Topic: Please explain me why Breath of the Wild got so many high scores

@KirbyTheVampire I definitely see a lot of room for improvement in BotW. I would also like to see meatier dungeons. Not traditional Zelda dungeons, though. I want them to take the shrine and divine beast concepts and integrate the creativity in a lot of those into a more expansive in-game environment.

Also, more enemy variety, more sweeping music like we heard in the trailers (seriously, why do the BotW trailers have better music than anything in the actual game?!), longer story cinematics, perhaps a rebalanced durability system... maybe even larger cities to explore? They already have a fantastic template for future games, so I'm eager to see what they come up with.

TP and SS were sometimes too linear for their own good (one of the few problems I really had with TP tbh), but I think a lot of this is a huge backlash against COD campaigns and Final Fantasy XIII, for trying to ruin the term linear forever. That's probably one reason for open world being such a big thing nowadays, when the biggest JRPG franchise and the biggest FPS franchise become Hallways: The Video Game, you make a lot of gamers desperate for the opposite.

@kkslider5552000 Maybe, but I wouldn't describe the Zelda games as linear. Uncharted is linear. Zelda isn't. At any point you can go anywhere you've been before, explore, do side quests, etc. Progression in the games is linear, but that doesn't make the games themselves linear, since there's a lot of freedom in the things you want to do, and can do.

I think the difference is that previous Zelda games could feel linear is because they had an actual storyline; progression. BOTW did away with any sort of progression whatsoever and I found that the game became easier (and it wasn't that difficult to begin with) and more boring over time. I think a good game needs a sense of progression or linearity, especially if it's 100 hours long. And without any upgrades or key items to be found in the game, it all becomes same-y very quickly. I really enjoyed the first twenty hours or so, after that it just felt more of the same to me.

@Octane Ha I know what you mean.

I enjoyed the article and I think it is has some valid points. What I think it is a shame that the launch hyperbole (majorly from the gaming media) will probably mean a backlash a few years down the line as people reassess it when it should just be recognised as a great game and not necessarily the highest pinnacle of gaming ever.

Oh god no.

As a Bioshock Infinite fan, I don't need to deal with the hype backlash crowd ever again.

@KirbyTheVampire In my opinion Skyrim look really good. In my opinion even Oblivion still look great today, except for the characters that back then were absolutely ugly, Skyrim fixed that only issue Oblivion had and improved everything else too so I can only say good things about Skyrim's graphics. I really don't like Fallout 4 graphics, but now we are talking about a game that struggles to be as much ugly and unpleasant as it can be. There are monsters in Skyrim, but the environment is fascinating, with lush forests, lakes, mountains, valleys and so on, Fallout is about a world destroyed by nuclear waste, junk, sh** is pretty much everywhere and everything is made to be as much disgusting as it can be. At this point I'm really unable to tell if graphics in a game like this are bad or not. I don't think it matters if they are bad or not. Probably if they are bad it only reinforces what the game wants to be. I wouldn't be able to judge graphics of a game like Fallout.

EDIT: Anyway, in my opinion the biggest mistake they made with Breath of the wild is that they decided to dismiss the "puzzle items" that usually you had do discover and obtain in each dungeon in past Zelda games and increased your abilities to interact with the environment and your powers. This is one of the most important and defining things in Zelda games in my opinion and this thing alone could be enough to build an entire game and make the journey from beginning to end varied and interesting enough. They removed this thing from the game and did not put anything that can be remotely good enough to substitute it. On top of that, if you remove one of the most defining and important features from a game why you still call that game Zelda? There is no reason at all to call "Zelda" a game like that. It could be a "Zelda spin off", but since a game like this would require a very big budget I don't know if it is really worth it. If they wanted to make something THAT MUCH different than what Zelda has ever been they should probably create a new ip then.

@Samus7Killer
Yeah but you has a smaller variety of actions with the characters of these games. These games had less work of game design.
But it's a matter of trend. We're living in an era of narrative heavy AAA. The era of game designers is over. Now videogames directors are scriptwriters, not toymakers. And because of this trend, the lack of work in narration is considered as a bigger flaw than the lack of work in game design.

@bitleman That isn't true at all. For example, I don't think anyone criticised The Witness for its lack of story. The difference is that 1) Zelda games always had an important narrative (especially the 3D Zelda games), and 2) games like The Witness didn't try to set up an epic tale about a great calamity, a hero, champions, history and war, lore and whatnot; Zelda does, but then fails to deliver on that front.

Pretty much. In Skyrim even the monsters had an appreciable quality to them since there were so many different 3D items, environments, NPC races, and enemies in the same game. In my opinion that detail is what makes a game beautiful. Not the frame rate, not the resolution, not the textures — the design and cohesiveness of all the assets created to comprise that world.

'Detail' is the angle Todd Howard took in the forward to Skyrim's art book and when they first announced Fallout 4, and I really see it in Beth's games. The intricate robots limbs folding and unfolding as they animate, the way houses near the railroad are built out of old boxcars, and the way robots spark and burst as they take limb damage and you break their armor of in realtime.

Just having NPCs' eyes follow you in first-person goes a long way toward making the world believable. It's so much fun to just stand in front of a brahmin (Fallout's two-headed cows) and move from side to side and watch each head follow you. Their heads aren't exactly in sync like a perfect tracking program, but rather they bobble around and lag behind each other organically — I bet that's mind-blowing in VR.

I think Fallout 4 has my favorite zombies in any game, called 'ghouls.' They sprint straight toward you unlike other enemies which circle and take cover. The way they walk is really unsettling, erratically with lulls and sudden bursts of speed before they literally fall over each other to hit you.

Really, that's a lot of work for a game where you can just make a perception character and quadruple headshot enemies in slow time the second you see them. The insectoid enemies are definitely gross though — they're giant bugs.

Came here to address a few points, but thankfully (and unsurprisingly) @Ralizah has said much of what I was going to say.

BotW excels in the moment-to-moment of gameplay - the running, jumping, swimming, fighting, climbing, gliding, horse-riding, shield-sliding, - the adventuring gameplay. It is, primarily, a game
to be played, not a story to be 'storied' or a world to be 'lived'. The world in which BotW is set is just one big nature's playground.

It's that aspect of the game that has garnered so many highly positive critical and user reviews. It's pretty rare that a game launches and is immediately being touted as possibly the greatest game ever. For those that really like the game and tend to agree, that's very exciting. For those that don't appreciate the above aspects to the same extent and therefore disagree with the consensus, it's obviously unfortunate for them to be missing out on the hype wave.

These aren't 'facts', these are your opinions.

I think it comes down to how 'story' is valued in a game. Sure, a great story can be a real bonus, but stories can be totally dispensed with and the game still be fantastic. Whether it's an open-world game or not.

I suspect for the likes of you it comes down to the fact that Skyrim is a PEGI 18 game, whereas BotW is PEGI 12 - i.e. BotW is by design much more accessible/simplified, and not focused on how deep the human world is in the same way that an adult-oriented game is likely to be.

Triggered much Where are the people labelling anyone Satan? And are all the critics who scored BotW 95-100 Nintendo SuperFans?

[quote=MegaTen]

The reward to many is the new vantage point it gives over the rest of the world, and constantly poses those "where shall I go next?", "ooh, what's down there?", "what's over that next peak?" questions that result in 20 hour detours from an original objective.

If it was released on the retail market it would have been criticized for that. I was speaking about the trend of the AAA market. Lower budget and indies market is different.

I don't need a game to be PEGI 18, and for the way I played Oblivion it could have been PEGI 12 for the most part (at least in my opinion) since I avoided all the "evil" quests and the game mostly felt rather "light hearted" imho, more light hearted than Skyrim, and yet it was better than Skyrim both in its side stories and in how believable npcs were. Of course if a game has to be immersive I usually don't appreciate if it is too much childish (I don't like the fact that in Wind Waker Link is a little child for example) but a PEGI 12 game with a protagonist a little older like Breath of the wild could be fine for me. Also I think that Breath of the wild is a lot harder and frustrating than Skyrim, I would not say it is more accessible. Maybe it is simplified in some aspects, but those "simplified things" that at first could seem more complex in Skyrim works in your favor and you can use them to make the game easier.

I don't think that having more and bigger cities with people that have a more "casual" behaviour and don't have "NPC specifically made for you to talk to" written in their forehead can be considered PEGI 18 stuff for example.
Probably there is just too much wilderness in the game and wilderness is beautiful usually so I like it but it also feel very empty and pointless usually for me so in a game I also need other things to give the game more balance. Wilderness is beautiful to look at but not interesting, intriguing or engaging. An immersive game, a game that I am going to play for so long, need it to look good, but it also need other things to be interesting. This episode of Zelda has not enough of those other things for me.

Haters are going to hate! "The world is to big and there is to much to do!" lol. Ok we get it you want a point A to B linear game.. one filled with cinematic movie scenes and nothing but boring dialog. I am glad these people arent in charge.. BOTW game of the year by far.

@Ralizah & @gcunit Great posts.

BoTW is not a perfect game by any means. It's lacking a few big dungeons, it could do with more enemy variety, the situational weapons like bombs and burning the environment become useless late on etc. but it's an incredible achievement in the medium.

I actually think one of the things that gets left behind in discussions of the freedom that BoTW offers is that it offers a realisation of the idea of a Role Playing Game.

That is you don't need to worry about numbers - you can play the role you want to play. If your Link thinks it's of urgent importance to rush straight to Hyrule Castle and fight Gannon right away he can do that. If your Link think's it's important to talk to Impa but then ignore her and go off to fight Gannon then - he can do that. If your Link think's it's important to photograph every weapon, play hide and seek with every Korok and clean out every Moblin den in Hyrule before he fights Gannon well he can do that too.

The term RPG has become so loaded and straight jacketed we've forgot what it really means but BoTW is a pure Role Playing Game.

I also think, as I've said before, there's more traditional Zelda in there than it's given credit for. Zora's domain removing the ability to climb (because of the rain - albeit it's a soft barrier rather than a hard one because you could potentially still climb if you were really determined) and giving you a key item (the Zora armour) that allows access to inaccessible areas could have been in any Zelda game.

It is at the point where I see 'gameplay' bolded three times that I realize I don't have to read a post because I won't learn anything from it. You guys sure are making a lot of excuses for "GOTY 2017, best game ever made, 10/10 MLG."

@LuckyLand Oblivion definitely needed to be an 18-rated game, lol. Quests in that game show you severed head items and an entire human body fed to a beast. And the main quest directly takes you to a realm where bloated corpses are strung up and used as containers. I kinda liked it when Skyrim cleaned up at least the gorey aspect of Oblivion, I was disgusted by the severed heads when I was younger.

@Haru17 That's what I said. Praise a game for its narrative work and it's ok. Praise it for its game design work and the variety of actions it offers and you're wrong. The actual trend on the AAA market is like that.

@Haru17 Honestly I had no problems at all with Oblivion. I played Clive Barker's Undying and from a certain point on that game really felt disgusting (and it was a little too disturbing since the beginning) but I felt that Oblivion's presentation was rather clean and "polite" even when it involved strong themes. I remember I found a little too creepy even the zombies with the big heads in Wind waker (I always jump scared everytime I encountered one) but I never thought that Oblivion could be considered that disturbing..

(I said "for the most part" for a reason anyway )

@gcunit Yep. It's the moment-to-moment that is magical in this game. Nintendo absolutely nailed evoking a constant sense of wonder and discovery in the player, which I don't get in a game like Skyrim. As I said, Minecraft is much closer to that: but, of course, that game randomly generated terrain, whereas the landscapes in BotW are obviously and wonderfully hand-sculpted.

@Octane Most Zelda games are absolutely linear in design. Not to the degree that something like Uncharted is, of course, but they're still focused on constant forward movement through sequential order of events, and they usually don't offer too much to take you away from this. Having a more open design to the world doesn't matter if you gate off every major area but the one you need to go to next.

@MegaTen I'm sorry but I just completely disagree with that type of categorisation.

There's nothing in the definition of a role playing game that states they must be numbers heavy. They can be but, even where they are, there's no hard and fast rule that the numbers must be tied to grinding to level up. This is something that videogames in the 80's baked in (because it artificially extends the length without increasing the storage) and they've largely kept to but it's not necessary or integral to the idea of a Role Playing Game.

When you look at the table top RPGs that spawned video gaming RPGs they originally were far more about imagination of the players inhabiting a role than they were about levelling up to gain an extra 10 hit points or such. The dice and stats were necessary to simulate battles or outcomes but they were always abstractions and the games at their best are not about the underlying numbers.

In any event though BoTW does have plenty of numbers. You have an ever present health rating, an attack value, a defence value and a speed value. All of these are dependent on the actions you've previously taken in the game (albeit they're mostly tied to gear rather than inherent levelling because of grinding).

In other words - BoTW is an RPG however you want to cut it. It's not in the same Japanese subset as Dragon Quest or the same Western subset as Fallout but it's definitely an RPG.

For some reason @Octane seems to be under the impression that criticising Zelda for its linearity is some modern whim that gamers got once all the games on the market became open-world.
This is absolutely not true - people have been criticising this for 20 years - especially those who can't get into Zelda because its linearity is hidden by absolutely unnecessarily convoluted processes that you have to go into in order to do certain things. Basically in Zelda, if you don't go where the developers want you to go, you get stuck forever, and this is true especially in the overworld, where you are given the impression that you can do most things while in actualitity there's only one thing at a time that makes you advance.

Yes, most games back then were linear, but Zelda really complicated things too much in order to give the impression it wasn't. It's not that people wanted an open-world Zelda because open-worlds are hip and cool now - it's because the open-world formula solves most of the issues people had with the series.