curl-6 said:
Gerudo Town or Goron City don't force you to go somewhere else or do another dungeon first as both are immediately solvable. The gated progression model of classic Zelda requires key items like the hookshot to progress through the game; this prevents players from exploring and progressing in the direction or order they wish and you'd run into areas where it's "go beat beat x temple then come back" which contradicts BOTW's open-ended design. You may not like the physics stuff but it is integral to the new formula that people loved so much. Nintendo would be crazy to walk back on these elements after they helped bring the series to a level of success far beyond any prior entry. |
Both Gerudo and Goron City fall under "locked until you solve" type of ordeals...difference being Gerudo is one solution, and one solution only, Goron City has multiple solutions. I like Goron City approach - it advertises loudly to player he is not ready "if XYZ requirement is not met", and to come back when he is...I like that in games, I liked that in classic Zeldas. Sure, they had a lot of "one solution only to a problem" type of things, and while I don't mind that, because sometimes some problems do have one solution only, that was certainly potential area to be improved upon. Richard Garriot, when he was designing Ultima VI back in late 80s, was precisely sick of that "one solution to a problem" and went on to design virtual world that behaves consistently and logically - thus giving the world first immersive sim with "emergent gameplay" that got tossed around these days so much...as if it is something new.
I won't spoil too much, but now that I've seen bit more, TotK has areas you can't access if you don't have certain item. I don't know how much this holds true for the rest of the game, but it was a surprise to me...somewhat pleasant. It seems that TotK has bit more of a structure than BotW.
As for physics - as I said on many occasions, I like it, always have - if it's consistent and not reserved to certain objects and areas. Which unfortunately BotW/TotK are guilty of.
That said, it seems TotK will be very mixed bag for me - I loath Fuse, since it makes for some ridiculous and downright atrocious looking combinations, I find everything around Ultrahand to be way overused, shrines are as pointless as they were in BotW giving you equivalent of orbs and combat is pretty much as unsatisfactory as it was - you fight enemies to get more replacements for your constantly breaking stuff. But that hint of better structure, no matter how frail, gives me hope that I will at least not like it less than BotW - which from the first few hours it seemed I would.
