Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

I'm not a diehard "taditional" Zelda fan and I loved BotW, but I don't like that this game is kind of a top down version of TotK..
What's wrong with having some classic Zelda games sprinkled in between modern Zelda releases?
I mean Metroid Dread did pretty well for the numbers this franchise usually does, and that game didn't have to change that drastically.
Nothing is set in stone, but I get the feeling we won't see new original (non remakes) traditional Zeldas anymore, for a long time. Even for top down Zelda. And that makes me kind of sad.

Please don't get me wrong. Video games are art and art is subjective. Everyone has their own tastes. I just personally don't like the TotK approach Zelda is heading.

@Budda I don't personally mind. I understand why others would be, but in my opinion, they've earned the right to keep experimenting with the series for now. Nintendo's made enough Zeldas of a a specific type for so long that I don't blame them for wanting to do something different.

@N00BiSH i get it. I think it'll be on a much smaller scale here, so in turn, more manageable( I hope). Either way, super excited for next month.

@N00BiSH
I just think TotK was an unnecessary game. I was just too disappointed by it. A version of BotW, just packed full of unnecessary things.
And they continue that trend with this game. Though it looks more creative.

I don't know if I sound harsh. If so, that was not my intention.

I think the game looks really cool and feels like the logical direction after the 2000s handheld games kept taking characters from 3D Zelda.

But I do agree that the worst part of the game is that the last traditional 2D Zelda was a remake 5 years ago and before that a new game more than a decade ago. I don't know why Nintendo or most devs for that matter wouldn't want to just keep creating games in the traditional Zelda style over anything else.

I'm glad they don't want to go back to the days when the series was living perpetually in the shadow of the N64 era, gradually diminishing in power as a modern cultural force, every entry feeling somehow worse than the last.

Breath of the Wild was a glorious escape from more than a decade of arrested creative development on the Zelda team's part, and it's pretty evident they're not yearning to go back to an increasingly played out formula.

Even as an N64 fan, this is blatantly untrue. Going from controlling Wind Waker and Twilight Princess over the N64 games (or worse, most other 3D games of that era) was the best part of those games (and arguably that entire generation by comparison to the last). They obviously felt better.

Also making every Zelda like BOTW is eventually just the same problem but worse because those games have infinitely more content. Literally my time with TOTK probably beats a 100% run of the first five 3D Zeldas combined, and I've yet to even do every shrine.

Don't make arguments that make the people most defensive of BOTW's innovations actively argue against it.

@Ralizah bit of a pointed take there. As regressive as it would be to disregard everything BotW/TotK established and return to the norm, it'd be even more regressive to disregard everything that came before.

@kkslider5552000 The series was becoming incredibly iterative in terms of world design, dungeon design, puzzle design, game progression, etc. It's not like that's some weird fringe opinion. People still enjoyed new Zelda games, but the series was absolutely living in the shadow of a game it couldn't seem to live up to and bucking the potential to evolve alongside new advancements in technological power, which the series had done until the GameCube era, frankly.

Plenty of Nintendo fandoms have a fringe minority of aging enthusiasts who want to play the same game with minor variations forever and ever every few years, but it's reasonable to expect that the developers, and most players, frankly, will get tired of that and want to use modern console tech to explore new boundaries that were impossible for the series before. And we're seeing that now. Even as iterative as TotK is in some respects, it was made primarily because it allowed the devs to explore things that weren't possible with the Wii U.

The possibility is absolutely there for the Zelda devs to fall into a new trap where they keep trying and failing to re-create the wonder of BotW, but I like to think they'll instead choose to keep reveling in their freedom from a rote formula, and I do think we're seeing that. TotK may be BotW+, but the "+" is stuff that actively pushes the potential of the Switch hardware and not just a variation on what came before. EoW seems to be playing heavily with the design of the 2D games and taking inspiration from a number of previous entries in the process.

Anyway, I'm not going to not make an argument just because it elicits a knee-jerk defensive reaction from some people, lol.

@N00BiSH Absolutely. I'm not saying they should completely disregard all aspects of the older 3D games. I think that'd be silly.

Considering public statements from the developers, general regard for these newer games, etc. I just think it's a bit wacky to say that they should return to the older formula. Why actively regress instead of continuing to evolve, especially when there's no desire for that to happen from almost any relevant corner?

The more footage I see of this game, the more excited I get. I like how they're trying to integrate some of BotW/TotK's freedom into the 2D entries, albeit on a smaller (and less of an open world) scale.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy open world games. The problem is, I get sidetracked VERY easily in such environments since I want to experience, not just finish. More games seem to be trending this way though, which means I probably spend way more time with one than I should before moving to another.

I like what I'm seeing so far, and I think a fusion between TotK and 2D Zelda in this way could work- but I also don't really like that TotK is the foundation for the future of this series. Not a fan of the Sandbox approach that these games have. Miss having actual structured stories in Zelda.

@Ralizah I don't want to play the same game over and over- but I don't like the direction Tears of the Kingdom and BotW take the series. There's a massive difference between a game with linear scope and story-telling and a game that's fully open to the point where you literally struggle to tell a story because it has to be left for people to do anything and everything they want in any order they so choose.

The devs for this series genuinely don't see that there's a middleground that would make most people happy- and instead have chosen to make Zelda into a sandbox game franchise. Something which got old with Tears of the Kingdom itself. Doesn't help that they didn't even fully commit to the sandbox approach either. You still have to grind for resources, there's still a story despite it being poorly written and told. At that point they shouldn't even bother with stories in Zelda titles anymore. Especially if they're going to play the same exact cutscene multiple times for no reason.

@VoidofLight I'm hoping Echoes of Wisdom is at least somewhat linear... it looks like there are lots of side quests but I don't mind that as long as the story and forward momentum doesn't get lost in the mix.

@FishyS I hope it at least takes more from A Link Between Worlds- where the story is more linear in terms of it's events, whilst letting you do dungeons in any order.

Finding a middle ground isn't exactly as straightforward as putting dungeons in an open world, as TotK has clearly shown. It's pretty obvious the experiment to find that halfway point(without leaning too much into a specific direction) is going to take a while. And even if they did meet halfway, there's no real evidence that everyone would immediately be satisfied.

Either way, it doesn't seem like EoW is going to be AS open as Breath and Tears were. The trailer shows some areas that are clearly blocked off by whatever it is that's going on in the plot.

@N00BiSH The middleground is having a linear story in an open world. Technically allowing players to go anywhere, but still having a story that effectively has to be done within a specific order. Other games do exactly this, and they thrive with it. It's just the Zelda team believes in either having an ultra linear story, or having a story that barely exists at all.

Edit: Also yeah, looking at the trailer it seems like Echoes of Wisdom might end up being a good middleground game, where it looks like things aren't fully open.

@VoidofLight While I thought the method of storytelling in BotW was the perfect match for that game, I'd agree it wasn't a great fit for TotK.

BotW is all about finding yourself and uncovering the mystery of your past in the devastation of the present. Recovering memories from key places in your life made perfect sense, and integrated well with the design of the game. Whereas TotK involves you finding memories that aren't even yours, so it's not as intimate or interesting, and just ends up forcing you to experience someone else's story out of order.

I'm excited to see what they do with a new iteration of the series that isn't saddled with the baggage of being a follow-up to Breath of the Wild.

@Ralizah I know your comment was narrative-wise, but do you feel the same gameplay-wise and can elaborate without heavy spoilers? I’m quite enjoying botw, but I can’t know for sure if it’s a game I can play twice >.> (at least that’s the vibe some of my friends’ comments on totk give me)

Gorons!

@Yousef- TotK does a lot to distinguish itself from BotW in terms of content density and mechanics in terms of the open world-ing. Without spoilers, there's a LOT more to explore and do, a heavy emphasis on resource collecting, and the vehicle building stuff people were doing in BotW has been fully and officially integrated into the game, which has changed up game progression pretty dramatically. And even with the same above-ground map, major settlements have been changed up pretty drastically.

The look and feel of it are almost identical to BotW, though, for better or worse.

It's a ludicrously huge, ambitious, incredibly impressive game that seems to go about as far as you can possibly imagine in the sandbox game design direction. But, I will warn you: the game can and will burn you out if you get too lost in its side content.

I don't really see where they can go from this point on without dramatically scaling back the scope of the next game.