Zelda BotW reactions from EB Expo 2016 in Sydney

[Nuvendil]

Lawlight said:

Nuvendil said:

Well that right there will effect your evaluation, what you call an RPG.  I do consider souls an RPG more than an Action game due to it's emphasis on player-guided and pseudo-class based progression. 

I would say that it had considerable impact on guiding where RPGs went, though perhaps not inspiring the features specifically.  I would say the popularity - though not the existence -  of action combat in popular RPGs - most notably, of course, The Elder Scrolls - would be tied to the influence the success of Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess had on gamers' taste.  Also, of course, the emphasis on exploration in Zelda from the start has no doubt helped build up the consumers who now seek that in more substantial games, like RPGs.  Many people who played Zelda 1 and Zelda 3 and of coures OoT and MM are now older gamers who moved to other systems or at least bought them alongside Nintendo hardware and would be drawn to a more RPG-element heavy game that reminded them of Zelda in terms of its real time combat and exploration focus, not an RPG with turn based or real time battle systems.  And of course, there comes the fact that many developers of RPGs do outright state the first Zelda and the third Zelda as inspirations when constructing their large explorable worlds. 

So yes, Souls is the most obvious and most easily recognized Zelda-inspired RPG, but I would say it is a reasonable conclusion to come to that Zelda has influenced the flow of the RPG market fairly well.  And in a variety of ways at a variety of points, Zelda is very old.

I disagree. I think the only thing in common between Zelda and the Souls game is that the characters hold a sword. Zelda has no RPG elements, is not a combat driven game and has puzzles.

The Elder Scrolls are based on the Ultima games basically.

If that's all you see in common, then we have a far different definition of what the phrase "in common" means.  In Souls games you use either a hub world or overworld to reach dungeons or dungeon-esque areas that you then traverse while unlocking shortcuts to allow you to more easily return to areas previously reached.  At the end of these areas is a boss using unique tactics with specific weaknesses and these bosses ultimately serve as milestones of progress.  The combat system uses the exact same principles, with a lock on, dodge, and role setup just with more weapons.  Frankly, I identified the similarities years ago when I had only a little experience with Zelda.  And as another poster pointed out, the devs of the Souls series openly acknowledge the similarities.

Also, there's a difference between a thing being the progenitor and something being a major influence.  Hydlide did Zelda before Zelda did but no one with most of their brains in their skull regards Hydlide as the greater influencer of action games.  That's why I said Zelda influenced the direction RPGs took.  Because while Ultima was the progenitor  (sorta.  Kinda.) And Square did lots of RPG things, Zelda's influence on gamers and gaming as a whole no doubt helped influence the rise of action-combat, open world RPGs to topple the domminant turn based RPGs of the past.