22nd June 2016, 7:31 PM
This is mostly just a slightly altered rewrite of stuff I said in this thread already, but I think I organize it better here in this version I put together for my E3 2016 post on my blog. So, here's the section on Breath of the Wild:
http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=288#T...%20at%20E3
2-2: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: My Thoughts on the Game As Shown at E3
At the show this year, Nintendo mostly focused on Zelda. The booth was large and the Zelda display impressive, with a whole Zelda-themed environment to pass through inside the booth. It looked pretty cool, from videos, and the game was very popular, the lines for the game were long all through the show, and it won some awards as well, such as IGN’s Game of the Show award. That’s all great. The game looks beautiful, too. This somewhat Skyward Sword-esque art style isn’t quite as great as Twilight Princess’s is in my book, but it does look very good. And a lot about the game looks fun to play, too. I do have reservations about the game, though, as while there is some of the core of what I love about Zelda here, this is also a Zelda game for people who like things in games very different from my own interests. I’ll list a few issues I have with this game, and also some things I liked about what I saw of Breath of the Wild.
First, this is an open-world game. I know open-world games are popular, but I have never liked them, and indeed have never managed to stay interested in an open-world action-adventure, action-RPG, or shooter game beyond the opening couple of hours. I need direction and an actual focused point to stay interested in an action or RPG game, not just “wander around and do whatever, where ‘whatever’ is a very limited number of mostly combat-related actions that you can take”. The Breath of the Wild’s map looks nice, but the very open design, like an open-world game or the original Zelda, is something I like less than traditional 3d Zelda or GB/GBC Zelda segmented designs. Of course given the huge popularity of open-world games over the past 15 or so years a lot of people disagree with me about them, but I generally find open-world games very boring, and rarely ever stick with one beyond, like, an hour or two. I can’t think of any open world action-adventure or RPG games I’ve actually gotten very far into at all. Now, I do love Guild Wars of course, I played well over a thousand hours of the game, and it does have a huge world, but I wouldn’t call that world open-world in the traditional sense; the game has a lot of gating (so you often need to do the missions to progress), it’s broken up by areas for different level characters, etc. But traditional open-world design? After a couple of hours of driving around in Grand Theft Auto III I pretty much lost interest in the concept, and no progress in the genre has changed my mind on that score.
And Breath of the Wild looks like very much an open-world game in key elements. I don’t need cinematic narrative, but I do need some kind of system to keep you on track — a quest log, indicators to show where you need to go, a good mapping system which rewards exploration by revealing the map as you go instead of just giving you all of it from the start since revealing the map as you explore is MUCH more rewarding, etc. Without that games are aimless and I’ll lose interest quickly, as always happens with me in open-world action, RPG, or action-adventure games. Endless choices doesn’t make me want to explore all those choices, it makes me often freeze up and probably just move on to some other game before seeing most of them. For an example of how much I dislike open-world design, I would say that StarTropics is a better game than the original Legend of Zelda, because it’s also fatnastic, but is a more focused, fun experience that doesn’t rely on stupid crutches like “go find the random hidden stuff” or “wander around pointlessly for no good reason”. I’ve beaten StarTropics 1, did so in the late ’00s, and loved it. But Zelda 1? I’ve still never gotten past the sixth dungeon. Sure, it’s a classic and a game I remember playing back during the NES’es lifespan various places, while StarTropics isn’t (I’d heard of it in Nintendo Power, but not played it until the ’00s), but while Zelda is fun, it’s also flawed and frustrating. StarTropics is better for sure, and it’s the best action-RPG I have played for the NES. Or for another example of how focused design is better than open-but-empty design, as much as I love Baldur’s Gate 1, I never even got into the city of Baldur’s Gate, as when we got it in ’99 I kept wandering around in the forests of the first half of the game until I lost interest in playing any more. In contrast Baldur’s Gate II is more focused than its predecessor, much less full of large, mostly empty forest zones. It’s the better game. I REALLY hope that Breath of the Wild has something to help you stay on track, be it a quest log, Navi or Midna analog, or what have you. It needs something.
And worse, this is not only an open-world game, but it is an open-world game which sounds like it will use level-scaling to some extent, perhaps a significant one. This is a big problem, in my opinion — for a game like this, making the whole thing roughly equal in difficulty makes for boring gameplay! Yes, it can be done well, as Mega Man games show, but more often it leads to a whole game of no-difficulty-progression tedium, as you see in Elder Scrolls games since they introduced level scaling for example. I find many more things than that boring about TES games, but the level scaling sure doesn’t help. If I ever do actually play an Elder Scrolls game, I’d install one of those “we remove the whole-world level scaling” mods. Or for a really bad example, see Knuckles Chaotix for the 32X; making level select random in that game, and all five worlds even in difficulty, was a terrible idea! Sure, Zelda games usually do let you explore around, but there is at least some progression of easier to harder as you go. I really hope that traditonal Zelda world design returns here, and not a true “you can go anywhere from the start” design, but word that you can, if you want, go straight to the end of the game right from the beginning, skipping most of the content in between, is not promising. So yeah, I am very worried about this in this game; it’s a huge problem with open-world games that use it.
On the good side though, fortunately the game isn’t randomly-generated, as Nintendo seems to be putting a lot of work into making a detailed and interesting world to explore. I saw some cool stuff in the gameplay demos, and the game looks like fun to play. Link can climb up cliffsides this time, so you can travel all over with ease. The Moblins to fight, trees to climb, stuff to chop at, and areas to explore looked interesting, and for an open-world game this one looks far better than most. I’m sure it’ll be fun to play, but my question is, will I actually stay interested, or will I quit partway through as the unfocused, wandering-around-heavy gameplay drags down the good elements of the game? I have always said that I often prefer a well-crafted linear experience to something too open-ended, after all. There are exceptions to this, mostly in the strategy genre where I like a fairly wide-open game like Civilization a lot, but in action or RPG games it very much stands.
Breath of the Wild has a lot more items to get than past Zelda games, with lots of stuff to pick up all over, but this doesn’t mean as much to me as it would to some people. I care less than most people seem to about loot in games. I almost never play games just to get better stuff, that’s not something that often actually interests me. I like exploration, finding new places, and putting them on a permanent map… so yeah, not a fan of randomly-regenerated-every-time stuff either. :p (Stupid Diablo games, even though I know the map isn’t permanent I can’t help but want to explore out every zone every time I play one… I find that much more fun than whatever loot the game drops.) This applies here because you make it sound like just getting items is a reward on its own in LttP, in lieu of having more areas to explore, but I don’t agree with that. Of course it’s fun to use new items in a Zelda game, but that’s as much in the context of the new places it’ll let you get to than it is with the item itself… apart from things which add to the combat too, such as a bow, fire rod, etc. But I probably wouldn’t keep playing a game just to get some item.
And on a related note, for another negative, the game has crafting in it. I hate crafting in general, and that’s in Breath of the Wild for sure. I can deal with crafting if it’s very simple, as it is in Guild Wars where you just talk to the person who makes some kind of armor or gives you an them from materials or somesuch, collect/buy the materials, then return to the trader to buy that item, but when you’ve got to deal with stupid “mix crafting items together to try to make formulas (and we either won’t tell you them or they’re kind of a pain to find)? ‘ No thanks, I hate that stuff! My first experience with crafting was Diablo 2, and I had next to no interest in trying to come up with Horadric Cube recipes; I just used the thing for some extra storage, and that’s it. This is also why I never bought Minecraft, I hate crafting. And on top of the crafting, the game has weapon durability as well. This is a questionable mechanic, more often bad than good. There are a few games with good implementations of weapon durability, such as the Fire Emblem series or Riviera: The Promised Land, but it’s a hard mechanic to get right, particularly for someone like me who wants to keep things, not have to keep tossing them away as they break! And yet it is absolutely central to Breath of the Wild’s design, as weapons break very fast so you’re constantly grabbing weapons from enemies and fighting them with them. That looks fun at times, but I’m sure other times it’s quite annoying. I hope that there are permanent items you can get eventually, perhaps as this games’ equivalents to the items you get from dungeons in a normal Zelda game.
But all that said, Breath of the Wild looks like a very good game, yes. The combat looks pretty good, durability aside, and being able to climb rock walls is pretty cool. It might even be E3 Game of the Show (as IGN gave it), though I’m not sure; Microsoft is my pick for best publisher this E3, them making all their first-party titles dual-releases on PC is a fantastic move and they showed some great stuff too. Nintendo did have some good games to show, but without a Direct and with so much focus on Zelda you didn’t see much of the others unless you were watching a lot of their day 2 stream… which I watched a bunch of, but still. Anyway, despite the good points, I can see myself liking this game less than any previous 3d Zelda game due to the kind of game it is.
http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=288#T...%20at%20E3
2-2: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: My Thoughts on the Game As Shown at E3
At the show this year, Nintendo mostly focused on Zelda. The booth was large and the Zelda display impressive, with a whole Zelda-themed environment to pass through inside the booth. It looked pretty cool, from videos, and the game was very popular, the lines for the game were long all through the show, and it won some awards as well, such as IGN’s Game of the Show award. That’s all great. The game looks beautiful, too. This somewhat Skyward Sword-esque art style isn’t quite as great as Twilight Princess’s is in my book, but it does look very good. And a lot about the game looks fun to play, too. I do have reservations about the game, though, as while there is some of the core of what I love about Zelda here, this is also a Zelda game for people who like things in games very different from my own interests. I’ll list a few issues I have with this game, and also some things I liked about what I saw of Breath of the Wild.
First, this is an open-world game. I know open-world games are popular, but I have never liked them, and indeed have never managed to stay interested in an open-world action-adventure, action-RPG, or shooter game beyond the opening couple of hours. I need direction and an actual focused point to stay interested in an action or RPG game, not just “wander around and do whatever, where ‘whatever’ is a very limited number of mostly combat-related actions that you can take”. The Breath of the Wild’s map looks nice, but the very open design, like an open-world game or the original Zelda, is something I like less than traditional 3d Zelda or GB/GBC Zelda segmented designs. Of course given the huge popularity of open-world games over the past 15 or so years a lot of people disagree with me about them, but I generally find open-world games very boring, and rarely ever stick with one beyond, like, an hour or two. I can’t think of any open world action-adventure or RPG games I’ve actually gotten very far into at all. Now, I do love Guild Wars of course, I played well over a thousand hours of the game, and it does have a huge world, but I wouldn’t call that world open-world in the traditional sense; the game has a lot of gating (so you often need to do the missions to progress), it’s broken up by areas for different level characters, etc. But traditional open-world design? After a couple of hours of driving around in Grand Theft Auto III I pretty much lost interest in the concept, and no progress in the genre has changed my mind on that score.
And Breath of the Wild looks like very much an open-world game in key elements. I don’t need cinematic narrative, but I do need some kind of system to keep you on track — a quest log, indicators to show where you need to go, a good mapping system which rewards exploration by revealing the map as you go instead of just giving you all of it from the start since revealing the map as you explore is MUCH more rewarding, etc. Without that games are aimless and I’ll lose interest quickly, as always happens with me in open-world action, RPG, or action-adventure games. Endless choices doesn’t make me want to explore all those choices, it makes me often freeze up and probably just move on to some other game before seeing most of them. For an example of how much I dislike open-world design, I would say that StarTropics is a better game than the original Legend of Zelda, because it’s also fatnastic, but is a more focused, fun experience that doesn’t rely on stupid crutches like “go find the random hidden stuff” or “wander around pointlessly for no good reason”. I’ve beaten StarTropics 1, did so in the late ’00s, and loved it. But Zelda 1? I’ve still never gotten past the sixth dungeon. Sure, it’s a classic and a game I remember playing back during the NES’es lifespan various places, while StarTropics isn’t (I’d heard of it in Nintendo Power, but not played it until the ’00s), but while Zelda is fun, it’s also flawed and frustrating. StarTropics is better for sure, and it’s the best action-RPG I have played for the NES. Or for another example of how focused design is better than open-but-empty design, as much as I love Baldur’s Gate 1, I never even got into the city of Baldur’s Gate, as when we got it in ’99 I kept wandering around in the forests of the first half of the game until I lost interest in playing any more. In contrast Baldur’s Gate II is more focused than its predecessor, much less full of large, mostly empty forest zones. It’s the better game. I REALLY hope that Breath of the Wild has something to help you stay on track, be it a quest log, Navi or Midna analog, or what have you. It needs something.
And worse, this is not only an open-world game, but it is an open-world game which sounds like it will use level-scaling to some extent, perhaps a significant one. This is a big problem, in my opinion — for a game like this, making the whole thing roughly equal in difficulty makes for boring gameplay! Yes, it can be done well, as Mega Man games show, but more often it leads to a whole game of no-difficulty-progression tedium, as you see in Elder Scrolls games since they introduced level scaling for example. I find many more things than that boring about TES games, but the level scaling sure doesn’t help. If I ever do actually play an Elder Scrolls game, I’d install one of those “we remove the whole-world level scaling” mods. Or for a really bad example, see Knuckles Chaotix for the 32X; making level select random in that game, and all five worlds even in difficulty, was a terrible idea! Sure, Zelda games usually do let you explore around, but there is at least some progression of easier to harder as you go. I really hope that traditonal Zelda world design returns here, and not a true “you can go anywhere from the start” design, but word that you can, if you want, go straight to the end of the game right from the beginning, skipping most of the content in between, is not promising. So yeah, I am very worried about this in this game; it’s a huge problem with open-world games that use it.
On the good side though, fortunately the game isn’t randomly-generated, as Nintendo seems to be putting a lot of work into making a detailed and interesting world to explore. I saw some cool stuff in the gameplay demos, and the game looks like fun to play. Link can climb up cliffsides this time, so you can travel all over with ease. The Moblins to fight, trees to climb, stuff to chop at, and areas to explore looked interesting, and for an open-world game this one looks far better than most. I’m sure it’ll be fun to play, but my question is, will I actually stay interested, or will I quit partway through as the unfocused, wandering-around-heavy gameplay drags down the good elements of the game? I have always said that I often prefer a well-crafted linear experience to something too open-ended, after all. There are exceptions to this, mostly in the strategy genre where I like a fairly wide-open game like Civilization a lot, but in action or RPG games it very much stands.
Breath of the Wild has a lot more items to get than past Zelda games, with lots of stuff to pick up all over, but this doesn’t mean as much to me as it would to some people. I care less than most people seem to about loot in games. I almost never play games just to get better stuff, that’s not something that often actually interests me. I like exploration, finding new places, and putting them on a permanent map… so yeah, not a fan of randomly-regenerated-every-time stuff either. :p (Stupid Diablo games, even though I know the map isn’t permanent I can’t help but want to explore out every zone every time I play one… I find that much more fun than whatever loot the game drops.) This applies here because you make it sound like just getting items is a reward on its own in LttP, in lieu of having more areas to explore, but I don’t agree with that. Of course it’s fun to use new items in a Zelda game, but that’s as much in the context of the new places it’ll let you get to than it is with the item itself… apart from things which add to the combat too, such as a bow, fire rod, etc. But I probably wouldn’t keep playing a game just to get some item.
And on a related note, for another negative, the game has crafting in it. I hate crafting in general, and that’s in Breath of the Wild for sure. I can deal with crafting if it’s very simple, as it is in Guild Wars where you just talk to the person who makes some kind of armor or gives you an them from materials or somesuch, collect/buy the materials, then return to the trader to buy that item, but when you’ve got to deal with stupid “mix crafting items together to try to make formulas (and we either won’t tell you them or they’re kind of a pain to find)? ‘ No thanks, I hate that stuff! My first experience with crafting was Diablo 2, and I had next to no interest in trying to come up with Horadric Cube recipes; I just used the thing for some extra storage, and that’s it. This is also why I never bought Minecraft, I hate crafting. And on top of the crafting, the game has weapon durability as well. This is a questionable mechanic, more often bad than good. There are a few games with good implementations of weapon durability, such as the Fire Emblem series or Riviera: The Promised Land, but it’s a hard mechanic to get right, particularly for someone like me who wants to keep things, not have to keep tossing them away as they break! And yet it is absolutely central to Breath of the Wild’s design, as weapons break very fast so you’re constantly grabbing weapons from enemies and fighting them with them. That looks fun at times, but I’m sure other times it’s quite annoying. I hope that there are permanent items you can get eventually, perhaps as this games’ equivalents to the items you get from dungeons in a normal Zelda game.
But all that said, Breath of the Wild looks like a very good game, yes. The combat looks pretty good, durability aside, and being able to climb rock walls is pretty cool. It might even be E3 Game of the Show (as IGN gave it), though I’m not sure; Microsoft is my pick for best publisher this E3, them making all their first-party titles dual-releases on PC is a fantastic move and they showed some great stuff too. Nintendo did have some good games to show, but without a Direct and with so much focus on Zelda you didn’t see much of the others unless you were watching a lot of their day 2 stream… which I watched a bunch of, but still. Anyway, despite the good points, I can see myself liking this game less than any previous 3d Zelda game due to the kind of game it is.