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| HoloDust said: I get that, though I never really bought into "journey is its own reward" mantra, I was always more of "how about both, journey and prize?" type of guy. So for me both BotW and TotK are very mediocre exploration games due to how subpar reward system is. I was honestly amazed by some things in TotK when I started the game, looking at some of the distant islands in the sky, but that was my 35+ years of playing RPGs talking, and hoping for major changes from BotW, not the reality of the game. You know, when you see something in the distance and it looks amazing, like it holds a piece of very important information, or some ancient weapon or shield or armor or new spell that you will be using for next 30+ hours in 150+ game? Or a terrible evil you need to overcome to initiate response from BBEG, thus progressing the story? Yeah well, after 15-20 hours in I realized that will (almost) never be true, and most of the times prize for getting somewhere will be equivalent of proverbial middle finger - so I decided to cut the losses and went on to finish it mainly focusing on Main quest and some exploration for things that seemed interesting (and there were still quite a few interesting things). Ultimately, I don't think Zelda could ever be fully satisfying exploration game - it would not only need to change its genre to full blown survival RPG, but also not just be open world, but open ended as well. And I don't think that is really good fit for LoZ - I think it would completely loose its roots based in monomyth and become something else. Which is perfectly fine if they opt to make a new IP based on experiences with BotW/TotK, just not for LoZ. |
Haha yeah the reward is indeed often the middle finger. Da dana da da, 5 bright bloom seeds! Or some useless piece of nostalgia armor, or a weapon/shield worse than all you have in your inventory. Those are the most annoying, pop up the replace menu, hmm ignore.
And going for those interesting looking things in the distance has me basically playing 80% of the game backwards :/ The exploration part of the game keeps drawing me to things prematurely. Now I've solved the wind temple already as I had to know what was in the giant storm in the sky. I found the obvious 5 key points which look like they need a gust of wind. (Not budging with fans, looks like Tulin has to do it). So I have to go to Rito village first, follow the plot there before actually being able to finish the wind temple, even though I have pretty much finished the thing already like I did with the water temple. (Also looked interesting in the sky)
Last night I finished the Yiga infiltration backwards :/ I was coming at it from getting to the shrine, yet the game thought I was following an infiltration quest started at the clan hideout I had not been to yet. So after becoming blade master there was much confusion. I went to the place you defeat Khogo in BotW several times yet the door there remained locked. Turned out I needed to be at the front entrance to trigger the quest which immediately went on to completed and they all acted like they already knew me lol.
Also doing the spirit temple too early (another interesting looking phenomena in the sky) ruined the story, huge plot spoilers. Same with doing the master sword too early, but Zelda and master sword, seems kinda obvious someone would pursue that early in the game?! So now Link pretends in cut scenes that he doesn't know yet lol. (And I use the master sword for breaking rocks, fused to a stone talus heart. It's a utility item now. Too weak for combat)
Nintendo hasn't found a solution at all to marry linear story gameplay with open world. In an exploration based game you nudge the player around with interesting things in the environment. Yet for TotK's linear story approach you need to ignore all what you see and follow the regional quest phenomena first, and wait for Purah to direct you to other interesting things. Of course some interesting things you can do any time like the Lomei mazes. So it's inconsistent as well. Then there's the problem with the Geoglyphs spoiling the story if you find them in the wrong order so even the regional phenomena should really be done in a certain order to get the most sense out of the story.
And the biggest reward middle finger is finishing the game or rather defeating the end boss. The game simply reloads you back to before starting the boss fight as if you haven't done it yet. You do get a small star next to your save file and adds percentage complete counters. Yet plenty people get confused and ask on reddit if they're doing something wrong... Finishing the game is utterly meaningless, no prize, no change in the world, no end of blood moons, just rewind to before the boss battle.
It's an odd one.
It's a great open world exploration game with tons of mostly varied content let down by linear story gated environmental puzzles. You can go anywhere you want, check out the interesting stuff you see in the distance, but you can't play with it yet.
And it tries to tell an epic story with great twists and turns, visiting interesting people and clever temples and boss fights along the way, let down by openworld freedom making it too easy to miss half the stuff (fly, climb, glide right by) and cheese any combat. Here's all these freedom toys, but please restrain yourself from using them if you want to enjoy the story as intended.
Nintendo successfully deconstructed the Zelda formula, now can they put it back together for the next iteration.
