Random: Zelda: TOTK Meets Super Mario 64 In Latest Ridiculous Ultrahand Creation

I am still baffled how this TOTK didn't win game of the year. Maybe it's because I am a Nintendo fan but after the Awards I barely heard of Baldur's Gate III while I keep seeing amazing things people do in the world of Zelda TOTK. The engine behind this game is incredible and I believe people will look back at this game and think that it should have won.

@Macnemo79 i agree with you. I think a large part of the reason baldurs gate iii won is that it’s a more ‘fan made’ game, where it was in beta for years and they implemented most feedback they’ve gotten from the community.

Also, it was a ps5 exclusive for a while and thus it’ll usually receive more media attention from more mainstream media.

Super impressed. Here we goooooooo

@Macnemo79 I mean, it just sounds like you were trapped inside a Nintendo bubble. BG3 was (and still is) absolutely HUGE. You should definitely play it someday, if you ever get the chance — fingers crossed for a Switch 2 port!

@Kestrel haha, definitely but I wouldn't want to be trapped by anybody else. I honestly didn't play BG3. It is not my kind of game. I watched some video and a lot of the memes that came out. I understand the appeal though. I was just expressing an opinion on how amazing the engine behind TOTK is and how, in my opinion, it should have won because of it.

@Olliemar28 Count me as someone who absolutely didn't love it. A clunky mess of a game, with amateurish writing, middling combat, a tedious plot, irritating characters, frustrating UI and a complete lack of understanding of how difficulty progression is meant to work, all drenched from top to bottom in ridiculous bugs. It has its charms, and we had a reasonable amount of fun with it, but yeah, I think the people praising it mostly just haven't played better games like Dragon Age.

I almost didn't click on this article, thinking "here we go, another TotK whatever ... ". It's actually super cool. I can't tell what the body is made off though, looks like a piece from those depths' pedestals where the parts are laying, but I wouldn't imagine you can actually use them.

@Macnemo79 I agree. Baldur's Gate was the most overrated game I've played in a long time. I agree with RygelVIII too, in that it seems clear it was a lot of people's first CRPG. I think anyone like me, that grew up in the 90s and played tons of CRPGs from the Ultimas to the early Fallouts to Planescape: Torment and Arcanum, wasn't as easily impressed.

I'll get flak for this, but for my money Starfield was a much better game than BG3 as well.

TOTK and Starfield were the best games of 2023, not Baldur's Gate 3.

@Macnemo79 A few things.

• Baldur's Gate 3 was the dark horse competitor from a much less prominent developer.
• It's at least as highly critically acclaimed as TotK was
• TotK was an iterative sequel, so plenty of people already felt a little fatigue regarding the formula.
• TotK's storytelling was... not great, the dungeons weren't really any better than in BotW, and as cool as Ultrahand is from a tech/dev perspective, it's very fiddly and turns the game into more of a resource management sim/physics sandbox. Its predecessor had these elements in the background, making the open world feel more real and engaging, but it became almost the exclusive focus of TotK.
• BG3 brought prestige and mainstream attention to a formerly extremely niche game genre.

This both why I love AND hate TOTK.

It has such amazing and versatile tools - that the game relies too heavily on for fun.

Having played again recently Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts I can certainly conclude that TotK was such a terrible game that destroyed what Zelda was. I don’t know why you people enjoy building ships and cars in two games that were not meant for that, destroying its essence and core in exchange for these invasive mechanics. Anything could have won in 2023 as long as it wasn’t TotK just so Nintendo wouldn’t get the wrong idea and continue destroying Zelda further more.
I’ll be cautious this time and wait for Zelda fans’ reviews with the new game, I won’t fall again with my Zelda addiction this time. Stop turning games into creativity sandboxes, it’s the cheapest excuse for “we didn’t know what to do anymore design wise, so we left it to the player”

It’s weird that every single long time Zelda fan that I have a Zelda conversation with, a year later, totally loathes and despises TotK or they are just indifferent towards it and prefer other entries.

@Ralizah
I understand and it’s true when you say people felt a little fatigue. At first I was overwhelmed. There was so much do. Having previously 100% botw I got really anxious about doing it again with a bigger game. I had fun though. I didn’t mind much the new dungeons. They were better than botw. Maybe not quite there yet but definitely better. Also it’s very difficult to build dungeons when it’s an open world as you have to be flexible with the challenges because the user could be at any point in the game.
I didn’t play BG3 and I can’t really express my opinion on it. The last thing I would say is that BG3 was full of bugs when they won while nobody was reporting anything wrong on TOTK.

@Yoshi3 It's better than Breath Of The Wild at least. I don't love Tears(I played it, don't own it) but at least it feels finished. Breath Of The Wild is a massive snooze fest. I'll probably buy the new 2D Zelda though since I just like 2D Zelda way more than 3D Zelda.

@Ralizah Exceptionally well put.

Games, err… ’exist in the context of all in which they live (?) and what came before them’. They are ultimately remembered for their impact — both on individuals and the industry as a whole.

The superlatives surrounding BotW basically wrote themselves (’legendary’, ‘a breath of fresh air’, etc.). Not everyone loved it, but it left an undeniable mark on the gaming landscape.

Tears was never going to match that, no matter how neat the crafting mechanics. It also happened to launch in the same year as a game that, much like Breath, shifted expectations for what was possible in its genre.

TotK was clearly a labour of love and has a lot of fine features. But it doesn’t surprise me that it didn’t top nearly as ‘Game of the Year’ lists as its predecessor.

@Olliemar28 TFW I thought Baldur's Gate III was too cringey to get more than a couple hours in.