Revisiting Breath of the Wild

[Jumpin]

Ultravolt said:

Jumpin said:

I think you should appraise a game by its merits. It seems like you are judging the merits of Breath of the Wild by the expectations of what other types of Zelda games do. It's like appraising an apple by the norms of an orange.

I appreciate the response, and you've made some good points, but I think I need to reiterate. I'm comparing it to other Zelda games because BotW just so happens to be... a Zelda game. In that regard, I don't think i'm comparing apples to oranges. Sure, BotW's different in terms of gameplay and progression, but it still happens to share aspects that are staples of the franchise. There's nothing wrong with questioning if these aspects live up to the standards set by previous entries. In my opinion, there are many things that previous Zelda games do better. As an entry in a critically acclaimed franchise, it's going to be compared to previous games. At the end of the day, it's all subjective, and everyone will have a different opinion on what they consider a flaw.

Apples and Oranges are both fruit, that doesn't mean they should be compared the same way. What you are presenting here is typically called the "No True Scotsman" fallacy; that is, you're not assessing Breath of the Wild for its own merits, but rather criticizing it for its differences from older Zelda games - even if by its own merits it is a far greater game.

To show why the No True Scotsman argument doesn't work:

Rather than holding Ocarina of Time as the standard, you can hold the original Legend of Zelda game as the standard, or the newest and most successful game in the franchise as the objective standard: so the older 3D Zelda games are found to be: plagued with lacklustre and rigid linear stories, too few dungeons that are all terribly paced dungeons filled with vague and monotonous puzzles, unimaginatively small and empty worlds with no purpose other than linking up towns and dungeons, and overplayed music tracks often lacking in originality and whose midi-quality fails utterly against the orchestral quality of BotW.

The fact that Ocarina of Time was done the way it was isn't because it was the ideal formula, but because the technology and resources to create Breath of the Wild was unattainable before Breath of the Wild, and certainly way back in the mid-1990s for Nintendo.