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Complete Breath of the Wild critique from a Game Dev perspective

brad-t

Member
The dogpile on OP in this thread is absurd and unnessassary. He's a talented developer who has some interesting thoughts to share. Yes, some of his arguments could be worded better, but overall, even as someone who really likes and appreciates the size of BotW's world, I think he's making a lot of good points. Not agreeing with someone is not a reason to try and vehemently discredit them.

Nobody's dogpiling on OP. A few members have made some nasty posts but the thread has been by-and-large very civil, and it seems like lots of fervent BotW fans agree with some of the observations made.

Nobody's trying to make the case that this game is perfect either (outside of a vanishingly small minority), and counter-arguments tend to be about more contentious points ("empty space" vs. "fun per inch") or asking for elaboration on what OP actually meant or how his solutions would look if implemented.

What's weird is that OP seems to be not that interested in engaging with replies made in this thread.
 
Nintendo literally did this with the map design of Breath of the Wild. They used mapping software to track where test users went and adapted the environment to the natural behaviour of users so that they were constantly engaged and continually discovering new things. Did you watch the Making Of videos that were mentioned many times in this thread? They might shed some light on the topic for you.

I obviously watched all of them :)

Question is if Nintendo had enough time to actually fix everything they found in those studies or not. Who knows? I'm saying with the size of the map, it was probably impossible. And usually Nintendo designs everything super tightly, so maybe they knew that the size to content ratio wasn't perfect? I mean, it's not like they didn't do this before with Zelda. People defended Twilight Princess to the teeth when it first came out, but nowadays most folks agree that the Overworld was largely empty and it would've been better to design those in a tighter fashion. And no, I am NOT (!!!!) comparing Breath of the Wilds World with Twilight Princess' Overworld - I'm just saying that sometimes it takes a while for people to have digested something to become fully objective. I mean, I love Zelda as well, probably more than most people since I've played through all of them at least 5-6 times and through the 2d Zelda games probably 50-60 times, but as a designer, I'm always trying to dissect things and try to get to an objective truth. And am I always right? No, of course not. I'm just basing this on my own personal feelings while playing the game. Just cause I thought the game was too big for its own good doesn't mean you can't enjoy it!

The idea that there's an absolute formula to fun transcending genre and taste assumes that all players play games for the same reasons, which is just a weird angle to come at this from. There's a reason that some people play Animal Crossing and some people play Dwarf Fortress and some people play CS:GO. (And a few people might play all three!) This very thread proves this point because lots of people appreciate the downtime in the game that you're framing as objectively bad.

Is there an absolute formula for the perfect song, the perfect novel, the perfect film, too? Come on.

And that's not how and what you'd test either, cause it's way too broad! What would be interesting is to take a paragraph of a book and test variations. Or a section of a song and test variations - In order to see if there's actually a common ground for what people 'generally' enjoy. I mean, that's not unheard of, Malcom Gladwell was talking about something similar in this talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwWq1K-s0Ms

There's a 'taste' of Pepsi that people generally prefer. Why wouldn't that be true for level design?

So bringing it back to Zelda, I think it'd be interesting to test this and see those studies regarding open world games in comparison to non open world games. This is getting a bit OT and way too broad, but since Zelda is an open world game, I guess that's where the discussion has to go :)
 

Boney

Banned
Your take on game design epistemology is down right bizarre.
Sounds like a kid high on sugar who just watched a bunch of TED talks.
 

brad-t

Member
Question is if Nintendo had enough time to actually fix everything they found in those studies or not. Who knows? I'm saying with the size of the map, it was probably impossible. And usually Nintendo designs everything super tightly, so maybe they knew that the size to content ratio wasn't perfect?

Obviously nothing is ever 100% complete or perfect — you could refine and add new features to something forever, but eventually you gotta ship it — but it seems like you're making big assumptions in order to bolster your preconceived notions.

I also think that looking at this as "fixing" doesn't make sense. It's not that they started with their vision of the world and then "fixed" it based on feedback; that feedback helped actively shape the world as they were building it.

And that's not how and what you'd test either, cause it's way too broad! What would be interesting is to take a paragraph of a book and test variations. Or a section of a song and test variations - In order to see if there's actually a common ground for what people 'generally' enjoy.

Sure, but a book or a song still has an intended audience ... you're optimizing for the enjoyment of that audience. There are certainly common denominators you can aim for but I don't think anyone here is going to be surprised, or argue against, the idea that things can be iterated on and tested for broader appeal. You're arguing — or appear to have been arguing — something much more rigid.
 
I also think that looking at this as "fixing" doesn't make sense. It's not that they started with their vision of the world and then "fixed" it based on feedback; that feedback helped actively shape the world as they were building it.

Well, if you have an open world game, you first start with a huge terrain full of nothing. And only then do you actually bring in content, bit by bit. That's completely different than what you'd traditionally do, where the space isn't defined yet and you build everything from the inside out instead of the outside in, on a much smaller scale. So with open world games, you're building content, you test with folks, you 'fix' areas that they didn't like by putting more content in, etc.

I mean, that's what Nintendo was doing over the past couple of years. They started with a huge, empty open world and then over years added more and more stuff. Whether it was enough content or whether they ran out of time is for everyone to decide and I guess time will tell if people will generally be happy about the size to content ratio.
 
Your take on game design epistemology is down right bizarre.
Sounds like a kid high on sugar who just watched a bunch of TED talks.

I'm puzzled by phrases like "fun per square inch," attempts to find an elusive fun formula, and seeking the "objective truth" in a game's design.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
The issue I have with constant things to do is it's overwhelming. That's what I love about BoTW is that I can sit down and explore and just go on an adventure which includes sometimes simply running around and looking at things and seeing where to go next. The notion of finding things and areas of interest is excitement in itself.

Like others have said it's really a personal taste type of thing.

Yeah, it's really just different strokes.

Some people like to veg out and explore.

Others want to be constantly engaged in active gamplay and only play pure gameplay games like fighters, racers, online MP games etc.

Others want to consume stories, cinematic experiences etc.

Thankfully there's never been a greater variety of games out so there's more than enough to play for everyone. :D
 
At some point in the development cycle someone decided to scrap dungeons, no amount of testing could fix that mistake.

This game with 9-10 dungeons would be the greatest game I have ever played. But instead it's bite sized puzzles rooms (if you are lucky) spread out too far and four larger puzzle rooms that basically all follow the same structure.

It seems they were so stuck on the freedom aspect, complete freedom no matter what, that they couldn't figure out how to incorporate traditional dungeons into that. So they made this alternative. Some people clearly greatly value that freedom. I value level design and well designed gameplay segments, which is what the dungeons always gave.
 

Hero

Member
Exactly. I think people are fairly touchy in Zelda threads, so I need to be very careful about what I'm saying :D Just to be clear: I did NOT and would never compare Breath of the Wild to 'dirt'

Nobody inferred you were saying Breath of the Wild is dirt, people were pointing out your asinine analogy.
 
I'm puzzled by phrases like "fun per square inch," attempts to find an elusive fun formula, and seeking the "objective truth" in a game's design.

I know my concepts are a bit radical, but stick with me for a bit.

Games are art.

But Game Design is based on mechanics. Mechanics are testable. Just as I can test a car and say that 'This car has a better grip than this other car', I can give you a character controller that has better controls than another one. I can test if by adding or reducing input delay on controls whether you enjoy the controls more or less and check if there's a common ground between groups of people.

I do sorta believe that the same concept must apply to level design. If I add this and this and this, do people have a more positive or a less positive reaction? Finding that golden balance that appeals to a lot of people is the art behind it, but I do think there must be a mathematical balance behind this that could prove certain things to be at least 'mostly true'.

Does that make sense? We're getting into a really wild discussion now :D
 

The Dude

Member
Yeah, it's really just different strokes.

Some people like to veg out and explore.

Others want to be constantly engaged in active gamplay and only play pure gameplay games like fighters, racers, online MP games etc.

Others want to consume stories, cinematic experiences etc.

Thankfully there's never been a greater variety of games out so there's more than enough to play for everyone. :D

Exactly, and it can change from game to game. Some games I want more of a constant engagement from my surroundings.

I think it boils down to this, the OP is fine to want games as he's explaining but it shouldnt and doesn't need to stop there. Not every game needs to follow a set pattern, some will engage more steadily than others. It's all about the style of game, the genre, etc... That stuff plays the biggest part. But it's really personal choice and something that can exist while other games do it differently as well.
 
I know my concepts are a bit radical, but stick with me for a bit.

Games are art.

But Game Design is based on mechanics. Mechanics are testable. Just as I can test a car and say that 'This car has a better grip than this other car', I can give you a character controller that has better controls than another one. I can test if by adding or reducing input delay on controls whether you enjoy the controls more or less and check if there's a common ground between groups of people.

I do sorta believe that the same concept must apply to level design. If I add this and this and this, do people have a more positive or a less positive reaction? Finding that golden balance that appeals to a lot of people is the art behind it, but I do think there must be a mathematical balance behind this that could prove certain things to be at least 'mostly true'.

Does that make sense? We're getting into a really wild discussion now :D

I love the way you think, that said while I think there is a place where you can get a consensus that's going to change drastically depending on the kind of game you are making. What works for zelda won't work for uncharted. What works for MGS won't work for RE and so on. So in specific genres their might be a "best kind of level design" it's still going to change from game to game. And it's also going to evolve with new tech and ideas.

But I love the idea of trying to hit a sweet spot for level design. I feel like RE4 hit that for TPSs, it's possibily the most universally agreed on TPS masterpiece for its incredible design. I think previous zelda games hit that in its dungeon designs.
 

Boney

Banned
I'm puzzled by phrases like "fun per square inch," attempts to find an elusive fun formula, and seeking the "objective truth" in a game's design.
I understand the "fun per inch" philosophy, it's a derivative from less is more. But the problem is that it's only applicable to very few elements in design, mostly on wrestling control away from players.

How does something like stealth fit that design paradigm? Or just take Zelda, is "fun per inches" compatible with The Great Ocean in WW? It's certainly a controversial part of the experience which needs to be taken into account in the search for an "objective truth". Even the fast sailing addition in the HD remake is met with animosity by some.

I know my concepts are a bit radical, but stick with me for a bit.

Games are art.

But Game Design is based on mechanics. Mechanics are testable. Just as I can test a car and say that 'This car has a better grip than this other car', I can give you a character controller that has better controls than another one. I can test if by adding or reducing input delay on controls whether you enjoy the controls more or less and check if there's a common ground between groups of people.

I do sorta believe that the same concept must apply to level design. If I add this and this and this, do people have a more positive or a less positive reaction? Finding that golden balance that appeals to a lot of people is the art behind it, but I do think there must be a mathematical balance behind this that could prove certain things to be at least 'mostly true'.

Does that make sense? We're getting into a really wild discussion now :D
There is no "art" in finding positive feedback from players. In fact, it is the opposite of what art is.
 

rhandino

Banned
Last night I cleared my 100th Shrine and was actually quite sad that I am going to run out of them T_T

I read here that they are interchangable or that they don't gel with the levels in which they are BUT then I just remembered that many of the shrines are actually of the [name]'s Blessing which are Shrines in which you have to overcome a challenge or solve a riddle in the overworld and the Shrine is only there to give you a cool weapon, armor or Ancient part along with the Spirit Orb.

I love that because some entire sections of the overworld are used in cool and crazy ways like the Shrine you unlock by going to the top of Mt. Lanayru for the first time or the ones you get by clearing the mazes and even the one in which you have to mount a deer and stand in a plataform to unlock it.

I never would have gotten any of that from a previous Zelda games and that is fine because it worked for this game and may be expanded in future entries to offer innovative uses of the open world.

At some point in the development cycle someone decided to scrap dungeons, no amount of testing could fix that mistake.
I don't really think they or most of the people that played the game consider that the Divine Beasts are a mistake tbh

They are well integrated into the world, the world and the inhabitants reacts to their presence and also allows the developers to offers some of the best setpiece moments in the franchise and cool puzzles.
 

hawk2025

Member
I know my concepts are a bit radical, but stick with me for a bit.

Games are art.

But Game Design is based on mechanics. Mechanics are testable. Just as I can test a car and say that 'This car has a better grip than this other car', I can give you a character controller that has better controls than another one. I can test if by adding or reducing input delay on controls whether you enjoy the controls more or less and check if there's a common ground between groups of people.

I do sorta believe that the same concept must apply to level design. If I add this and this and this, do people have a more positive or a less positive reaction? Finding that golden balance that appeals to a lot of people is the art behind it, but I do think there must be a mathematical balance behind this that could prove certain things to be at least 'mostly true'.

Does that make sense? We're getting into a really wild discussion now :D


As someone that works on means-testing human behavior every day -- This is quite an outdated view of human choice and human response to incentives.

Since the 70's, the literature in both behavioral and rational making has moved beyond the homogenous consumer model towards a heterogeneous one.

As an example: Logit models now have random coefficients, and consumer preferences are updated over time and inherently heterogeneous.

You are taking an inherently complicated subject (modelling human behavior) and applying a model to it from 40 years ago.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with means-testing without accounting for heterogeneity, if all you are interested in is the mean.
But the search for an objective truth of human preferences has been abandoned by researchers across the human and social sciences across the board for the better part of 40 years.
 
I love the way you think, that said while I think there is a place where you can get a consensus that's going to change drastically depending on the kind of game you are making. What works for zelda won't work for uncharted. What works for MGS won't work for RE and so on. So in specific genres their might be a "best kind of level design" it's still going to change from game to game. And it's also going to evolve with new tech and ideas.

Absolutely, I 100% agree, because level design isn't the full story, the other mechanics you give to the player also play a big role, etc. etc. There are a million variables here and it's unfeasible to work in such a robotic fashion, but does a 'mostly objective truth' exist? Probably.

And obviously I'm not at all designing games in a 'mathematical' way like that - I'm just designing stuff mostly by feel and by coming up with an interesting structure that I and our team enjoys. I make level designs the same way I sculpted figures as a character artist: I just wing it, for the most part, and hope that I create something that people like.

But after having been in User Research Tests, do I believe that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing things that decides on whether the majority of people like something? Yup, I do!
 

ExitPotato

Neo Member
Thomas, I think you raise some good points. I think, however, and I hope this isn't me being presumptuous, that you may have made a few missteps in your posts? You give some really fantastic ideas but you give the impression that you're telling people that they would make Zelda: BotW a better game. If I'm not mistaken, what you were trying to get across was that while the game was generally hit and miss with you, it gave you some inspiration on how to approach a smaller-scale, tighter Zelda-like?

I've yet to play Ori, but I've heard many great things and while I am totally in love with BotW, I'm really looking forward to seeing if your musings posted here will come together to become part of a game we see from you in the future.
 

tuxfool

Banned
But after having been in User Research Tests, do I believe that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing things that decides on whether the majority of people like something? Yup, I do!

Yet somehow all empirical evidence points to people liking BOTW differently to the way you're pushing it.
 
Last night I cleared my 100th Shrine and was actually quite sad that I am going to run out of them T_T

I read here that they are interchangable or that they don't gel with the levels in which they are BUT then I just remembered that many of the shrines are actually of the [name]'s Blessing which are Shrines in which you have to overcome a challenge or solve a riddle in the overworld and the Shrine is only there to give you a cool weapon, armor or Ancient part along with the Spirit Orb.

I love that because some entire sections of the overworld are used in cool and crazy ways like the Shrine you unlock by going to the top of Mt. Lanayru for the first time or the ones you get by clearing the mazes and even the one in which you have to mount a deer and stand in a plataform to unlock it.

I never would have gotten any of that from a previous Zelda games and that is fine because it worked for this game and may be expanded in future entries to offer innovative uses of the open world.

I don't really think they or most of the people that played the game consider that the Divine Beasts are a mistake tbh

They are well integrated into the world, the world and the inhabitants reacts to their presence and also allows the developers to offers some of the best setpiece moments in the franchise and cool puzzles.

They are great in the context of this game because it's the highest form of level design you get in this game outside hyrule castle. But I would rank these beasts pretty much in the bottom of any dungeon ranking list. They like so much of everything in this game follow repetition, so they look the same, their puzzles start to feel the same, the goal is exactly the same in all of them and the bosses even look alike. Why? What happened to the amazing variety of past zelda games?
 
Yet somehow all empirical evidence points to people liking BOTW differently to the way you're pushing it.

I never said I can't be totally and completely wrong! :D

And again, I'd rate BotW as a 9/10 game. It's an excellent game and you have to tip your hat to Nintendo for once again delivering a game that gets a 97 Metacritic. That's insane and I'd obviously love it if we'd achieve that with one of our games as well.

That said, Skyward Sword also has a 93 and Twilight Princess a 96 Metacritic. But listening to people today, years after the their releases, do we feel like that judgement was completely right? We probably get closer to the truth when the honeymoon period is over and people have fully analyzed what they've been served. If 5-10 years from now, people will still be swooning over Breath of the Wilds overworld, I'll be very glad to say that I didn't understand what people wanted and that they got it right, cause the design apparently held up.

I have to really get back to work now, so I hope this discussion will still keep going. I love reading this thread to see how people perceive the games design and how that matches up with my own feelings :)
 

hawk2025

Member
I never said I can't be totally and completely wrong! :D

And again, I'd rate BotW as a 9/10 game. It's an excellent game and you have to tip your hat to Nintendo for once again delivering a game that gets a 97 Metacritic. That's insane and I'd obviously love it if we'd achieve that with one of our games as well.

That said, Skyward Sword also has a 93 and Twilight Princess a 96 Metacritic. But listening to people today, years after the their releases, do we feel like that judgement was completely right? We probably get closer to the truth when the honeymoon period is over and people have fully analyzed what they've been served.

I have to really get back to work now, so I hope this discussion will still keep going. I love reading this thread to see how people perceive the game and how that matches up with my own feelings :)


That's an odd argument.

If preferences adapt and take time to change, how can you possibly use focus groups and means-testing for design?

You are simultaneously telling us that you can infer objective customer preferences, AND that they are not fixed.


Edit: and it takes 5-10 years? How can you possibly estimate preferences in this scenario?
 

Nickle

Cool Facts: Game of War has been a hit since July 2013
They are great in the context of this game because it's the highest form of level design you get in this game outside hyrule castle. But I would rank these beasts pretty much in the bottom of any dungeon ranking list. They like so much of everything in this game follow repetition, so they look the same, their puzzles start to feel the same, the goal is exactly the same in all of them and the bosses even look alike. Why? What happened to the amazing variety of past zelda games?
I thought that the Gerudo beast was fantastic, it threw me into a giant overwhelming room and made me really think deeply about the layout of the dungeon. The boss also felt like a classic Zelda boss, instead of some of the other bosses where you just constantly spam bomb arrows and charged attacks.
 

brad-t

Member
I do sorta believe that the same concept must apply to level design. If I add this and this and this, do people have a more positive or a less positive reaction? Finding that golden balance that appeals to a lot of people is the art behind it, but I do think there must be a mathematical balance behind this that could prove certain things to be at least 'mostly true'.

Describing this as a "mathematical balance" is overthinking it. What you're describing just sounds like play-testing and incorporating feedback from play-testers into the design ... which Nintendo did for Breath of the Wild, and which nobody is arguing against. User-testing is a pretty standard part of any design process. There's a balance, of course.
 
Yet somehow all empirical evidence points to people liking BOTW differently to the way you're pushing it.

I think he is missing the part where there seems to be a lot of people that value their freedom to play as they want above all else even well designed game sections.

There was always a segment of people that were fed up with the dungeon template, I never understood it cause I love the template but I understood it as, it's been done before so let's try something different. Now I see it might have been more about "I don't want to be pushed through a level" they rather just play as they want and if running around an open field makes them happy then so be it.

I feel the sandbox freedom gameplay philosophy is relatively new, sort of the minecraft philopshy of you create the play. I grew up with the devs designing the play for me. Now I love freedom too but definetly not total freedom, I like a balance, a balance I felt past zelda games had at times, that this one went to far for me but clearly it's exactly what others wanted.

I think where Nintendo goes from here is going to be super interesting cause the direction of the next game will disappoint some people for sure depending on what they focus on.
 
I thought that the Gerudo beast was fantastic, it threw me into a giant overwhelming room and made me really think deeply about the layout of the dungeon. The boss also felt like a classic Zelda boss, instead of some of the other bosses where you just constantly spam bomb arrows and charged attacks.

Ahhh shhhh the one I haven't done. Not reading.

I read the first few words and I hope I feel the same way, I really do.
 
They are great in the context of this game because it's the highest form of level design you get in this game outside hyrule castle. But I would rank these beasts pretty much in the bottom of any dungeon ranking list. They like so much of everything in this game follow repetition, so they look the same, their puzzles start to feel the same, the goal is exactly the same in all of them and the bosses even look alike. Why? What happened to the amazing variety of past zelda games?

If a Divine Beast is one dungeon of many, I think everyone would have loved the idea. But since they are replacing traditional dungeons, its understandable some people are upset.

I remember at the first true trailer of BOTW I was really excited of the idea that the giant bird in the sky was a dungeon. But after I found out that every dungeon in this game is a Divine Beast and they all have the similar theming, I was very disappointed.

@Gerudo Beast my favorite one too. I think its one of the best dungeons in the past couple of years.
 

ZServ

Member
While I agree with some of your thoughts, and disagree with others, I do think that your title is pretty click-baity. I've not played Ori and the whatever, but the title could potentially come across as a "I've made a thing, so thus my opinion is more informed."

As for Shrines, I have a lot of mixed feelings about them. I've felt like some where really something special, but.. I also had the opposite. As a whole, I feel that Shrines are far too short. I would be fine with taking 30 of them out entirely, or redistributing their contents into others in order to extend some.

Your view on combat shrines is (IMO) wrong. There's more variety, but it comes on the reliance that you allow your mindset to view some of the "Your merely being here has proven that you rock" shrines as combat shrines. For example, the one on the hill that has 3 balls and 3 Hinoxes. IMO, that's a combat shrine. Putting a ball in a hole isn't hard. That said, it doesn't increase the variety by tenfold or anything crazy, but perspective is nice, I think.

Korok puzzles.. they're in a weird spot where, they're fine when you're doing it once or twice. It's after 200, 300, 400, 500.. etc that they become truly painful. The problem here is the sheer quantity, I think. I don't believe that having more variety would've done a great deal of service here. Perhaps making them be rewards for some mini-games would have been more appropriate.

Enemies: Yup, more variety would be nice. ChuChus are ChuChus, I don't care if they're blue or on fire, that's the same thing IMO. Enemy camps I think are for the most part fine, as later on when you're farming specific bits for Mons or crafting the right upgrade, going to a specific camp might be nice. On the flip side, the abundance of low-quality cooking ingredients you get shows how flawed the current implementation is.

I flat out disagree about the controls and UI. While I think the UI could be improved, tacking what is effectively rarity schemes onto it goes against the core gameplay loop. The game isn't about hunting the best weapons/shields. Controls I feel are fine.

Quests could be better. But, ultimately, making good quests in a Zelda game is going to be very hard. Quests are at their best when driven by a narrative (for the most part). When broken down to its basest elements, a quest revolves around Noun A -> Noun B -> Noun A OR Noun C. Witcher 3 gets around this with very narrative driven quests. Majora's Mask does the same. At the end of the day, what makes a quest memorable is likely what story it leaves you with to tell. I will also say that I see no need for "shrine quests." I would've personally looped them in with side quests, but that's me.

Dungeons are very weak. The shiekah slate is a cute idea, but it doesn't work in the context of the dungeons. Additionally, the lack of variety in a room-to-room basis makes dungeons feel like a 20-30 minute brain teaser, rather than a test of both your mental and physical fortitude. OoT/MM/LTTP still rule this domain. On a narrative basis, I would have preferred had they cut the whole "Something-Ganon" route, and had the Calamity consume the Champions. "Calamity's Champion, Urbosa" not only comes off as a lot more intimidating, but strengthens the idea of only triforce wielders being able to resist the blight of calamity. While that isn't expressly stated, I think that it's fairly obvious, as to me, a fair portion of the narrative circles around the fact that the Guardians and Divine Beasts were made specifically to break the need of a Hero of Legend and Goddess Princess. It's very self aware, but ultimately just makes Demise stronger, as he must be able to rival the incarnate Goddess Hylia (Zelda) and the Hero of Legend (Link).

Phew! that was long. Sorry for that!
 

Nickle

Cool Facts: Game of War has been a hit since July 2013
Ahhh shhhh the one I haven't done. Not reading.

I read the first few words and I hope I feel the same way, I really do.
My post isn't spoilery, but the Gerudo dungeon is definitely something to look forward to.
 
If a Divine Beast is one dungeon of many, I think everyone would have loved the idea. But since they are replacing traditional dungeons, its understandable some people are upset.

I remember at the first true trailer of BOTW I was really excited of the idea that the giant bird in the sky was a dungeon. But after I found out that every dungeon in this game is a Divine Beast and they all have the similar theming, I was very disappointed.

@Gerudo Beast my favorite one too. I think its one of the best dungeons in the past couple of years.

Oh yeah when the idea of the beasts became a reality I was super excited. Giant moving dungeons. My mind was racing with the possibilities, dungeons you go outside of and climb around. But once word started to get around that they were short and didn't really follow any of the design philophies of traditional dungeons I started to worry. Again they are fun, this game is a ton of fun with great ideas but it never reaches the highs the past games did for me.

I remember SS, in the middle of the third dungeon. I am manipulating time, riding these platforms through this sort of ancient future factory thinking to myself this is one of the most amazing hours of gaming I have ever experienced. I was in awe of the design. That hasn't happened to me during this game.
 

Lork

Member
Nobody's dogpiling on OP. A few members have made some nasty posts but the thread has been by-and-large very civil, and it seems like lots of fervent BotW fans agree with some of the observations made.

Nobody's trying to make the case that this game is perfect either (outside of a vanishingly small minority), and counter-arguments tend to be about more contentious points ("empty space" vs. "fun per inch") or asking for elaboration on what OP actually meant or how his solutions would look if implemented.

What's weird is that OP seems to be not that interested in engaging with replies made in this thread.
I can definitely attest to that.

Something I've noticed during my time online is that when one encounters a post that challenges their ideas, but in a way that can't be easily refuted or dismissed, the most convenient way to deal with it is to simply ignore it. It's surprisingly effective. I think it's one of the reasons why online arguments often devolve into shouting matches. People tend towards histrionics not because it's their natural inclination, but because they can sense that it works. A post full of insults will at least provoke a response, which is much better than what you often get for being "quietly challenging".
 
Oh yeah when the idea of the beasts became a reality I was super excited. Giant moving dungeons. My mind was racing with the possibilities, dungeons you go outside of and climb around. But once word started to get around that they were short and didn't really follow any of the design philophies of traditional dungeons I started to worry. Again they are fun, this game is a ton of fun with great ideas but it never reaches the highs the past games did for me.

I remember SS, in the middle of the third dungeon. I am manipulating time, riding these platforms through this sort of ancient future factory thinking to myself this is one of the most amazing hours of gaming I have ever experienced. I was in awe of the design. That hasn't happened to me during this game.

Haha, I hated that dungeon :D. Not that it wasn't good, it just felt tedious to me. I'm not a huge fan of the dungeons in any Zelda game, though... They always disrupted my personal adventure. I tend to get the feeling of being stuck in a maze I don't even want to be in. Twilight Princess was the worst offender in that regard.

Wind Waker and Skyward Sword had some dungeons that were actually cool in terms of place and atmosphere. Thinking about that beautiful eastern water temple in the latter or the forest dungeon in TWW.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Exactly, and it can change from game to game. Some games I want more of a constant engagement from my surroundings.

I think it boils down to this, the OP is fine to want games as he's explaining but it shouldnt and doesn't need to stop there. Not every game needs to follow a set pattern, some will engage more steadily than others. It's all about the style of game, the genre, etc... That stuff plays the biggest part. But it's really personal choice and something that can exist while other games do it differently as well.

I agree, and I like a reasonably wide variety of games depending what I'm in the mood for. For instance, Zelda is great if I just want to veg out and explore and not put a ton of thought, effort and active attention into a game one evening. Another evening I'll want more engagement and play a fighter or racer or Roguelike or some other pure active gamplay game. Others I primarily want to consume a story and will go for something with a strong narrative. And so on.

However, I didn't read the OP as saying all games should adhere to his design philosophy. More just critiquing Zelda based on his preferences and what they prefer in terms of game design.

And that's fair. We all view games and form opinions based on them from our own varying likes and dislikes. Few things are more tiresome than people trying to review games objectively, vs. acknowledging their preferences and reviewing the game noting where it met those and didn't and leaving any objective comments to things like performance, framerate, game length etc.

For instance, it's informative to someone for me to say "I liked Horizon a bit more than Zelda as I prefer narrative-driven games in general, more combat vs. exploration and I'm generally not big on exploration for explorations sake in games." That let's people that love exploration disregard my take, while cueing those that have similar interests that my impression may likely match theirs.

That's way more informative that people who go on long diatribe reviews about all the "objective" qualities of said game with no statement given as to their tastes, preferences etc., as well as being off putting as so many read like people trying to pass of their opinion as factual/superior etc.

Point being, I do think the OP (and subsequent posts) while not trying to say all games should fit their design philosophy does come off as it elitist and sounding as if their opinion/preference for game design is superior since they're a dev etc. I don't think that was intended just comes across that way vs. just saying "here's the way Zelda didn't mesh well with my game design preferences."
 

Newboi

Member
This is a very informative critique. I can't say anything about BoTW because I don't own it, nor a switch (yet).

I do wonder what the general consensus on the original Dark Soul's, or Bloodborne's, "open" world design would be when aligning with this critique?

I love seeing how much debate and overall positive impression BoTW has been bringing up on the gaming community. I'll definitely be super late to the party when I play it, but I know it'll be an amazing experience regardless.
 
Haha, I hated that dungeon :D. Not that it wasn't good, it just felt tedious to me. I'm not a huge fan of the dungeons in any Zelda game, though... They always disrupted my personal adventure. I tend to get the feeling of being stuck in a maze I don't even want to be in. Twilight Princess was the worst offender in that regard.

Wind Waker and Skyward Sword had some dungeons that were actually cool in terms of place and atmosphere. Thinking about that beautiful eastern water temple in the latter or the forest dungeon in TWW.

You seem to be an example of one of those people that rather create their own play experiences than a specific designed one. I think TP has the best dungeons, it's one of my favorite games of all time. So I feel Nintendo made this game for you.
 

Head.spawn

Junior Member
To those that are strongly opposing the suggestions/changes that OP is toying around with; what would your opinion be if the next Zelda seemed to make changes that mirrored OP's critique? Because it doesn't seem so outlandish to me that those would be things they would possibly address.

I think maybe people might hold a different opinion on the suggestions if they saw them in practice.

Granted my playtime with the game is absurdly limited and I don't think I've played nearly enough to form an opinion either way (played a short session when my friend brought it to band practice), I'm just wondering what kind of perspective people are using to digest the critique. It all seems like plausible changes IMO.
 

Makonero

Member
To those that are strongly opposing the suggestions/changes that OP is toying around with; what would your opinion be if the next Zelda seemed to make changes that mirrored OP's critique? Because it doesn't seem so outlandish to me that those would be things they would possibly address.

I think maybe people might hold a different opinion on the suggestions if they saw them in practice.

A lot of us played that game, it was called Skyward Sword. They made the environs (on the ground) tightly designed and while I enjoyed it, it was clearly not the big successful Zelda it was supposed to be.
 

UrbanRats

Member
I know my concepts are a bit radical, but stick with me for a bit.

Games are art.

But Game Design is based on mechanics. Mechanics are testable. Just as I can test a car and say that 'This car has a better grip than this other car', I can give you a character controller that has better controls than another one. I can test if by adding or reducing input delay on controls whether you enjoy the controls more or less and check if there's a common ground between groups of people.

I do sorta believe that the same concept must apply to level design. If I add this and this and this, do people have a more positive or a less positive reaction? Finding that golden balance that appeals to a lot of people is the art behind it, but I do think there must be a mathematical balance behind this that could prove certain things to be at least 'mostly true'.

Does that make sense? We're getting into a really wild discussion now :D

Well, first of all this logic offers so many variables, that makes the argument almost pointless, since a responsive input is only better in theory (for example) and in a situation devoid of context.
Crawling in the microwave corridor in MGS4 requires bad controls to work.
Being drunk in RDR or GTA requires bad controls to work.

Applying this idea, you need to examine every situation (let alone game) on a case by case basis, and you come up with so many possible (even only on a theoretical level) scenarios, that again, renders the search for the perfect fun formula, sound absurd.

More over, if games are indeed "art", art isn't about always giving the consumer what they desire the most, or even what they are comfortable with.
Art isn't supposed to please all the time.

You can argue that most art employs researched and more or less tried "mechanics" to elicit certain states, ideas and emotions (editing in film for example, color or composition in painting) but even then, it's not really a field where we're even close to finding the one solution to perfectly crack the code of manipulation, and so endless experimentation is, and likely will be for a long time, required.
 

Head.spawn

Junior Member
A lot of us played that game, it was called Skyward Sword. They made the environs (on the ground) tightly designed and while I enjoyed it, it was clearly not the big successful Zelda it was supposed to be.

There could be some middle ground between the two though and FWIW, not the biggest fan of Skyward Sword myself.

Maybe I'll just step out on the convo until I play more of this BotW for myself and have a better opinion to weigh in either way.
 
You seem to be an example of one of those people that rather create their own play experiences than a specific designed one. I think TP has the best dungeons, it's one of my favorite games of all time. So I feel Nintendo made this game for you.

Something for everyone out there ;) I get what your preferences are and I totally understand.

I love tight games, too, like Mario Galaxy, The Last Guardian or Bloodborne. Still, they convey a sense of freedom within their designed spaces that I'm generally drawn to.

BotW is made for me, though. You are right about that! :)
 
I know my concepts are a bit radical, but stick with me for a bit.

Games are art.

But Game Design is based on mechanics. Mechanics are testable. Just as I can test a car and say that 'This car has a better grip than this other car', I can give you a character controller that has better controls than another one. I can test if by adding or reducing input delay on controls whether you enjoy the controls more or less and check if there's a common ground between groups of people.

I do sorta believe that the same concept must apply to level design. If I add this and this and this, do people have a more positive or a less positive reaction? Finding that golden balance that appeals to a lot of people is the art behind it, but I do think there must be a mathematical balance behind this that could prove certain things to be at least 'mostly true'.

Does that make sense? We're getting into a really wild discussion now :D

This approach would make sense if people were a homogeneous group of rational actors. Think about your car analogy. People emotionally respond a car on a level completely removed from it's raw statistical capabilities.

Building something following your philosophy is a good method for making things that people find acceptable, but it is a bad model for creating anything exceptional.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Are they worlds? Can I explore the white spaces? The places where that world's characters sleep and eat? Where they maybe teach their children? Farm their crops? Can I go and explore what I see in the background, leaving the forest trail?
Let me tell you something about most characters in the world of Brath of the Wild: They stay in one position at daytime, "farming" by just standign on the field and go to be at night. No one is teaching anyone anything, no one is eating anything, no one even needs to. Animal behaviour is simple, so much so that after setting foot outside the tutorial area, it took me maybe 2-3 hours to be absolutely sure of the behaviour of any animal I'd meet. Consumable items just spawn, animals vanish if you follow them for some distance from their spawn point. Enemies are incapable of dealing with the environment, what with Hinox getting stumped by a tree stump and waiting for me to bomb them to death. Interactions with the world such as cooking and talking to people is stiff and clearly unnatural. Terrain, including trees and bushes, behave so exactly alike everywhere and with each kind of interaction that you will certainly not find any surprises here.

Mind you, this is not a critique of Zelda BotW, I think it would be a waste to put enormous amounts of effort into diversifying these things that have little bearing on the meat of the gameplay and game's challenge in particular. But to belittle game world design that is handcrafted and tight because it is not realistic with this kind of argument is just unfair. The worldi n BotW is highly unrealistic and ianyone who plays the game with a slightly analytical viewpoint will see how each system works quite immediately, same as for handcrafted levels, at times even moreso, because repetition of mindless contents is a characteristic of this kind of world design, whereas all kinds of variations by design can be implemented more thoroughly in a more handcrafted world design. What is important is the inherent believability and I stand by the point that Zelda BotW is good in that regard, but so are Majora's Mask, ALttP or Banjo-Kazooie. They are not "just" pbstacle courses, they have an inherent logic they abide to and have inhabitants of the world that behave in a consistent and believable way. Not a realistic one, the latter three games are not even attempting at recreating reality, BotW does so at times, but the artifical nature of it all is absolutely apparent at all times for anyone with an open eye.

Or are they 2D levels that you mistake to form a world if only you put connections between them, while the very basic premise of a 2D game is antiquated and obsolete as means of world modeling, reducing the "world" to selected slices, while building an open 3D world would allow you to actually model the rest of the world for the player to explore, if they're so inclined?

It's pretty obvious you neither understand the appeal of open world games nor should attempt to create or improve one, if you look at what the modern 3D open world games do and would rather want to go back to the antiquated ALttP "world", just because you "don't want to push a stick forward for more than a minute".
This notion of thorough world design being antiquated and somehow made obsolete by current open world design is ludicrous.
 

Burny

Member
Let me tell you something about most characters in the world of Brath of the Wild: They stay in one position at daytime, "farming" by just standign on the field and go to be at night. No one is teaching anyone anything, no one is eating anything, no one even needs to. Animal behaviour is simple, so much so that after setting foot outside the tutorial area, it took me maybe 2-3 hours to be absolutely sure of the behaviour of any animal I'd meet. Consumable items just spawn, animals vanish if you follow them for some distance from their spawn point. Enemies are incapable of dealing with the environment, what with Hinox getting stumped by a tree stump and waiting for me to bomb them to death. Interactions with the world such as cooking and talking to people is stiff and clearly unnatural. Terrain, including trees and bushes, behave so exactly alike everywhere and with each kind of interaction that you will certainly not find any surprises here.

And yet, all of that pushes the boundary of how intricately the world is modeled compared to previous Zeldas a hell of a lot further. Btw., there is a school in a certain settlement, even though, of course, characters only sit there during day and leave during nights. And it only has 1/5 to 1/10 of the size you'd expect a class to have in a realistically sized world. There's also at least one instance of a family sitting round a fire eating as well as several instances of characters and locations plainly modeled to show how the world's inhabitants grow crops, herd cattle etc..

This notion of thorough world design being antiquated and somehow made obsolete by current open world design is ludicrous.
For the purpose of actually modeling a world? No more than the idea of old low res CRTs having been made obsolete by modern high res displays. You don't need to paint a static background anymore, you can actually model it. You don't need to force a player into a path they can't leave due to invisible walls anymore, you can just let them leave the path. You don't need to limit yourself to paint a grass texture on the ground, but you can model grass. At least something that looks closer to actual grass, within the confines of your LOD. You don't need to build a static house mesh players can't enter, you can instead model the house's whole interior. Of course all within the confines of what the engine and hardware can do, but in terms of how accurately you can model a world, that's objectively more advanced and there's no second way about it.

Which is not to say a game that pushes to those modern boundaries is in any way better than a game that still limits itself to sides scrolling through 2D extracts of an implied world. Such a limited game has no business to claim it's accurately modeling its world anymore however, just as an old low res CRT has no business claiming to give you the best image anymore. Just like actually modeling an openly traversal miniature Hyrule instead reducing it to a matrix of top down screens or reducing it to separately loaded walled of rooms is, well, a more accurate and advanced model of Hyrule. Whether you find it more fun is a completely different question, but I find it makes all previous Zelda games in terms of the feeling of exploration and discovery they create rather obsolete, as my personal expectation of exploring a game world is not to run into invisible walls left and right of the forest path or to cuddle the left corner of a top down screen to transition to the next. As badly as a Hinox gets stuck in BotW, enemies forgetting I was there and arrows forgetting they flew at me, just because I left their screen is the bigger lie.


Edit: If you can't get cozy with the lowres CRT vs. highres modern display analogy, painting styles from absolutely abstract to photorealisitc are probably a better analogy. You may like or prefer any style. But no impressionistic painting of a scene can ever claim to model the scene more accurately than a photorealistic one or an outright foto, simply because it abstracts details away in favor of focussing on certain aspects of the scene or outright exaggerating them. The difference in your perception of what's the "better" is then what you perceive as more desirable.
 

correojon

Member
I think small barriers could have worked. For example, now the Zora Armor is given to you at the middle point of the Zora Main Quest. Imagine if, instead, there was some unclimbable wall somewhere and a dungeon where you get the Armor and the ability to swim on waterfalls from it. That ability isn't indispensable to exploring the game but there could be some particular high areas that need it.

I appreciate the full freedom in BotW but finding a place where you can't progress isn't bad at all. It's cool to see a place, remember that you can't clear it yet and then return later with better upgrades. After all, it's what makes Metroid so fun!
Yeah that would be fun, put a layer of Metroidvania gating optional content that can help you explore or move faster around the world or provide some additional skills. In fact with map markers it wouldn´t be so bad to mark something for later. The problem I see is that this may permeate the rest of the world: in BotW the world and puzzles are designed in such a way that anyone can "unlock" or go anywhere at any moment. That enforces exploration and is one of the big reasons why exploring Hyrule is so engaging: literally nothing can stop you (but yourself). Puting gates depending on certain items may make the player find a puzzle and leave it because he thinks he needs and additional skill, while in fact he just needed to get creative with the tools he has. It´s happened a lot to me during the game, getting to a Shrine where I couldn´t find the solution, but finally finding a really cool way to solve it because I knew that I had everything I needed.
And the opposite may also happen: if you restrict the need for this additional skills too much so that the player feels like he can go anywhere, those skills may end up being useless (I´m thinking about TP´s spinner).

BotW´s freedom truly is a double edged sword, it´ll be nice watching which direction Nintendo (and presumably other developers) take it in the future.

I love your ideas.

And yeah I agree with you, it would have to be in addition to all of the other content not instead of if you were to implement barriers for high tier rewards. But even then it still is A limit. Secret content would have been a nice place for it.

Honestly just having them peppered around would have been fine. I get the idea that it might break early game by b lining it to something good right away since everything is available, but I say just make it difficult like Hyrule Castle, and "you deserve it if are able to get it early" kind of attitude. As that attitude already exists in the form of simply beating the game early if you choose to. And more importantly you can only b line if you knew it was there already.

I think it would be my most requested improvement in a sequel that built upon the fundamentals this game made.
Yeah you have a point, but I´m still not 100% sure about it (see the beginning of this post). More than breaking the game I think having "gates" in the world may discourage exploration. Now we can go anywhere at any time, but the mere knowledge of there being places you can´t get to unless you´ve previously found a certain upgrade may discourage this. Maybe a "dynamic" rewards system could solve this: have gates in certain areas requiring a skill, but give the player the skill he needs in order. So, say you get to the desert secret area first, you´ll get the Zora armor there, which is required to get to the secret area in the forest by swimming up a waterfall instead of climbing a very high cliff which requires eating a lot of stamina replenishing food. But if you somehow managed to make it to the Zora secret area first, you´d also get the Zora armor. This way you don´t need to get through the secret areas in order, though it´ll be much easier.
This just gave me another idea: have special effects for food as rewards. At the start of the game food will only replenish health, but finding and beating the secret fire area will unlock elements in the world (grass, mushrooms, fish and such) that provide cold resistance. This would also have a cooler side effect: as you get through the game and beat more areas you´ll gradually repopulate the world. With 120 Shrines this would´ve been an awesome thing to have, like an electric mushroom shrine, a fire mushroom shrine...you could even tie each individual critter/material to a single shrine!


Exactly. I think people are fairly touchy in Zelda threads, so I need to be very careful about what I'm saying :D Just to be clear: I did NOT and would never compare Breath of the Wild to 'dirt' (and it's ludicrous to assume that based on me saying that it's one of the best games Nintendo ever made!), I just think it'd be interesting to take a game and do a study like that among various groups to see what works best. It's a bit OT, but since I have been in these UR sessions, it's just something I'd find fascinating :)


I'm sure that's the case. But it'd be interesting to be able to take a certain group of people and then have them test, say, various Mario Maker levels to see if there's a common ground. With level design, I generally always found that 'emptiness' is rarely a good thing for most folks. Keep in mind, I mean emptiness, not 'white space' :)
Of course there´ll be a common ground. But take those same people, make them play 10 good levels, maybe with different focuses like story, action, puzzles or pure platforming and then make them choose their favorite one. Not all of them will choose the same one. Maybe the same people in different days will have different choices. There is no such thing as an absolute formula for fun. There are some guidelines for level design, as there are for music composition, cinematography, photography...There are many great works that interpret different aspect and individual rules of their design rule set in vastly different ways, sometimes even choosing to completely ignore them, circunvent them, twist them into something new or break them. Some of these works are appreciated by most of the public, while at the same time being despised by critics. The opposite also happens. It´s impossible to get a 100% positive reaction from everyone no matter how good your work is. As an example: no matter how good your racing simulator is, every time I have to slow down to make a turn I´ll be wishing I could just boost through it and crash into the closest opponent to throw him out of the course. I won´t say it was a bad game and will recognize it´s merits, but I´ll still put any gameplay focused racing game before it even when the rest of the world is calling it the GOAT.

At some point in the development cycle someone decided to scrap dungeons, no amount of testing could fix that mistake.

This game with 9-10 dungeons would be the greatest game I have ever played. But instead it's bite sized puzzles rooms (if you are lucky) spread out too far and four larger puzzle rooms that basically all follow the same structure.

It seems they were so stuck on the freedom aspect, complete freedom no matter what, that they couldn't figure out how to incorporate traditional dungeons into that. So they made this alternative. Some people clearly greatly value that freedom. I value level design and well designed gameplay segments, which is what the dungeons always gave.
That and a dark world would´ve been ridiculous, like, I can´t envision any other game able to top that.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
And yet, all of that pushes the boundary of how intricately the world is modeled compared to previous Zeldas a hell of a lot further. Btw., there is a school in a certain settlement, even though, of course, characters only sit there during day and leave during nights. And it only has 1/5 to 1/10 of the size you'd expect a class to have in a realistically sized world. There's also at least one instance of a family sitting round a fire eating as well as several instances of characters and locations plainly modeled to show how the world's inhabitants grow crops, herd cattle etc..
There also was a school in Wind Waker and a toilet in Majora's Mask and so on. But it is not an accurate representation of real world desires, needs and life styles. It's a facade, though more emphasis was put on giving a first impression of closeness to reality.

For the purpose of actually modeling a world?
This depens on what a world is. A world in my sense need not be an accurate representation of the real world. It may have boundaries, though they should be stated in a consistent way that is inherent to the game logic, which they were in all examples I cited.

No more than the idea of old low res CRTs having been made obsolete by modern high res displays. You don't need to paint a static background anymore, you can actually model it. You don't need to force a player into a path they can't leave due to invisible walls anymore, you can just let them leave the path. You don't need to limit yourself to paint a grass texture on the ground, but you can model grass. At least something that looks closer to actual grass, within the confines of your LOD. You don't need to build a static house mesh players can't enter, you can instead model the house's whole interior. Of course all within the confines of what the engine and hardware can do, but in terms of how accurately you can model a world, that's objectively more advanced and there's no second way about it.
Here, you are purely arguing on the grounds of technological progress, but technological progress does not necessitate open world design as it is currently done. You can have individually modelled grass and house's interiors in all kinds of world designs, though much of this is purely window dressing. By the way, CRTs are not fully obsolete because of HDTVs, you usually trade better response times for greater resolutions. In fact, I still use a CRT for all TV-based systems.

Which is not to say a game that pushes to those modern boundaries is in any way better than a game that still limits itself to sides scrolling through 2D extracts of an implied world. Such a limited game has no business to claim it's accurately modeling its world anymore however, just as an old low res CRT has no business claiming to give you the best image anymore. Just like actually modeling an openly traversal miniature Hyrule instead reducing it to a matrix of top down screens or reducing it to separately loaded walled of rooms is, well, a more accurate and advanced model of Hyrule.
It may be a more accurate representation of what you imagine Hyrule to be, but a world, conceptually, need not be exactly like ours. Of course, screen swaps instead of scrolling are usually a technological boundary that was put in place by the hardware, I don't argue that smooth scrolling is, if gameplay does not gain from the lack of it, preferrable over static screens. But a conceptual world need not be 3D, it need not have long stretches of nothingness or redundant content like those abysmal enemy camps. A conceptual world can be top down, it can be sidescrolling, it can be fully 3D, it can sport various degrees of freedom. For believable world building, it is important that everything is consistent and follows an inherent logic. This logic need not be the same as reality's.

Whether you find it more fun is a completely different question, but I find it makes all previous Zelda games in terms of the feeling of exploration and discovery they create rather obsolete, as my personal expectation of exploring a game world is not to run into invisible walls left and right of the forest path or to cuddle the left corner of a top down screen to transition to the next. As badly as a Hinox gets stuck in BotW, enemies forgetting I was there and arrows forgetting they flew at me, just because I left their screen is the bigger lie.
I don't see how either is a lie, it's just not a representation of reality. It is fine if your expectations are closer to what BotW does than what other games do, but to state that previously used design concepts are obsolete in consequence is not OK from my point of view.


Edit: If you can't get cozy with the lowres CRT vs. highres modern display analogy, painting styles from absolutely abstract to photorealisitc are probably a better analogy. You may like or prefer any style. But no impressionistic painting of a scene can ever claim to model the scene more accurately than a photorealistic one or an outright foto however, simply because it abstracts details away in favor of focussing on certain aspects of the scene or outright exaggerating them. The difference in your perception of what's the "better" is then what you perceive as more desirable.
Well, as I said, if the goal is absolute realism, then yes, BotW is closer to that than other Zeldas before, though still far away from achieving it in any remarkable way. All the systems were very transparent to me and BotW is in many ways even stiffer and more predictable than previous games in the series. But realism is not the only way to go in art, otherwise we would be stuck with novels like Fontane's annoyingly detailled descriptions of any irrelevant detail in his otherwise intellectually mundane stories as they were common during the phases of realism and naturalism. There are different ways of doing art and in fact, photography has taken a huge toll on photorealism as an artistic direction, which I, personally, think, is a very boring goal anyway. Again, looking at other art forms, Disney can create believable coherent worlds with magic and princesses, Star Trek is believable and coherent as well, though it plays in the future and uses vessels that travel above light speed and so on. Dramas, aiming for a close-as-possible representation of reality in their worlds, are far from the only genre succeeding at world building.

The thing is, realism comes at a cost usually, in different art forms. In books and movies, it limits the intricacy of the stories that are told, something like Star Trek Deep Space Nine's "In the pale moonlight" or basically all of the second season of Hannibal would be impossible in a very accurate depiction of reality. Due to a different appraoch to building their worlds, they manage to craft special experiences that are beyond the scope of a fully realistic world building. If you contrast this with the often less brainy and more personal / emotional stories that are used in many dramas, you can of course prefer the latter, but the former would have to be limited severely if the world design had to conform to restrictions (and freedoms, as well) of reality.

Similarly, I'd argue, that current open world design is not making other designs obsolete, because it limits what you can do as well. You can observe this in Zelda, where BotW has a anticlimatic difficulty curve and puzzles took a serious hit, whereas mechanically less challenging, but repetitive tasks took a bigger part. You can observe this in arcade racers, which suffer significantly from an open world concept, where courses are layed out less clearly, speed takes a backseat and there is a lot of redundant driving in between, which is not actually challenging. Just compare F-Zero GX or Burnout 2 to Forza Horizon or modern Need for Speed to see what I mean. You can see this in Assassin's Creed when compared to its obvious predecessor Prince of Persia, where challenging and intricate climbing sections have been removed by mere traversal, fully trivialised recently by a hookshot. On the flipside you can see that a lot can be gained by making the game more controlled, when you take a look at 3D Mario, offering a much larger frequency of fresh content, without losing (prior to 3D Land, but then, this was a deliberate choice, as well) any of its believability as a world.
 

Pastulio

Banned
Not a developer, but I have to throw my two cents at your critiques about the world size and repition.

Some of the most memorable moments in this game come from how open the game world is. Sometimes getting to that location is just as important as the location itself, and littering the journey with too any interesting and attention grabbing things can distract from that journey.

Also about the repetition of Korok seeds and shrine design. In an open world game with no waypoints, you need that visual consistency to help the player find these locations and solve the puzzles. Imagine if all 900 Koroks had different ways to solve them. Not only would it frustrate players, it would put too much burden on developers to create 900 unique challenges that can be visually recognized and solved with no guide.

Also about weapon swapping. Not taking away control works when you have 2-3 weapons like dark souls, but when you have 20+ weapons and monsters that can one shot you, you need to give the player some breathing room to swap weapons.
 

elyetis

Member
The same thing must be true for level design and design in general: You don't want dirt, you want chocolate!
I get you you mean, but it still goes to the idea that something is always inherently better than the other, which I don't agree with.

I think we really dont want to underestimate how intricate things are. And that sometime, something perceived by the player himself as something bad/unfun, could actually decrease his enjoyment of the game if you go for something more userfriendly/fun ( not to say improvement can never be made ).
For me the best example of that is when I compare final fantasy 11 to final fantasy 14. On many aspect, ff14 solve many of the problem I had with ff11. In the end for me ( again I still think what something is true to someone, won't always be true for someone else ) immediat enjoyment of the game was bigger ( "yay I can easily tp everywhere" etc.. ), but it did lead to something less interesting/fun in the long run ( "oh nooo, now the world end up feeling too small" etc.. ).
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
As two examples: I think DKCR:TF has the best sense of momentum and weight of any platformer I've played, but find the NSMB series annoyingly floaty and buoyant. My girlfriend can't stand the sense of inertia in DKC, but loves the instant speed and direction changes of NSMB's controls. There is no perfect solution; the perfect design varies from player to player (and even with a single player dependent on mood - I can't cope with BotW's enormity after a long work day, for example, but can lose a whole weekend to it).

If you added more content density to BotW, I am reasonably confident I would have enjoyed it less. The feeling of joy for having found something is heightened by the periods in which you do not. It relies on a very fine contrast, and BotW follows that path very well.
 

Burny

Member
There are different ways of doing art and in fact, photography has taken a huge toll on photorealism as an artistic direction, which I, personally, think, is a very boring goal anyway.

And that's all that needs to be said. You think it's boring, others don't and would rather find it boring if the game makers build a world not by trying to model it to some decent accuracy and at least superficial believability, but by limiting it to shoving their obviously artificial authored content into every corner, presuming to think a player might prefer their elaborate trigger based puzzle sequence disguised as forest trail over just ignoring it, leaving the forest trail instead and wandering off into the world. The latter has been enabled and improved as technology progressed, only it's a progression Nintendo has missed out on in their games for about a decade.

The reasons you don't enjoy BotW as much, may be precisely the reasons others enjoy it in the first place, rather than thinking that it's just another over-formulaic and over-gimmicked entry in a game series that didn't get the message that the 90s ended 17 years ago and games like Morrowind and the Witcher happened since.
 
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