Topic: BotW is Better than TotK

@Bigmanfan I love the new and the old formats for different reasons, but I do wish the next 3d Zelda is more traditional but incorporates botw era things. I don’t want either to dissipate entirely. (I counted out 14 Zelda games I’ve played my first was Wind Waker HD)

Also Big man is okay but Marina is obviously superior.

@Xenoblade-Fan
I'm a Mario gamer, but Zelda is my close second and has been ever since I got the original on my NES as a kid.

I think BotW is the better game, too, and I still go back to it from time to time, but I've never truly finished a second playthrough. I tore the game apart, though. All the shrines, costumes, etc. Not all the Korok seeds, though, lol can't bring myself to do that. TotK was... just too much for me. I put like 80 hours into it and beat it, but there's tons of stuff I haven't seen in it, but it just got overwhelming for me and I was ready for it to end. I never felt that way with BotW, but TotK is essentially BotW x2.5 when it comes to pure landmass and content to explore.

I REALLY hope the next big Zelda takes some ideas from these two games, like you said, but is largely a return to a form. A homecoming. I don't know if the push to change the series came mostly from the fans or the devs, but I would like BotW and TotK to kind of remain their own part of the franchise's history, with hundreds and hundreds of gameplay hours to offer, but for the franchise to mostly get back to why people loved it in the first place.

It's probably going to be a couple years before we see anything about the next big 3D game anyway, and at that point we'll be at least 15 years out from Skyward Sword. A return to form mixing in some of the recent ideas would feel "fresh" at that point, whereas another game that skews close to BotW and TotK will, at least to me, feel exhausting. I think TotK showed us that "just" being open world and offering tons of stuff doesn't necessarily lead to insanely high sales. I mean, it's selling well, but nowhere as well as BotW. I'm sure Nintendo is getting the message on that.

@rallydefault Yeah I'd agree. TOTK is an exemplary game, but suffers from severe 'open world bloat' IMO... and it never quite recaptures that magic moment of overlooking the Great Plateau in BOTW and feeling that you're seeing something completely new for the first time.

I'm at odds in regards to my aspirations for the series moving forward. BOTW is, IMO, as close to a perfect game as you'll find... and up there in terms of a 'game of the generation' alongside CyberPunk, Baldurs 3, Elden Ring, Hades etc.

I would quite like to see Nintendo completely reinvent the franchise, and use it as a vessel for experimentation in other genre elements... maybe something more choice-driven, akin to Baldurs 3? An act-driven narrative, where each playthrough is nearly unique depending on choices and dialogue options?

@CJD87
I am open to seeing them innovate again, for sure. I think they need to. If the next 3D Zelda is another TotK or BotW… those games are just so big and full of content already that casual gamers will likely never see everything in them. Another game like that would be overkill.

The more formulaic games, though, are much more manageable. You can see everything in them in dozens of hours, not hundreds, which is the reality of the time most gamers have to give to the hobby.

I think, unfortunately for me, Nintendo is taking the franchise more and more in a direction that is outside my favorite genres, which I just need to accept. I’ll always play them and beat each one, but I think the days of scouring every last inch of Link to the Past and Ocarina in a more action-oriented genre are fading. They seem to want this open world/crafting/building trend.

I don't think they'll go back and nor do I think they should. Whether you're personally a fan of open world or not it is undeniable that it gives much more room for experimentation and player derived narrative. BoTW and ToTK filled YouTube and Twitch, dominating the conversation around gaming in a way that the linear Zelda games could never hope to have done.

BoTW is a more "pure" experience.

ToTK has more plates for you to spin, it's not as fully committed to its concept as BoTW is or as effortlessly confident. I mean in BoTW the game very early on says "Main Mission - Defeat Gannon" and lets you go at it there and then if you'd like. It doesn't worry that you might wander around for 5 minutes without "something to do", a little mini-game or a third tier collectable to add to a counter so that you can justify that you've not wasted your time.

All that said - ToTK has a lot of things going for it. It's also a great game and it's better in many ways.

I just wish they'd made a handful of ultra focused games spin off games playing on the systems of both games. An action puzzle platformer using just ascend or ultra hand, a true wilderness survival game etc.