So, uh, why didn't they bother to include an actual story into these games? Both of these are huge 100+ hour epics, yet the plot is just as straightforward as the original Donkey Kong, and the characters and world aren't given any development whatsoever(if anything, TotK seems to have contempt for people who held on to what little story BotW had)

I'm not arguing for the games to have long ass cutscenes or dialogue dumps either - these games already have way more exposition than other games that are praised for their story and setting like Elden Ring or Ocarina of Time. You could just take the time that was already allotted to cutscenes and dialogue and, you know, do something with it. The games already have a ton of exposition, they just don't do anything with it

Because they learned from Skyward Sword Zelda can just ride off of launch hype and by the time everyone realizes how lousy the game is they've already made a few hundred million dollars

When haa Nintendo every written a good story? They make games for kids anyhow so its not in their interest to even try.

>>714975989 (OP)
>So, uh, why didn't they bother to include an actual story into these games?
They did.
They just for once did something no other AAA dev dared to do in the 2010s:

Make a fun VIDEO GAME.

This is a normal Zelda game
>4-9 dungeons
>Side-quests include a Trade Quest, a Collectathon, and exploration for increased HP
>The story is simple enough but epic
This is what a True Zelda Open World would be
>more than Twice the Main Dungeons
>More side content: Collectathons, Numerous Trade Quests, Side-Dungeons, Side-Bosses, Side-stories
>A story that feels even more monumental and plays to the epic scale of the world
What we got
>Only 4 dungeons that are shorter than ever before, and no unique enemies inside them
>Everything is depletable collectibles so you lose as many as you get, creating an endless loop
>The story is ostracized from the world and its epic scale, and happened "in the past".
That's why some people hate these games.

BOTW had the perfect balance of story and gameplay and you're mr. Gay

Stfu lil nigga

OP PLEASE, I beg you, name 3 videogames you think have a good story. I'm dying to know.

>>714976327
When does the fun start?

>>714975989 (OP)
It’s their game they can do what they want.

>>714976313
>When haa Nintendo every written a good story?
Majora's Mask, the Earthbound games

Still I take your point, there's nothing wrong with Nintendo not wanting to make story the focus of their games. The problem comes when a game has the exposition time of a story heavy game, without actually telling a story.

>>714976475
Majora mask had no story. It was just dumb side quests padded out by a shitty mechanic that forced you to reset the game constantly.

>>714975989 (OP)
>Both of these are huge 100+ hour epics, yet the plot is just as straightforward as the original Donkey Kong
They have a story and still manage to go for that long. Adding more isn't necessary and lets me focus on just playing the game and exploring.

>>714976327
Of all Nintendo's games Zelda was never the one I played for "fun". I played it because the world felt mysterious and like a riddle with an answer. That's what NES Zelda feels like and it pays off. That's what Ocarina of Time is like, and it pays off.
They're not exactly "fun to play". They're just nice experiential worlds you get a pique into, with a little story and a sense of growing as Link who expands his arsenal of items and overcoming all the secrets through them, as you get to a climactic finish in the storyline.

BotW/TotK is basically just Minecraft adapted unto Zelda. It sucks, and the combat is boring as fuck. Dark Souls ended up recapturing the "Zelda feeling" to me more than these games do.

>>714976463
NIggas think posting montage videos of defeating Lynels in the most convoluted game-breaking ways is "fun".

>>714976463
Right here.

>>714976461
Shadow of the Colossus
Prince of Persia Sands of Time
Half Life 2

of course by this I mean they are good for video game standards, they could not be compared to what can be found in literature of even film

>>714976718
>Looks amazing
>Actually all you find are Shrines
>Shrines are boilerplate and shortened versions of previous Zelda Dungeon level design
>There's 120 of them to pad the game out
Wow. I'm having a blast.

>>714976642
>They're not exactly "fun to play"
All that what you described is exactly what makes them FUN.

>BotW/TotK is basically just Minecraft adapted unto Zelda.
Incorrect. BotW especially is a literal modern throwback to Zelda 1.

>the combat is boring as fuck
Zelda games are ADVENTURE games, not action games. And the combat is fun as hell, allowing crazy amounts of creative solutions. It's still not the main focus.

>Dark Souls ended up recapturing the "Zelda feeling"
Thank you for outing yourself as the fake fan zoomie you always were. DaS has literally nothing to do with Zelda, and never will have.
Demon's Souls was literally nothing more than 3D Diablo. Nice little dungeon crawlers with lots of traps.

>>714976475
I just wanted to say you're making a good point. Just to counter >>714976567

>>714976763
>Wow. I'm having a blast.
oh ok I thought you were arguing the games were bad

>>714976763
>muh shrines and collectibles!!!!
This is literally your brain on Ubishit rot.

>>714976919
>>714976947
The point is the game is only great if you define success by "fun", which I don't, because to me Zelda are historically very boring games to "play", and yet I somehow love them because of the overall experience and lasting impression of its sense of discovery and delightful little stories.
BotW doesn't do any of that, but it's more fun than ever, so it's consumer-slop, and that's all it is.

>Why wasn't Zelda an old lady at the end of BotW?
>Why were the monsters/guardians not doing anything for 100 years?
>What was Ganondorf doing after being unsealed?
>What was he even attempting to do by summoning molduga?
>How did Ruafo not see/hear Ganondorf from across the canyon and why was he even afraid of the sand whales?
I legitimately do not understand BotW or TotK's stories. They never really feel like you're doing anything, rather just stumbling around while other characters act retarded or use ridiculous plot armor/devices to progress whatever the story is supposed to be.
I.E. the whole "swallow an infinity stone to become a dargon then somehow get a toothpick inserted into your forehead so it can charge up ambiguous light powers for 10,000 years" subplot.
I love how both games involve Zelda making an "ultimate sacrifice" that she ultimately suffers no consequences from. She's still just a 17 year old thot with no discernible intellect or leadership qualities despite the game trying to sell her as some university undergrad.

>>714976718
how is a single screenshot from a game as recent as 2017 already this fucking ICONIC!?

>>714975989 (OP)
if you want a movie buy Sony

>>714977282
>recent
>eight years
>screenshot is actually nine
>not to mention the arguably more iconic announcement trailer which is eleven years old
Shame the game didn't really turn out like that OG trailer, but then again, what game does?

>>714977459
I want a good game

>>714977607
then why does the story matter? read a book nigga

>>714977459
Read the post, the point isn't that I want the game to have more story. It's that I want the massive time that the game allotts to story to actually go somewhere. Or just reduce the cutscene and dialogue time in favor of more gameplay, I would be fine with either

>>714977849
that's fair, i admit i only read the first half

>>714975989 (OP)
They did, but because you can experience the story in any order you want they had to keep it basic as fuck so each cutscene makes sense no matter the order you experience them in.

>>714977661
The story matters because it exists. If they wanted a game without a story, that's fine, but this one has it, and it sucks.

>>714977849
Funniest part of this is now there's even more "story" with the voice memories, which essentially add context to the world because the writers couldn't figure out how to introduce it naturally during gameplay, so Zelda (among others) now look into the camera and monologue lore to you.

>>714975989 (OP)
Every video game story is short and boring if you are skimming a synopsis. The idea with the games is the story has already happened and you are piecing it back together so you aren't seeing people develop, they have already developed. Hell Zelda in these games has more character development than most any other NPC in a Zelda game, I don't know why that doesn't count for whatever reason.

Zelda games have a barely defensible story to begin with. OoT is widely considered the best and its dogshit from a children's fairy tale but without any lessons or depth. BotW gave an intriguing premise (what if the kingdom knew evil was coming and did everything to prepare for it, but it wasn't enough and they were destroyed anyway?) And then explored the mistakes people made and the dashed dreams of would be heroes while you rediscover the land. It's not amazing but it has enough depth I would say its better than most Zelda games, the real problem is its all told in flashbacks and 99.9% of modern gamers are conditioned to want
>Talk to NPC
>Go to place
>Talk to other NPC
>Get cutscene
>Get emotional about the story
And BotW's non-traditional story structure is impossible for them to understand.

>>714976718
Too bad it ends a couple hours later when you get the glider and the majority of the problems the game presents you are officially solved before you encounter them.

>>714978309
>the real problem is its all told in flashbacks and 99.9% of modern gamers are conditioned to want
Oh fuck off with this. It's not "conditioning" for a story with a beginning, middle, and end to have more impact than a story consisting of seven interchangeable points. The idea that the emotional profile of a given part of the story is improved by the fact that you can discover it first is asinine.

Since nintendo has abandoned the LOZ formula for open world there should be a big market for indiedevs to make some LOZ-likes, either 2d or 3d. Where are they?

>>714976865
>Incorrect. BotW especially is a literal modern throwback to Zelda 1.
I contest this. Zelda 1 is closer to Ocarina of Time than it is to BotW. Zelda 1 is also a game where you start from zero, and discover 9 dungeons and items that allow you to reach/complete dungeons, thus expanding Link's abilities like in a Metroidvania and making you feel like the more you search the world the more you're able to search even deeper in the world.

BotW is a game that gives you a toolbox at the start of the game and the rest of the experience is just a sandbox, always using that 1 toolbox and it never expands, thus the sense of search never deepens as the game progress. The removal of the "Metroidvania" part of Zelda's formula in BotW is its damnation, as it flattens the entire world into just content-repetition and diminishing returns to the same type of boilerplate content over up to 150 hours of play. The Divine Beasts do smartly introduce a dungeon-centric new mechanic to compensate the lack of expanding your toolbox, but the dungeons are SO simplistic in their "find 5 switches" and near lack of enemies, that it also becomes boilerplate.

That's why these games suck and are not fun in the way that Zelda could be "fun" or just a rewarding experience. These games are "minecraft"-fun and it never transcends that quality.

>>714977204
>BotW
>Doesn't have a sense of discovery
>Has more NPC's and side plots to do than any other Zelda game
>Has no delightful little side stories
Anon I am not even trolling, how do you play games? The only Zelda game with more side stories is Majora's Mask which is built around it, BotW is a game you could sink over a thousand hours into and still find random pockets of people and monsters or locations which are new. It is pure discovery which is where all the fun comes from.

Like do you just hate any kind of downtime between big set pieces? BotW has a lot of lulls between the bigger happenings and nothing is on rails so people who don't enjoy finding things will probably miss a great deal the game has no much going on I can't imagine anyone with an attention span could hate it.

>>714978608
>Anon I am not even trolling, how do you play games?
The flavor-text is ass in BotW. All of it is Skyward Sword tier writing and Skyward Sword and the DS titles had the worst NPC writing already.

>>714978535
>I contest this. Zelda 1 is closer to Ocarina of Time than it is to BotW
Statements like this is why the Zelda fanbase is starting to turn on OoT and its diehards. No anon, the literal first game in the series that has no story and a world where you can go almost anywhere from the beginning does not have more in common with OoT than it does BotW. The devs who made the game and put out art of Zelda 1 and showed how they used a mock up of Zelda 1 to design BotW were not in fact comparing it to OoT when they made the game.

BotW outsold the boring and outdated old linear games for one reason: It returned to its roots and gave people adventure and exploration back instead of holding a gun to their head and forcing them to watch cutscenes in a linear grind. Why do you think BotW sold better than OoT/WW/TP and SS combined? Because people are tired of forced """story""" from those games being boring and wasting time.

It isn't dungeons people play Zelda games for it, it was always a sense of adventure. Something the recent games dropped and BotW brought back. I'm sorry, but it's the truth.

>>714978608
>BotW is a game you could sink over a thousand hours into and still find random pockets of people and monsters or locations which are new
Not him, but "new" isn't as subjective a word as you're making it out to be. A pack of Bokoblins and Lizalfos isn't "new" because one of them happens to be wielding a weapon I haven't specifically seen before or this camp layout is technically different from the last. The more things I discover that I'm perfectly equipped to handle the moment I discover them, the less it feels like I'm exploring. You know?
Likewise, when someone's problem falls perfectly into the format of a previous person's problem, and the solution to it is 10 of an item I've been picking up on my own already, it doesn't feel like I've interacted with a unique individual with a unique problem.

>>714978929
>the literal first game in the series that has no story and a world where you can go almost anywhere from the beginning
... in pursuit of individual, unique items that open up specific ways for you to continue the game. The part that OoT has and BotW lacks. Zelda 1's point wasn't that you could take ANY path, it was that the paths were controlled by the items YOU got. Most paths being impossible because they'd require an impossible item collection sequence isn't a "flaw" in Zelda 1.
>The devs who made the game and put out art of Zelda 1 and showed how they used a mock up of Zelda 1 to design BotW
Advertising?
>BotW outsold the boring and outdated old linear games for one reason
See above.
>Why do you think BotW sold better than OoT/WW/TP and SS combined?
See above.

>>714978929
>No anon, the literal first game in the series that has no story and a world where you can go almost anywhere from the beginning does not have more in common with OoT than it does BotW.
Yeah, it has no story and BotW certainly brings back the feeling of "go anywhere" freedom that slowly and steadily got eroded with and since ALttP. I think that part of BotW is fine. What I don't understand however, is how people move from that initial impression of "it's open ended again" to actually awarding 10/10 when the game, as it unfolds, is actually less like Zelda 1 than it first seems. Because Zelda 1 is a true Adventure game. Not really an "Adventure Sandbox", but just an adventure game. The content is prescriptive, and the whole experience is based around finding the rest of its prescriptive content, such as the Lantern, which lets you reveal hidden passages below trees, or the Raft which makes you cover all those areas you noticed earlier that cross the sea.

BotW is a SANDBOX, so you never need to pay attention to its world to figure it out. Instead, you always have the ability to do what you have to, so when you see a sea area and an island you want to reach, all you do is "come up with" a method to get there, and you get there.

This may feel rewarding at first, but it's diminishing returns as you continually discover that all you find are Shrines, and Shrines only upgrade Health/Stamina, which only lets you find more Shrines so you can get more Health/Stamina. You never have a true "Wow, I didn't know this was in the game!!!!" moment when there's no Lanterns, Rafts, or Main Dungeons that are somehow hidden within the world.

TotK gave me a few of those moments with the way some Caverns were designed on the inside, but ultiamtely it's also stuck in this Boilerplate approach where the game folds in on itself with an incestuous approach to content-repetitive design.

In short: BotW sucks because it's closer to Minecraft than a proper Zelda game.

>>714978316
Not true.

>>714975989 (OP)
You know I'm at the age where when I play a modern game I expect the first 2 hours at minimum to be humiliation ritual of unskippable cutscenes, slow pacing, and tons of exposition. The lack of story being in your face in Breath of the Wild is to its strength; much like the original Zelda games.

Let me ask you something, when you think about replaying Link's Awakening or Ocarina of Time what goes through your mind first? The owl talking nonstop or the Deku Tree talking nonstop? You think that's fun? I think BoTW has a lot of charm in its dialogue areas you weren't expecting. For example Robi (forgot the exact name) the tech Sheikah who enhances your tablet has a wife and if you talk to her she inquires about her son. You can say Yes/No, but if you say you never met her son then talk to her again and say you did, she utters under her breath what's going on with you. Those are the type of interactions that are funny to me and you don't need a cutscene owl in your face.

I do agree Tears of the Kingdom was very lacking in story and continuity issues (people who should know Link don't). Nintendo was lazy in that regard.

>>714978929
>It isn't dungeons people play Zelda games for it, it was always a sense of adventure. Something the recent games dropped and BotW brought back. I'm sorry, but it's the truth.
And that makes you question how OoT ever got 10/10s if it was solely based on how "impressively huge and open" it felt. Even if you played it in 1998, which I actually did, my takeaway was not "wow the world was so open and free", it was "wow that felt like a MASTERPIECE!" because the dungeons were so good, the open world was a nice atmospheric 'buffer' between its more game-oriented content, and the lead-in and ease-out moment between dungeons had storytelling which culminated in a super climactic and rewarding feeling, and a sensational vibe to how the story ends, that felt like a game finally had a real "movie" quality, but through being just a video game (as opposed to how games now chase Hollywood, overly-linear/directed stuff)

It felt like Zelda at its core, but a more matured and completed form, where Zelda 1 was more of an arcade experience. BotW bringing back that arcade feeling is fine and I applaud that, but omitting everything else that made Zelda reach a "masterpiece" feeling makes me super confused what exactly about the "fun of exploration" makes BotW feel like a "masterpiece". To me it still feels like people just played 10 hours of BotW and decided in advance that it must be a truly special experience, because the full experience of BotW is one of diminishing returns and exhaustion. by the time you're done, it doesn't feel that amazing anymore, and the story was honestly utter crap, even compared to earlier Zeldas. And it's somehow even a worse story than Skyward Sword which felt all kinds of overwrought and "kiddie".

>>714979828
Right... so we agree that Great Plateau is pure unadulterated kino, and how the game opens feels really iconic and amazing, right?
But we disagree that the game is a masterpiece just because the opening "isn't like all those other normie games". The point is that the more you play BotW the more its "magic" wears off and it has way more in common with Assassin's Creed 2 at the end of the day, than it does Zelda 1.

I liked BOTW story. TOTK was awful.

>>714979898
There's an overwhelming number of people who want to measure old games by how "freedom" works in modern games, when "freedom" in modern games is a self-referential mess of arbitrary rules. Zelda suffers a lot from this.

I HATE ALL OF YOU SUBHUMAN STORY TRANNIES SO MUCH KILL YOURSELVES ALREADY AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO RUIN VIDEO GAMES WITH "WHY IS THERE NO LE STORY" BECAUSE FUCK YOU THATS WHY STORY IS SUBHUMAN SCUM GO PLAY YOUR WESTERN TRANNY SLOP FOR LE STORY

>>714977849
Dialog text boxes aren't cutscenes you subhuman tranny

>>714980098
I've noticed that, but I don't understand it in a "critics consensus" way, which is what makes games like MGSV or BotW stand out as extremely overrated to me, considering they play similarly to Assassin's Creed 2 and later games in that franchise, yet stuff like that, or Far Cry 3 are adequately rated at like 8/10 on average, and I agree with that rating. And I would similarly place BotW/TotK at an 8/10 for the same reasons. because to me they don't outperform the "norm" of these types of normie-games. Sure, you can climb anything, and the games have a more "special feeling" in their opening. But that's literally it. You keep playing and it just has such a "status quo" feeling the more hours you sink into it, exactly how Assassin's Creed becomes downright mediocre by the time you're halfway done as the map fills up with menial boilerplate design.

Why is BotW/TotK not given a bump down in its score for the same reason? Its content is exactly as low-effort and has the depth of a puddle while being wide as an ocean, but "Because it's ZELDA" or "Because it's NINTENDO" the hype takes over and people get delusional about it.

If all we're looking at is an officially Nintendo Branded alternative to Ubisoft shit, what's honestly that great about it? Brand recognition? That's all I get from these normie-admissions anyway.

>>714980017
It's fantastic, if you're into game design you should study the Great Plateu in Breath of the Wild. A lot of invisible hand game design going on. There is a fault, because of the way it's structured when replaying the game you kinda have to do it (as the nature of all tutorials). I remember the original Deus Ex on the PC having a tutorial on the main menu that was divorced from the rest of the game's narrative. Back then (early 2000s I wanna say) we had tutorials in the main menu, whereas today without manuals or menu tutorials they're all forced on the player.

For a first impression, it's fantastic what BoTW accomplished. For replayablity I would've had maybe a hidden shrine, super hidden, that only a returning player would find and if you find it you get all the other shrine powers at once and can sorta skip the rest.

Anyhow, what BoTW plateau does is it subtly guides the player to areas with points of interests. Then it dangles the paraglider carrot stick reward over your head. A lot of other elements are mixed in like the food near the snow area entrance having warmth properties when cooked. It's good teaching skills. The one element that wasn't used past the tutorial was cutting trees down to make makeshift bridge gaps (Tears of the Kingdom used this, though).

The lazy flashback narrative is servicable in Breath of the Wild, but in no way should it have returned in Tears of the Kingdom. It lacks player agency and since they repeat the cutscenes in TOTK, it lacks any urgency since you know it's the same song and dance. So the OP/you are correct in critique when they fell short of a better storyline, but at least in the first iteration the problems didn't knockdown the story. You get a lot of value from NPC interactions, like the traveling guy who looks like Iwata isn't even a questline in Breath of the Wild.

ToTK was the laziest way of doing a story.

>>714978309
>Hell Zelda in these games has more character development than most any other NPC in a Zelda game, I don't know why that doesn't count for whatever reason.
Describe Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom withiyt saying what she looks like, what kind of costume she wore or what her role in the plot was. Describe her as though you're talking to someone who has never played a Legend of Zelda game before

>>714975989 (OP)
>100+ hour
no

>>714975989 (OP)
>BotW was a placeholder game so that they could hit the Wii U sunset date and Switch launch
>TotK was literally a first draft that Fujibayashi made in an afternoon and gave to Aonuma only for him to not even read the thing and just give it full approval
The Aonuma/Fujibayashi powerteam is basically just the logical endpoint of Japanese work culture: Incompetent Peter principle boss and non-confrontational, meek employee.
>>714978309
It's told in cutscenes, because those were easy to cut out and salvage when making the placeholder. You don't tell a game story in disjointed cutscenes that have nothing to do with the gameplay, because that's just a visual novel with extra steps.

>>714980167
the story was a major selling point though
the major selling point of the Switch 2 version were lore/story notes you could only get with the upgraded version

>>714981392
>the major selling point of the Switch 2 version were lore/story notes you could only get with the upgraded version
Aha, gimmick trash is now a major selling point. Take your meds, tranny. They needed something to justify this re-release to the people who are always complaining on the internet, even though they don't even own a Nintendo Switch. The whole selling point is 60 fps and 1440p, and that's good enough for me. I don't have to pretend that I care about those useless sticky notes about useless lore

If they re-release Pikmin 4 in 60fps, I'll buy it again. And guess what? It won't come with useless sticky notes about le lore because NOBODY CARES

>>714982051
You can just play it on 60 via Yuzu already

>>714980705
To me the fault of BotW is the same as in so many other games with non-linear design, like RPGs where you've overleveled the game completely. The designers can't know what I've decided to do and under-designed their own game in its deeper parts instead of tightening it up. The thing that amazed me about the Souls games was that they're pretty darn hard to learn at first, but they get even stricter as you moved forward, kind of punishing the player and then telling you "Hey ACTUALLY learn how to play it now, or you'll be stuck." Zelda felt a bit like that too when dungeons required you to know how the game really is put together instead of trying to dumbly guess your way forward.

And to me, much like how TotK can't tell its 4 dungeons's narrative without re-introducing "The Imprisoning War" at every point, there's a weird Laziness coming from Nintendo when it came to designing the freedom of their games past the tutorial area. They designed every corner of the world to be "the first corner the player tries" and that makes the games feel crappy after progressing them. A game like Mass Effect 1 knew how to design narrative around multiple choices and addresses the player's agency by updating and changing the writing based on where you go first and where you go last. Nu-Zelda doesn't, and it doesn't do it with gameplay either.

To me BotW is a lesson about how Gating is actually a good thing that people took for granted, but the normie-lesson is that Gating sucks and we're glad it's gone. I learned using Impulse 101 to beat Half Life 1 as an 8-year-old that games get worse the more you cheese them and miss the more excruciating encounter-design the devs actually tested. Sad to see adult gamers switch off their brains and act as if games are better the more we get to thoughtlessly skip as much content as we want. Absolute Zoomer logic.

>>714980990
>The Aonuma/Fujibayashi powerteam is basically just the logical endpoint of Japanese work culture: Incompetent Peter principle boss and non-confrontational, meek employee.
I'm actually liking the structural design and more specific level-design of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom right now, and it had a lot of BotW staffers making it too... but NO Fujibayashi, and even Aonuma is also credited. That to me proves, along with Skyward Sword that it's Fujibayashi who can't make good Zelda games.

His ethos of game design was similarly shitty in Skyward Sword, thinking that Zelda games should have "non-stop fun", but instead of open world he just decided "every location must be dungeon-like". He doesn't grasp the concept of pacing, that one part is really tightly designed so the following part eases up, creating a flow between player freedom and player challenge.

BotW suffers from this too IMO, as he once again thought "everything should be non-stop fun" and so the open world and Shrines are ALWAYS open-minded to the player's own ideas, rather than pacing it between getting as much freedom as possible vs a scenario where a few solutions are required, through knowing and having learned how to use the mechanics right.

He has to go IMO.

>>714980783
TotK apologists will not answer this

>>714980783
>Describe Zelda's character without referencing her design
Absolute NTR-queen that made Linkbros lose.

>>714983025
Nu-Zelda apologists never refute criticism. Best they can do is throw sales figures and Metacritic scores back at you.

>>714980783
She is my wife

>>714980783
She is a complete fucking retard who couldn't piece together that the clearly evil person named Ganondorf might have some connection to Calamity Ganon.

>>714980448
Hey including those is being pretty generous. Or did you actually hate the cutscenes and prefered the exposition being told by a mii NPC who makes funny faces and goes "GUH" sometimes

>>714984153
TotK's narrative is actually shitty beyond comprehension.

>>714982719
>>714980990
Read this anon's post>>714982442
The issue with BoTW and TOTK is they were designed with areas that could pass off as "first time player going here". What I mean is that even the Gerudo Desert has storyline designs that treated the player as a tourist going there for the first time. There is a lack of player difficulty in the game's progression due to non-linerarity. While the open world design for exploration is to be praised, the actual story->dungeon->story arc progression have faltered since BoTW.

I don't know who's fault it is that things are they way they are, but it was every evident they didn't improve the criticisms of BOTW in TOTK. The only area they succeeded was the accidental 5th dungeon you could trigger in TOTK, which is part of the Zona Minu storyline. Oh and by the way, she's always been inside the tablet in TOTK just not awaken because someone at the writing team didn't think this plot point through. In Tears you could end up on this thunderstorm island that's very cool because no one even mentions it as being part of a larger questline.

Of course this becomes an issue, because there is a questline related to the thunderstorm that you can do out of order. Bit of a mess really. A Link to the Past would let the player do most dungeons out of order once you begun the Dark World arc (you can travel back and forth with the mirror). It's sad to say but neither BOTW or TOTK had this level of player progression for dungeon design. While you could do the dungeons out of order, they all felt like a beginner's tourist trap dialogue and dungeon design.

>Make nonlinear Zelda game
>Except it has a very clear Nintended sequence of what you're supposed to do
>Do something early or learn a key piece of information the rest of the game is built upon learning
>None of the NPCs react to this information and the quests don't change either
I don't get it. Why do they try to force the non linear meme so hard if it detracts from the whole experience.

>>714984153
>She is a complete fucking retard who couldn't piece together that the clearly evil person named Ganondorf might have some connection to Calamity Ganon
So you're saying that VOLODYMYR Zelensky must have some connection to VLADIMIR Putin? Presumably Ganon is a common name in that part of the world, like Muhammed or something

>>714984543
I tried playing TotK in the epic "non linear" way everyone was talking about, basically going exploring instead of doing the quests the game was pestering me to do
Long story short I beat the entire game without getting the autobuild, and I only found the underground when the main story required that I do it near the end of the game
I blame myself for listening to /v/

>>714984595
I mean she also gets sent back in time by an evil mummy guy who knows her and Rauru by name and she doesn't think to mention this at all until after Ganondorf is murdering everyone.

>>714984543
Cause they developed it as DLC around the ultrahand shit first, then realized the work involved was too much for DLC pricing but also that no one would buy DLC priced as a full game, so they had to shoehorn in shit to justify making it a sequel. Then, because it's Nintendo, they slapped an extra $10 on because fuck you.
Everything outside of Link's abilities and maybe the tutorial sky island was a complete afterthought and it's wild that people can't see that. They've even talked about the mechanics and fuse being the biggest timesink in development.

>>714984796
Same. I get so afraid of spoiling content in this open format that I end up missing all the obvious starter-things until late in the game, because it would be too obvious and I thought they wanted me to be free from walking in the designer's footprints.
Turns out these games are just as scripted as any other slop but they just removed all the barriers from sequence breaking it.
This is our "masterpiece" btw.

>stumble upon the scene where Rauru's wife is already dead before seeing any of the other memories because I dared explore before anything else in the open world game

How do we make sure Nintendo's writing department knows how poorly received Tears of the Kingdom is?

>>714984595
Given the last thing she encounters before she's goes back in time is a mummified red haired man who sounds like Ganondorf and mentions Rauru?

For players looking forward to Tears of the Kingdom building upon Breath of the Wild as a sequel, many feel disappointed that direct references to the events of Breath are kept very minimal, sometimes entirely ignored. While this was understandably necessary to prevent newcomers' confusion, many feel that the minimal references squander much of the game's nature as a sequel. Some have suggested that the game could've used Old Save Bonus to change dialogue where needed, especially since Tears retains horses and the Champions' Ballad photo from such.

>>714975989 (OP)
Imagine how cool it'd be if we had Fallout 3 but with BOTW gameplay, movement, mechanics in general? guns would be like bow and arrows, melee would obviously be preferable, "shrines" don't exist points of interests and "dungeons" exist naturally there... damn that'd be an awesome game indeed

>>714976475
>>714976567
>Majora mask had no story
Not only that, it was still an exception directed by Koizumi, not the norm

>>714975989 (OP)
I don't know, Ask the localizers why they didn't translate the Quest log correctly. A lot people who work on these games don't have a single fuck to give.

>>714976461
umineko
muramasa
ever17

>>714976747
>they could not be compared to what can be found in literature of even film
please stop being a fucking pseud

>>714976461
>Sakura no Uta -Sakura no Mori no Ue o Mau-
>Sakura no Toki -Sakura no Mori no Shita o Ayumu-
>Sakura, Moyu. -as the Night's, Reincarnation-

>>714986805
kek

>>714980167
storyniggers ruin literally everything and you cant escape it in any game. even doom is a muh epic lore series now

Not one cutscene of Purah meeting Paya and she teases her grandniece because she looks much younger than her. Not one cutscene of Impa and Purah fighting.

Very cool writing staff Eijia Aonuma san! Let's talk more about you setup mysteries boxes in Breath of the Wild then choose not of answer any of them in Tears of the Kingdom! My favorite one are the gigantic dragon/whale skeletons that have old Link tunics in the abyss, with zero context for how this could happen. How was there a Day/Night cycle in the Kingdom of Hyrule founded in the Abyss when there's a literal contient ceiling on of them?

MYSTERIES, AMBIGUITY, AONUMA EIJI STYLE WORLD BUILDING WRITING JUST LIKE THE WIND WAKER HAVING NO CLEAN FUCKNIG WATER SINCE THE SEA OF SALT AND THE FISH ARE ACTUALLY MAGICAL FISH WHO ARE IMMUNE. YES THIS IS ACTUALLY LORE.

FUCK THIS WRITING, FUCK TEARS OF THE KINGDOM. STAR WARS NEW TRILOGY STYLE WRITER INTERNS. I have almost no problems with Breath of the Wild storytelling and NPCs, but ToTK bothers me so much its unreal. What the fuck Nintendo? The lack of consistency from game to game is so insane.

>>714980167
>>714988798
Stuff like Mario doesn't need a story
A 100h slog like Zelda does
simple as that

>>714988798
>>714980167
The story of TOTK purports that Hyrule was founded by Zonai. In all the past cutscenes with Zelda there's obvious day and night cycle. Yet in the present day, the abyss area where it's located is in the underground without any sunlight. There's no way this makes geographical sense whatsoever. It would be like Dark Souls 2 level designers made a Zelda game.

>>714984387
TotK exists for the same reason Majora's Mask did. They had a ton of production work done that they wanted to capitalize on with a much less costly sequel. I can't explain how on earth they justified working 6 years on a sequel of that type, but they did, but it doesn't change that TotK's impetus was that "We made BotW and we're not just gonna scrap its systems/design pipeline already!"
BotW3 is either gonna be a very different type of game, or it's going to be a pretty radically different take on a BotW style game.
My money is on them going "Live Service" next.. Seems to always be how companies grow from Ubisoft-style games into games where the content becomes monetized and FOMO driven.

>>714989175
Maybe we can design actual dungeons. Zelda 3D maker.

>>714989137

Don’t forget that they literally show a full sun above Zelda and Rauru in *numerous* flashbacks. There are open fields, blue skies, and weather effects in these "Ancient Hyrule" scenes. But then you go to that same area in the present and it’s a pitch-black hole under a continent-sized slab of rock with glowing mushrooms. Like, did the Zonai build Hyrule in Minecraft Creative mode and then hit bedrock later?

The game doesn’t even make an attempt to explain any of this. Geography, physics, even basic logic be damned-because “aesthetic.” It's like the writers just assumed we'd forget the flashbacks have fucking natural lighting. This is literally Skyward Sword levels of retcon spaghetti but weirder because we have actual modern hardware now.

>>714984796
Tears is simply a mix. It wants you to at least clear a temple (assumed to be the Wind temple) and get the plot rolling before it lets you go, then occasionally wants your attention for other plot points during the game as well. If anything Zelda oldfags should be happy that it's at least attempting to blend both styles. Echoes of Wisdom does so a little as well

>>714975989 (OP)
BotW's story was fine and complimented the freeform structure. TotK's story is one of the worst I've seen in a game

>>714976313
>When haa Nintendo every written a good story?
Ocarina of Time
Majora's Mask
Wind Waker
Twilight Princess
Skyward Sword
Minish Cap
A Link Between Worlds
Link's Awakening

>>714976327
>They did.
Did they? I like how you collect tablets with ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE in ToTK and those just spell out things you already know from main quest. Thanks Nintendo, don't want my brain to explode from too much information do we

>>714976294
When you type a comment like this, do you actually mean it?

>When haa Ninten-
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP
>T-T-They make games for ki-
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP
>its n-n-n-n-not in their intere-
HAVE A ROTTEN DAY

>>714995891
Were you not alive when Skyward Sword was hailed as the new best game ever made for like the 2 weeks following its release

Explain to me the appeal of a fish

>>714989175
>My money is on them going "Live Service" next..
If NS2 Zelda is actually just Genshin Impact I will end Nintendo