Zelda's problem is Nintendo thinks a Adventure Games are RPGs

[Soma]

oniyide said:

@soma  hours of exploration, and it feels linear to you??? FF13, that was linear, i dont want to be an ass, but IMHO if your too lazy or tired to explore all of Hyrule then thats on you and not the game designers, if anything the games have become less linear

hehe, originally I was going to explain it with more detail but got lazy :p

First of all you're probably right about me being lazy or tired, I don't have enough time to explore a game for hours anymore and I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem. But, as I said in my example, in Link to the Past you could explore an area in a matter of minutes, moved from one screen to another beating enemies, cutting grass, lifting rocks, etc. In 3d Zelda games it's not like that anymore. If you go from point A to B, you're basically just moving the stick. There are less elements in the screen to play around with, and there's no much reward in doing so. I guess Nintendo did this because it would be a pain in the ass for them and for us to stop every few seconds lifting rocks to see if there's something hidden in a big map. There's no point, so they decided to remove those elements and making the game feel more "linear" or maybe the correct word should be "passive".

Even Nintendo said that Twilight Princess was too huge and it made it feel empty. Making a more compact map they can add more elements to explore and not just going from point A to B.

I love to explore in Zelda games, but running around in a map like that with nothing else to do other than the random enemy makes it a bit boring. Even if I don't have enough time now I may be willing to play it if the map was shorter but more "richer" to explore.

Point is, you may play long hours in Twilight Princess but many of them you're just moving from A to B hence the "linear or passive" feeling.  I rather have a 20 hrs Zelda with less time moving around but with more things to do.