Legend of Zelda thread - Lorefags GTFO!

Nico Nico Nikola said:
I think one of the biggest aspects of BoTW's design is the ability to basically do whatever you want as soon as your past the tutorial.
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Not really. The issue is that the lack of a time limit combined with the lack of a central plot makes the game feel very static and dead. "Yeah, sure, go spend 40 hours unlocking every shrine and gathering up 600 Korok Seeds. Ganon and Zelda will both wait patiently while you do and the gamestate of the map won't change at all in the meantime either."

I'd be more fine with that openness to explore if it were combined with a less pressing central plot where Calamity Ganon has awakened and Zelda is desperately holding him back with the final vestiges of her remaining strength or if it were combined with a system that allowed me to take over and control territory that I would then have to defend from raids or lose it. Or something. I'm not a gamedev and maybe my ideas suck.
Retarded Weeb said:
I've thought about this before, but I feel like it get tedious while the games are designed the way they are. It would make more sense if the game world had a more Metroidvania or Soulslike design where it's basically a giant interconnected dungeon, so no massive fields would need to keep crossing to get from one part of the map to another. Traversal would have to be more about routing than about feeling expansive.
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The teleport system would help to cut down on that. I know people got down on Bethesda when they first implemented it back in the day but a fast travel system seriously helps mechanics like that not feel oppressive.
 
Its just me or Zelda fans have a love-hate relationship with BotW?
Like, they admit its a great game, maybe the best of the series, but they do so reluctantly, because of its changes and what impact the game had on both the series and goytendo?
Never played it anyway, I only know the final boss is ass and its a open world slop done right.
 
Strangolapreti said:
Its just me or Zelda fans have a love-hate relationship with BotW?
Like, they admit its a great game, maybe the best of the series, but they do so reluctantly, because of its changes and what impact the game had on both the series and goytendo?
Never played it anyway, I only know the final boss is ass and its a open world slop done right.
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BoTW is a game of peaks and valleys. The things it does well it does really well, and the things it does poorly it does really poorly. Your perception of the game will be based on what comparative values you apply to those things an whether or not the juice of the good game design choices are worth the squeeze of the bad game design choices.

Personally, I like BoTW as a fun little fuck around game but it is in no way a good Legend of Zelda game nor do I think that it holds a candle to most other open world fantasy games/RPGs.
 
Strangolapreti said:
Its just me or Zelda fans have a love-hate relationship with BotW?
Like, they admit its a great game, maybe the best of the series, but they do so reluctantly, because of its changes and what impact the game had on both the series and goytendo?
Never played it anyway, I only know the final boss is ass and its a open world slop done right.
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Sure. The love-hate is because while fun it's not actually a Zelda game and what Zelda fans want is actual Zelda games like those that defined the franchise, such as LttP and OoT. Namely an exploratory action game with very light nominal RPG elements (nominal because the series predates the term Metroidvania so pretending Zelda is some sort of RPG is a long-running tradition--really it boils down to the fact that you can dungeon dive for loot, NPCs that tell you about some story you don't care about, upgrading your gear and health bar, and collecting coins you can spend in like one store) which alternates between overworld traversal and a series of discrete puzzle-based dungeons with end bosses, with each dungeon giving you the shit you need to explore more and find the next one.
This specific combination of elements as well as the conventional design sensibilities of the dungeons gives the core series a very distinct vibe. But like many of their popular franchises, Nintendo seems bored with it and insists on making dumb entries which centre on you jerking off Tingle the fairy or whatever. It's exasperating because the core games usually already include major gameplay twists: with LttP there's a dark mirror dimension, in OoT it's time travel, etc. In this particular case it'd be possible to satisfy players without making the same game over and over like Pokemon.

BotW is a good game, but it's not so much "open world done right" as Nintendo launching a well put-together "baby's first open world" for their casual audience. It's smart: they know they have a lot of Animal Crossing players or whatever, and they know that the AAA market has moved toward producing this style of game (and with the technical homogenisation of "consoles" that they'd be hosting a lot more cross-platform ports going forwards, despite it launching on the Wii U).
So BotW was an elegant strategy to get girls to spend money basically, and it was so successful that every open-world Chinese gacha looks like BotW.

For many of these kinds of players, BotW might have been the best thing they've ever played. For Zelda fans, it's a game that looks like Zelda but with half the formula missing in order to streamline the product. The half it does do is solid though so you can't really hate it. By cutting the cool fun dungeon stuff that people were actually want they were able to put their typical level of extreme polish on the empty-ass open world aspect that other studios would half-ass, which is why it gets a lot of praise. Where most games would have you just holding W for five minutes to run to the next thingy, there's so much intractability that empty space becomes a sandbox, and all the fucking shrine challenge things everywhere that replaced dungeons exist basically just to teach and motivate you to play around with the possibilities. It's basically Just Cause 2 if you had a gravity gun and could build a jet out of logs.

The sequel was like someone taking a shit on your face, though.
 
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Gimmick Account said:
BotW is a good game, but it's not so much "open world done right"
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I didn't said "open world done right", I said "open world SLOP done right", there's a difference: Elden ring is open world, Oblivion is open world, Fallout New Vegas is open world, *insert ubisoft title* is open world slop.
Gimmick Account said:
Namely an exploratory action game with very light nominal RPG elements
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The last time they tried to add extra RPG elements, Zelda 2 was born and only a few people will be able to unironically tell you its not a bad game, which I'd kinda mixed over it: its not as bad as people describes it, but it needs to be played differently, with either a guide or pen+paper so that you can keep note of past mistakes.

Its easy to trace a quintessential formula for Zelda games with something like the game boy games: you have an overworld, a villain/goal introduced at the start and multiple mystical mcguffins you need to get by clearing dungeons that you need to find first, after which a final battle ensues to save everyone's lives.
Its a very videogame-y formula but quite effective, I can understand trying to change it to avoid stagnation, but I'm not quite sure if the alternative has been any better, the way you described me BotW makes it looks like trading an ol' reliable formula for something that managed to be more generic and normie friendly.
 
Strangolapreti said:
The last time they tried to add extra RPG elements, Zelda 2 was born and only a few people will be able to unironically tell you its not a bad game, which I'd kinda mixed over it: its not as bad as people describes it, but it needs to be played differently, with either a guide or pen+paper so that you can keep note of past mistakes.
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I hate to break it to you but that's fairly common for contemporary actual RPGs to Zelda II.
 
2 is fine; it's a black sheep as the series goes but there were a number of other contemporary games like it. It's not as though people were like "oh shit this stinks" and ditched the bullshit platformy RPG genre in 1987 or whatever. Instead they made their own.
Retrospectively, people won't get it, but a lot of NES games weren't really meant to be beaten. It's like the Battletoads or TMNT or Contra or Ghosts 'n Goblins of the Zelda series.
(All of which were big hits in the fucking nintendo shack my school had where you could hang out until your parents picked you up, moreso than any of the games they had that people recognise as good now, because they're perfect for that type of setting where the reaper might show up and drag you home at any moment.)

Obviously they realised it didn't have the magic of the first game and went back to that. Shame they can't seem to stick to that insight.
You probably could add actual RPG elements (although like I said, calling what it does have that is basically an ancient meme) without changing much, it's just a very unnecessary idea. Dragon Quest is a long walk from A to B where you hang out in dungeons a bit if you need more numbers to beat the boss. Zelda doesn't need that because you hang out in dungeons because you're retarded and haven't figured out yet that you can destroy the pillars holding up floor 2 by rolling those big steel balls the right way.

It's one of those vibe things that the mysteries and rewards of exploration are right in front of you to put together rather than obscurity or being walled off by FUCKING BULLSHIT like the zelda 2 desert temple.
 
DickMain said:
BGS (and other weapons) actually do less to him than the Master Sword. A flat 1 damage, as a matter of fact. I think thematically it's supposed to be because MS is the only thing that can really oppose him.
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I always used the Megaton Hammer, since it's basically forgotten outside of a few switches post Fire Temple. (Also the Ganondorf Lego set has the Megaton Hammer, so it's codified in the canon).
Strangolapreti said:
Its just me or Zelda fans have a love-hate relationship with BotW?
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Yeah, go through the last 50 pages.
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
Personally, I like BoTW as a fun little fuck around game but it is in no way a good Legend of Zelda game nor do I think that it holds a candle to most other open world fantasy games/RPGs.
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Basically. This is probably the fourth time I've said it, but I want to see an alternate timeline where Breath of the Wild is released on it's own as a totally new IP by Nintendo, and see how it does. It's a fun game with great physics puzzles and total freedom, which I miss when I play other open world games like Tsushima, but it's just, not a Zelda game.

Release two bad platformers by a third party that look like Zelda? Nope not Zelda they don't count.
Release Zelda musou? Doesn't count, these are spin-offs.
Release a Zelda roguelike with rhythm-based combat? Nope, a spin-off.
Release a Zelda TPS, actually developed by Nintendo? Nope, it's a spin-off.
Release an open world game that plays nothing like most Zelda games? Yeah, this is totally Zelda.
 
Strangolapreti said:
Its just me or Zelda fans have a love-hate relationship with BotW?
Like, they admit its a great game, maybe the best of the series, but they do so reluctantly, because of its changes and what impact the game had on both the series and goytendo?
Never played it anyway, I only know the final boss is ass and its a open world slop done right.
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I just think BotW is a bad game. It's kind of interesting for the first couple or more hours on the Plateau because everything is still new and the full gameplay hasn't become apparent yet. You're still encountering enemies for the first time, resources feel like you're finding better things to work with, and it feels like there's some sense of danger and reason why might want to retreat back to a base camp. Once you leave thee Plateau and the game starts to get going though, it all just starts to fall apart.

The longer you play, the more apparent it becomes that the game doesn't have that much unique content as far as enemies or challenges, and things get repetitive quickly unless you're deliberately skipping over much of the game. The weapon system just feels pointless, like I'm never running out of weapons so that's not the issue, but it doesn't feel like combat meaningfully changes regardless of what set of weapons I have on hand. They're mostly all the same three weapons anyway just with different numerical attack differences - something that caused the devs to have to give enemies varying HP values to make higher attack weapons mean something, leading to damage sponge enemies. At best the elemental weapons kind of do something different, and I guess it makes sense to tie elemental effects to a resource with how effective they can be, but it would probably make sense for it to be like magic instead of just dependent on whatever you randomly find lying around. Once you figure out that durians are the best food ingredient and that there's a place you can literally farm them then you have no reason not to have 20 meals in your inventory you can freely stop to eat whenever to fully heal yourself up to double your max health, so now combat is not only tedious but basically impossible to lose. The amount of resources you can carry around plus freedom to fast travel means that exploration has no real risk or downside, since you'll never run low on anything or and you can freely warp out of any danger or inconvenient location. The really generous save adds to that, since it means even if you do die you'll generally lose no more than a minute or so of progress.

There's a few engagement spikes when the game presents you with something that feels new for the first time, like your first Guardian, your first Lynel, your first encounter with a dragon (especially if you do the Lanayru dragon quest before encountering the other two, like I did), or the island where the game takes your stuff away so you're back to playing like on the Plateau for a little while, but it's all pretty washed away in dozens of hours of nothing particularly new, exciting, or challenging happening. I wouldn't even call the game world "empty" like some people do. If anything, taking out half the Korok seeds would be an improvement. The issue is just that 80% of the content feels the same (sometimes literally, like those Bokoblin camps that are literally copy-and-pasted).
Strangolapreti said:
The last time they tried to add extra RPG elements, Zelda 2 was born and only a few people will be able to unironically tell you its not a bad game, which I'd kinda mixed over it: its not as bad as people describes it, but it needs to be played differently, with either a guide or pen+paper so that you can keep note of past mistakes.
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Zelda 2 is a perfectly fine game by NES standards. The only thing wrong with it is that it's needlessly punishing when it's already fairly difficult. If you just removed the lives system and just sent the player back to the start of a dungeon or last visited town regardless no matter how many times you died then I would have no major issue with it.
 
Jack Garland said:
Basically. This is probably the fourth time I've said it, but I want to see an alternate timeline where Breath of the Wild is released on it's own as a totally new IP by Nintendo, and see how it does. It's a fun game with great physics puzzles and total freedom, which I miss when I play other open world games like Tsushima, but it's just, not a Zelda game.
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Breath of The Wild is basically just the best Ubisoft Game. You know what I mean, climb the towers, reveal the map, destroy strongholds, do pointless busywork, the story doesn't matter, etc.

It is a very fun, very polished game for what it is but it isn't a Zelda game and I agree with you that it would have been really cool to see it as the release of a new IP. The worst part is that it doesn't have an excuse for being such a stark departure from convention in the same way that something like Star Fox Adventures does either where it literally was a new IP that Nintendo forced them to rework at the eleventh hour.
Strangolapreti said:
I meant you need to play differently from other Zelda games.
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Yeah fair. I'm in the "I like it" camp though because although it's different I feel that it's different in an expansive and productive way that enhances the extant Zelda Formula.
Gimmick Account said:
Retrospectively, people won't get it, but a lot of NES games weren't really meant to be beaten. It's like the Battletoads or TMNT or Contra or Ghosts 'n Goblins of the Zelda series.
(All of which were big hits in the fucking nintendo shack my school had where you could hang out until your parents picked you up, moreso than any of the games they had that people recognise as good now, because they're perfect for that type of setting where the reaper might show up and drag you home at any moment.)
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This also makes sense when you consider that back in the day playing video games for more than an hour or two at a time was considered incredibly weird and so many games were optimized for that short, intense burst of playtime.
Retarded Weeb said:
Once you figure out that durians are the best food ingredient and that there's a place you can literally farm them then you have no reason not to have 20 meals in your inventory you can freely stop to eat whenever to fully heal yourself up to double your max health, so now combat is not only tedious but basically impossible to lose. The amount of resources you can carry around plus freedom to fast travel means that exploration has no real risk or downside, since you'll never run low on anything or and you can freely warp out of any danger or inconvenient location. The really generous save adds to that, since it means even if you do die you'll generally lose no more than a minute or so of progress.
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Utilizing a similar inventory system to Dead Rising would go a long way to fixing this issue along with a Souls like or Dead Rising style system where accessing your inventory doesn't pause the game. Tweaking the fast travel system to only be able to activate at a fast travel point would be amazing and tweaking the auto-save system to only auto-save at a fast travel point would likewise make the game more challenging and resource management focused. Missed opportunities I guess.
Retarded Weeb said:
The weapon system just feels pointless, like I'm never running out of weapons so that's not the issue, but it doesn't feel like combat meaningfully changes regardless of what set of weapons I have on hand. They're mostly all the same three weapons anyway just with different numerical attack differences - something that caused the devs to have to give enemies varying HP values to make higher attack weapons mean something, leading to damage sponge enemies.
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The game also actively punishes you for getting into combat with the Blood Moon system as well since nothing that you clear will remain cleared for very long and as each Blood Moon happens the enemies become stronger and stronger. The Blood Moons are controlled by a counter that goes up as you complete objectives, discover locations, and kill enemies, so killing enemies exacerbates the problems caused by the shitass durability system and shallow combat to the point where avoiding conflict is just plain smarter in 9/10 of all cases.
Retarded Weeb said:
Zelda 2 is a perfectly fine game by NES standards. The only thing wrong with it is that it's needlessly punishing when it's already fairly difficult. If you just removed the lives system and just sent the player back to the start of a dungeon or last visited town regardless no matter how many times you died then I would have no major issue with it.
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The localization is also not that great. In typical Nintendo fashion. Which means that there are certain parts of the game that can be very obtuse unless you have a guide or have done them before.
 
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
The game also actively punishes you for getting into combat with the Blood Moon system as well since nothing that you clear will remain cleared for very long and as each Blood Moon happens the enemies become stronger and stronger. The Blood Moons are controlled by a counter that goes up as you complete objectives, discover locations, and kill enemies, so killing enemies exacerbates the problems caused by the shitass durability system and shallow combat to the point where avoiding conflict is just plain smarter in 9/10 of all cases.
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I enjoy the Blood Moon. It's cool the game has a hard "reset" that's very clear so you know when items and literally everything have respawned. The hidden leveling system BotW has is also interesting; you would "level up" even if you entirely avoided optional combat simple due to shrines and story. However, lots of combat speeds that up and it does become punishing like you said. I remember playing Tears and felt like I was seeing silver enemies before doing a single dungeon. I'm not sure if it has a quicker "level curve" than BotW did, but it made finding Blue and Black horns nearly impossible. Good idea, but really terrible design.
 
Jack Garland said:
Good idea, but really terrible design.
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That right there is the entirety of both BoTW and ToTK in a nutshell. The games are surprisingly shallow for how much they try to implement, and while yeah I think that BoTW is fun to boot up for an hour or so and just fuck around for a bit I wouldn't go to bat for either being truly "good" games, especially not Tears, that game is fucking awful. They literally took every bad thing about BoTW and made them worse and then didn't improve on any of the good things that BoTW did well.
 
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
Not really. The issue is that the lack of a time limit combined with the lack of a central plot makes the game feel very static and dead. "Yeah, sure, go spend 40 hours unlocking every shrine and gathering up 600 Korok Seeds. Ganon and Zelda will both wait patiently while you do and the gamestate of the map won't change at all in the meantime either."

I'd be more fine with that openness to explore if it were combined with a less pressing central plot where Calamity Ganon has awakened and Zelda is desperately holding him back with the final vestiges of her remaining strength or if it were combined with a system that allowed me to take over and control territory that I would then have to defend from raids or lose it. Or something. I'm not a gamedev and maybe my ideas suck.
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I've been desensitised by too many games doing the whole "You better hurry because disaster might strike at any moment, except not really because as long as you avoid the trigger the disaster won't ever occur" schtick.

For me it ended up helping to set specific goals.
First was to locate and unlock the sheika towers, along with any shrines that were visible from them or i stumbled on along the way
I got some of the more useful DLC quests done like for the Traveller's Medallion
Then I went back and conquered all the shrines i found in order to get a second stamina wheel and a couple more hearts
Only then did I work on the story a bit, and one thing lead to another and then I got the divine beasts, because revali's gale is quite useful for getting around
Then i got burnt out and stopped playing for two weeks, and started and finished Luigi's Mansion 3 with an A rating
And then i pulled up a map of all shrines and stamped them on the game map, unlocking most of them. i still have a dozen or so with shrine quests to tackle
Now I'll just slowly start conquering shrines one at a time, picking at it a little bit every day or so.
 
Sleazy Car Salesman said:
Personally, I like BoTW as a fun little fuck around game but it is in no way a good Legend of Zelda game nor do I think that it holds a candle to most other open world fantasy games/RPGs.
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Basically this. It's a cute Zelda-themed gary's mod (Tears especially). But it will never be the kind of open world GTA is, and it will never be a Red Dead 2. And what it traded for the Open World gimmick - losing dungeons, an impactful story, throwing out the lore, no memorable music - it was NOT worth it in my opinion. Not in any way shape or form was it worth it. And it getting praised as the second coming just because Zelda was "open world now" did nothing but fuel my hatred for the bellcurve gamer and the absolute state of the industry. And Tears taking 6 years to be a Green-colored permutation of the same shit, just made me exhausted with the entire affair.

I'll always love Zelda, at least the older games which had something to say, but I ain't here for Ubisoft, I don't nor ever did play Zelda for wide-as-an-ocean-deep-as-a-puddle open world shit. I had my fill of unfulfilling open world climb everything collect-a-thons during my teenage years with the Assassin's Creed games. I am and have been FATIGUED of open worlds for a long time now. And the industry's abject obsession with the genre for the better part of 20 years has only calcified that opinion for me.
 
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