we needed Odyssey after 3D Land and 3D World and it's very unique but has the same feeling of 64 and Sunshine. Zelda, otherwise, it's totally different from anything we've seen on The Legend of Zelda series.

I'm not sure. I think BotW is more ambitious as they'd never attempted a game quite like that. It's beyond amazing (I love the YouTube videos of game directors reacting to BotW) that they absolutely stuck the landing in their first real attempt at a modern open world game, complete with many features that genre tends to lack.

This new MARIO, imo, looks like it utilizes whatever engine they constructed for BotW. I can't put my finger on it, but they just look very similar.

This to me is basically Mario building off of what they learned from BotW, just as Ocarina of Time built off of Mario 64 (and why I to this day believe Mario 64 was Miyamoto's most impressive accomplishment).

Wind Waker was open world. So was the original LoZ.

I'd love to see what everyone else is seeing. Mario looks great, certainly a modern Mario 64 with some weird mechanics, but nothing that's completely blowing me away. Must be hype lenses.

To be completely honest, I think both are equal in terms of ambition.BOTW reinvented everything about Zelda and pushed adventure games and open world games foward.Oddyssey will reinvent everything about Mario and push platformers and exploration, and everything Oddyssey touches upon foward.

And I think that will be the mantra going foward for Nintendo for its big games(the ones that they say "Ok, this is meant to push systems").That isnt "really" happening with games like Splatoon 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because they are rather new franchises and they are already fresh in their own regard, but they are pushing the boundaries in their own respective genres.

ARMS is a whole different, and what it seems to be fun, take on the fighting genre.I wholly believe that we will see the same kind of push with Metroid Prime 4(and I believe that is just a tentative title and they will rebrand the Prime subtitle and start a new trilogy or something along that line).Pokemon will be fresh and ambitious just by being on console.
Nintendo got a wake up call with Wii U(the same it got with Gamecube) and I think it will push foward with everything, while at the same time having those safer titles(like Yoshi and Kirby)

Oh, and I also believe that, whatever Retro is doing, will be ambitious and they will try to make it genre-changing.

Or you are just pessimist by nature and cant put off these pessimist lenses?

Well yes, but not to the same lengths of Botw I mean. Wind Waker consisted of small isolated islands, and 8-bit doesn't quite give the same affect, well at least 30 years later that is.

Perhaps you could tell me what exactly is so ambitious about this game?  Mario can possess most things in his world - tight.  It's a really great mechanic and should be a lot of fun.  As for the world, it's Mario 64 but in 2017, so a much grander scale of openness and freedom.  Instead of paintings, you use the Odyssey to get around - ala Mario Galaxy 2 sort of.  It looks GREAT but it just looks like Mario taking the next step for Mario.

Breath of the Wild takes Zelda and dismantles it, puts it back together for something brand new.  It released in a time when open worlds are in abundance and shows everyone how they've been doing it wrong all these years.    As I said in another thread, it reinvigorates the franchise and brought back so many old Zelda fans and intrigued Nintendo naysayers to the point of wanting a Nintendo console.

So again, break down what I'm missing.  Mario looks super fun and I'll be getting it when I get a Switch.  But let's pretend I'm not - how is this not just Mario 64 - 2.0?

Totally disagree. This is Mario 64 with a new mechanic. Zelda almost entirely switched genres.

Perception is the point here.You could argue that Zelda simply entered in the "modern age" and finally realized what the first game set out to do:Be an open world game with endless possibilities.You could also argue that Zelda simply perfected what other open world games do today.If you were to be trully nitpick about things, Zelda dosent do anything really new, outside of being able to climb most things(and thus makes the game be something different althogeter).It just perfected a concept.Its not like Splatoon that has basically created a whole new concept to third person shooters, or even shooters in general.Yeah, its very different from past Zelda games, but still not "groundbreaking", if I were to apply the same view you have for Oddyssey.

Oddyssey does the same here.Yes, you could say that it is Mario 64 version 2, and it really seems to be, but does that really stop the game from being ambitious or groundbreaking?In the same sense as Zelda, it really isnt "creating" something completely original, something that I believe that Splatoon gets close to, but it seems(and I say so because the game hasnt released yet) to be pushing every single concept of platformer games, games focused on exploration, or even open ended puzzles in games.And who knows, it might even influence things even further, just like Mario 64 did.And what do I base this off of?Each Kingdom seems expansive and each seems to be shockful of secrets, but they are not simply "go there and grab that collectible that you see".Sometimes you need to think outside the box to reach it, or you have a specific costume that you need to wear to reach it, or you have to search for clues to understand how that locked door can be opened, or you need to first understand what each enemy ability does, so that you combine them to reach your objective.Or even then, its a combination of all those before to be able to do that.Its would be the true definition of "complete it the way that you think it works", something that is present in BOTW, and to be quite frank, almost nowhere to be seen elsewhere, and even is hard to find it on Nintendo games.

Then you have the possesing mechanic.Instead of having a couple of powerups, now you will have a myriad of them, each of them offering a new perspective and a new way to see the level.See that moon over the cliff?You could climb there, but would take 5 minutes to do it normaly.But now, if you possess that enemy, it becomes 30 seconds.Or rather, see that Moon that you think its impossible to reach?You could do a complicated set of moves to reach it, or you could just possess a Bullet Bill to reach it.Or all those enemies you need to defeat, just poisses one of them and use their area based atack to finish them off quickly.You finished the whole kingdom but then you find an enemy that has an ability to cross the map in a really cool way, and that simply changes how you perceive that kingdom.And those possibilites are just scratching off the surface.And you still can mix and match evry single one of them.There is also the fact that we havent had a Mario like that in decades, and no one else has anything close to that.You may not find it impressive, but how can you not say its not ambitious?

I do think that Zelda is ambitious, and thats lowballing it, but Mario is too.You may not find it nearly on the same level as Zelda, but saying that the game is not ambitious by design is simply wrong in my opinion.