Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

They got them from the same place the white walkers got the massive chains.
It's where Obi-Wan went to forget about owning any droids.

He never owned the droids.

Alrightey, finally finished the game. These are my thoughts, which people have no doubt been waiting anxiously for (brief spoilers, obviously). Sorry for the length, but then I guess this thread has slowed down in terms of activity. Happy to hear any counterpoints:

Positives

-Brilliantly designed beautiful world with so much variety of locations.
-Except for Goron City, the rest of the towns were some of the best in any Zelda game. This Goron City was awful compared to the cool one in Ocarina.
-Best fighting mechanics in any Zelda game, easily.
-The puzzle variety and quality was incredible. In the shrines and on the overworld. Big environmental puzzles on the overworld were one of the highlights of the game.
-Almost no poorly designed or written characters. All were interesting and distinct. The 4 champions especially I liked a lot. And Prince Sidon of course.
-The 4 divine beasts are easily 4 of my all time best Zelda dungeons. I love the setting of being part of a giant beast where you can see the rest of the world in the background (camel and bird especially). The length of them was just perfect for me. I can't be doing with Twilight Princess length dungeons. And I like dungeons where the whole thing is just 1 continuous puzzle rather than just a series of random rooms in a row.
-I love the shrines. Dividing the total number of puzzles up into smaller chunks than in regular Zelda is a big improvement in my opinion.
-Hyrule castle shocked me with how good it was. That's the definitive example of how to do an open-world dungeon.
-There's something meaningful about the broader world layout. It's designed so you can see Hyrule castle from so many points, building an increasing sense of tension for the upcoming confrotation. And then the completed dungeons become permanent landmarks on the map, reminding you that you're getting closer to being ready for that confrontation and you feel less capable ignoring it. Zelda dungeons have never felt like they have such story importance as this. You normally just fetch a macguffin and then the dungeon effectively deletes itself from existence.

Negatives

-Needed a LOT more story. The story stops it feeling as epic as the gameplay and setting suggest it should be. I really wanted a narrative on the scale of something like Xenoblade Chronicles for a game this big. In terms of the narrative, Twilight Princess feels more epic a game than this, which it shouldn't.
-As with lots of Zelda games, so little incentive to 100% the game, or even get close to that. Once you've got the Master Sword, there's no real incentive to keep looking for shrines. Needed 1 more goal to aim for in terms of shrines completed. Same with Korok seeds. Collecting only about half of them is enough. No reason to bother with more.
-Almost none of the bosses are memorable. Maybe the first stage of Ganon. That's about it. I couldn't even tell you what the moves of the first Blight boss I fought had been.
-Needed a lot more voice acting. What was the point of even bothering for such a small amount?
-Maybe an ending longer than 2 minutes? C'mon, FF9 had like a 20 minute ending.

Overall
Incredibly close to being a perfect game for me. Mostly just the story issue holds it back. More story could also have fixed the problem of a lack of incentive beyond a certain point, as you tie the story up into that completion rate. I think what they should've done is have a new memory unlock every time you do 10 shrines (12 memories=120 shrines). And then if those memories were significantly longer, it'd be a good incentive to push towards completionism.
Those issues aside, the game is just so good in its gameplay, puzzles and world design, that it's way up the top of the list of Zelda games for me. I think it's probably 2nd behind Ocarina. There are just so many moments of magic in this that I think I'll remember for years to come. What this game does that seems almost unique is it makes really cool gameplay mechanics be more memorable because you used them to interact with a memorable location in a world you feel invested in.

@Dezzy Nice write up. I agree with most of your positives.

On the story side, I think they got it about right. I've only played a handful of Zelda games, but from what I've seen and heard, Zelda games never have a 'deep' story, each game is just a re-imagining of a very simple 'defeat the evil' plot, so they'd have to change something pretty fundamental to give BotW a deeper story. Personally, I don't want 20 minute cut-scenes in my games, so the ending, and the memories, felt just right to me.

It felt a bit of a let down that there wasn't a proper showdown with Ganon i.e. I don't think Ganon gets any dialogue. I'd have liked a more human-scale representation of Ganon to fight after the light arrows section, and for Ganon to let rip verbally.

As a 'game' I loved it. As a 'Zelda game'... my only reservation is that I'm used to Link being armed with a fairly primitive toolset - e.g. boomerang, hookshot etc., so while the sci-fant Sheikah tech was a fun innovation, it doesn't 100% feel right to me in a Zelda game.

@gcunit

They never have a particularly heavy story, no. But most of the other 3D zelda games have at least as much story as this did. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword probably had a bit more.

I would've liked for it to at least increase alongside the size of the overall game. There's about 100 hours of potential gameplay here for a completionist. Whereas Twilight Princess only has about 50 hours for a completionist, yet the same amount of story.

The memory idea I suggested would've worked well though because the story would be optional.

@Dezzy Yeah, the lack of continual story was my only gripe as well. I agree with @gcunit that an in depth story has never really been the Zelda thing, but I think that with a game this size, that takes this many hours to complete, you just need more reminders of the story you're involved in. I mean you can just explore for hours without having any conversations beyond getting hit on by.....everyone, haha.

They have so much more than a good base to build on for future games. I'm excited to see what they do.

It's the BOTW problem. The game is bigger than any other Zelda game, but has the smallest enemy variety for example. Least amount of bosses. And all of that in the biggest Zelda game, makes everything look very empty and repetitive. I think the world could've been a fourth of the size it currently is, and it would still be bigger than other Zelda games. I don't mind a huge world, but there needs to be enough variety to keep in interesting.

@Octane

Yep. The only aspect of the game that actually matches the size of the map is the number and variety of puzzles.

Spot on, my only gripe with the game is that, got really tired of seeing the same enemies over and over.
Yiga Clan Members are also rather lame, I wish they delved more into them as well, instead of a small portion of the story.

This was exactly my beef with Wind Waker. At least BotW has an adventure log.

@Dezzy Yeah, there was variety, but without any actual dungeons, most shrines were nothing more than a simple puzzle, lacking depth. That was a bit of shame IMO. They couldn't build upon other puzzles, since you can do them in any order, so every shrine needed to be its own contained thing. There were a few that introduced a concept and build upon that, but most were just simple one-offs, plenty of ''reward'' and combat shrines too, nearly half of them.

It feels as if they put more resources into the size of the world than the actual content, that's why I wouldn't mind a more traditional Zelda as their next game.

@Octane I got to be honest. I agree that I would like a more traditional Zelda game next time around. I mean, I'd love it if they kinda did a middle ground game, maybe a world that's not quite as big but still very explorable as well as "gating" some parts off until you reach a certain story point, etc. I really just think the most logical area for Zelda to grow in the franchise is the story. They have something truly great here.

I remember being in awe of the size of the map when I first reached Kakariko and Hateno and began to realize how much more I had to discover, but now that I've covered most of the perimeter, it doesn't feel too big to me, and this is coming from someone who's only used fast travel once in about 110 hours. I'd have no qualms about them going bigger next time. Though what I'd prefer them to do is use the verticality more by having a whole layer of the map that is subterranean - I want underground tunnels and dungeons etc.

Lol you want it bigger? I'd rather have another game this decade.

I'd prefer the next Zelda game to be a mix of the new style and traditional style. Bring back traditional dungeons, make the story better, and add some linearity to improve the story and experience. In other words, a middle ground between BotW complete freedom and traditional Zelda games.

I really want them to make Zelda Galaxy at some point. A Zelda set in space using the planet physics of Mario Galaxy but with the game structure of Zelda. It really could work. The explorable world map equivalent could be big planets and then the dungeons are smaller ones that you shoot up to in a rocket or whatever.
I just think the gravity physics could combine really well with the Zelda tools like sail cloth, hookshot, etc

I wouldn't be surprised if they make another 2D one for the 3DS and then a 3D one for the Switch.

@MegaTen I don't want 2D Zelda games, give me another one like OOT, WW, or TP.

Seems almost impossible they'd just return to the standard formula after this.

@MegaTen Well, the thing is that I don't think BOTW is bigger in scope per se. Yes, the world map is bigger, but the rest is kinda lacking, and it feels like they made the world too big, at least for the amount of content that was in the game. As if there was a compromise between content and map size, and they chose the latter.

And I don't think the return of key items, proper dungeons and unique boss designs is a step back from the BOTW formula at all.