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Why does BOTW get so much credit for basic open world elements?

Ezquimacore

Banned
I think most people do. The question is whether those people care about it.

for me, it didn’t do much. But I can see how some folks absolutely love it.

but other than that, the game did nothing original.
The game did a lot original, even Zelda's stuff was revamped. People are trying too hard to make it seem like Nintendo just did another far cry when that bullshit, I should know, I play every Ubisoft game. You know what, reply with a open world that has the level of gameplay freedom of breath of the wild... I'll be waiting to laugh at your response.
 

Lognor

Banned
I think it’s because the general Zelda/Nintendo audiences haven’t played a lot of open world games (if they’ve mostly played on Nintendo systems), so maybe it’s more new to them.

BotW doesn’t do a lot original but it has a neat physics system that very few open world games bother to implement. That alone makes it seem more unique.
I love all these posts with people trying to discredit others' opinions saying they've only played Nintendo games. One of the dumbest things to come out of these discussions. Botw has sold 25m copies probably and it is consistently ranked as one of the best games of all time. You think the majority of the people who bought and praise Botw have only played Nintendo games? Granted, the Switch is the market leader, but that is still a ridiculous statement. I guess to help yourself feel better since maybe you don't like the game. Which is fine. But no need to discount the general consensus for the game.
 

Ezquimacore

Banned
I love all these posts with people trying to discredit others' opinions saying they've only played Nintendo games. One of the dumbest things to come out of these discussions. Botw has sold 25m copies probably and it is consistently ranked as one of the best games of all time. You think the majority of the people who bought and praise Botw have only played Nintendo games? Granted, the Switch is the market leader, but that is still a ridiculous statement. I guess to help yourself feel better since maybe you don't like the game. Which is fine. But no need to discount the general consensus for the game.
For real these people are ignorant as fuck, it's sad really. They're inside their little gaming boxes and for some reason Nintendo fans are the problem. I was not even a Zelda fan before botw and I play on PC and I can admit it's one of the best open worlds ever made and the freedom of its gameplay is unmatched.
 
I love all these posts with people trying to discredit others' opinions saying they've only played Nintendo games. One of the dumbest things to come out of these discussions. Botw has sold 25m copies probably and it is consistently ranked as one of the best games of all time. You think the majority of the people who bought and praise Botw have only played Nintendo games? Granted, the Switch is the market leader, but that is still a ridiculous statement. I guess to help yourself feel better since maybe you don't like the game. Which is fine. But no need to discount the general consensus for the game.
What’s your problem? From my second paragraph I clearly stated I liked the game. Also I have a WiiU and recently got a Switch for Metroid. I put 100 hours into BotW on WiiU. I was just positing one possible explanation for it seeming new to some people. Read more carefully next time.
 

Raploz

Member
Because the act of getting from point A to B is a gameplay element itself, just like Death Stranding tried to do later. On other open world games there's no challenge in traversing the map, you could just as well fast travel and there would be no difference. On BotW you actually need to strategize how you're going to do it, the routes you'll take, if you need to upgrade your stamina, if the weather is just right for climbing a mountain or if it's better to go around it, or even of you have the right clothes to be able to get to where you need to be. There's also the atmosphere, the animal behaviours and the physics system is also an integral part of the gameplay. The world just seems to have a purpose, instead of simply being there as a way to connect missions.
 

Lognor

Banned
What’s your problem? From my second paragraph I clearly stated I liked the game. Also I have a WiiU and recently got a Switch for Metroid. I put 100 hours into BotW on WiiU. I was just positing one possible explanation for it seeming new to some people. Read more carefully next time.
My problem? Your ridiculous statement that people that praise Botw are Nintendo only fans and haven't played other open world games.

And I don't think people are claiming that a lot of the things in botw are new, per se, but that the way they were implemented is better than other open world games.
 

reezoo

Member
Best thing BotW does is to not waste my time. Nothing feels chore or checkbox. There’s crazy chemistry engine. Going to any place is very quick specially later in the game. Combat is deep specially lynels. Graphics and sounds are very soothing. I sometimes just login to see that world.

It borrows from other open world games just like mario copied jump from other games!
 

The Skull

Member
My problem? Your ridiculous statement that people that praise Botw are Nintendo only fans and haven't played other open world games.

And I don't think people are claiming that a lot of the things in botw are new, per se, but that the way they were implemented is better than other open world games.
I see this so much whenever someone wants to trash BOTW. Possible one of the dumbest arguements I've seen.
 

Lethal01

Member
What’s your problem? From my second paragraph I clearly stated I liked the game. Also I have a WiiU and recently got a Switch for Metroid. I put 100 hours into BotW on WiiU. I was just positing one possible explanation for it seeming new to some people. Read more carefully next time.

Nobody said anything about you liking the game.
You claim people praise BoTW over other games because they don't play many games. It's just a dumb thing to say.
 
Nobody said anything about you liking the game.
You claim people praise BoTW over other games because they don't play many games. It's just a dumb thing to say.
Yes he did.
I love all these posts with people trying to discredit others' opinions saying they've only played Nintendo games. One of the dumbest things to come out of these discussions. Botw has sold 25m copies probably and it is consistently ranked as one of the best games of all time. You think the majority of the people who bought and praise Botw have only played Nintendo games? Granted, the Switch is the market leader, but that is still a ridiculous statement. I guess to help yourself feel better since maybe you don't like the game. Which is fine. But no need to discount the general consensus for the game.
And that’s not even my point. Something can be unoriginal in what it borrows from other games, but add other aspects and combine and use said aspects to create a unique experience. Which the second paragraph of my original post says BotW does. I wasn’t discrediting it, I was complementing it.

I know it has a bit of a stigma, but saying something isn’t original isn’t necessarily a negative thing and I think you guys are overreacting. I wouldn’t call Dead Space original either but it’s still a great game.

Thaedolus made a good counter point earlier in this thread and wasn’t insulting about it. You guys just seem be over sensitive/reactionary. Have a good day/night though. I’m out
 

Lethal01

Member
Yes he did.
Fair, I lost track and mixed up what you said with another post that came recently, that's on me

You guys just seem be over sensitive/reactionary. Have a good day/night though. I’m out
Gotta disagree, there, you're post was thought out and again, it's totally my bad for mixing up what you said. But, for every post like yours, there are 3 more that will literally say that BoTW does nothing to make itself notable and it's all praise for it is because of clueless Nintendo fans.

Anyway, I maintain that BoTW almost never gets praise just for being a basic open world or for things it's copied. It's love because of the unique combination of choices and how well it's executed on, so the premise of this thread is flawed..
 
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Notabueno

Banned
Hasn’t been too profoundly influential yet. I get the physics part. It’s hard to say what is “the best” but for me. And my enjoyment of an open world….there are better open worlds.

botw felt like great tech in an otherwise boring world that didn’t feel good to Exist at in. Skyrim, Witcher, morrowind, hell even some ACs felt better just to “be” in them.

On that aspect, you might be right and the reason is simple but subtle (and actually what makes it a revolution), for me it's on the contrary what made it a way better experience than all the OW you mentioned (though I agree in terms of populating and design): the conception and game design of the game is made so that the game gets rid of one of the most annoying, archaïc aspect of many video games especially pseudo-OW ones, the point-to-point progression system.

In most games, and the reason why Ubisoft feels redundant, boring and archaïc, is because this whole redundant and simplistic world they build is conditioned by a huge layer of POI Hud elements that stands on the very "linear" point-to-point structure of the game, which actually takes away the whole immersion, not just visually, but cognitively and interactively, this the gameplay is repetitive, but also bland and irrelevant.

What BoTW did is that they purely and simply removed all of those elements to build a absolute "live", "asynchronous" world in which there is no linear suite or branche point-to-point sequences (save for 7/8 of them), instead letting you be able to explore and play the whole world however and whenever you want, which has the effect of removing this huge useless immersion-breaking layer of information and instead letting you play, connect and "feel" the game in real-time as if you were directly connected to it, discovering things as they happen, with a grid repartition of interesting and unique things happening here and there without spoiling them, and many possible interactions with it.

They even build the first "asymetrical" open-world grid LOD (to my knowledge) to reproduce real-world landscape perception ie. the place where you are is scaled 1:1 but the zones further are scaled 1:1,5 and the ones afar are scaled in order to seem higher, more visible but also look closer, which is one of the best immersive, landscape/level design approach I've ever seen, you can see the whole map from anywhere, and that's actually part of the gameplay.

The counterpart problem to that, is that it is incredibly complex to build such a structure while having many different, especially narrative, scenes happening in the game since the player can go wherever, whenever, that and the fact that the Wii U is extremely limited in memory, which is probably while you felt it was boring or bare to exist in, which I somewhat agree even though that wasn't my experience. Yet, it's the most advances OW there's been so far, and it's probably how future OW will be built when producers and designers get back to it and deconstruct it eventually.
 
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Aldric

Member
The second paragraph is a legitimate perspective, so it’s a shame the first is a meaningless stream of drivel because it misses too much to respond from an accurate perspective. But we'll move past it because it's not important.
It's not a "meaningless stream of drivel" it's an accurate description of the behavior of people like you (I'm just using you as a case study here because of how typical your posts are) who've been shitting on the game for the past 5 years with the exact same nonsensical, lazy parroted points ("not a Zelda game", "Ubisoft towers", "empty map nothing to do", "yeah like BotW invented climbing lmao gotem" etc) while consistently ignoring detailed explanations of the game's merits, you can see another instance of it in this very thread where I spent a bit of time making a post articulating why BotW got praised so much and it was predictably ignored in favor of the same zero effort talking points. It's like this game's success creates resentment in a way I've honestly never seen before, very bizarre phenomenon.

To give the level of freedom you get, they sacrificed things that are key hallmarks of the series. Gear-based progression and the dungeons that go with it are big points. Having flashbacks is a nice idea to help try and pad out the emptiness, but for me it doesn't make up for what's lost. The game has puzzles, but they're wasted on being spread so thinly across a largely empty world and are definitely not a replacement for dungeons. The only power that feels like an actual upgrade to me is Revali's Gale. Urbosa'a Fury is okay, but the other two are a rechargeable fairy and a rechargeable shield. Hardly adequate rewards for doing half of the main story content.
The didn't sacrifice dungeons because the game still has them. You can argue they're bad dungeons and I wouldn't even necessarily disagree but that's not the same thing as saying they removed them entirely thereby turning the game into something fundamentally different from Zelda. They did get rid of the gear based progression but you can't reduce the franchise to that since this system has been used in other Nintendo games like Metroid or Luigi's Mansion and no one would confuse them with Zelda. And again with the "largely empty world" horseshit. Not wasting another half hour listing the variety of gameplay scenarios crammed into the overworld just so it can be ignored so I'll simply assert you're lying and leave it at that.
 

dcx4610

Member
I remember Nintendo saying that the game was so open world that you could immediately go to the last boss. Did anyone ever do this legitimalty without cheats? is it possible to pull off?
 
I am not a Nintendo only gamer and it's not ignorance. I've played countless open world games. Botw is just that good.
As am I. It’s not that BoTW isn’t good, it’s that some of the more vocal fans of it have to resort to outright untruthful and absurd comments to praise the game. It was/is the same with Metroid Prime and other games. Yes, some people who love BoTW are ignorant about other games. Fair enough, you’re not one of them.
 

daveonezero

Banned
I remember Nintendo saying that the game was so open world that you could immediately go to the last boss. Did anyone ever do this legitimalty without cheats? is it possible to pull off?
yes. You can. It is hard and very skill based.

you can get there with food and base stamina and beginner gear. Without using glitches to get inside. Although I’d argue magnesia launching isn’t really a glitch. But you can do it without that too.

There are farming guides of how to get gear in the castle.

once you have a bit of stamina I think it’s pretty easy to fly into. Or go through the moat entrance with a boat.
 

Lethal01

Member
On that aspect, you might be right and the reason is simple but subtle (and actually what makes it a revolution), for me it's on the contrary what made it a way better experience than all the OW you mentioned (though I agree in terms of populating and design): the conception and game design of the game is made so that the game gets rid of one of the most annoying, archaïc aspect of many video games especially pseudo-OW ones, the point-to-point progression system.

In most games, and the reason why Ubisoft feels redundant, boring and archaïc, is because this whole redundant and simplistic world they build is conditioned by a huge layer of POI Hud elements that stands on the very "linear" point-to-point structure of the game, which actually takes away the whole immersion, not just visually, but cognitively and interactively, this the gameplay is repetitive, but also bland and irrelevant.

What BoTW did is that they purely and simply removed all of those elements to build a absolute "live", "asynchronous" world in which there is no linear suite or branche point-to-point sequences (save for 7/8 of them), instead letting you be able to explore and play the whole world however and whenever you want, which has the effect of removing this huge useless immersion-breaking layer of information and instead letting you play, connect and "feel" the game in real-time as if you were directly connected to it, discovering things as they happen, with a grid repartition of interesting and unique things happening here and there without spoiling them, and many possible interactions with it.

They even build the first "asymetrical" open-world grid LOD (to my knowledge) to reproduce real-world landscape perception ie. the place where you are is scaled 1:1 but the zones further are scaled 1:1,5 and the ones afar are scaled in order to seem higher, more visible but also look closer, which is one of the best immersive, landscape/level design approach I've ever seen, you can see the whole map from anywhere, and that's actually part of the gameplay.

The counterpart problem to that, is that it is incredibly complex to build such a structure while having many different, especially narrative, scenes happening in the game since the player can go wherever, whenever, that and the fact that the Wii U is extremely limited in memory, which is probably while you felt it was boring or bare to exist in, which I somewhat agree even though that wasn't my experience. Yet, it's the most advances OW there's been so far, and it's probably how future OW will be built when producers and designers get back to it and deconstruct it eventually.

I didn't realize they actually changed the size of faraway things, I thought they just used depth of field and lighting to make them look further away. Got any sources on the details?
 

Soodanim

Member
I remember Nintendo saying that the game was so open world that you could immediately go to the last boss. Did anyone ever do this legitimalty without cheats? is it possible to pull off?
It’s definitely possible. The castle has lots of gear inside, so if you can make it in and survive you can get armour, weapons, and ingredients to get yourself through it all. If you don’t do the main story dungeons, you have to fight the bosses in the castle so it’s even more of a challenge.

 

Majukun

Member
the conviction that nintendo games get praised just because it's nintendo or because nintendo fans don't play games outside of nintendo will never stop being funny

you guys are funny

I remember Nintendo saying that the game was so open world that you could immediately go to the last boss. Did anyone ever do this legitimalty without cheats? is it possible to pull off?
it is.
actually they dropped the ball in that regard since

a) the final boss isn't reallly as hard as it is supposed to be, so while difficult, it isn't an insurmuntable task that justfies the rest of the game, which is basically prep time for the battle
b) you find weapons INSIDE the boss room for some reason, so you don't even have to gather them beore the battle
 
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Aldric

Member
the conviction that nintendo games get praised just because it's nintendo or because nintendo fans don't play games outside of nintendo will never stop being funny

you guys are funny
It's particularly stupid because I'm pretty sure there was a survey a few months ago that showed that 40% of Switch owners also have a Playstation or an XBox and it didn't take PC in consideration so I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of Switch owners played on multiple platforms.
 

royox

Member
One thing I see alot since BOTW came out is "this is the breath of the wild of______". It reminds me when everything was the skyrim of _______ or dark souls of ________. But as someone who played breath of the wild why does it seem to get credit for elements that seem to be pretty common in open world games. Open world games with freedom of choice isn't new...shadow of the Colossus, Skyrim, even the witcher seems to have equal if not more unique open world elements, but being that zelda is an influential franchise, and it adopted a popular game design philosophy it gets a ton of credit for inventing them even tho it existed. Maybe I'm over analyzing but it now seems any game with the "you can play how you want" is automatically breath of the wild of its genre.
For the physics. The game's structure is basically "here are the phisics of the game, xploit them as you wish". That allows diferent players to deal with situations in infinite diferent ways. That's why for months there were thousands of "X THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW IN BOTW!!" cause every week were discovered more and more tricks to do with the physics.

Yeah you are talking about Skyrim and Souls...in none of those games you can throw a boomerang that will get hit by a lightning half way and you can trap with your magnet item so now you have a lightning chainsaw of the death, or throw a tree to the skies and travel over it like Tao Pai Pai.

UnsungFriendlyBlackfly-size_restricted.gif

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ForsakenAnxiousGuppy-size_restricted.gif


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c5924a646933ac04b781a2fbf0836601.gif



Combining all your metallic items to conduit electricity from one spot to the other.
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Magnetism, time stop, ice control, air balloons, the way electricity works, the way wind works, the way fire works and creates air currents, plus the possibility of climbing almost every surface of the game...there's just SO MUCH stuff to use as a player to solve everything at any moment.

The game is full of just so much little things that "just works" it's a wonder. Throw eggs in thermal waters and in 1 minute you get Boiled Eggs that restore HP. Throw any fruit to a fire and in 3 seconds you have Grilled fruits that heal double HP and in 5 seconds they are burned and are useless. Use a torch or wear a fire sword and you can survive cold enviroments, use an ice sword and you can resist better heat. It's just too much and always impresses you while playing, so much attention to detail.

Looks simple but the mentality of "if you think it, you can do it" is super powerfull in BOTW.

I'm open to suggestions of Open World Games with physics comparable to BOTW.
 

Soodanim

Member
For the physics. The game's structure is basically "here are the phisics of the game, xploit them as you wish". That allows diferent players to deal with situations in infinite diferent ways. That's why for months there were thousands of "X THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW IN BOTW!!" cause every week were discovered more and more tricks to do with the physics.

Yeah you are talking about Skyrim and Souls...in none of those games you can throw a boomerang that will get hit by a lightning half way and you can trap with your magnet item so now you have a lightning chainsaw of the death, or throw a tree to the skies and travel over it like Tao Pai Pai.

UnsungFriendlyBlackfly-size_restricted.gif

n2JFVO7.gif


ForsakenAnxiousGuppy-size_restricted.gif


DqQpddb.gif


c5924a646933ac04b781a2fbf0836601.gif



Combining all your metallic items to conduit electricity from one spot to the other.
aZ2qYWP.jpg


Magnetism, time stop, ice control, air balloons, the way electricity works, the way wind works, the way fire works and creates air currents, plus the possibility of climbing almost every surface of the game...there's just SO MUCH stuff to use as a player to solve everything at any moment.

The game is full of just so much little things that "just works" it's a wonder. Throw eggs in thermal waters and in 1 minute you get Boiled Eggs that restore HP. Throw any fruit to a fire and in 3 seconds you have Grilled fruits that heal double HP and in 5 seconds they are burned and are useless. Use a torch or wear a fire sword and you can survive cold enviroments, use an ice sword and you can resist better heat. It's just too much and always impresses you while playing, so much attention to detail.

Looks simple but the mentality of "if you think it, you can do it" is super powerfull in BOTW.

I'm open to suggestions of Open World Games with physics comparable to BOTW.
One thing that always comes to mind with regards to Nintendo explicitly giving you tools to circumvent what they set up is the rolling ball maze boards. Early game ones you can bypass by simply flipping the board, but later ones have the spikes underneath to stop that. It lets you know they know exactly what they did.
 
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Raven117

Gold Member
Don't be an idiot, I have played most major open world games, and for a slew of reasons, not just the chemistry system. BoTW is my favourite.
I definitely don't love it for "nostalgia" since I never went crazy over Zelda.
Glad you enjoyed it.
 

Raven117

Gold Member
The game did a lot original, even Zelda's stuff was revamped. People are trying too hard to make it seem like Nintendo just did another far cry when that bullshit, I should know, I play every Ubisoft game. You know what, reply with a open world that has the level of gameplay freedom of breath of the wild... I'll be waiting to laugh at your response.
A great piece of physics tech in an otherwise completely flat open world.

you tell me what it did so much better than the rest other than physics.

people’s defense of this game boggles my mind. It’s a great game, no doubt, but say something critical there is just a meltdown. Maybe they like anime and furries too I don’t know
 

Aldric

Member
A great piece of physics tech in an otherwise completely flat open world.

you tell me what it did so much better than the rest other than physics.
I told you here:


In your case you should focus on the last sentence.
 

uncleslappy

nethack is my favorite dark souls clone
For me, it's not just that it's open world. It's taking a series that had gone pretty far away from it's original design philosophy and took a look back at the origins of the series and went all in on trying to recapture the essence of the franchise's origins while incorporating modern game design elements. I would argue they were successful in that. That's what we're seeing with things like Pokemon Legends Arceus - it looks like it's meant to capture the essence and feeling of Red/Blue while expanding the scope and gameplay elements.
 

Raven117

Gold Member
I told you here:


In your case you should focus on the last sentence.
You use a wall of text to say absolutely nothing.
 

Raven117

Gold Member
On that aspect, you might be right and the reason is simple but subtle (and actually what makes it a revolution), for me it's on the contrary what made it a way better experience than all the OW you mentioned (though I agree in terms of populating and design): the conception and game design of the game is made so that the game gets rid of one of the most annoying, archaïc aspect of many video games especially pseudo-OW ones, the point-to-point progression system.

In most games, and the reason why Ubisoft feels redundant, boring and archaïc, is because this whole redundant and simplistic world they build is conditioned by a huge layer of POI Hud elements that stands on the very "linear" point-to-point structure of the game, which actually takes away the whole immersion, not just visually, but cognitively and interactively, this the gameplay is repetitive, but also bland and irrelevant.

What BoTW did is that they purely and simply removed all of those elements to build a absolute "live", "asynchronous" world in which there is no linear suite or branche point-to-point sequences (save for 7/8 of them), instead letting you be able to explore and play the whole world however and whenever you want, which has the effect of removing this huge useless immersion-breaking layer of information and instead letting you play, connect and "feel" the game in real-time as if you were directly connected to it, discovering things as they happen, with a grid repartition of interesting and unique things happening here and there without spoiling them, and many possible interactions with it.

They even build the first "asymetrical" open-world grid LOD (to my knowledge) to reproduce real-world landscape perception ie. the place where you are is scaled 1:1 but the zones further are scaled 1:1,5 and the ones afar are scaled in order to seem higher, more visible but also look closer, which is one of the best immersive, landscape/level design approach I've ever seen, you can see the whole map from anywhere, and that's actually part of the gameplay.

The counterpart problem to that, is that it is incredibly complex to build such a structure while having many different, especially narrative, scenes happening in the game since the player can go wherever, whenever, that and the fact that the Wii U is extremely limited in memory, which is probably while you felt it was boring or bare to exist in, which I somewhat agree even though that wasn't my experience. Yet, it's the most advances OW there's been so far, and it's probably how future OW will be built when producers and designers get back to it and deconstruct it eventually.
Now this is a thoughtful post. I agree with everything you said.

For as cool as all of that is, for me, I need a reason to give a damn about the world. I just....didn't. It all felt so flat to me.

Exploration in video games for "Exploration's sake" has absolutely never been something I value. I never felt in the the entire playthrough I was rewarded in any meaningful way for spending 20 minutes climbing something or what have you.
 
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Soodanim

Member
You use a wall of text to say absolutely nothing.
He does get some things right, and in fairness if there's one thing the world isn't it's flat, because all that climbing and slipping in the rain gets old quick. But he gets carried away with its aggressive defence. Take the paragraph on how it's different to Ubisoft's towers despite the fact that everyone knows the difference between Ubisoft towers and BOTW's towers. What we also all know is that Ubisoft popularised them and it's why they have the name Ubisoft towers. I enjoyed marking things from the towers and making my way to them, but they're still Ubisoft towers. I didn't think that was hard to work out., but I guess when you're fervently defending your favourite game that doesn't matter too much. God forbid you think there's no enough to do in the world and that exploration for exploration's sake isn't the ultimate reward. Especially when the main thing you do is combat that is, as has been said innumerable times, all too often a net loss. You'll be branded a liar for disagreeing with the gospel or a conspiracy theoristfor being the OP asking a question, apparently. I wouldn't bother wasting your time, just laugh and move on.
 

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
Because those "basic features" have been absent from open world games since Morrowind.
Try playing The Witcher 3 without the map markers and that BS Witcher Sense. The game becomes a pain in the ass to get through.

Breath of the Wild is arguebly a much better game when played in Pro Mode.
This is also why Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is my GOTY of 2016. Both games have true freedom. Not that fake freedom typical open world games give you, the ones you mentioned very much included.
I haven't played BotW yet, but I have to agree that I haven't really felt free in a game since Morrowind. Morrowind dropped you off in the world, said "these are the mechanics, do what you want. There's a story if you want it. There's lore if you care." It didn't make you do anything after it showed you the very basics.
 

Aldric

Member
Take the paragraph on how it's different to Ubisoft's towers despite the fact that everyone knows the difference between Ubisoft towers and BOTW's towers. What we also all know is that Ubisoft popularised them and it's why they have the name Ubisoft towers.
... The point I was making is that saying the game has Ubisoft towers is used as a pejorative to imply BotW is just another iterative open world game, the kind Ubisoft mass produces every year and I showed that BotW's take on the concept fixed a major issue with them and was also much better integrated into the overall game design, thereby potentially justifying the praise the game received. I'm not nitpicking for the sake of it.
 

Soodanim

Member
... The point I was making is that saying the game has Ubisoft towers is used as a pejorative to imply BotW is just another iterative open world game, the kind Ubisoft mass produces every year and I showed that BotW's take on the concept fixed a major issue with them and was also much better integrated into the overall game design, thereby potentially justifying the praise the game received. I'm not nitpicking for the sake of it.
That's on them then, it's not up for debate that they're better in BOTW.
 

Notabueno

Banned
I didn't realize they actually changed the size of faraway things, I thought they just used depth of field and lighting to make them look further away. Got any sources on the details?
I don't have sources on that, that's what we analysed with game designer colleagues, they do use "depth of field" which is part of the perspective warping, but they also have to use physical landscape warping to achieve this result.
 

Raven117

Gold Member
He does get some things right, and in fairness if there's one thing the world isn't it's flat, because all that climbing and slipping in the rain gets old quick. But he gets carried away with its aggressive defence. Take the paragraph on how it's different to Ubisoft's towers despite the fact that everyone knows the difference between Ubisoft towers and BOTW's towers. What we also all know is that Ubisoft popularised them and it's why they have the name Ubisoft towers. I enjoyed marking things from the towers and making my way to them, but they're still Ubisoft towers. I didn't think that was hard to work out., but I guess when you're fervently defending your favourite game that doesn't matter too much. God forbid you think there's no enough to do in the world and that exploration for exploration's sake isn't the ultimate reward. Especially when the main thing you do is combat that is, as has been said innumerable times, all too often a net loss. You'll be branded a liar for disagreeing with the gospel or a conspiracy theoristfor being the OP asking a question, apparently. I wouldn't bother wasting your time, just laugh and move on.
LOL, I don't know if you taking my literal use of the word "flat" is a joke or not. I like it anyway.

Yeah, I just don't understand the fervent defense of the game. I can't name another game with such a force that defends EVERY valid criticism. I have absolutely no problem with people complaining about some of my favorite games. Its like, these people NEED it to be the "ZOMG BEST GAME EVER" objectively, which it isn't. Its an excellent game worthy of discussion in the pantheon of great games, but its far from perfect.
 
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Ezquimacore

Banned
A great piece of physics tech in an otherwise completely flat open world.

you tell me what it did so much better than the rest other than physics.

people’s defense of this game boggles my mind. It’s a great game, no doubt, but say something critical there is just a meltdown. Maybe they like anime and furries too I don’t know
What boogles my mind is people like you trying to discredit the game so hard, when the game already made history. Maybe put that energy into actually playing video games.
 
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Lethal01

Member
you tell me what it did so much better than the rest other than physics.
Much better level design, It starts by doing a far better job of spacing out visible and obvious points of interest so there is always something to draw your attention than other games. Then your movement options mean there's usually more thought required in getting there quickly on the large scale and on a smaller scale you run into a higher frequency of more handcrafted movement-focused challenges on the way. The terrain is designed in a way that lets it hide and reveal points of interest as you move through it better than other open worlds, there's no real secret sauce element to that, it's just well made, the hills, mountains, boulders etc are simply just arranged just the right way.

You say people go crazy to defend this game but it feels like you're just bothered by people disagreeing and arguing against criticism that you label as Valid. I'm totally fine with people hating the game, That doesn't mean I can't point out that I think some of the things they mention seem to be untrue like the claim it does nothing different. I could just say that the problem is people dismissing "valid praise" by jumping in and dismissing it all as being due to "Nostalgia for Zelda" or "never playing an open world"

So like in for example Morrowind?
Movement through the world of Morrowind is much more straightforward so no, BoTW requires/encourages much more thought in how you simply get from A to B.
Technically everything is gameplay so you can say "just moving from A to B is gameplay itself" in literally any game. The point is that in BoTW it's fun and engaging gameplay.

Take the paragraph on how it's different to Ubisoft's towers despite the fact that everyone knows the difference between Ubisoft towers and BOTW's towers. What we also all know is that Ubisoft popularised them and it's why they have the name Ubisoft towers. I enjoyed marking things from the towers and making my way to them, but they're still Ubisoft towers. I didn't think that was hard to work out., but I guess when you're fervently defending your favourite game that doesn't matter too much. God forbid you think there's no enough to do in the world and that exploration for exploration's sake isn't the ultimate reward.
That's on them then, it's not up for debate that they're better in BOTW.

You claim it's not up for debate but people in this thread will literally ask "why does BoTW get praise for this when Ubisoft does the same thing" then go on about how it's because Nintendo fans don't play other games.

Especially when the main thing you do is combat that is, as has been said innumerable times, all too often a net loss.

How so? The weapons enemies carry are almost always enough to defeat them, combine that with bombs and it's rare that you ever even have to use up a sword to get past them, and if you have a weapon worth hording then it will probably let you go through enough camps to get reward ontop of getting a weapon that's just as good to replace it.

I don't have sources on that, that's what we analysed with game designer colleagues, they do use "depth of field" which is part of the perspective warping, but they also have to use physical landscape warping to achieve this result.
Cool, I noticed it myself but I also think I heard the devs themselves address it, been trying to remember where.
 
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Marvel14

Banned
Don't patronise me. You are acting as if I am afraid to admit there are positive things about the game, which means you haven't been listening. Your question was answered in the post you quoted.

I have trawled through your posts and I think that you are saying that the physics engine is the one new and innovative thing.

But I'm not sure. It's hard to be since there is so much aggro and focus on good vs bad instead of new vs copied in what your write.

Maybe next time we chat you can start by giving me the benefit of the doubt instead of insulting my opinion in your opening remark and then getting offended when I don't agree.

Not holding my Breath of the Wild though....
Head In Hands GIF by Australian Survivor
 
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Raven117

Gold Member
What boogles my mind is people like you trying to discredit the game so hard, when the game already made history. Maybe put that energy into actually playing video games.
I’m not discrediting anything. It’s a great game. Worthy of discussion among the industry’s best.

But it’s not flawless. And there are things that are off putting to some people (like me). The BotW defense force seems to think that someone “doesn’t get it” if they don’t like the game very much. For me, I get it. I just do not think it’s compelling. Others think it is. That’s cool.

There is no other game I can name that garners this kind of response from the defense people.
 
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Marvel14

Banned
It's not a "meaningless stream of drivel" it's an accurate description of the behavior of people like you (I'm just using you as a case study here because of how typical your posts are) who've been shitting on the game for the past 5 years with the exact same nonsensical, lazy parroted points ("not a Zelda game", "Ubisoft towers", "empty map nothing to do", "yeah like BotW invented climbing lmao gotem" etc) while consistently ignoring detailed explanations of the game's merits, you can see another instance of it in this very thread where I spent a bit of time making a post articulating why BotW got praised so much and it was predictably ignored in favor of the same zero effort talking points. It's like this game's success creates resentment in a way I've honestly never seen before, very bizarre phenomenon.


The didn't sacrifice dungeons because the game still has them. You can argue they're bad dungeons and I wouldn't even necessarily disagree but that's not the same thing as saying they removed them entirely thereby turning the game into something fundamentally different from Zelda. They did get rid of the gear based progression but you can't reduce the franchise to that since this system has been used in other Nintendo games like Metroid or Luigi's Mansion and no one would confuse them with Zelda. And again with the "largely empty world" horseshit. Not wasting another half hour listing the variety of gameplay scenarios crammed into the overworld just so it can be ignored so I'll simply assert you're lying and leave it at that.
Preach GIF
 

Keihart

Member
I remember Nintendo saying that the game was so open world that you could immediately go to the last boss. Did anyone ever do this legitimalty without cheats? is it possible to pull off?
I did it on day one with my little brother, he couldn't believe it, we didn't defeat ganon but felt pretty special.

The thing some people seem to miss, be it either because they hate nintendo getting praised or because the game doesn't look "real" enough as other games they like or because is not "zelda" enough for them, whatever the case, most people questioning BoTW's impact seem to be missing that there is no other mainstream open world game with such good core mechanics focused on exploration, and when i say fucused on exploration i mean on actual exploration driven by curiosity and not just checklists or min maxing, in Zelda the way it's esctructured, you don't really explore because of fiding the next boss with some cool loot or anything of the sorts, you explore because of curiosity most of the time and the reward is in actually getting to discover things without any obvious hand holding from the dev, this probably made several people jaded with popular games at the time feel like a kid again (you can notice this when hearing devs talking about it)

The game, like most games, borrows a lot from other games, which is how the medium works, there is a lot of iteration, but BoTW makes something completly new with it.
Can't link this channel enough when game design is discussed:
 

Soodanim

Member
LOL, I don't know if you taking my literal use of the word "flat" is a joke or not. I like it anyway.

Yeah, I just don't understand the fervent defense of the game. I can't name another game with such a force that defends EVERY valid criticism. I have absolutely no problem with people complaining about some of my favorite games. Its like, these people NEED it to be the "ZOMG BEST GAME EVER" objectively, which it isn't. Its an excellent game worthy of discussion in the pantheon of great games, but its far from perfect.
Haha, I'm glad you got it. I wished the game was flat at times. The climbing really was shit.

That's the thing. The game does plenty of things well enough, but when a game invites this much discussion some of it is inevitably going to be about the things that they didn't get right and how it could have been better. It doesn't automatically mean hatred towards the game.
You claim it's not up for debate but people in this thread will literally ask "why does BoTW get praise for this when Ubisoft does the same thing" then go on about how it's because Nintendo fans don't play other games.

How so? The weapons enemies carry are almost always enough to defeat them, combine that with bombs and it's rare that you ever even have to use up a sword to get past them, and if you have a weapon worth hording then it will probably let you go through enough camps to get reward ontop of getting a weapon that's just as good to replace it.
Then they're wrong. It's not up for debate.

I found in my time playing that there comes a time where you've got some good weapons saved up for the right occasions, because you know, building in power to fight bosses/Ganon and all that. But then you've got normal mobs, and unless you need the item in the chest they might have, you're going to get absolutely nothing from it. Unless you have the Master Sword, combat opportunities that aren't high level enemies in your face mean giving up what you have or skipping it entirely. It's one of the main areas I think they need to improve on in the sequel.

A simple way they could have done that would have been with the reward weapons. They could have been a break from the brittle bone disease all the other weapons have, but instead they were run of the mill weapons that cost too much to repair. I'll take a lower power Kokiri Sword if it means infinite durability, at least it's a back up.
I have trawled through your posts and I think that you are saying that the physics engine is the one new and innovative thing.

But I'm not sure. It's hard to be since there is so much aggro and focus on good vs bad instead of new vs copied in what your write.

Maybe next time we chat you can start by giving me the benefit of the doubt instead of insulting my opinion in your opening remark and then getting offended when I don't agree.

Not holding my Breath of the Wild though....
Head In Hands GIF by Australian Survivor
That was mostly because newness and innovation are secondary to quality, and the highest quality thing in the game is the physics engine. And I explained what I saw to be wrong with your post, it wasn't out of the blue. I don't take offence to internet disagreements, so it's all good.

In honour of your god-awful pun, let's start again. I'm using your list as a starting point. It wasn't intended as an innovation list so I need to pick and choose.

Shrines - VR missions for the physics engine spread out so thinly that most people never get anywhere close to doing them all. Some good design to be found, but the innovation mostly belongs to the physics engine. Would have been better if they made 10x fewer but longer. If they fleshed these out with a bit of story/purpose/variety/theming you might even go so far as to call them dungeons.
Using towers to uncover the map - Took the Ubi towers and made them better by letting you do it yourself. Increases interaction and individual adventure. Innovative use of a largely passive existing idea.
Monster battles - Combat was an evolution on previous games, but I think they took durability way too far. They tried to be innovative by forcing a certain play style, but I see it as a regression that holds it back. There's a lot of fun to be had with Ancient Guardians, though. That's the pinnacle of the combat in this game.
Cooking - It's not a bad implementation, but I wouldn't go so far as to say there's innovation here.
Climbing - I don't know if I can say there's innovation here, they just tailored something existing to an open world, whacked a stamina drain on it and ruined it with rain and offered too little recourse

It's been a while since I played, so I may need my memory jogged for more, feel free to throw ideas for me to comment on. I wish they'd innovated themselves a way to auto-skip the fucking text after every shrine or the cooking animations. It's like they hadn't learned from Skyward Sword.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Because Nintendo fans don’t know shit about genre. It’s ignorance basically.
I won't believe people actually think Nintendo Switch owners don't play anything else but Nintendo games lmao, are you people really conviced that Nintendo fans don't play anything else from other platforms? Or that they don't PRIMARILY play third parties on other platforms? Isn't it possible for you all that maybe... MAYBE... Lots of Nintendo fans play lots of games on different platforms but it just happens that they think Nintendo games are better or that they like them more than the rest? Isn't that a remote possibility? just curious
 

Lethal01

Member
Haha, I'm glad you got it. I wished the game was flat at times. The climbing really was shit.
I thought the climbing was great outside of sudden rain at the wrong time, once you learn to really find rest spots and the areas where you can regain stamina by running despite it's steepness every mountain becomes a fun little challenge and your speed increases by alot.

I definitely agree it sucks when you are mid-way through a super steep climb and rain hits you but for me that was extremely rare. A lot of the time you can still climb despite the rain and you can almost always create a fire and skip the rain so it raining beforehand isn't really a problem.

I found in my time playing that there comes a time where you've got some good weapons saved up for the right occasions, because you know, building in power to fight bosses/Ganon and all that. But then you've got normal mobs, and unless you need the item in the chest they might have, you're going to get absolutely nothing from it. Unless you have the Master Sword, combat opportunities that aren't high level enemies in your face mean giving up what you have or skipping it entirely. It's one of the main areas I think they need to improve on in the sequel.

A simple way they could have done that would have been with the reward weapons. They could have been a break from the brittle bone disease all the other weapons have, but instead they were run of the mill weapons that cost too much to repair. I'll take a lower power Kokiri Sword if it means infinite durability, at least it's a back up.

I really don't think they need any permanent weapons. As I said, you can always beat enemies with the weapons they're holding so you never need to sacrifice anything. And the items enemies drop are as valuable as weapons you would need to kill them, the money you can sell it for keeps being useful until you are pretty much done with the game.

So the only thing you ever really need to sacrifice is time. "Fighting normal mobs means you have to sacrifice what you have" is just objectively not true in my experience. I'm putting it to the test right now. Every fight ends in gain at zero cost so I can't see it as something that really needs "fixing".

Climbing - I don't know if I can say there's innovation here, they just tailored something existing to an open world, whacked a stamina drain on it and ruined it with rain and offered too little recourse

Not sure if I'd say it's innovation either, but I'd definitely say it's different and mostly better than other open worlds, Usually the climbing is either very fixed to certain areas or extremely clunky and more of the player breaking the game to move up. I think BoTW is "innovative" in how the world is built around a proper climbing system you can use anywhere at any time.

Also, there is tons of recourse against the rain, You can almost always skip it totally with about 10 seconds to make a fire, you can run up most things that you think you need to climb and that isn't affected by rain, and you can always power through most of these situations with 2 or 3 stamina potions if you absolutely don't want to even think about it.

I'd say in most situations, climbing in the rain does even slow you down by 20%. In my eyes that far from "ruining it".



Here's something we agree on though, the game DESPERATELY needs Qol improvement, Not being able to skip chest opening text is dreadful and not having an option to quick swap what you are holding with what's inside the chest is insane. The game is filled with tiny time wasters like this.

I play through the world of BoTW like I'm doing a giant DMC combo, moving from one activity to the next as fast as possible and trying to make things go perfectly cleanly, all the unskippable stuff that repeats all the time absolutely kills that feeling of flow. This is the kind of irritation that I've ranted for FAR too long about this game. I won't get started about the inconsistency of the dodge system, or the desperate need for them to limit the amount of food you can eat.
 
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