BotW is one of my favorite games, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend it did something revolutionary.

No game did all of what Mario did before Mario did it, and Mario popularized what it did and set an industry standard.

Halo set an industry standard with its regenerating shields.

Doom wasn't groundbreaking, it was incredibly popular and well made.

BotW set no standards. It made no revolutions in gameplay. It was simply Nintendo trying their hand at a nonlinear open world game and doing a magnificent job.

WiiSports

That game set the world on fire. Whether the game was good, changed the industry or anything, doesn't matter. The game was huge and on everyones minds/mouths and played by everyone of all ages, sexes and races.

As far as I am concerned only two games were truly revolutionary; Super Mario Bros and Mario 64.  Everything has been evolutionary.  So for me framing BotW as revolutionary is moving goal posts.  The conversation was about what BotW brought to the table in terms of new ideas, and it brought a number of them.  Really it is that simple.  

Halo Shield was an improvement to gaming, evolution.

Mario 64 via 3D and analog controls changed the way games were played, revolution

I just noticed this. Soul Caliber should be in the poll for sure. Didn't know Panzer Dragoon was a launch title. 

Several years ago, everybody loved Uncharted 2 and for good reason. It was a really enjoyable, tight, beautiful and cinematic experience. But some of those people started to go too far. They started praising it because "No other game blended gameplay and cinematics like this". They even praised the platforming. You couldn't tell them otherwise because they loved the game and thus it had to be the best in every categy. It was a masterpiece.

That's how I think people feel about BotW right now. As a total package, it's an unbeatable experience. It's the sum of several well polished parts--but almost all of those parts can be found in other games. Climbing, exploring, levitating, cooking food, gliding through the air, etc. From Just Cause to Red Dead to Psi Ops to Dragon's Dogma, everything probably came from somewhere else. And that's okay. It doesn't detract from the game as a whole.

There was a time when I was so far up Gears of War's butthole that you couldn't convince me that it wasn't innovative, even when you showed a video of Kill.Switch. I'd say "Yeah, but it didn't have a little mini game when you reloaded!" It took years... YEARS to admit that it didn't have to be the first cover based shooter or that Gears 2 didn't have the first "Horde Mode".

And that didn't hamper my enjoyment of the series one bit.

BotW is destined to be a timeless classic. It's a hell of a launch game for the Switch and a hell of a conclusion to the Wii U. It may be the best game on either console to this day and some may think it's the best launch game ever. It's all opinions. But at 40+ years old and with 3+ decades of gaming under my belt, I have a hard time thinking of things BotW did that doesn't exist in some other game I've played.

This is all that really needs to be said though. It's not about whether each individual part was brand new tech or not. It's about the fact that the total package felt revolutionary. Super Mario 64 wasn't the first 3D game or even the first 3D platformer. It's still revolutionary though. The total package is what the gaming community points to as the moment that we all understood what a 3D platformer could be. Even Super Mario World, which did much less in the way of new things, ultimately, still felt revolutionary because it just defined the moment where the 4th gen showed what video games could be, that they couldn't before. The total package was just something on another level. The same goes with Uncharted 2 and cinematic experiences. It defined a new era for Sony where it moved beyond competing with Nintendo over mascots and to the cinematic storytelling it's more known for now (yes that started a lot sooner, but this acted as a defining moment for the zeitgeist). Gears of War did that too, for cover shooters and the shooter genre in general. Kill Switch just...didn't, come on man. Who cares if the mechanics are similar?

It's not about being the literal first to have a particular piece of tech, a particular innovation, etc. It's about being the first time the total package really got through to the gaming community as a whole. These revolutionary games are the moments we as a community remember as THE moments where it felt like it had finally happened. Where we got it, that THIS was something gaming could do now, and it could do it really fucking well, and it was fucking awesome. Those games then go on to set the example for whatever that thing was, for the rest of gaming, at least until something made that obsolete, if it ever did. To suggest that because you can't pin down one precise mechanic to point at, that these games hold no significance beyond that we all thought they were really fun, that is disingenuous and does a disservice to the games and gaming history. What you've essentially suggested with that last post is that games can't really be revolutionary because if you break them down enough, you can reduce a game to elements that have been seen somewhere else. And that's just silly, and we all know that. I think you know that too.

Whether or not something was revolutionary or groundbreaking was literally the basis for the back-and-forth between Curl and myself. If you're going to involve yourself, the least you could do is know where the goalposts were set before you accuse them of being moved.

Lols are cheap, point to an industry standard set by BotW.

But that's the thing. Throughout this thread, people have minimized other games like Okami to build up Zelda. And one person said BotW was revolutionary because it was the first game of its kind on a portable console. I personally feel like that's less of an accomplishment of the game and more of an accomplishment of the console.

Again, I love BotW so I'm not going to attack it. I loved GTA3 back in 2001 and it was another game that did a lot of things that other games did but it brought them all into one nice little package. BoTW follows that pattern and updates the series for a new generation. Great game. Great launch game. If the PS2 launched with GTA3, I'd say the same thing about it.

And, the entire point of my last post: A game can still be great without being revolutionary. BotW is great. It's not revolutionary and it never needed to be. I'm just wondering why YOU seem to need it to be?

I involved myself when you ignorantly claimed BotW didn't have a physics engine, and proceeded to be even more ridiculous with an Okami comparison.  I never made the claim nor backed the claim that BotW was revolutionary.  I simply corrected your false assertions.  Before responding with snarky attitude, you might want to work on that reading comprehension.  

One more thing: Hindsight is 20/20 and we can appreciate how great SMW is and was but in 1991 a lot of people saw it as a step down from SMB3. Less power ups, secrets, variety, etc. Even worse, a lot of gamers and gaming media gave GotY to Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic.

The.

Fucking.

Hedgehog.

Even with the GBA Super Mario Advance series, SMW came out before SMB3 as if the third game were the bigger/better title.

Just goes to show that a great game now might not be so great years from now when the dust settles. And a good game now might be considered legendary later on. Tastes change.