Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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Theres a multitude of places its coming from. Most of it atems from the same source. Pavlovic conditioning and learned helplessness at the hands of overbearing pr and marketing of the worst generation, ie 'Gamerbrain'. I will talk about the two main groups i usually see.

1. Assumptions and fall through logic. Most of the people making the empty claims havent even played breath of the wild. They are simply judging off the ridiculous notion that Zelda is 'open world now'. In general they dislike modern open world games, and with pretty good reason. The ubisoft design permeates the industry, as its the cheapest fastest way to crap out games yearly on an assembly line. The marketing is so strong, that even people who dont LIKE that kind of open world design actually believe the absurd narrative that its the ONLY kind of open world game. That if a game is open world it HAS to sacrifice content density for size...

And so thats as far as they think. Open world=empty zeldas open world now therefore breath of the wild is empty. Never mind the fact zelda has ALWAYS been open world. Facts dont matter.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum, those who just cant comprehend not being constantly told what to do. They've been conditioned to desire it. To these people if they arent told to do it, and therefore they didnt see it, it doesnt exist. They have been so conditioned to obey the insipid garbage rules instilled by worst generation design, that even when they are no longer confined, when they are no longer forced to do the one specific thing in the one specific way... They still play that way.

Both these groups have neither understanding nor concept of context or nuance. They will compare two completely different things as 'the same' because of a cosmetic similarity. For example, they will tell you wall jumping in mario 64, where you actually wall jump with your own skills within the rules and physics in the game, is EXACTLY the same thing as a context sensitive event where you stand in front of a wall until a flashing 'push A' prompt appears, and then, all by itself, the character performs a cinematic flashy wall jump animation.

They will argue forever that those things and similar situations are exactly the same. I used to think they being purposefully obtuse. There was simply no way anyone could be so stupid and incapable of basic formative concepts. But recent events have made me realize that I was wrong.

They arent playing dumb so they dont have to admit they were wrong or their argument poor. They just really are that stupid. And you cant fix stupid.

There is a gigantic distinction to be made here. There are areas where breath of the wild is EXTRINSICALLY empty, bit it is never, ever, EVER intrinsically empty.

Skyrim, or really the elder scrolls and all modern open world games since the seventh gen, are ALL almost completely intrinsically empty, they generate a map, and vomit the little event flags over the top of the generated world. If you dont activate the event, it doesnt exist in the world. We called it key jingle design before the seventh gen, and it was generally mocked quite thouroghly. It was like making music without rests. Pure cacophony. Design noise. You activate your event, and you follow the arrow on your map, which will take you the only there is to go, and you do the thing that is exactly the same as the last 20 things you just did, but with a different cutscene and explanation attached to it.

Even in areas without an extrinsic area or event in zelda, your bucket is overflowing with intrinsic options. There is wildlife and fauna constantly underfoot. Do you go hunting and gathering to replenish your ingredient supply? Do you start a fire to roast some of your spoils for immediate use? Do you cut down a tree and see if you can nail that group of bokoblins a mile away for giggles? Oh, it started raining and the land is flooding... Do you start using cryonis to star flipping over old broken gaurdiens for easy extra ancient loot? Oh, someone is running up to a nearby overhang to get out of the rain. Do you barter with them? They give better deals in poor weather, you can make a nice profit off the extra spoils you just hunted.

The rain has stopped and they set off again. Do you follow them, they always go somewhere, might be a place you didnt know about, and stuff always happens to them on the way.

You look around, because unlike in extrinsically focused games, thats actually part of the gameplay in this zelda. And see four points of interest. And about half a dozen ways to get to each one.

You pick the downhill one, and start sheild surfing, and find out this 'large empty space' was actually specifically designed to be a rad sheildboarding run, that puts 1080 to shame.

You find throughout the subsequent hours of the game that you actually completed about half a dozen sidequests during your time through the empty field, as impressed npc's around the world instantly hand over their rewards. In zelda you dont need to extrinsically activate quests to do things, they always intrinsically exist and can be done. The npc's extrinsic quest giving system is just there as a way to let you know they exist.

The game is never empty, and yet you have plenty of room between extrinsic events and areas to build tension and make them rare enough thet actually have some value upon discovery. Thats the strength of intrinsic design.