Actually no, I don't "have to come to terms" with your assertion, I reject it as untrue. If you're going to conflate a scripted interaction with the ability to apply physical and chemical forces freely throughout an organic world in a way that produces countless gameplay possibilities, then we may as well conflate Mario 64's breakthroughs with the implementation of simulated 3D in Mode 7 SNES games, and there's little point continuing this discussion.

Anyone else find it weird how Nintendo has some of the absolute best and lamest launches ever. The same company that had super Mario Bros, Mario 64, twilight princess, BoTW, Mario world, f-zero, Wii sports, Luigi's Mansion and Tetris as launch titles also thought it was a good idea to launch the 3ds with pilotwings.

I think it's more that their launches are almost always stellar and they just had a massive collective attacks of the stupids in the Wii U/3DS era.

There's a reason those systems are their worst selling console and handheld ever respectively.

BotW physics is very limited and indeed has quite scripted feel to it in many cases.

Exactly.  In Okami I can hit a button and watch what happens, and I can only hit that button in certain areas.  BotW has multiple physics engines I can manipulate in a variety of areas and in a variety of ways, all producing a different outcome.  Okami is scripted, BotW is not.  

I get that BoTW is probably the best game on the list, but in terms of a launch title, its impact is nowhere near what SM64 accomplished.

I lived through both launches. It's not even comparable.

So the conundrum is what do we measure "Greatest" by? The best game on the list or the launch title that had most impact. I gotta give it to SM64, because after that game, everything changed.

10. It's hard to say
9. Each console has it's
8. Own strengths and
7. Weaknesses and it can
6. Be difficult to choose
5. A favourite retrospectively
4. Because if you weren't there
3. At the time it's hard to
2. Gauge the impact of a title
1. Super Mario 64

The ones that had the biggest impact on the industry and helping to push their systems like no other game before I would say are...


SMB1 - NES
SM64 - N64
Halo - Xbox

Each one of these games brought something new and that was never done before, or maybe done but not executed the way these games pulled them off.

SMB1 because of its tight controls, massive world, music and just plan fun.
SM64 - the first real console 3D with massive worlds, really unique control set up that made you feel like you had freedom to run and jump. And the GRAPHICS!
Halo - the control set up was a HUGE stepping stone for pretty much every shooter after it. Halo had the music, graphics, controls and something that had never really been done before, lan parties. This was a HUGE deal for multi player sceene and helped open the door for console online gaming.

It has technological limits due to having to run on the Wii U's CPU, yes.

But let's take the scenario I described; you could fire a bomb arrow during a fight and not only damage an enemy, but set the grass around them on fire thus igniting and degrading their wooden weapons, and causing an apple tree to topple and kill one baddie, and for the apples to roll into the grass fire (which spreads with the strength and direction of the wind) and become roasted apples, then to use the updraft generated as the fire spreads to get airborne and rain more arrows down on the remaining foes. This isn't a scripted sequence, its the dynamic result of the game's various systems interacting.

In the conversation you're joining, this was compared to using a specific power at a predetermined point in Okami to produce a canned reaction, much like bombing a cracked wall in Ocarina of Time. I know you're not a fan of BOTW, and that's totally fine, but surely you can see the two aren't remotely comparable.

It's definitely not scripted sequnce - it's dynamic result of set of mostly scripted "physics" systems. It's better than nothing, of course, but it's not anywhere near consistent and all encompassing physics system.

I think I made this remark in some post, most likely replying to you as well - it's not just CPU limitations, for such approach to physics there needs to be quite different approach to game design from the very beginning.