Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

They are design polar opposites.

Horizon is completely extrinsically designed via the seventh gen marketing first design school.

BOTW is completely intrinsically designed via the design philosophy prior to the seventh gen devolution, but with contemporary... Well, kinda comtemporary technology.

Horizon is the highly polished peak of a tiny mountain.

Botw is the bottom floor foundation reclaimed from under the worst generations toxic wastelands ready at last to finally be built upon. A wrought of solid pureified iron ready to be forged into the steel blade of the next zelda, which will have the intrinsically designed world and interaction of botw, along with the extrinsic aspects of story and dungeon design botw was lacking.

Or it will he a flash in the pan and Nintendo will once again forget what put them on the map.

I have GOT to make one of those dimension sliding doohikies. I'll be damned if Im going to be stuck in the worst dimension for gaming for another decade and a half again.

@TNGYM Those sound like a lot of terms that you just made up. Have you played Horizon to comment, or are you just judging from afar?

What the heck makes dungeons 'extrinsic?' The fact that Nintendo removed them when they had been integral to the games for three decades?

Well you can always google for definitions to words you have never heard before.

Yes, I have played Horizon, but honestly, with extrinsically designed games, you dont need to, what you see is what you get. Intrinsic design... Is trickier. What you see is just something someone else got. You could have used those same tools and systems and gotten something completely different.

Extrinsic is externally designed, in games, dungeons are externally designed because that is simply their point. It is a challenge and test the team created specifically to challenge you on various aspects. This is why the shrines in breath of the wild took away the intrinsic ability to climb anywhere.

Technically any kind of world building or modeling you do is extrinsic design, however, where intrinsic and extrinsic world design diverge, is on whether you then shape that world around the systemic aspects, virtual physics, rules, and abilities the player can utilize to enact their agency in their virtual world, or whether you restrict what the player can do to the world/path/progression you built.

Its the difference between going on an adventure, and an amusement park ride depicting said adventure.

Its not so much what you can do as it is how the dev went about doing it. You can have the same exact mechanic in different games utilize different solutions to accomplish it.

For example both Zelda and Horizon focus heavily on the mechanic of climbing.

In Zelda, climbing is handled intrinsically, in Horizon, extrinsically.

In horizon if you want to climb you have to go up to a wall where it looks like you might be able to climb, if The Devs decided this wall is one you are allowed to climb, a prompt will appear, push the button and you attach to the wall.

In Zelda you just do it. Its intrinsic. However, that was the easy part. The hard part was now they had to design an entire world around the fact the player has the power to climb anywhere. If there is an area they want to keep the player out of via climbing, they had to manually design a way to keep the player out... Or in. For example the great plataue. Not just deny a context sensitive button prompt.

Conversely, Breath of the wilds Zora Armor enables an extrinsically handled ability. You should have an idea now of what using that ability would be like had it been handled intrinsically.

Well, whatever man. I think the words you're looking for are 'systemic' and, well, 'non-systemic.' And even then asserting that one design philosophy is always superior is going to be shortsighted. I've enjoyed the 'amusement park ride' Zeldas much more than this one because they felt infinitely richer, better designed, and handcrafted as opposed to copy paste environments with all the personality of an MMO zone.

So much for one being more 'adventurous' if everything is just recycling the first ten hours.

Well, you can't have intrinsic design without systemic driven mechanics.... But you can have systemic driven mechanics that don't achieve good intrinsic design.

I think you may be picking up on my irritation with western AAAAAAA publishers and the worst generations egregious overuse and abuse of extrinsic design and the near extinction of intrinsic design over the past decade plus as me giving extrinsic design a negative connotation. Extrinsic design is just as important, and has its own irreplaceable place as well.... But it can be, and has been abused and done poorly a lot in the past decade.... Most likely as a response to the ps360's incredibly poor handling of branching code, which is intrinsic designs blood.

The best aspect of Zelda (and metroid) when they first came out was that they were master classes in both intrinsic and extrinsic design of the time, the best of both worlds. They were more flexible and the worlds more persistent than level based games of the time, and more focused and tightly designed than the 'loosey goosey' intrinsic designs of the time. Over time the intrinsic design aspects eroded away. It is much easier faster and cheaper to just go extrinsic.... Especially when production value demands keep ramping up.

I also think your irritation at the change (and all the praise its getting) may be causing you to be overgeneralizing.

There are lots of generated open world games that easily fit into the mold you are describing... Breath of the Wild is not one of them. Like the other two games using the engine its modified off of, and made by the people who designed them, Breath of the wild is clearly 100% hand designed, a modern day anomoly..... And truely intrinsically designed based off of how people reacted to and explored the world. Its so unique you can literally show people like us any decent screen shot, and (if weve been there) we can tell you where it is.

The lack of dungeons and story are unfortunate, but not mutually exclusive to this design path.... They aren't missing because of the way the game is designed... But logistics and time constraints. Now that the foundation is set, bringing those properly into the fold for The next title is inevitable. BOTW is a massive leap in the right fundamental direction... But the true master sword is not yet forged.

At the very least look at it this way. You are this irritated that ONE Zelda game catered to the original audiences design tastes. Now imagine its been twenty years of it happening over and over. We have been waiting a long long time.

@-Green- I forgot to thank you — like, a week ago — for explaining the snow dove for me. So thaaaaank you XD. I went back and it looks really clever. Probably one of Breath of the Wild's best puzzles, and a new type of puzzle for Zelda even.

@TNGYM Before you level assertions at me, perhaps stop looking through rose-tinted glasses toward a certain period of time and condemning an entire generation of games all the time. If you're getting terse responses, then you should think about the way you're using terms foreign to the online gaming space and how well you can convey the nostalgic concepts you're talking about.

And I think you're completely off base to imply Xenoblade and the sequel are in any way unique or handcrafted in the way they make their worlds. The first one at least is nothing but MMO fetch quests combat, and collectathon / crafting elements over and over again. Plus an unremarkable anime. Both those games and Breath of the Wild liberally reuse enemies and environments.

@MasterWario,

I heard that one before, and thought it would not be possible. Would have gotten my arms in a twist though.

@Octane,

I understand it now. Its a bit cumbersome but I tried it and it works. From now on I will use it (if I can remember it)!

Just finished fighting the final boss! Couldn't resist waiting any longer. This is definitely my favourite finale. I was only getting teary.... until I saw Satoru Iwata in the credits and started bawling! XD Also probably my favourite line from the game and maybe the entire series "But courage need not be remembered.... For it is never Forgotten"

The first 4 shrines you encounter in your exploration of Hyrule on the Great Plateau all pay homage to the power of the Triforce. The monks encountered at the end of the shrines are holding their hands in such a way that combined, they reference the most powerful object in the Zelda universe.

I love some of the old time-y writing in this game (it's only in the cutscenes, not in written dialogue), but the best lines in Zelda will always be Ganondorf's death lines.

"The wind... it is blowing..."

"The history of light and shadow will be written in blood!"

Ride or die.

@Haru17 Its...pretty obvious.

Also what Kass plot did they drop?

There is nothing I can do for you if you refuse to acknowledge accepted terms of fundamental design concepts. You could try learning, you do have a lot of information available at the behest of very little effort. There are several excerpts of interviews from aunoma chronicling how the new kids at monolithsoft showed him how he had been systematically removing the core aspects so many people enjoyed. It would be much more effective than resorting to the mental refuge of tired nonsensical tropes like 'nostolgia goggles'. There are users on this very forum whom the reintroduction of intrinsic design is already a recognized difference, and are coining their own terms to express these fundamental concepts.... Many reviewers think its something NEW and are praising this 'new change' endlessly! Its not a nostalgia thing. Mechanics can grow obsolete, graphics can age, design does not. Thats like saying sound is old and shouldnt be used to make music anymore.

Besides, how would nostalgia goggles even apply? The changes in the industry im talking about JUST HAPPENED last gen. If you are trying to insinuate i have a soft spot for the games that where out when i was a kid, then i can elucidate you on the giant pile of garbage that was the first and second gen. You guys are lucky our generation knew how to say NO to publishers.

Xenoblade and XcX ARE incredibly unique and handcrafted in the way they make their worlds I get the feeling you know this and are just refusing to let go... Because you then switch to a completely different unrelated subject from designing the world to extrinsic aspects like rpg combat, collectathons and quest design.

But i will show the difference anyways.

With pretty much every open world game since the seventh gen, the worlds are auto generated by computers. The methods vary slightly, but generally you have a 'seed' a psuedo random number, which is then used as the formula basis, and then from that fractals are extrapolated out until you have a large mesh that may resemble a land mass. This process is repeated over and over again, until the computer generates several interesting maps, and then one is chosen from those. Assets are dropped on top of the map, and its textured and decorated. Bethseda is a little different, as they generate a 2d map, and then use it as a height map to extropolate the land mass. Both these methods and any similar methods used to make realistic open worlds... Are completely incapable of the layered vertical design used heavily throughout zenoblade, xcx, and botw. The generated methods just cant do it. They would have to be hand modeled, and western AAAAAAA aint got time for none of that. Thats why 'modern' open world games like skyrim, the witcher 3, and horizon, are all very 2d in design compared to the xenoblades or botw. Thats how they were created. The only generated games that defies this is minecraft... And well, Dwarf Fortress of course.

Xenoblades terrain along with xcx and botw... IS modelled by hand, from the ground up. No auto generated scapes.

Its why in all 3 games, the scene composition is perfect from pretty much anywhere you can find yourself. Pan the camera any which way and you have a vista full of interesting land marks you can actually go to or just came from. Extrinsic computer generated scapes cant do that. Only intrinsic design can do that.

This is why these 3 games in particular have so much praise leveled at them for the simple act of exploring the world itself being rewarding.

Your complaints, stem not from world design, but from extrinsic design systems put on top of them. It seems you arent a huge fan of poorly done overbearing extrinsic design tropes either. The combat, collecting loot to unlock progress, fetch quests. All extrinsic design aspects. XcX got hit REALLY hard with that stick. Had this wonderful hand made world that then had progression design completely slaved to the extrinsic mission structure. Oh did you find this really cool area with a peice of the much coveted life hold? Well you better forget about for the next 20 hours until you are a high enough level to sign on for the mission that involves that area, then well pretend you never saw it before!

XcX has that problem throughout the entire game, as its world design was intrinsically designed around the players ability to traverse the world and explore using the powerful traversal tools supplied.... But its progression design is completely extrinsic and slaved to the level based mission system. Which resulted in an entire game of akward frusteration, where players motivated by exploration would find cool things they couldnt do until they signed up for the specific mission that extrinsically 'activated' the event.

To those who already beat the Qua Raym Shrine: How did you do it? I found a different way: I built my own stairs, basically.

I found this shrine a while ago and, although I was on the right track, I couldn't find the solution.
Yesterday I desperately needed a few spirit orbs to get my 13th heart and I went back to that shrine. I was impatient and wanted to do it with a walkthrough but due to a glitch, the balance scale got stuck under the spikes. I noticed the breakable wall though and destroyed it with a bomb.
Then I used those three metal cubes to build stairs, but Link can't climb them that way. So in front of each step, I put one of the barrels (upward). Now Link can actually just run up to the barrels and climb up the cubes and up to Qua Raym (you don't need a barrel for the last step).

Now for something I just discovered on youtube. Just a quick warning though: this gives you an advantage equipmentwise. It doesn't break the game or anything, it just frees you of constantly looking for an item that you use all the time. It reminds me of the 99 Lives tricks in Mario Galaxy 2 and NSMB which were obviously put there intentionally. But in this case I'm not sure it was intended by the developers:
This is how you get 999 arrows:www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8UiBbDE7Lg This works even without using Revali's Gale. Just move the camera so that it creates a top-down perspective. After a second or so, Link will go into that invulnerable stance, everything else works just as described in the video.

Woah... I just found out something even more fascinating on that guy's channel. You've probably heard of or seen the BotW NPC that resembles Satoru Iwata. Well guess what, there's a lot more to the story! The tribute to Iwata-san goes actually way deeper:www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlaapqiKTUs

Wow, that's cool, I didn't know that!

I was just about to watch a BotW video on youtube about the exact same character. ^^

@TNGYM Without knowing Horizon Dawn, I enjoyed reading your essay about game design. The difference between intrinsic and extrinsic game design concurs with what I had felt all the time, but couldn't put into words exactly. I wish there was a like button in the forums.

Well I played all 3D Zelda's too and while I more or less loved all of them, I could never say that they're 'richer, better designed' than BotW. It never felt repetitive.
BotW is just as handcraftet as it's predecessors, only on an unbelievably bigger scale. For example, every inch of every mountain is handcrafted. They never look the same and although they almost seem vertically endless - I've never seen a game with such verticality, e.g. I enjoyed climbing mountains in Cry 3 and 4but now they look almost tiny in comparison - every part of them is manually designed in a way that you can climb them up in any way you want.

It's evident if you look closer. There's so much passion, care and personality in these little things, that's what makes this game so great. Not only is the world truly living and interacting with itself, there are no limits, you have complete freedom. I enjoyed exploring open worlds and observing the wild life/city population in other open world games like in the GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry and Watch_Dogs series, but it always bothered me that there were unreachable places that I couldn't go and things I couldn't do.
Well, not with this game. In BotW, with the right combination of objects, you can do anything, even fly.

Almost got 20 shrines left, might also only have 2 weapon slots left to unlock, the quest goes on.

My favorite shrines are the gyroscope ones. Oh and this one I just did with moving an ice block to the end

@Tsurii Dragon Roost Island theme in Rito Village is neat too.

There's a shrine that requires the blood moon and of course I go from having two in a row to having none for the past 2 hours. I even went out and murdered a bunch of enemies.