6th March 2017, 11:19 PM
The game isn't directionless at all, not even in the slightest. You're given objectives along a "main path" and a primary objective you can decide to pursue at any time, under-prepared or not. It's just that the game LETS you do whatever you want instead of going on those quests. How is that "directionless"? Are you honestly telling me right now that you would prefer they put in artificial barriers to FORCE you along the main story path? Do you honestly believe that's better? I'm seriously asking here, because in this regard it seems you and I are exactly opposite in our tastes. Your "problems" are my "features", and the features of those who are playing the game. You seem to have missed that they had clear objectives, but they didn't care. You know what I did in the tutorial, the TUTORIAL? I lived like a hermit in the woods for days, hunting and gathering and cooking stuff up. I love that I could do that right out the starting gate!
As far as cooking goes, I wanted something like a mini-game, but I think Nintendo found a better way. It's hands-on cooking but without the burden of a mini-game every time you want to eat. You have to light the fire, carry a big handful of stuff, and stuff it in the pot. It could only be improved, I think, if one of those Koroks you find at the start summoned a magical shelf full of all your food so you picked it from the shelf instead of an in-game menu, further giving you that experience of actually picking stuff yourself. "Recipes" would come in the form of asking the korok to cook something you discovered for you, but generally I think Nintendo handled it well.
Durability... stamina... Frankly I agree. These are vestiges of gaming's experiments from a few years back that turned out to never have been worth pursuing in the first place. The new Doom and Phantom Pain in particular prove that such systems aren't really needed for the most part (Phantom Pain has durability on the silencer alone, but I'm okay with that, since the gun still works fine when that breaks, and they're easily replaced). The best I can say about stamina is the game does give you upgrades to it. Still, it would have been better if it hadn't been in the game at all and they'd designed it around that. Phantom Pain really did spoil me. I now look at stamina bars as nothing but a liability. It's a shame, because Nintendo was smart enough not to toss that into Link Between Worlds. I can say this about durability. Frankly, weapons are constantly dropping like candy in the game, so if something breaks there's probably already a replacement on the ground right next to you. If nothing else, I've had a number of "both me and the enemy scrambling towards that one weapon" moments like in an action movie. Those were pretty fun. Still, I would have preferred those moments come about because something knocked my weapon out of my hand and I had to run over and grab it. That'd be pretty cool.
All in all though, this is the "lived in" world I always dreamed of playing Zelda games! Random critters going about their lives, an endless wood I can just walk to, and I can climb up practically anything, stamina aside (and I've already found a little trick to get stamina back as I climb so I can keep going). The emergent gameplay is strong here. I got the ability to move things with a magnet. Normally, yeah, whatever, I use it on specific puzzle items. Now though, I can get clever about it. I was trying to throw some bombs to a distant outpost, and it suddenly clicked that I could go over and grab a long metal plank, a metal box, lay them over a log, and I created a working catapult to launch bombs with. I CREATED A WORKING CATAPULT USING IN-GAME PHYSICS! I DID THAT! THAT'S A THING I CAN DO! I.. CREATED A FRICKIN' CATAPULT! THIS is the sort of fun you could have in this game ABF.
I CREATED A CATAPULT!
As far as cooking goes, I wanted something like a mini-game, but I think Nintendo found a better way. It's hands-on cooking but without the burden of a mini-game every time you want to eat. You have to light the fire, carry a big handful of stuff, and stuff it in the pot. It could only be improved, I think, if one of those Koroks you find at the start summoned a magical shelf full of all your food so you picked it from the shelf instead of an in-game menu, further giving you that experience of actually picking stuff yourself. "Recipes" would come in the form of asking the korok to cook something you discovered for you, but generally I think Nintendo handled it well.
Durability... stamina... Frankly I agree. These are vestiges of gaming's experiments from a few years back that turned out to never have been worth pursuing in the first place. The new Doom and Phantom Pain in particular prove that such systems aren't really needed for the most part (Phantom Pain has durability on the silencer alone, but I'm okay with that, since the gun still works fine when that breaks, and they're easily replaced). The best I can say about stamina is the game does give you upgrades to it. Still, it would have been better if it hadn't been in the game at all and they'd designed it around that. Phantom Pain really did spoil me. I now look at stamina bars as nothing but a liability. It's a shame, because Nintendo was smart enough not to toss that into Link Between Worlds. I can say this about durability. Frankly, weapons are constantly dropping like candy in the game, so if something breaks there's probably already a replacement on the ground right next to you. If nothing else, I've had a number of "both me and the enemy scrambling towards that one weapon" moments like in an action movie. Those were pretty fun. Still, I would have preferred those moments come about because something knocked my weapon out of my hand and I had to run over and grab it. That'd be pretty cool.
All in all though, this is the "lived in" world I always dreamed of playing Zelda games! Random critters going about their lives, an endless wood I can just walk to, and I can climb up practically anything, stamina aside (and I've already found a little trick to get stamina back as I climb so I can keep going). The emergent gameplay is strong here. I got the ability to move things with a magnet. Normally, yeah, whatever, I use it on specific puzzle items. Now though, I can get clever about it. I was trying to throw some bombs to a distant outpost, and it suddenly clicked that I could go over and grab a long metal plank, a metal box, lay them over a log, and I created a working catapult to launch bombs with. I CREATED A WORKING CATAPULT USING IN-GAME PHYSICS! I DID THAT! THAT'S A THING I CAN DO! I.. CREATED A FRICKIN' CATAPULT! THIS is the sort of fun you could have in this game ABF.
I CREATED A CATAPULT!
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)