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HoloDust on 30 September 2018
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Veknoid_Outcast said:
HoloDust said:

I think you're too fixated on the idea that BotW is something very special and that "other" games should do exactly the same things that BotW does - you can take quite a lot of games and turn it around, and BotW will not pass that check. However, I'll play along - I find BotW to mostly be a mishmash of FarCry (FC 2 is pinacle of how enviroment reacts, no other FC game after it had it at the level of details FC2 had), and Just Cause - JC is probably king of let's fuck around, with destructable enviroment, great physics, paragliding and zipping to anywhere. These two IPs have been contantly popping into my mind while I was playing BotW.

And yes, for me, BotW indeed boiles down to fucking around, cause rarely any of those mechanisms is actually very usefull, apart for occasional...well, fucking around...which is not bad per se, I like fucking around in JC, it's just not what I want from Zelda.

And no, I don't want old formula, anyone that has ever been in any Zelda thread that I posted in, know what I think of Aonuma and his fixation on puzzles...and yet, I like puzzles, I always have, since all the way back in time, 80s and 90s, when they were quite common in CRPGs and dungeon crawlers. But he unbalanced Zelda so much with them ever since OoT, and now he swung it the other way, forgetiing meaningful puzzles in the process, instead making it about meaningless exploration in largely empty world - because, without fucking around, that what's BotW boils down to, given that there are only 4 beasts you need to go to (and even that is optional) and almost no significant story to follow.

What I would actually want is meaningful world with attention to details, and not the size, built for exploration, both horizontally and vertically (there's down, undergroung, as well, but seems they forgot that in BotW) crossed with "old mold" puzzles. Or if I'm crossbreading games, Twilight Princess mated with, let's say, Dark Souls (if I said Severance: Blade of Darkness no one would understand) all put together in the world that has world building philosophy of Gothic 1/2.

And no easy climbing - the most annoying thing for me in whole BotW, apart from lack of dungeons/shrines, is climbing, given how easy it breaks the world - such skill that Link is showing in BotW should never come at low price, and that should be one of character defining traits, for which he should suffer in other skills - but then we're in proper RPG domain, and I'm talking TES: Daggerfall/Morrowind amount of skills, and I'm not so sure Nintendo wants to push Zelda into full RPG, especially old school RPGs that draw so much from D&D.

Whether or not you enjoy the game is immaterial. You asked me why I though BotW set a new standard and I responded, "I'd say BotW set a benchmark for open-world games in terms of physical/mechanical/chemical freedom, locomotion options, and emergent gameplay." I then elaborated upon it and provided several examples.

You've done nothing to disprove that. 

I've played Far Cry 2 and love it--I imagine I'm one of the few who does. I also adore Morrowind and while I'm not fond of Just Cause (mission design is a weak spot) I appreciate the amount of mayhem you can cause courtesy of the grappling hook. But I'm sorry: none come close to the level of complexity of Breath of the Wild.

It just seems like your distaste for the BotW (and the critics and consumers who love it) is blinding you to the extraordinary qualities of the game. Again, you don't need to enjoy them, you don't need to want them replicated elsewhere, but you can at least recognize their significance.

Well, I'm not so sure how much your examples prove your statement compared to other games that have those mechanisms, and I already gave you one example to disprove it - actually, that was my very first disappointment with BotW - after being able to destroy full size tree, I sneak up to bokoblin tower and swing the axe - nothing happens. I try to set it on fire - nothing happens. I try to blow it up - nothing happens. That alone told me quite a bit about underlying mechanisms, at least when it comes to physics. Try that in JC3 - they fall - hard. On overall, I find JC having much more going on for itself as sandbox than BotW, especially when it comes to destruction and traversal, among other things. Maybe that's the thing though - after playing JC3, BotW felt too samey in lot of ways with some of its mechanisms.

Admittedly, that is not bad per se - yes, there are indeed mechanisms that work in BotW - and that are somewhat fun to use - occasionally. Yet, what's left of the game when you don't amuse yourself with them is fairly empty world, mostly devoid of meaningful exploration, with often very questionable designs, that are sometimes borderline lazy. I don't care much about JC to actually care much what's beyond sandbox, it's all silly fun for me there. I do care however about Zelda and what's beyond its sandbox.

I'm honestly quite surprised that you love Morrowind so much and think that BotW is better open-world game - though, they are very different games, and realistically they cannot be compared - but, apart from those "fun" mechanisms, BotW pales compared to it in almost every other aspect. But I'm guessing, those mechanisms mean that much to you - which is fine. For me, in this shape at least (that is, partially incorporated), they are quite low on the list of important things for open-world games. And even lower on list of important things for a Zelda game.