Nintendo's open-world is the only open-world I liked.
I can't get immersed in GTA's open world because I'm just a random going on a killing spree for 15 minutes then shut the game down.
I hated Skyrim, the world is big but empty. There is nothing particular about the landscape that makes me want to "go there". Most of the time, I discovered areas because I was going in straight lines.
Zelda on the other hand, I was like "oh wow, a mountain split in two, I wanna see it". The landscape view makes you want to see what's going on and act as a map ("oh so the gemini mountain is on my right, I must be at XXX"). You're on top of a tower, look at the volcano, and you're like "what is that thing moving on the horizon". Same thing for pretty much all divine beasts.
The other nice thing about BOTW's open world is the map. You don't need it. In The Witcher 3 you have a GPS that tells you where to go. When people tells you to go somewhere in this Zelda, you ask people, you look at the road signs, and you go there. This makes the world much more realistic and less empty because you need to interact with it.
To go to the Goron village, you have many ways of doing it, stockpile a huge amount of food to heal while you burn, or go around and talk to people to find the potion. If you choose to stockpile food, you need to hunt, to cook, and to interact with the world once again.
The world is part of the game play, unlike many other open world games where the world is just the scenery where the game play take place.
Both BotW and WoW also made exploring the "empty" areas rewarding (they're not actually empty, and there are things to find).
Weirdly, that's what every FFXI player did almost every day and for years, until they finally added fast(er) travel options in later expansions. Even using the Chocobo to increase run speed, it took 30+ minutes of travel to get to any end game content. And it was very easy to accidentally die along the way in places where nobody could resurrect you without also dying themselves, and then you would need to make the entire trip again. It was absolutely stupid and a complete waste of time, and yet I have nothing but fond memories of it.
But literally days of walking would be too much without something (either plot along the way or fast travel).
I discovered the Elders Scrolls via Morrowind, then because I enjoyed it so much I was overjoyed about Oblivion coming out, and a little bit less about Skyrim.
... But these last two left me with that feeling of emptiness about the world. Oblivion had some redeeming qualities on specific quests (going into that painting was absolutely fantastic, although way too short), but felt like a drag overall. Skyrim felt like you never stop stumbling on something, encounters and quests felt evenly spaced and incredibly generic, succumbing to a Horror Vacui of sorts[0]. Also since everything dynamically adjusts in difficulty to your progress, everything is always as easy as it ever was. As a result there's no risk, no surprise, no tension.
Comparatively, Morrowind had many many flaws but I just kept on wanting to explore the world more, go past this ridge, reach to that spiky thing on the horizon, enter this weird tomb, walk down that windy road...
While quite different of course, they have basically the same goal: you first have to get lost in order to find your way.
The fun begins when you explore and stumble across things by mistake.
Also many landmarks in BOTW are straight up taken from the NES game, like the twin mountains in the gerudo desert.
After Ocarina of Time, the Zelda games went to a linear story with a dungeon formula almost copy pasted for 20 years. BOTW breaks this pattern to get back to its roots: exploration.
Just watch the interviews of Aonuma explaining this.
Zelda 2 was pretty linear too.
The twin mountains are spectacle rock. They have appeared in many games. Most notably, imo, they’re in the crater of death mountain in ocarina of time. If you squint at the way the fire temple is built (two towers) it’s sort of implied to be built inside of it. Very cool
BotW manages to always be fun and interesting to explore. A quality worth taking inspiration from for sure. Getting around the map in games like Assassins Creed often feels like a chore.
Games are for every one (well some games are for mature audience but that's not the point).
I like easy games because I don't want to be punished for not being good enough after a job week.
I like thinking/strategy games like chess because I like to challenge myself.
I like a lot of other genre for different reasons.
But not a single one of them should be depicted as "for little kids", not even sokoban, tictactoe, etc... because that's just not true.
Games are for entertainment. You're either entertained, or not when playing the game. It's completely subjective. It does not depend on the fact you're a kid or an adult.
Where they see something they don't understand, and assign an "alien" status to it. They might as well be saying that BOTW is for Klingons, for all the rationality there is behind it.
In that poster's vein, we might as well refer to all GTA players as criminals and thugs (of course they're not!). When in reality, the player base of both GTA and BOTW has a massive overlap - both games are largely played by the same people. "Computer gamers".
No need to insult the fanbase. You can just say "I don't like it".
> it just goes to show that people like different things.
Which is why I simply explained what worked for me and what didn't work for me, not saying any of my comment was an absolute truth.
Breath of the wild is a game full of secrets. Things are there and they need to be found.
Many other open world games are not. They’re full of missions. Because the ui is so informative, you actually get rapid confirmation that there is nothing.
A lot of missions start at a hub and make you go to a place and then come back. That’s how that portion of the world gets used. Botw doesn’t do this much. Most content that you find is immediately relevant there because that place is interesting in itself.
Lastly, you don’t have a dearth of dialogue to get through things. Dialogue is fine and all but side quests are conceptually very stupid and the writing is inevitably tiresome. It breaks immersion when someone needs you to collect maguffins again.
It is amazing to see how many games today have taken inspiration from Zelda BOTW.
The first time I played the game, I decided it was more fun just exploring the open world and visiting all the Sheikah Towers.
I didn't have good armor/equipment/food/etc, and I had a complete blast doing it. That was one of my fondest memories of gaming.
Miyazaki cited Fumito Ueda's work such as Shadow of the Colossus (2005) as an influence that "inspired him to create" Elden Ring, while also drawing influence from "the design and the freedom of play" in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).
Enemy, dungeon, weapon, skill, play style, and boss variety is massive in Elden Ring. BotW does not hold a candle to it.
The main artistic voice of the game says he was inspired by BoW, yet because you don’t like it, you say it’s not an influence.
Take a step back from your own preferences when discussing art, it helps.
Just because somebody is calling out the massive shortcomings in a piece of art you enjoyed doesn't mean whatever value it held to you is reduced. Not everyone has to like what you do. No need to cry over it.
I care about judging the actual work. It doesn't matter what he thinks. The reality is that there's nothing of BOTW in Elden Ring.
Doesn’t BOTW have a similar option to rush to the end boss?
Also, this video shows BOTW doesn’t have to be like what you say
Rather uncharitable to compare a four year old game to one that just came out.
The world in Elden Ring is beautiful but the controls and interactivity of the world is just lacking. I've died so many times that I never would have in botw (as the controls are precise and predictable).
Switching flasks is a pain and using them after getting hit once so you don't get killed is just so repetitive. It would be much better to have enemies hit a third of the damage and give you a third of the flasks.
Music in both is 10/10. Breath of the Wild story/characters I prefer. ER horse I prefer. ER world I prefer visually. Gameplay wise, I prefer breath of the wild's world.
Wish there was climbing, ability to destroy non furniture (of which you can't jump on to platform in this even if you wanted to). I don't like that I can't climb a two foot castle wall. If there is a chair next to the wall I just jump through it and break it.
Both are incredible games but I find the creativity, freedom, and puzzles what I look for in a game more than rolling through an absolutely stunning and detailed world.
Then you're missing out on half of the fun. If one playstyle is repetitive then switch your build out. Learn dragon rot, pick a colossal weapon and apply ridiculous skills to it. Choose a faith build and spam buffs until bosses can hardly scratch you while you fat roll away. It sounds like you're just bad tbh. Stick to Zelda.
Reskilling takes so much time to do as well so it's not like you can just swap and try out something else quickly. You have to go to Raya Lucaria, re skill, then level your items with stones, then go back to where you wanted to try something else out for a fight. You might find you actually don't like that and you have to do the whole thing over again.
Counterpoint, there is one form of attack in BotW, you have coupled it with a few prescripted interactions which give you the illusion of emergent behaviour, you will not actually be able to perform this action in 99.9% of your fights. In addition, your fire/attack/tree fall all just do "damage", ruling out a small number of specific exceptions your enemy will not respond differently to any so whichever achieves the higher numbers is best.
ER has different moves for light/heavy, one hand/two hand, running, rolling then the hundred plus the ashes of war skills which can be customised on each weapon. You can indeed set fire to the ground (it's a torch skill), you can catch a gust of wind (ash of war), you can freeze opponents etc. Enemies have meaningful resistances, choosing your armaments carefully makes a difference.
> Reskilling takes so much time to do as well so it's not like you can just swap and try out something else quickly
I tried this out to guage how onerous it actually is, this takes less than 15 minutes. Are you sure you're making these points in good faith?
What makes tetris or animal crossing any less repetitive? Nothing, and yet they're fun games people can sink hundreds of hours into.
I sure love when someone reviews a game they hardly even played.
So I guess all-in-all I agree with your thesis though. Elden Ring does seem to have managed to leave the worst aspects of previous games while inviting the best ideas along for the ride. Add to that the most beautifully crafted world FROM has ever made and you have something that simply exudes GOAT.
Skyrim, GTA, and RDR2 all share the same "Main Mission" mechanic that helps keep players centered on overall story progression while leaving room for side quests and exploration. This "go there, do this, go there" cycle doesn't exist in BOTW or Elden Ring.
A friend of mine installed minecraft after like 5 years or even more, he was playing it like crazy back then. He died like ten times before giving up...
I feel like new players have a hard time now in Minecraft because its full of "new mechanics" and monsters and traps and god knows what..
You can think about it as how the games fall on the hand-holding spectrum. Elden Ring and BOTW are clustered closer together on the left side of "No Guidance", and the further right you go towards "Linear" you'll see the other games. Sure there's a big gap between ER and BOTW, but it's less than between BOTW and its next peer.
There's also the added dimension that Elden Ring and BOTW both share this unique quality that even random encounters can turn life-or-death, especially when running into new classes of mobs, and you have to be very patient and get absorbed into the moment or you're rewarded with death even when you're convinced you did the right thing. There's no room for quick drags of a cigarette in the middle of a fight, and instead you're rewarded with the outcome possible with incredible focus and game play experience that leaves you feeling like a superhero.
That sums it up. Enjoyment comes from core game play mechanics, not quest content. I'd be just as happy with core Street Fighter mechanics in an open world, with no-explanation filler content between boss encounters.
The industry influence I would credit FromSoftware with is that its ok to make really difficult games again, a trend born through their work such as the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring etc. It's been a long time IMO since games this difficult were this mainstream.
I do have to admit it was perfectly aimed at someone like me, who remembers the glory days of video games but no longer has the time or skill to play at a top level.
Put it in context back before the game existed. The Zelda games are selling well, but they’re never Nintendo’s most successful games. What they are is Nintendo’s most revered. They have a great formula, designed by Miyamoto and polished to perfection by his successors. The critiques are getting deafening though. It’s getting too linear, the dungeons are turning slowly into content tubes, and the time spent on story is too long. What do you do? You don’t do Breath of the Wild to break the mould, you do Link Between Worlds.
Link Between Worlds is less linear, and harkens back to the SNES for its story and interaction. You take a step back from your mould, you redefine it.
But then BAM! They completely redesigned everything with Breath of The Wild. Link Between Worlds is but a mere footnote. That’s gutsy, and risky.
Interestingly it seems Nintendo understood that it could possibly not succeed, by where they placed the story in the timeline.
Nintendo, at least ever since the success of the Wii, hasn't been unwilling to make gutsy moves - but even then they do them in ways that they have fall-back positions if they're not as successful as they'd like.
In prior Zeldas, dungeons were architecturally complicated and treasures would bring a new kind of ability.
> Shrines and Korok leaves are chores
They’re designed to be fun if you discover them naturally instead of actively trying to get them all.
Getting 13 hearts and two stamina wheels only takes about half the shrines, and I felt like I had plenty of inventory space after 200 or so Koroks, not to mention the “reward” for going to the trouble of getting all of the Koroks
They are not as inventive or unique as in previous games. They all use the same textures, which is so tiring after a while.
As Nintendo and Monolith Soft (the secret MVPs of that game) develop sequels based on the formula, they’ll close the dungeon gap and give us even better games.
Looking at the trailers for the sequel, I’m pretty convinced this will be the big difference; unique dungeons based on their previous work.
BotW, if it wasn't for the Zelda tag in it's name, would have been judged for what it truely is: a very mediocre game. It does almost eveything wrong: the reward loop isn't satisfactory because getting a weapon that will break after a few hit feel useless, the cooking system has no tutorial and is hard to understand wihtout looking up on the internet and once understood is very tedious to use more a few time in a row, there is a lack a variety in enemies that are just copy-pasta of each other, the rain is basically stopping exploration as soon as it starts, thunder is even more infuriating: it's just a punishing mechanic that does the finger to the player, the world is big but empty, the shrines are mini-games designed by interns and feel often very out of place just as the UI (the red magnet for instance) are breaking immersion, the controls... oh the controls there are 16 different buttons + 2 joysticks (that are also clickable) on the Switch and every. single. of. them. is. used. for some action. That's 20 input to remember (I don't), bring me back the GameCube controller with its 7 buttons please! Aweful monetization too: a basic feature in an adventure game (path roamed by the player) is locked behing a DLC, and a lot of equipments are locked behind physical and expensive DLC (Amiibo). Very few memorable NPCs, forgettable music, almost no story, the list goes one.
In conclusion: this is likely the most overrated game in existence. But a Zelda (or Mario or Pokemon) in the name and people will buy it and like it whatever the quality. I regretted almost instantly spending money on it.
However, those weaknesses turn into strengths for the vast majority of people. Take raining for example. I hate the rain, but I’m glad it’s there. It forces you to change your plan when it starts. Some of my most memorable moments where after the rain forced me to rethink traversal.
Weapon durability was a common critique, but once again it’s to force you to change your weapons. Not to get married to any weapon style, and to savagely throw your weapons at your enemies. I love it.
When I got a Switch BotW was the only game worth playing on the platform. I played it for over a year exclusively and had fun all the way.
I tried to play Elden Ring but I made the mistake of provoking an NPC and dying about 10 times until I figured out how to shake him off. Then I proceeded to die another 10-15 times on the next NPC and a dragon until I figured out how to run away from those. I gave up after dying again on the encounter that followed those.
Eventually I'll try to play it again but at the moment I'm sunk into Ghost of Tsushima which is awesome.
That's something they probably picked up from Monster Hunter.
It felt all wrong and... Hacked together? Like they planned a different game and then put the zelda theme on top of it. Something like that..
The whole "exiting the cave to reveal the world" is Socrates cave shit. Old as the hills.
I don’t think video game starting caves have “shadows on the wall” though?
Your comment is full of hate because someone basically have a different opinion than you. This is toxic and I expect it to get flagged pretty quickly.
Bring arguments please instead of trying to fight with attempts to silence someone
Are we on a Chinese/Russian website?
Offended because you don't know how to reply.. weird
If you disagree with me, you downvote, it's that simple, why trying to censor everything?
So this is not hate to you? Basically insulting a complete generation, fans of a franchise, making dubious comparison with unrelated things and accusations of pedophilia?
Are you a joke?
> Bring arguments please
Read siblings comments, I already explained my point of view.
You keep saying I'm offended like it's some sort of magical word to dismiss what I'm telling you. You keep making assumptions and accusations about me and an entire fandom, for what reasons? Because we like a game you don't?
Grow up.
> Grow up.
Please be respectful
Here, my original reply that got flagged, minus the parts that offend people
Hopefully you'll better understand the point i was trying to make
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> Just like how you're introduced to the world is literally how BoTW introduces you to it's own world (could it be a homage?)
#### you either haven't played Elden Ring, or you #### think breath of the wild is the only open world RPG to ever exist ####
Elden Ring succeeds not because they ignore bad open world design
They succeed because:
- they built a reputation over the years
- they stay true to their vision
- they have taste
- they build a solid gameplay and foundation
- they make a great epic-trailer
Nobody experience the open world before buying it and spend few hours into the game, the game already sold a shit ton by the time people spread the words
So the game having all i listed is what made it successful
What made it receive great positive ratings? the choice to make an open world, that's it, there is no GPS, it's not an open-world-through-ui-information, it's an open world in the veins of Morrowind/Oblivion, you talk to NPCs to know where to go
Nothing about Breath of the wild and its poor GPS/minimap/item-durability and other non-sense features ####
Nintendo rested on their laurels and released a literal 3/10 game but people still ate it up for some reason. I don't think I have ever been so disappointed with a game in my life, and I've been playing Zelda since I was four years old. I wasn't asking for much, perhaps if the map was 1/10th the size they could have spent more effort filling it with content.
Elden Ring is in total juxtaposition. Exploration is rewarded with secret weapons, armor and skills that don't break and are actually useful. Your build is totally up to you and the wide variety means options for how you play the game, fight the bosses, and navigate enemy corridors is huge. FromSoft added respec this go around which lets you change it up if you're getting decimated over a bad build or just want to try something else. The bosses are unforgiving but manageable if you're resiliant. The map is still large enough to get lost in, but small enough that it doesn't feel empty. You're forced to ditch your horse in many areas out of respect for navigating on foot. And of course the story/lore which FromSoft is known for being bad at delivering (usually told through items and notes collected through the game) is leagues better than previous titles, having GRRM consult and help build out the lore was a brilliant idea as well. This game is 10/10, they did not compromise on their core values of delivering a legit challenge to players and improved upon every conceivable part of the game.
If it's not clear, I really love this game. I'm 75hrs into my first playthrough and only 50% of the trophies achieved. This has been great value in my opinion.
It’s got a lot of rough edges, but it’s an absolute breath of fresh air; and even my gf says it’s the one she’s enjoyed watching me play the most.
For all its flaws, Elden Ring is packed with “oh wow” moments as you unlock new areas. And the design of the “dungeons” is inspired, they’re so intricate and rich, yet never so lengthy that they outstay their welcome. The main gripe I have with the game is that a number of the enemies and bosses stray from being fun challenges into just being frustrating. I’d have preferred if they’d made the game just a bit smaller and focused on making each boss encounter as memorable as those on the critical questlines.
I would say BotW was more akin to Animal Crossing. That Japanese genre of relaxation game where you sort of mindlessly wander around doing menial tasks to decompress. That said, I did get like 150hrs out of Animal Crossing with my girlfriend so I do see the appeal, I just did not want that for Zelda.
They were inspired to reinvent it by watching the reviews for Shadow of the Colossus which was “modeless” (low-UI) and refused to explain anything, like Fromsoft does now.
Just like how you're introduced to the world is literally how BoTW introduces you to it's own world (could it be a homage?), or something as simple as picking up consumables with a simple press of a button with no animations, little things that aren't in the way of you experiencing the world.
What I haven't put my finger on was how both of these games propel you to discover the world, and to find out what's above the hill or if there might be a cave in a cliff. I don't know if it's the terrain design that's actually thought through and not left to some algorithm, or if it's simply the perk of having a great brand behind these games that have rewarded us properly for exploring their previous worlds.
A better tittle would be : Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Bad Open-World Design