Peh said:
Obviously, no you don't know where the good and best weapon are if you play for the first time. But, that's also not the point. The point is, that you give the players actually not restrictions. So, if a player stumples by accident over a really powerful weapon and he can keep it for the rest of the game, than you created an exploit and all the other weapons loose their purpose and the game also looses parts of its challenge itself. After the tutorial level, you can just go to Hyrule castle and get all the good stuff. It's just lying around or are in treasures. You just have to avoid enemy encounters when doing so. You can see this being done in speedruns.
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But there's where the balance thing comes into play: it's the developer's responsability to prevent these exploits. Let's go back to Oblivion. Oblivion puts you no restriction whatsoever. You find a weapon, you can use that weapon. It still cleverly hiddens all the best inventory in several places and quests (outside Oblivion orbs, which they only unlock after a certain point in the main quest), and to actually get "game-breaking" inventory requires knowledge of what you're doing. There's little chance you're going to run into one of these dungeons, and be capable of overcome it to claim the treasure within it. Outside specific story-related places, you can go wherever you want in Oblivion too. So you could aim for these places and try to get the good gear. It's still a monumental task that no player will know about, and by the time you naturally find it you'll have progressed enough to become it an integral part of the experience, not an exploit.
Speedruns are not a good measure of anything, because speedruns are based upon godly optimization and (in the case of any%) massive exploits in favor of breaking the game. Oblivion speedruns for example duplicate one specific item within the first five minutes of the game so they climb the blocked end-game door and open it, thus finishing the game. Can we take that into account when criticizing a game? I doubt saying Oblivion lasts 5 minutes because a speedrun does it is a fair criticism. Speedrunners know the best routes and exploits, but again, a speedrunner (that goes for such level of optimization) is someone who has beaten the game plenty of times and knows all the secrets within it. There's no "lessening the experience" or "accidental exploit" there. It's just a crazy string of optimization over layers of experience. They can't account for any of what this video is saying.
Peh said:
The dungeons are all the same level, because all the necessary equipment you need to solve them are there from the tutorial part of the game. I havn't tried it but I guess you can use your bombs to kill nearly every enemy in the game. The better weapons makes the enemies just a bit easier to kill, nothing more. So like mentioned in the video, weapons are just consumable, like ammunition for weapons. There are not a necessity, they just make your journey easier and in order for you not to exploit that, every weapon becomes breakable.
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Dungeons being the same level is almost as the same as what he says about Skyrim: the world balances to fit the player skill. In Breath of the Wild, there's that standard skill akin to all dungeons because then there's not some sort of progression the game demands for the player in order to tackle any of them. It's not a bad mechanic, mind you, but this doesn't do anything for the weapon system, at all. Weapons being consumables lose the charm of acquiring weapons; it might not be the point of the game, but it sure can be seen as a complain; and goes against what the dude in the video says about the "charm of finding enemy weapons over and over". Because it's not charm, it's the way the game "forces" you to proceed. Like I said, it's not boring, but not charm either.
Peh said:
But how would you design a game without restricting players in what the can wear or not? You don't have level restriction like Witcher 3 for parts in your game and equipment. Even if the Witcher 3 is an open world game, you still are restricted in what you can do and at what time you can do that. Zelda Botw doesn't have such restriction at all. You can do whatever you want in the game. And in order to keep a certain balance, certain mechanics have to be made to make it work. If you are allowed to keep the best weapon in the game from the beginning, why go on and explore the game? Being to powerful in the beginning will have no challengers at all and thus the game becomes boring as hell.
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I redirect yourself to Oblivion, again. You're never restricted in Oblivion, aside from some progression in the main quest. Let me tell you, there's no way you can become game-breaking powerful in Oblivion either unless you know what you're doing. Which in essence the game can't become boring, because it means you liked it so much you're replaying it and exploiting it in your favor for the thrills of beating it again as far as you can or whatever other reason.
Peh said:
I am not saying that every game should absorb this mechanic. It's about what you want to achieve in your game. Diablo is about getting the best gear available and throwing the old ones away. But it also got different difficulty settings to make it challenging. Those doesn't exist in Zelda. And Diablo is also not an open world game without restrictions. It's similar for Oblivion. You have a level system, so better gear is only available with a better level to avoid explotation. But Zelda doesn't have a level system. It never had with the exception of Zelda 2. They just wanted to get rid of the linearity in the game and go back to where it all started with Zelda for the NES.
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Oblivion doesn't have level-requirements despite having levels within the game. It's what I'm saying all along: Oblivion is a game that entices looting with some rewarding equipment that doesn't break, but also doesn't impose any limitation on the player to use these (outside specific magic items that worn out and you need Soul Gems to refill them again). Finding them is the challenge, and beating specific quests or dungeons to obtain them isn't an easy task, nor the player knows about it when you start.
Peh said:
Zelda is not about finding the best gear, it's about the expierence you have with the game. And with this one, you get all the freedom you want without someone telling you, "Nope. You can't do that unless you are level blablabla". That's why they also give you the possibility to go and beat the game right after the tutorial part.
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So does Oblivion, outside the main quest, which also encourages the player to make their own way into several quests, such as when you're tasked to bring a daedric item to a character but it's up to you to find what daedric item in the whole world.
My point with this is not bashing Zelda for what Oblivion or other games have done, mind you. All these games are different in nature, so it's only reasonable that they also play different in praxis, and it's great that Zelda tried to aim for something different. I can't just agree with any of the points made in the video, because there are several examples of games that don't fall on the generalizations the OP makes and manage to be enjoyable throughout; likewise, justifying the weapon-break mechanic by saying that what entices the player to keep through most of the world is finding more weapons that will break so that you'll find more weapons that break is dumb as well; especially when even yourself are pointing out that the game isn't about finding the best gear. Weapon becomes secondary, an expression of the combat system but not an integral part of the world-building or character progression, and thus, weapons get relegated to a second plane. They don't have flavor, they don't have charm. They're nothing but a breakable tool you employ in combat; and nothing about fetching these from fallen enemies become interesting after you've done it the initial 50 times or so. It's like Dead Rising, where you can find plenty of weapons that break after some hits. You never really get attached to any because weapons come and go like the wind.
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