Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Like a lot of more difficult Zelda puzzles, it's very easy in retrospect but I can easily see why someone would get confused by it. Same with the Water Temple. Yes, it's exaggerated a bit unless you have a bad sense of direction/bad at puzzles, but it is a bit of a confusing place to keep track of at points, especially compared to how linear most 3D Zelda dungeons are. But at the same time, it is still nothing compared to Metroid 1 or Castlevania 2.

The water temple was linear m8... There's only one path to complete it, some people just got lost.

And then there's the Master Quest version...

No one played that one

I did

Well linear in the "Super Metroid is super non-linear apparently!" sort of way where it is a vague term in gaming for not knowing exactly where to go next. That and you can get some keys in different orders IIRC. Whereas the others are a straight line of rooms practically if you know what you're doing, instead of the constant necessity to backtrack to the same room and hope you remember which is next and whatnot.

I guess it's more accurate to say that there is a heavy emphasis on backtracking that feels closer to something like a non-linear (hence the Metroid comparison) game than other dungeons, particularly because of how immediately open it seems to be.

If the water temple is nonlinear then every Zelda game is nonlinear and people need to stop whinging about it. It's exactly as linear or nonlinear as every other Zelda game.

I'm with @kkslider5552000 here, the Water Temple wasn't as confusing as people make it out to be, but I think it can be compared to the Lakebed Temple. If you don't know where to go next, you probably end up doing a whole lot of nothing before you discover the next room you need to go to.

Not to mention the gelatinous, phallic end bosses swimming around in a pool.

I agree to a point, but there is a significant difference between "linear" and "a straight hallway with no exploration" which quite frankly is what I think many people actually mean when they talk about non-linear games. Which I just assume is because saying "non-linear" is just easier than any explanation of the difference between the two. And also because most good games aren't actually non-linear (or at most have 2 options). People just want more Final Fantasy IV and less Final Fantasy XIII, more Doom less Call of Duty etc.

I have to assume there's a word or phrase to describe this, because no one is going to use "linear game that has illusions of non-linear gameplay and some worthwhile level of exploration" doesn't roll off the tongue. My first thought would be "non-hallway linear".

I think more FFIV when I think linear. FFX/XIII are hallway simulators.

XIII is an insult to the word linear. I think I really did just accurately sum up why people use non-linear this way, because everyone is just terrified of more hallway simulators that much. They're so linear they're like a new form of linear. Linear 2: The Quickening.

People get on Zelda for being linear and they really need to stop, because every Zelda game but FSA has elements of nonlinearity. Revisiting areas, for example, is a nonlinear element most JRPGs have.

Other elements of linearity / nonlinearity are main quest structure, side quest structure, world structure, and character progression structure.

For instance, Xenoblade is a linear game, in that the main quest is linear, it just has nonlinear side quests and world.

Since when did non-linear have any other meaning than "having more than one way to progress through the main objective?" That's the definition I've used for years. It doesn't matter how many side-quests, or elements of exploration, it's linear if there is only one correct path to progress through the story.

Zelda I (The Legend of Zelda) was nonlinear because you could complete any section in any order, more or less. Mario 64 was non-linear up to the point where you had to beat Bowser each time, but until then, the game didn't care where you got your stars from. Most open-world games I've played, extra content aplenty, usually have only a single story-line with each checkpoint pointed out for you each step of the way, so they would still be linear. A game can be linear on the micro-level too, like Mario 64, where you could get to the star by using a canon, crossing the bridge, triple jumping from a lower platform, wing-cap, etc., or like an Assassin's Creed game, where there are multiple strategies to infiltrate a 3D stronghold. But I wouldn't call the whole game linear based on that.

But if you want to talk about exploration, or side-quests, then call them that. I'm pretty sure linearity is different.

Nooooooooooope, nope. (Non)Linear is an adjective when last I checked and that means it can describe a number of different things. And area of a game can be linear or nonlinear, that's why labeling entire games with different parts 'linear' or 'nonlinear' is reductive. The only thing that really counts as totally 'linear' is stuff like The Last of Us, and even that has different paths within explorable areas.

@Haru17, I thought of it more like jargon; it means a lot of things in other uses of the word, but in the context of game design, it's very specific. I remember back when it was mostly a term to describe the first Legend of Zelda, but also to a few other similar cases. At least to the people I was exposed to in my early teens. It was a very definitive and distinguishable quality, unlike how most people here use it.

Well obviously people are applying 'linear' to the wrong games, overgeneralizing games with it, or just plain incorrectly using the term. People need to be specific so we can stop having this wave of hate towards all linear games. Whatever people think of The Order 1886, that doesn't make all linear games bad. Which is exactly what a bunch of morons droned on about following that game's embargo date.

@Haru17, unfortunately, video games are an early art. Art forms like paintings, opera, and film have been around for a lot longer, and don't have that dreaded curse of being labeled as something for children, so a deeper repertoire of publications have been made on the theory of those arts. Those arts can have the luxury of having generally accepted precise terminology, thanks to all of the scholars theorizing about these arts for centuries. Video games' first generation core audience only became adults about a decade ago, so... baby steps. All we've got as far as publications is that Warioland 4 analysis.

In short, there's no generally accepted dictionary for precise video game review jargon anywhere as far as I know, so we're stuck inventing our own definitions for things based on our personal uses, and arguments end up taking a lot longer to resolve.

Skyward Sword non-withstanding, I don't think linearity should be associated with any sort of quality judgment. As I've often said, not everything needs to be an nonlinear open world game.