So....... so far the general consensus is that this happens because its a Zelda game?

there is something very unsettling about that to me.

And there are so many other things that I think if any game does it would be dissed.... like somethings that just don't make sense to me. Eg, we look at a game(s) that at least tries to use voice acting for every single NPC interaction and criticize it to hell and back (witcher, horizon, mass effect, skyrim...etc) yet no one seems to mention that outside major cutscenes no single NPC in zelda does more than grunt?

i really don't get it. I am not going to point out any more discrepancies so this doesn't become a review criticism thread, cause at least i can relate with voiceless NPCs being a stylized thing with zelda... but those towers though. And there are 15 of them!!!! to Horizons 5......

We are talking about reviewers here...... they typically play EVERYTHING. And in the case where the same reviewer that reviewed horizon reviewed BotW.... they played both games within the same month of eachother. Yet was ok with 15 of something that they complained about 5 times in another game.

You gotta admit, its kinda weird. 

Thats not entirely true though....

Lets look at horizon and zelda as that is the most obvious comparison and not just because of the proximity of their release but also how the towers are implemented.

Horizon DOES NOT hand hold you and keep aspects of the map behind a "tower lock" you could completely ignore those towers and find everything in the map yourself. The towers have a practical explanation, the tallnecks in horizon are area communication hubs. We are talking about machines here, and when you climb on and Hack it... you get access to all its information. You get information on the herds of some machines nearby, locations of a cauldrum nearby, and of human settlements nearby. It makes sense. But you could just as easily ignore that tower and seek out all those things yourself. Its an option and considering what it gives its a welcome and practical one. And of course, it reveals a portion of the map too.

Now with BotW, it doesn't give you anything but opens up the map. Some reviewers even suggest that you should go for the towers first as it opens your map up and gives you a fast travel point. Some reviewers even suggest that you should turn off the HUD in the game (also something you can do in horizon, but here its treated like a "feature" as opposed to it just being another option. 

Now both games implement these things slightly differently but they both serve the same purpose, to reveal the map to you. Some may say.... that with horizon its bad because the tall necks will give you map markers. but they forget that thats the only way the lore in Horizon makes sense... no one else in the game know what hacking machines are or where cauldrums are supposed to be so its not like they can make you meet an NPC that will tell you about where a shrine is or where an enemy resides.

eithr way, its really a simple thing. Both games have towers in them. But in one its ok (even if  that one has 10 more towers than the other) and in the other its somehow a bad thing. I am sorry but that makes no sense to me. 

And lets even lok at fast travel, in zelda you get to a towe and/or a shrine and you have unlocked a fast travel point, in Horizon, fast travel only applies to camp fires that you find or towns, and to even do it consumes an item that you have to craft.

I have no idea. I don't know why it would be a bad thing to get a map from the top of a tower, if reviewers detracted points for that with Horizon then that is pretty stupid. I only played the first Assassin's Creed game (to take one series), but getting pieces of the map from the tops of towers wasn't the reason why I never played another.

I also noticed what Rol just said when I played ACIV. Whenever I discovered an area I saw everything what there is to do and completed that one by one. That has nothing to do with exploration and discovery.

As for Zelda I can only say that I climbed the first tower and it's nothing but a lookout. You still need to mark suspicious spots that you want to check out yourself.

So Far Cry comparisons are ok with Horizon, but in Zeruda they aren't even worth mentioning in reviews, interesting. I thought this game was the antithesis of modern open world games that people grew to hate.

Kinda disappointed even 98 Zeruda takes from Ubisoft.

Nice to know. Was afraid they were littered all over the place.

Have to say I agree with this. I feel like 5 years from now some will laugh at its score and the things they claimed, "best Zeruda", hell some don't shy away from calling it the best game eva, I don't think it's gonna be as influential as OoT.

thats not true at all. in ubisoft games they are completely optional for the most part (sometimes a mission requires you to do one, but that would be it). but you can explore and discover the map on your own freely. Horizon doesnt even most everything thats on the map for example. 

just look at the most influential games last gen, and ask yourself. are Super mario galaxy 1/2 among them? looking at the state of the industry they certainly arent, yet they got 97 review scores. 

Does climbing a tower in Zelda give you magically information on your map about specific places as if you would have put that on the map by your own? I guess that's the difference, Zelda towers are there to find stuff if you climb them and look around, not to climb them to let the game tell you that you found stuff.

As another example I could give you State of Decay. There you climb something and you magically see pretty much everything happening around you even if it's behind walls or whatever. I found that pretty bad to be honest. You still had to "look at it" for some time to get it on the map but you automatically saw every interesting spot when you were on the tower or building. Climb the tower and the game will tell you there is something hidden 300 meters away.  Pretty boring to be honest. 

eithr way, its really a simple thing. Both games have towers in them. But in one its ok (even if  that one has 10 more towers than the other) and in the other its somehow a bad thing. I am sorry but that makes no sense to me. 

I'm assuming that the map towers work similarly to Shadow of Mordor.

Shadow of Mordor I climb the map tower.  Once I do that, I see everything available to me.  I like bows, so I mark the bow mission on my map, and make a beeline for it.  I know everything available to me, and there's nothing to discover.

In Breath of the Wild, I climb the tower.  I activate it and... I know nothing.  I see the names of a few landmarks.  That's it.  I can now mark things on my map, or scan the horizon for interesting points, but I don't really know what will be there when I make it.  Opening the map doesn't tell me "oh if I want to do so and so, I should go right here."

The point is that not all towers are created equally.  If they function differently, then reviewers should consider them differently.   A good comparison is L.A. Noire.  Some reviewers complained it was an open world, and you had to drive to different places.  They didn't complain about that in GTA.  Because in L.A. Noire, there was nothing to do aside from main missions, and driving was just a chore.  In GTA, you could find interesting things along the way.

Just because two features are somewhat similar does not mean they're both well implemented.  You're trying to manufacture a controversy.