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Topic: Zelda broke the mold, should other franchises follow?

Posts 1 to 17 of 17

Timppis

Breath of the Wild was applauded for it's unconventionality. Everyone said Nintendo finally was brave enough to venture beyond the traditions of Zelda and the end result is one of the greatest video games of all time. At the same time Nintendo pretty much redefined open world gameplay in many ways, mixing physics based problem solving with unlinear storytelling.

It seems that Mario is breaking it's own barriers in a smaller scale, returning back to sandbox style gameplay after the last three 3D iterations that were more confined and linear levels.

Kirby seems to be as it always has been. Yoshi is going the pseudo 3D-platformer with similar aestethics to Woolly world, but on a slightly different mechanics. So they are keeping to their current style.

We know that Metroid Prime is coming, we know Pikmin is coming, Pokemon is on the way.

Should Nintendo go Zelda on it's upcoming franchises or keep them on their known forms. What kind of changes would you like to have on those franchises if they did change? (Remember to keep it short, because as I was told very straightforwardly when I first came to Nintendolife, no one likes fanfiction )

You can speculate on any franchise you will, I will list the three upcoming major franchises and Animal Crossing, since it's one of my most wanted.

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Metroid: Keep the tight level design, don't go full open world, but have unlinear gameplay with multiple planets or locations.

Pikmin: Let us use the treasures in meaningful or silly way. Let us build forts, playgrounds or something like that from the stuff we find. Other than that, don't change stuff.

Pokemon: Just make it HD, that's enough.

Animal Crossing: Make it bigger, make it a lot bigger. That is all.

Edited on by Timppis

Timppis

Anti-Matter

Of course.
Animal Crossing for Switch needs an Open World style games with Tons of customization from Houses, More than 30 villagers to be accepted as residents, more minigames, cooking, making own flea market, customable terrains, etc.

Anti-Matter

crimsontadpoles

Sure Zelda broke the mold, but I'd argue that plenty of other games have been breaking the mold as well, such as Skyrim and Horizon Zero Dawn. Still, I'd welcome Nintendo to be more ambitious and take more risks like they did with Zelda.

Timppis wrote:

Pokemon: Just make it HD, that's enough.

No, Pokemon could be so much better than that. How about a gorgeous open world where we can actually see Pokemon in the wild. If they do it right, then I could spend ages just watching the Caterpie going up and down the trees in a lush forest. (though it's GameFreak we're talking about, so I'm not expecting much change for the Switch games).

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LuckyLand

Nintendo already broke the mold other times, for example in the Gameboy version of Donkey kong. I don't even think that Breath of the wild is as perfect and great as other people say. It is of course a well made game with high quality standard but it does not redefine anything, it does not surpasses anything that has been done before in other games and I think older Zelda games were better. They were more original and more different than other games and the fact that they were more linear made them less repetitive. Breath of the wild is so similar to many other games that is just disappointing in some ways. I'm not even a fan of Zelda games but I think the traditional ones were better and had a more defined and distinct personality. For sure Nintendo got much better results in breaking the mold in other occasions.

Edited on by LuckyLand

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-Green-

LuckyLand wrote:

They were more original and more different than other games

Zelda games haven't been very original for quite some time, tbh. They usually focus on the same premises repeated over and over again across Zelda games. Some of them are unique in some aspects but I find myself a bit troubled in considering some of the later ones unique and different. Maybe in setting (for some) and maybe possibly in story. Then again, Zelda stories are usually the same thing told over over again because of a 'cycle'.

LuckyLand wrote:

and the fact that they were more linear made them less repetitive.

Being linear doesn't make a game less repetitive. I think that has more to do with the actual content of the games, and how much is reused.

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LuckyLand

They were more original compared to other games, not to previous Zelda games probably, but that is better than being different than previous Zelda games and becoming much more similar to many other generic open world games at the same time. This is not a step forward, an improvement in my opinion. It is not even innovative at all.

Edited on by LuckyLand

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Haru17

The mold made mastercrafts except for like one game.

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MarcelRguez

@-Green-

-Green- wrote:

Then again, Zelda stories are usually the same thing told over over again because of a 'cycle'.

Other way around. The cycle exists because they needed a diegetic justification for putting out the same basic plot structure in every game.

MarcelRguez

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@LuckyLand
I don't really consider Zelda games to be innovative anymore. I can't think of anything that they do great that I can't go and find in another game. Except SS's motion control thing, but even then that's a bit of a mixed bag.

Anyways, I'm not surprised you feel that way. The Zelda creators usually based the Zelda games off of Ocarina of Time, with I believe Aonuma stating in an interview that "the base of our secret sauce has always been Ocarina of Time". In BotW's case, he stated that he looked to games like Skyrim and Western Open World games for inspiration and used elements from them. Even saying that "the change in flavor will be like going from Japanese food to Western style food".

@MarcelRguez
I thought that as well, which is why I put quotes around cycle. I probably could've phrased it better.

Edited on by -Green-

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Haru17

Before Breath of the Wild and to some extent of Skyward Sword Zelda games did 3D environmental puzzling and dungeons better than any other game. Now Zelda is just a more polished, very limited open world game.

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KirbyTheVampire

I like the open world format for Zelda, but I don't think they should break the mold unless they can do so without losing half of what made the old games great like they did with BoTW.

KirbyTheVampire

Kasma

Personally, I think they should absolutely break the mold with Pokémon. I loved Sun and Moon because they were unconventional, but I want to see them take it even further on the Switch. I'd love for it to be truly open world, taking cues from Breath of the Wild and creating a vast world to explore. Pokémon always hints at a diverse eco system and it's time they tried to create that for players to explore.

Kasma

Timppis

I love how everyone is suddenly arguing that Zelda didn't break the mold compared to Horizon Zero Dawn or Skyrim.

It wasn't what I said. It broke the mold compared to previous Zelda iterations. That was the point. Nintendo changed their own pattern and it worked.

And to be fair, most of the critics seem to argue that Nintendo really did a lot of great and new things with Breath of the wild considering the whole genre.

Timppis

skywake

Nintendo has always done this, BotW isn't really anything new in that regard. They don't necessarily do it with just one game and people don't always like it. But they have always re-invented the wheel. The most obvious other example is what Metroid Prime did with Metroid. Or how much Mario changes between every console generation.

I also think it's funny that people keep bringing up Pokemon. Pokemon was always a grid-based, sprite based RPG with the same gym structure and the same everything. Slightly better graphics but mostly the same everything. And it was like that right up until the 3DS. In less than five years Pokemon went from what it had always been to something pretty radically different with Sun/Moon. It's also now on your phone. I think Pokemon should be the last franchise on the "these games need a shakeup" list...

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LuckyLand

I have played other games in the open world genre and I don't think BOTW did anything special compared to other games.
The worst thing about BOTW imho is how big the world is without any real purpose, just for the sake of making it big. It just feel empty and uninteresting this way. A much smaller open world game could have been much better.
Like Haru17 said now Zelda is just a polished but very generic game. It lost everything that was interesting in the old ones and replaced it with a big emptiness just for the sake of being big.
If they took inspiration from Elder Scrolls games they clearly did not understand that one of the best thing about those games are towns and interactions with npcs, since towns and npcs in BOTW basically works just the same as A Link to the past (and towns are the same in size. Now this is definitely one thing that should have been bigger. Not even Skyrim towns are big enough imo). Skyrim is very disappointing in this sense but it is still much better than BOTW.
They had their "secret sauce" that they were so good at, they should have stick to it instead of trying different things that they did in a polished way, yes, but it is not their style and you can feel it. All the flavour is gone.

Edited on by LuckyLand

I used to be a ripple user like you, then I took The Arrow in the knee

-Green-

Haru17 wrote:

Before Breath of the Wild and to some extent of Skyward Sword Zelda games did 3D environmental puzzling and dungeons better than any other game.

So what about the puzzles in BotW makes them worse than other Zelda games? They seem like pretty standard puzzles you'd find in other Zelda games.

LuckyLand wrote:

They had their "secret sauce" that they were so good at, they should have stick to it instead of trying different things that they did in a polished way, yes, but it is not their style and you can feel it. All the flavour is gone.

Not denying your point, since it's a clearly evident one, but I can understand them wanting to try something a bit closer to their original roots, and to try something a bit new for themselves. Again not saying that your wrong, but I can understand why they would want to try something a bit different from their usual formula. It's also likely what they're gonna do considering Aonuma said that "open air (which is a stupid term) will be the standard for Zelda now".

Edited on by -Green-

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JasmineDragon

@Timppis Interestingly, the phrase "broke the mold" literally means there can never be another thing like it. This sort of carries the implication that trying to duplicate the process is a waste of time, which I feel is very true in this case. Other games should not be looking at BOTW and trying to do the same thing. Unfortunately, I think that is exactly what they will do.

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