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I wrote like a 6 paragraph "thoughts on" piece about this game in the review section now that the game is out and I have finished it.
https://gbatemp.net/review/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild.563/
The following post was speculation from before the game came out and honestly I wasn't too far off from what I predicted here.
I'm a big Zelda fan. Huge. Twilight Princess is one of my all-time favorite games ever. I'll eat up anything with the Zelda name slapped on it and its usually pretty good anyway. However, Breath of the Wild has me very concerned because what I feared the most and predicted what would happen with this open word transition is seemingly true. This game is going to be plagued with what makes your generic open world game so uninteresting and borderline pointless.
Let me explain, and before you sound off with "The gams not out yet u moran", I know but we have seen plenty of it and more than enough to understand what most, if not all of it, will be like. Let's take a look at what could make this game a forgettable, monotonous, poorly designed experience. This is gonna be a long one.
First I want to talk about the main feature of the game, the thing it's named after, "the wild". You can, supposedly, go anywhere you want whenever you want. Isn't that something? What do you want to go do then now that we have that possibility? ....... hmmm.... what could we possibly want to go do... you'd think it'd be obvious but there's really zero reason to want to, for example, ignore the entire opening area and walk all the way across the map to do things there first. And don't worry angry billy, I'll be sure to tell you why.
Let's look at the slim number of things BotW decides to populate it's worlds with. First and foremost there's Bokoblin camps. These are where the game hides away seemingly most of its battles. In the hours and hours of gameplay footage I've seen, there have been hardly any enemies just out and about, they're all at these camps. These camps alone introduce their own set of structural problems but thats for later. So along your journey you're just gonna be seeing tons of Bokoblin camps that are all more or less the same thing, kill 5 or so and then get a debatably pointless reward, again more on that in a bit. Woohoo. What else is there to populate our expansive, bigger than Skyrim, map? Oh! Horse Stables! You can register horses you find here for easy access to them later. That's cool. Except for the fact there's way too many of them. In the new area they've been showing off at the Switch events, there's at least THREE of them. And they're all really close to each other! Why do you need that many of this thing that serves such a miniscule purpose in the game? If there's already that many in just one small area, how many will there be across the entire map? If this area's anything to go by, I'm willing to bet at least a hundred. Again these serve hardly any purpose yet they're a main thing populating the world. And now the last main thing they use to make the world seem less empty and pointless. The main game part of the game. The Shrines.
The Shrines honestly are the most disappointing aspect of the game to me. Instead of making real dungeons (I know real dungeons are probably coming but the rumor is only 4 and that's not nearly enough for the biggest Zelda game ever)
(EDIT: Actually there AREN'T ANY LMAO http://nintendoeverything.com/aonuma-on-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-development-shrines-art-style-more/)
Sure theres 120 or something of them but think about what they are and watch gameplay of them. Its go in, solve one stupidly easy puzzle and get whatever the reward is. That's no supplement for enemy filled dungeons with tough puzzle segments and finding the right way to go at a given time and figuring out layouts and getting new key items. And here's a thought: You may think "Oh since this world is open Im gonna go do this one all the way over here". Why? Whats the point in that? You don't know whats in any of them untill you go in. You also don't know what rewards you'll get. Hell you might not even be able to complete it because you don't have the proper items if you wander off too far. On top of all of that, they all look the same. I want uniquely themed stuff, the Gorons worship shrine, the catacombs of the Royal Family, a freaking Yeti's house.
And thats it. That's about all the Breath of the Wild has to populate it's world. I'm sure theres gonna be a couple villages here and there but there's not going to be much else. And it shows. The world is barren. I have absolutely no idea what could possibly be fun about exploring this world if there's little incentive to do so.
Remember when I said the idea of gating enemy encounters off to camps and select areas was a problem? Let's get into that. Basically, there's not point in going out of your way to fight them, or to not just walk around them. Not only this is because the rewards suck horribly, but because of the breakable weapons system. You're just breaking weapons, and using up other equipment to kill everything in these camps. And guess what you get back? Equipment. wait that sounds like a certain paper mario game oh no. And not even a lot of it. I saw one guy take out a whole treehouse of Bokoblins and all he got was 5 arrows. Another took out a riverside camp and all they got was a piece of fruit. That's extremely stupid. I'm sure there's gonna be a small handful that do have decent rewards but most of them will be crap like this. No reason to bother with them.
Another broken mechanic is food. No more scavenging for heart's or hoping theres some in the boss room. Just pause and eat. It seems as if you can hold tons and tons of food too. Nothings stopping you from making a bunch of the OP food either. This pause and eat mechanic effectively destroys any and all challenge that could possibly be in the game.
Last but not least, the lack of music in the game. There's no music in the game because "muh environmental immersion". Instead there are small piano loops every once in a while when somethings nearby. This hurts me especially because Zelda has tons of gamings best music tied to its name and now it has very little if any music at all. Great...
And that's my problems with BotW. Yeah the games not out. Yeah I'm still gonna play it. Who knows, maybe it's going to be amazing, I'll come back to this thread and happily eat my sock(I really will) if Im proven wrong. But I am just very cautious because upon close inspection this game just looks bad design wise. On a positive note, the trailers make it seem like there will be a great story in the game, the story is always one of my favorite parts of Zelda, and voice acting is a great addition.
Sorry for the long post, here's hoping this game isn't another Metal Gear Solid V, and Zelda at least has that beat already by having a story. Update: It doesn't have it beat by having a story, it was terrible and short. This is literally the MGS5 of Zelda
https://gbatemp.net/review/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild.563/
The following post was speculation from before the game came out and honestly I wasn't too far off from what I predicted here.
I'm a big Zelda fan. Huge. Twilight Princess is one of my all-time favorite games ever. I'll eat up anything with the Zelda name slapped on it and its usually pretty good anyway. However, Breath of the Wild has me very concerned because what I feared the most and predicted what would happen with this open word transition is seemingly true. This game is going to be plagued with what makes your generic open world game so uninteresting and borderline pointless.
Let me explain, and before you sound off with "The gams not out yet u moran", I know but we have seen plenty of it and more than enough to understand what most, if not all of it, will be like. Let's take a look at what could make this game a forgettable, monotonous, poorly designed experience. This is gonna be a long one.
First I want to talk about the main feature of the game, the thing it's named after, "the wild". You can, supposedly, go anywhere you want whenever you want. Isn't that something? What do you want to go do then now that we have that possibility? ....... hmmm.... what could we possibly want to go do... you'd think it'd be obvious but there's really zero reason to want to, for example, ignore the entire opening area and walk all the way across the map to do things there first. And don't worry angry billy, I'll be sure to tell you why.
Let's look at the slim number of things BotW decides to populate it's worlds with. First and foremost there's Bokoblin camps. These are where the game hides away seemingly most of its battles. In the hours and hours of gameplay footage I've seen, there have been hardly any enemies just out and about, they're all at these camps. These camps alone introduce their own set of structural problems but thats for later. So along your journey you're just gonna be seeing tons of Bokoblin camps that are all more or less the same thing, kill 5 or so and then get a debatably pointless reward, again more on that in a bit. Woohoo. What else is there to populate our expansive, bigger than Skyrim, map? Oh! Horse Stables! You can register horses you find here for easy access to them later. That's cool. Except for the fact there's way too many of them. In the new area they've been showing off at the Switch events, there's at least THREE of them. And they're all really close to each other! Why do you need that many of this thing that serves such a miniscule purpose in the game? If there's already that many in just one small area, how many will there be across the entire map? If this area's anything to go by, I'm willing to bet at least a hundred. Again these serve hardly any purpose yet they're a main thing populating the world. And now the last main thing they use to make the world seem less empty and pointless. The main game part of the game. The Shrines.
The Shrines honestly are the most disappointing aspect of the game to me. Instead of making real dungeons (I know real dungeons are probably coming but the rumor is only 4 and that's not nearly enough for the biggest Zelda game ever)
(EDIT: Actually there AREN'T ANY LMAO http://nintendoeverything.com/aonuma-on-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-development-shrines-art-style-more/)
Sure theres 120 or something of them but think about what they are and watch gameplay of them. Its go in, solve one stupidly easy puzzle and get whatever the reward is. That's no supplement for enemy filled dungeons with tough puzzle segments and finding the right way to go at a given time and figuring out layouts and getting new key items. And here's a thought: You may think "Oh since this world is open Im gonna go do this one all the way over here". Why? Whats the point in that? You don't know whats in any of them untill you go in. You also don't know what rewards you'll get. Hell you might not even be able to complete it because you don't have the proper items if you wander off too far. On top of all of that, they all look the same. I want uniquely themed stuff, the Gorons worship shrine, the catacombs of the Royal Family, a freaking Yeti's house.
And thats it. That's about all the Breath of the Wild has to populate it's world. I'm sure theres gonna be a couple villages here and there but there's not going to be much else. And it shows. The world is barren. I have absolutely no idea what could possibly be fun about exploring this world if there's little incentive to do so.
Remember when I said the idea of gating enemy encounters off to camps and select areas was a problem? Let's get into that. Basically, there's not point in going out of your way to fight them, or to not just walk around them. Not only this is because the rewards suck horribly, but because of the breakable weapons system. You're just breaking weapons, and using up other equipment to kill everything in these camps. And guess what you get back? Equipment. wait that sounds like a certain paper mario game oh no. And not even a lot of it. I saw one guy take out a whole treehouse of Bokoblins and all he got was 5 arrows. Another took out a riverside camp and all they got was a piece of fruit. That's extremely stupid. I'm sure there's gonna be a small handful that do have decent rewards but most of them will be crap like this. No reason to bother with them.
Another broken mechanic is food. No more scavenging for heart's or hoping theres some in the boss room. Just pause and eat. It seems as if you can hold tons and tons of food too. Nothings stopping you from making a bunch of the OP food either. This pause and eat mechanic effectively destroys any and all challenge that could possibly be in the game.
Last but not least, the lack of music in the game. There's no music in the game because "muh environmental immersion". Instead there are small piano loops every once in a while when somethings nearby. This hurts me especially because Zelda has tons of gamings best music tied to its name and now it has very little if any music at all. Great...
And that's my problems with BotW. Yeah the games not out. Yeah I'm still gonna play it. Who knows, maybe it's going to be amazing, I'll come back to this thread and happily eat my sock(I really will) if Im proven wrong. But I am just very cautious because upon close inspection this game just looks bad design wise. On a positive note, the trailers make it seem like there will be a great story in the game, the story is always one of my favorite parts of Zelda, and voice acting is a great addition.
Sorry for the long post, here's hoping this game isn't another Metal Gear Solid V, and Zelda at least has that beat already by having a story. Update: It doesn't have it beat by having a story, it was terrible and short. This is literally the MGS5 of Zelda
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