>>715928490
>I would say it was a decent game, great even, but yeah it didn't have the "wow" factor that BotW had.
I barely understand whenever people keep saying this. It might be because I downloaded the game on my Wii U and played it as a "late-gen" title while others were simultaneously impressed by the Nintendo Switch and felt some arbitrary "magic" because of it.

I totally get that the Open World was unprecedented for Zelda, and that even compared to Ubislop or even Skyrim, they'd done this Open World in a way that was kind of technically impressive, but honestly, that's about it. It's not as if I hadn't seen what an Open World sandbox looked like before. And as soon as I saw FUCKING TOWERS in Zelda, and the way BotW really emphasizes it as the premise of the game with a huge cutscene showing the "majesticness" of them, I really really wasn't that impressed with it back in 2017. I wasn't thinking "holy shit how did Nintendo do it?" I was just thinking "EVEN NINTENDO is guilty of copying this shitty formula now."

I kinda couldn't believe it. Zelda had been my escape from the thoughtlessness of AAA converging all fucking genres into just "Third Person Ubislop" or a "Third Person Shooter" the whole Xbox 360/PS3 era, and when Skyward Sword shipped, like, I recognized it wasn't as good as Wind Waker or other 3D Zeldas, but it was still SO unique from all the "slop" coming out of the AAA space that it was an easy 2011 GOTY for me back then.

Playing BotW was after having played Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 2 and Skyrim already, YEARS AGO. So all I felt was this "You're doing THIS now?"

I still don't really get it. Maybe there's an initial peace to its world. It's enjoyable, I get that. But compositionally, and just in its larger scope, BotW is an empty game of Nintendo being way too proud of making their own Open World. They just forgot to put shit in it. It's Shrines, Korok Seeds, and the rest of the game is built entirely around looping you between those.

>NES Online: TLOZ, Zelda 2
>SNES Online: A Link to the Past
>GB Online: Oracle of Ages/Seasons
>GBA Online: Minish Cap
>N64 Online: Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask
>Gamecube Online: Wind Waker
>Switch 2: Link's Awakening, Echoes of Wisdom, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom
I'm having a blast.

>Instead of asking "how do we make Open World cool in Zelda" they just asked "What can we remove from Zelda to ease development?"