Divine Beasts.
The prospect of discovering the world would be much cooler if the story allowed for discovering a story more interesting than "wowzah these four peeps were pretty cool dudes"
Even Splatoon's Sunken Scrolls are more exciting than the BoTW memories
From my perspective Zelda going in this direction is the only thing that would actually get me to buy it. Is it perfect? No, of course there's obvious places where there's room for improvement. Could they have managed the story better even considering the open world setting? Sure, sure. But Hylia's blessing has the overstatement of BotW's quality caused a crazed knee jerk reaction in the opposite direction.
Thanks to a history of having to put up with reading whining involving the idea constantly, I have absolutely zero respect for the logic that if something was done one way before that doing it any other way is awful. Zelda's traditional puzzle design was forced, illogical, and had all the nuance of a crossword puzzle for five year olds. Zelda's traditional storytelling was decent when compared to other games from a company where major staff actively recoil at the concept of a plot but was nowhere near as good as the gold standard that Zelda fans try to hold it to. Breath of the Wild makes Zelda feel natural where your average Zelda game felt more like a computer input process than an adventure. Yes, of course I want to use this specific item to progress in this specific way even if it's a downright boring or irritating gimmick, especially with blatantly obvious gimmick dedicated objects that insult my intelligence, what would be ridiculous about that? /s
No one is saying Breath of the Wild isn't flawed. But it's essentially a reboot for the franchise, not in the gimmicky "we're going to tell the first game's plot over again only with prettier graphics and a worse take on the same gameplay, LOL" way, but in the sense of being a new gameplay style altogether. Look at Mega Man compared to Mega Man 2, or Sonic compared to Sonic 2. A brand new concept often takes a sequel to fully meet it's stride, and I strongly suspect it's the case here.
I think the problem with most 3D Zelda games is the fact that the oberworld is just used to stretch out the time between dungeons, usually, there's nothing on them apart from an occasional secret. I liked the more compressed maps in the 2D games like ALttP because almost every area had something to do.
Though BotW has so many things it ends up distracting me from whatever I was usually gonna do lol
**** it. Make an ideal roster of a MHA fighting game
Deku
Bakugou
Iida
Todoroki
Pinky
Tsu
All Might (wearing power inhibitors)
Uraraka
Stain
Gran Torino
Momo
Tokoyami
First Nomu
Eraser Head
Kirashima (Plus Tesustetsu Tetsutetsu skin)
Mei Hastume
Jiro
Sero
Shoji (The Quad Arm guy)
What do you mean by All Might wearing power inhibitors?
I like the roster though, just needs Monoma as the obligatory mirror fighter. Also, no Shigaraki? Tag team with Kurogiri ala Hol Horse+Hanged Man would be cool.
Also, it'd be cool if each character had some sort of gimmick, like pre-Full Cowl Midoriya getting injured by using One For All, Todoroki having to balance his temperature, Dark Shadow being affected by the match time, etc.
Honestly if the next Zelda game just has "semi-linear main quest but a huge open world that has tons to do and discover outside of it" then it's already half way there to being a huge improvement.
I wouldn't mind it staying like BotW but I wouldn't mind that either.
Technically, that's what the 3D games already are but they don't exactly do it well
Holy **** Spirit of Justice just got me to cry of laughter
At the end of Magical Turnabout, Apollo thinks and you get multiple choices to connect the dots of the mystery, and the first answer is 'Bonny made a mistake'. Then Apollo asks himself what that mistake was and one of the wrong answers is 'Her life choices
I think the problem with most 3D Zelda games is the fact that the oberworld is just used to stretch out the time between dungeons, usually, there's nothing on them apart from an occasional secret. I liked the more compressed maps in the 2D games like ALttP because almost every area had something to do.
Though BotW has so many things it ends up distracting me from whatever I was usually gonna do lol
What do you mean by All Might wearing power inhibitors?
I like the roster though, just needs Monoma as the obligatory mirror fighter. Also, no Shigaraki? Tag team with Kurogiri ala Hol Horse+Hanged Man would be cool.
Also, it'd be cool if each character had some sort of gimmick, like pre-Full Cowl Midoriya getting injured by using One For All, Todoroki having to balance his temperature, Dark Shadow being affected by the match time, etc.
I wouldn't mind it staying like BotW but I wouldn't mind that either.
Technically, that's what the 3D games already are but they don't exactly do it well
I wouldn't mind it staying like BotW but I wouldn't mind that either.
Technically, that's what the 3D games already are but they don't exactly do it well
I'm not saying they should get rid of the open world, they should keep that. I like being able to go anywhere at any time and discover things at my own pace.
They should just add some more exceptions to that rule when it comes to the main story. Like blocking off the entrance to Ganon until you do certain things, have more than just one short story episode per major character and have them move about the world for certain story beats.
Everything else like finding shrines and Korok Seeds would still be available, and you can still climb things and have the paraglider, but the story quests have a slight order to them so that characters can develop and the situation can escalate. There should still be freedom in terms that of which character you help in which order, but each character should at least have two or three major quests, which you can tackle one by one or you can bounce between helping each character at your leisure. And finishing all of them will allow you to fight Ganon for some plot related reason.
Plenty of other open world games do this. They have main story with a semi-linear order of events, but everything else can be tackled whenever.
Another thing I noticed Breath of the Wild doesn't do, is have characters move about the world. The only ones that do are Beedle, Kass, and Pikango (sp?), and while they are among the more memorable characters in the game, they aren't involved with the core plot much at all. Having characters like Sidon and Yunobo move about the world as part of the plot for some sort of quest would have helped them develop more as characters.
I'd be thrilled if it was Splatoon 2, but we just had a Splatfest and have already had our first couple months of content winked at and ARMS has been in a perpetual silence zone for ages and been hinted to have a reveal soon anyway.
Holy **** Spirit of Justice just got me to cry of laughter
At the end of Magical Turnabout, Apollo thinks and you get multiple choices to connect the dots of the mystery, and the first answer is 'Bonny made a mistake'. Then Apollo asks himself what that mistake was and one of the wrong answers is 'Her life choices
I'm dying
All Might wouldn't want to fight his students at full strength, now would he?
*3DS MHA game flashbacks*
Yeah, that was unsettling but it is a fighting game so **** logic really
I mean, you can have Mario beat up Peach in Smash or making Naruto beat up his own son in Storm 4.
And he sorta did that on the first OVA
Holy **** Spirit of Justice just got me to cry of laughter
At the end of Magical Turnabout, Apollo thinks and you get multiple choices to connect the dots of the mystery, and the first answer is 'Bonny made a mistake'. Then Apollo asks himself what that mistake was and one of the wrong answers is 'Her life choices
I'm dying
All Might wouldn't want to fight his students at full strength, now would he?
Tbh I like Zelda for the puzzles and dungeons more than the exploration, I don't mind them taking a more linear approach in the future. Not that I dislike the Open World, it's just that the narrative feels kind of empty compared to, say, OoT or WW.
Although I guess it kind of helps that two of the games I'm playing through at the moment (KH2, FFX)have a more linear style.
Tbh I like Zelda for the puzzles and dungeons more than the exploration, I don't mind them taking a more linear approach in the future. Not that I dislike the Open World, it's just that the narrative feels kind of empty compared to, say, OoT or WW.
Although I guess it kind of helps that two of the games I'm playing through at the moment (KH2, FFX)have a more linear style.
I agree with this, I love puzzles and that's something I've always liked about Zelda but... well, they're very strict in the sense that you can only do them in one way.
One reason I love BotW is how every puzzle can be tackled on multiple ways, I like this freedom, and even if I do it how it's supposed to be done, I still feel like I had a choice.
The same applies to fighting enemies, since the game gives you so many tools, there's a lot that can be done.
You can even be stealthy! And like, this doesn't seem big but I ****ing love how the game rewards you for doing so.
Or, I dunno, just jump from high up and paraglide on top of your enemies, that's fun too.
Because they just looked like some plastic hand that he uses to look cool(which would be in character).
But ****, where did he get them? Is his actual name Kira?
Shigaraki
Higaraki
Igaraki
Garaki
Araki !!!!!!!
Raki
Kira
**** HE IS
