Topic: What would your perfect Zelda game be like?

Breath of the Wild is quite close.

The only changes I'd need are:

1) A lot more story. I want a Zelda game with a Xenoblade Chronicles level of storytelling. No reason at all they couldn't do it. Make Link talk if you really need to.

2) A big town or city in the open world. I love open world games where there's a massive city of some kind (like Witcher 3 or Xenoblade X) because I always find having a developed fictional culture enhances the immersion of a fictional world. They never quite go that far in most Zelda games. The cultures in Hyrule are usually quite cartoonish and simplistic. Just a series of small tribes.

3) A lot more endgame content. Most open world games and RPGs do a good job of this but Zelda never has. I want a way to be able to extend my playthrough to 200 hours if I'm really loving it, whilst having it feel connected to the story. Breath of the Wild failed at this. There was around 150 hours of content but there was no meaningful motivation to do most of it.

@SMEXIZELDAMAN Yeah, it's about time Link gets the girl given how many times and in various incarnations he's saved the world. In my hypothetical game's story, after Ganon is defeated, Link, the other heroes, and the armies all fade away into particles of light as the entire timeline resets. This whole reset plays out in the background during the credits, showing all the eras fading away into a new timeline. After the credits, Link wakes up in an unfamiliar room and looks over to see Zelda holding a baby and realizes it's their child, and the camera looks out the window to reveal a beautiful world free from the taint of Ganon. Not sure this would happen given that the Japanese culture seems to be allergic to letting the hero get the girl.

@Dezzy Agreed on all points, especially the endgame content. In my hypothetical game, after the ending scene with Zelda, the player gets control back of Link and can explore around the "perfect world". Back in that initial cave in the forest with the first time portal, Link meets the Spirit of Time who enables Link to freely revisit the old timeline as desired to pick up anything missed on the first playthrough, and also kicks off the optional endgame questline in this new world. The ultimate reward could be something along the lines of a debug/cheat mode where Link can mess with reality at will.

And to get this thread a bit more back on track...
Everyone so far seems to agree that what the "perfect" Zelda game needs is more dungeons than what we got in BoTW. What kind of dungeons do you want to see?

For me, I would like to see a mix of somewhat familiar elemental dungeons with a new twist (like a water temple that focuses on other aspects of water besides raising and lowering the water level) and some newer ideas. I really liked the time crystals in Skyward Sword that were used in the Lanayru dungeons, and would like to see another dungeon built around those. Also, a proper time-travelling puzzle dungeon where you have to visit the same dungeon multiple times across different eras to complete it (which we saw to a limited degree in OoT with the Spirit Temple). An idea I had for a new dungeon could be a mind trap dungeon that takes place in a surreal world that defies the normal laws of physics where Link is trapped in his own mind, with Dark Link as the final boss. Upon defeating Dark Link, Link gains the ability to transform into Dark Link at will and use various darkness-related powers.

Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon 2. Or an HD remake of the original. Either would get perfect review scores.

The 'LOZ' Franchise would greatly benefit by returning to games such as Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess, and attempting to extract the meaning those games possessed to create something deep and original; I don't think we should have a 'post-apocalyptic' Hyrule, as the last time we had that we were given BOTW - A game in which it's end-of-the-world setting was just an excuse to create less complex characters and a cheap game mechanic where you would collect 'memories' to effectively utilise the series new found open-world format. No, my 'perfect' Zelda game would instead feature a Hyrule in great turmoil and weakness, one that has began to falter with age and depression. The 'High' Hylians - rich, egotistical slobs - occupy the ruins of Hyrule castle, a large walled-off city for those who have inherited and/or unfairly profited enough rupees to seem presentable enough to live there: However, nobody is higher than the great king of Hyrule (Rhoam Bospheramous Hyrule VIII) who is in-fact, no King at all. No, Rhoam's real name is Link, and for countless decades he has lived off the fame of defeating Ganon many years ago, and was able to reach the top with ease. Despite seeming jolly in many of his public appearances - Like many corrupt leaders, he is a great orator - time has made him a bitter man. Losing his beloved Queen Zelda to a mysterious plague that many of the Hylians blame on bokoblins and the like, who in the history books are all painted as evil monsters who eat children and pillage villages. Unfortunately, every other species or 'race' - Lesser Hylians - are considered inferior to the 'High' Hylians, and although there is no evidence to suggest this to be so, both the history books and the divine tablet state it to be so, and therefore what they do to them is justified, or so they believe. Although the High Hylians rarely set foot outside the castle, on the few occasions they have it has exclusively been to bring back Lesser Hylians from the make-shift villages below to start on their new 'jobs' as servants, or to steal bokoblin eggs - the main food source of those in the castle. The protagonist - King Link's great grand-son, a plucky 18 year old with a big heart and seemingly undying patriotism for the throne - is one of the many to travel on the latest expedition, this time to a small fishing village in at the edge of Hyrule to locate the remaining lesser hylians, and this is how the first portion of the game 'plays out', as it were. Despite the game adopting a similar open-world style, for the most part you travel in a group of six or seven - You can leave the team and explore the land around you at any point - providing you help them set up camp first, of course. The camps themselves function as temporary homes for you and the team, and similarly to something like Red Dead Redemption II, there are several side-quests and tasks to be completed whilst here. As the surrounding world is initially quite barren and dead, these people will act as the 'main cast' of your adventure, becoming deeper and more complex the more time you spend with each one. In fact, this friendship mechanic becomes a life or death situation in many cases as the better graces you are in with someone has a direct effect upon how they perform in battle situations - In other words, if you repeatedly ignore someones needs and interests, it is almost a certainty they will betray you or die at the hands of the enemy when worst comes to worst. Aside from this, gameplay will be your typical zelda outing - hack and slash at enemies, utilising new weapons and gadgets found from the rubble of the old world. In a somewhat controversial move, there will also be no dungeons in this particular game, as the entire world will instead act as a dungeon; Every decrepit building, each rat-festered cavern offers a unique challenge or piece of story about the truths of the world, as you slowly uncover what - or who - truly killed Queen Zelda, and if Ganon is truly real at all. Whilst the story is just as non-linear as BOTW, it - hopefully - will manage to be far more involved than the previous title, due to its greater focus on characters and emotion. Lastly, as you can probably already tell, the game will have a far more prominent focus on player choice, with various actions having very large consequences. An example of this would be if you were hunting the final bokoblins for a crazy chef, only to discover they were more human-like than you could possibly imagine. Do you finish the deed for a hefty profit, or do you let them free to stage a revolution against the cooking village, burning to the ground? Bosses, depsite the lack of dungeons, are still very much there and act as waypoints within the main story depending on the choices you make. If you are in high favours with the king by the end of the game, you could potentially be the one to lead the fight against the lesser hylian's leader. Alternatively, you may be the one fighting King Link at the games climax. However, neither of these will be the final boss, providing you successfully uncover the truth about the Queen. This was really long and somewhat tedious to write, but hopefully it expresses what the best possible Zelda game - for me - could be like.

I'm thinking of an extremely well made remake of Ocarina of Time. High Definition: It would be hard to change the visuals without losing some of Hyrule's charm just as it would be difficult to further improve the gameplay. An OoT remake can turn out amazing or pretty dissapointing. So they either have to do it right or not at all.

I just hope the next Zelda has a better story and challeging dungeons + bosses. Not that I mind the creators changing up the formula every now and then, I like every Zelda game I played in its own right.

@gamer1000k

What I'd prefer is endgame content that you do before you go for the final boss and then if you've completed it all, it gives you a better ending for the story.
That's the best way of making it feel meaningful.
Also, Zelda needs optional superbosses like Final Fantasy has.

@Dezzy
Makes sense, I guess in my hypothetical game that sort of content would be in the form of recruiting the max number of armies/getting all the best items to help you out in the final boss fight. From that perspective, BoTW is nearly all endgame content once you leave the Great Plateau.

In my previous post on endgame content I was thinking more along the lines of post-game optional superbosses with appropriately difficult dungeons leading up to them.

@linq Me too, amongst other things

And that's without revealing the twist, that being that after Link has been made a man, the Great Fairy reveals that even that is not enough, and that he must now go and satisfy three more Great Fairies in order to acquire the three sacred weapons/tools necessary to complete the quest.

But for the sake of those who may not be won over by my Great Fairy suggestions alone, I would also like to see Link be able to explore underwater.

Also, as my first two meaningful Zelda experiences were Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, to me the summoning Link performs through music, using the aforementioned Ocarina and Wind Waker, are pretty core Zelda game mechanics, and the tunes played are a significant part of the Zelda game identity to me, so I'd like them back.

I'd like to see a Legend of Zelda title set in a modern-like setting where the tales of heroes and evil overlords are thought to be little more than legends and fairy tales. Where Hyrulians, and the other races live side by side in modern nations. Having long been forgotten, an archaeologist accidentally breaks the aging seal on Ganon and... nothing seems to happen. But in fact Ganon is set free and years later we see he has built a massive multi national corporation and is slowly corrupting the leaders of the nations and quietly having opponents killed.

Link, a young Hyrulian soldier fresh out of the academy finds evidence of the truth of the legends when he mistakes ruins he finds while on a training exercise to be a simple cave. Zelda it turns out is the daughter of the President of Hyrule, and an activist speaking out, loudly and against her father's wishes, against Ganon's company.

You'd actually play as both characters throughout the game. As Link you'd deal with more combat focused missions, at first doing things like putting down Hobgoblin rebellions and defending the public from beasts that still plague the outlying regions of the "kingdom", and ultimately fighting Ganon's goons. As Zelda, the game would be more stealth focused. You'd be sneaking around, in Ganon's corporation's facilities looking for proof to reveal to the public that this outstanding stand up citizen is actually the one behind the murders. Zelda would be a punk girl, a hacker, a freedom fighter. Link would be a noble soldier and idealist. Link and Zelda would meet about 1/3 of the way through the game. Link, on government assignment would be protecting a shipment from Ganon's company and would be the one to intercept Zelda, who would win Link over by showing him the evidence she's already found.

From there the two would co-operate and support each other's missions, often overlapping and having sections where you switch back and forth between them.

Many classic characters would pop up in new incarnations. Groose would once again be a jock like comrade who thinks he's better than Link but ultimately makes the right choices. Impa would be Zelda's hacker friend, and the 4 champions of BotW would be reincarnated as officers in their respective kingdoms military who help our heroes in various missions or quests.

The whole game would be pseudo open world, with a traditional story opening up more of the world and more side quests/missions as you progress. A big gimmick/theme would be seeing traditional Zelda characters in this modern setting with various twists on their classic roles.

One major difference would be that this modern world would never have developed guns. They just wouldn't be a thing. Traditional Zelda tools and weapons would reappear with a modernized look and be described as being made with modern materials like steel, aluminum, titanium, and plastic. We'd still be using bladed weapons, crossbows and the like.

@gcunit I think there are fan fictions like that. Probably Doujins too.

@Heavyarms55 That sounds like it could be a pretty awesome game. The theme might not be your traditional Zelda-fantasy, but if the core Zelda experience was still there with the exploration, items, dungeons, and boss fights then it would still be very much a Zelda game.

@gamer1000k That's exactly what I am getting at. It would retain the exploration, dungeons, boss fights, etc, but it would be a different sort of setting and with a lot of twists on classic ideas to make the game fresh. Also darn it all, it's about time Zelda is also a playable character in the games with her name on them! And not just in a spin-off!

This just gave me a random idea for a Zelda game where Link and Zelda's roles are completely reversed.

You play the game as Zelda who starts out in a quiet little village and gets equipment and attire similar to what Link would normally use. As the story progresses, you meet Prince Link who must be saved from the forces of darkness.

At some point in the story, there needs to be a character who refers to the old legends of the hero saving the princess, and commenting on how the gods/fates/whatever must have a sense of humor with the situation being reversed in this age.

@gamer1000k

Yeah the recruiting allies approach is a good model. Mass Effect 3 and Witcher 3 both did that well. Mass Effect 3 might've ruined the outcome but the process was still good.

Zelda would need a much harder final boss though for that to work.
Breath of the Wild had the dumb situation where the final boss was so easy that the fact that you'd done the divine beasts ended up feeling annoying because it made it even easier. You need it to feel like those extra recruits are really essential.

I agree. I'm a completionist so I haven't quite gotten to the final boss yet on BoTW myself, but from the speedrun videos I've seen, as long as you're good at dodging you can easily defeat the final boss with just the weapons available in Hyrule Castle.

Which is why I suggested an epic final boss fight that takes inspiration from Hyrule Warriors where it's you and your allies versus Ganon and his armies. Something that's nearly impossible to do solo (although there should still be a way so we can watch epic speedruns), and makes each recruited ally and army feel meaningful