Thread 717136776

These were so fucking stupid.
You ever wonder who constructed these fucking things with those puzzles specifically for one dude to solve to get practically nothing as a reward?

>>717136928
sounds like normal game dev work

>>717137056
heh
updoot :)

>we can't just combine these puzzles into a minidungeon that actually looks like a part of the world and has a theme and doesn't require a loading screen
I don't get it. They had a SECOND chance to do it right and still fucked it up.

>>717136776 (OP)
Every Nintendo game pursues what BotW's director called "Multiplicative Design" now. It means small bits of gameplay that can be scaled up to mass production and provide fun on a constant basis no matter what the player is doing, like Minecraft.

This is why all Nintendo franchises now introduce Minecraft-like gameplay mechanics.

But the real issue with BotW-formula's "mini-dungeons" is that it doesn't grasp the "point" of dungeons in older Zeldas. A lot of gamers wrongly assume Zelda is good as long as the dungeons are good, just like Dark Souls fans wrongly assumed Souls is great as long as it's got bosses with 5 types of fake-out wind-up-attacks that you have to learn 2 dodge.

But when that's all the game kinda is, there's suddenly no pacing anymore. Skyward Sword was made by the same director but had the inverse issue. The entire game was like a non-stop series of Old-School dungeons. The maps outside the dungeons and the dungeons themselves was just "Level Design". The director once again wrongly assumed that Zelda is good as long as the dungeons are good.

The real reason Zelda was seen as so good was because it's a "many things" kind of game. The dungeons are a great contrast to having spent 5 hours just exploring, and then getting to a story beat. But in order to see the next part of the story, you have an uninterrupted 1-2 hour slice of gameplay with depth, where the real meat and bones of the game experience is. Then you go back out into the overworld and have a 2-5 hour buffer, before you see another dungeon, creating a sense of ups and downs in the "adventure", with the dungeons being the "high stakes" moments for a video game, which would be "drama/action" if it were in a movie.

But if you're ALWAYS bumping into dungeons that last no more than 2 minutes, and you're always otherwise exploring for hours upon hours, the game loses all its momentum.

BotW is a chill game, but it's a bit too chill to be a good "Zelda" experience for me.

>>717136776 (OP)
I'm still baffled Nintendo never released a Super Mario Maker-esque game for designing your own Sheika shrines. Sounds like free money to me.

>>717137275
They didn't do it because they didn't bother. Just like they didn't bother creating an actual "Dark World" for TotK as the "ALttP" part of the BotW series, when they could just inverse the existing map in a 3D Tool, put it under the overworld through a loading hole, and call it "The Depths".

Fujibayashi is such a shitty director for Zelda, I swear.

Every Nintendo game plays exactly the same now. I hate it.

I am not looking forward to open world slop Metroid and Fire Emblem

>>717137275
I know why they didn't do that in BotW.
Its because the Switch's portability directed them towards designing content that can be complete in short bursts.
Shrines are small self contained puzzles so you can get one done on your train commute.

>>717137498
Yeah me neither. I already expect Metroid Prime 4 to have some "experimentatitive puzzle" gameplay that is as bad as the forced open world in Mario Kart, which is why the game seems to be constantly delayed as they know it isn't good, but they're trying to "save it".

When all they should've done was just... fucking make Metroid Prime 4, another 3D Metroidvania game that loosely applies the structure of Super Metroid but swaps out the story, bosses, locations and items and puzzle encounters.

Like, there's nothing wrong with the old formulas. I'm so sick of journos killing Nintendo because they want them to change what they're supposed to be. Like, "Uhh Uncharted is always the same, I hope the next one is an Open World Survival game". Nobody said that because they know Uncharted is Uncharted. Why can't they do that for Nintendo games?

>>717137540
Not true. It was implemented when the game was still mainly made for Wii U, and the director did comment on it. He said
>"We knew we COULDN'T make traditional dungeons in this game, so we had to mass produce it."
Literally said that.
So whatever that means, it probably means something along the lines of "Once we set up the dev pipeline to make an Open World, we realized there wasn't a budget for '''real''' dungeons this time."
So they found a boilerplate formula and made the Shrines. And, they made all the shrines by literally grabbing 1 developer at a time on the team, whether they were Level Designers or Artists, or Sound Engineers, and said "Hey guy. Make 1 Shrine. Pick a location from the list, and go into the toolset and put a Shrine in the game."

That's why the game is also so inconsistent with the quality of Shrines. A series of devs put layouts together for the 25 "Combat Shrines". Another group put normal Shrines together, and a third group worked to implement puzzle-moments that unlock those reward-shrines where there's just a chest in them.

I really would accept the "Mini dungeon" aspect of Open Air Zelda more if it was done like the Reward-shrines, but the Shrines don't require a seperate map instance. I'm so done with the whole "omg, an ancient structure comes out of the ground and you must wait on the load screen." Just put it out in the map. The Caves in TotK are perfect replacement for Shrines in many cases. The only problem was that they're stuck underground where the graphics look like shit because there's no skylight.

All they have to do is more carefully construct a new overworld, knowing they have the ability to do Cave Networks too, and make some emergent level design as part of the player discovering things, and I'd really just go for Heart Pieces again at this point, and instead make the Shrines more of a "Story Collectable".

>>717136928
We know who constructed them, their shriveled corpses are buried inside each one.

>>717138092
I can understand they ran out of time for BotW. Which is why TotK is so disappointing. They should have removed shrines and towers completely.

>puzzle-moments that unlock those reward-shrines where there's just a chest in them
Fucking hate these. There are a few overworld puzzles. Clearly they can make them. But in the end a shrine STILL pops out and makes you spend like a full minute in loading and cutscenes to get a spirit orb. Completely sours a triumphant moment.

>>717137275
Nothing stopping you from doing back to back shrines if you want anon

>>717137498
Open world fire emblem would be cool

>>717137498
Mario Kart World was a poor omen. That's what told me "oh my god they're actually gonna do this to pretty much every IP now".

>>717138937
What part of having a theme and no loading screens did you not understand? I hate when these "no appreciation for aesthetics" motherfuckers pop on this site. Go back to your Atari.

>>717137301
Well said. As someone who could never get into the series due to getting stuck on dungeons as a brainlet, BOTW is the only one Ibeat since the dungeons are such a small part of the experience. I believe this is why it sold far more than the rest of the games but I understand why the old fans would be upset

>>717139206
Lots of aesthetics in the over world anon

>>717139219
Absolutely. The fact that it can market itself on "Look the world is so EPIC AND BIG" is how Zelda was always MARKETED, it just didn't ring true with what the Zelda experience actually was. If you check the back of the box on Twilight Princess it says like "up to 100 hours of content in a huge, vast world". And I sometimes wonder when people hate on TP if it's because their idea of Zelda is entirely "Wow, such epic world, so big and huge" because to me that has never even registered as the "essence" of this series prior to BotW actually realizing it.

And the other thing that made you and more people play and finish BotW is the TikTok factor. When everything is in smaller chunks and every activity in the world are decisions you make on a whim, it follows a pattern of instant gratification. I'm sure Nintendo was also aware of this. It's also why Donkey Kong Bananza tickles my fancy as an eternally online doomscroller. It's made for the current world we're in, while older video game genres sadly fell out of relevance because like a book or a 2½ hour movie, they require an attention span that has been ruined in today's distractful society.

>>717137498
>Every Nintendo game plays exactly the same now. I hate it.
What are modern (switch era and beyond) Nintendo tropes? I can think of

>Open world
>Voice acting focus
>Character customization
>Fake Languages
>Lore focus
>Love of modern club music/raves

>>717137275
It should just be a cave or something, I would have liked it more. Instead in TOTK, we get caves, but the end result is some shrine inside it. The cave itself should be the "shrine"

>>717137301
Good post.

>>717139219
I like the game a lot more now than I did for the first 3 years. In 2017 I struggled to keep playing it. I felt like after Divine Beast #1 I had "seen everything in the game" already which is kind of true when you know what that means. And I actually stopped and didn't see the rest of BotW for like 3 years.

First time I finished it I cursed at the final boss and ending because I thought it was so awful after all the time you spend and it just kinda ends "on that".

It's like a lot of other games that have gone open world. They're wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle. The issue I had wasn't that the game is shitty -- it's a really good game. What bothers me is the amount of people saying "it's a masterpiece", because to me a "masterpiece" is a certain kind of experience you get as a whole after a game is done. I don't ever play 50 hours of a game and say "This is a masterpiece because I'm having fun." It's a feeling that emerged from games that, as they go from being "really good", to being "more than the sum of their parts" especially as you reach the finale, I look back and say "everything went to a higher level".

I got the opposite feeling from BotW. When it ends I'm just kinda left with "All I did was zoom around, do 1 shrine and 1 more shrine. Pick up 500 korok seeds, and ride my horse."

it's a game full of activities but as a larger experience it never reaches that "other level" for me. The reason people said that about Ocarina of Time in 1998 wasn't that it was just so huge and epic and "wow 3D!" it was that the game really builds to an "experience" over its full course, and the finale really tops off the game in a fantastic way, after the game is already more and more surprising and consistently solid.

So what Zelda fans are sad is gone isn't that the games are too open-ended or too huge... it's just that they fail to build to a sense of momentum and story-composition through whatever you're able to do in them.

>>717137275
this is what pisses me off, they could have given us 40 shrines, 100 korok seeds and 3-4 more dungeons instead.

>>717140146
Yeah, or they could've made a system where a dungeon can be chipped away at over the course of the whole game, and be 3x larger than a normal Zelda dungeon, and make better use out of "4 major dungeons".

Like, imagine if dungeons were divided into 4 areas, and you have to solve a series of puzzles or enemy gauntlets to clear 1 of those areas in the dungeon, and then you have the choice of running to the next area inside the dungeon, which all feels like kind of interconnected level design (A bit like Hyrule Castle interior at the end of the game)

Plus it has the Divine Beast map mechanics so the entire time you're inside it, it can move the walls and stuff, really feeling like a giant puzzle box, built from ominous, ancient origin.

Then you'd have maybe a total of 50 hours inside dungeons, which then are more diverse and contain more unique types of aesthetics and enemies, but another 40-100 hours of Overworld.

The issue I have primarily with BotW is really just that the ratio between Dungeon to Exploration is fucked. It used to be kind of a half and half in total. You spent a lot of time walking back and forth trying to figure out where the next dungeons would be located, and clear many caves and enemies and side-quests until you find it, but in BotW you really do have like a 9:1 ratio of just pure Overworld exploration, and then dungeons are somehow SHORTER Than in a normal Zelda game.

I'd love a game that justifies the BotW approach in a more true-to-form Classic Zelda structure. One where there's like 3 primary dungeons that unlock a "paradigm shift" like becoming an adult (causing change in the narrative) and then 4 new main dungeons emerge, but they're like I spoke of earlier, where they feel like they're themselves kind of Open World Dungeons, and you can decide to do 50% of one, and then leave it, to do more exploration and then 25% of another one, or just concentrate and spend 2-5 hours in each primary dungeon and fight their bosses.

>>717140754
Yeah but most people liked botw, so

>>717140894
Exactly. It was a "masterpiece" so no feedback is needed and this gave Nintendo a free pass to make TotK and keep milking the most boring version of Zelda in history.

>>717137540
Modern gaming is such a pain in the ass to start, I'll never understand this sentiment. With SNES or Game Boy you just flip a switch and within 5 seconds you've loaded your file and you're in the game. Old systems start faster than Switch, yet their games were still properly designed with progress to be made in non-bite sized chunks. Switch takes longer to boot and load into the game to the point where if I bothered to turn it on I'm sure as hell playing for several hours. Not just for Switch but for all modern games, all systems, and PC as well. Loading times are so high that I would never bother to turn it on for just a commute or a lunch break.

>>717140754
>and then dungeons are somehow SHORTER Than in a normal Zelda game.
I really noticed this with Vah Nabooris, the entire "dungeon" was like 1/4th of a normal Zelda dungeon.

>not in echoes of wisdom
>not in mario and luigi
>not in mario kart world
yep, OP is a nigger as always

>>717139921
When I heard Miyamoto say you could go straight to Hyrule castle and beat Ganon, that's what I did. Best gaming experience I've had in a long time. In fact that memory is still the last time I can recall having true fun in a videogame. Took me at least a dozen hours too. From beating the Plateau, to fucking around a bit, dying to guardians, exploring Hyrule castle, dying to the Blights repeatedly, reluctantly going back to the field to get some materials, and finally making my way back and defeating Ganon.

Conversely, I tried playing the rest of the game afterwards and got super bored. It somehow became one of the worst games ever.

Basically I feel like a Ganon only run makes this a 10/10 game, but an all-divine-beasts all-shrines run is like 3/10. It gets worse the more you do. I had to take many pauses and force myself to finish it. Idk why I did. Brand loyalty I guess.

I did another Ganon only run when TotK and it was fun too. Even did it without the glider. I think the bosses were much better but the leadup was disappointing. It was just a linear underground route which wasn't as epic as BotW castle. Starting with Colgera without a glider though was like "hooooly shit." It was amazing the game even let me get there.

I pity all the Zelda fans who tried playing these games conventionally by doing dungeons and 100%. Honestly bad design though.

>>717136776 (OP)
you mean, mario sunshine pipe levels are showing up in other nintendo games? how dare they.

>>717140754
>but in BotW you really do have like a 9:1 ratio of just pure Overworld exploration
Overworld exploration in BotW is awful because there's no sense of intrigue. Yeah, there's a lot more to see, but what the fuck are you getting out of checking out that weird alcove? Yay, a fucking Korok seed, perfect for solving a problem no one asked for. Yay, a cool trident that does decent damage so you won't fucking use it because you don't want it to break. Ocarina of Time's little hidey-hole caverns may have been a single chest with a five fucking rupees half the time, but they made it that much more satisfying when you found a fairy fountain or a piece of heart. By homogenizing exploration rewards, BotW devalued the entire appeal of Zelda exploration.

Modern Nintendo makes good momentaey gameplay, but they largely design their recent games around repeating it into the fucking ground and spread it across big feeling worlds to give the illusion of depth and variety.

>>717138092
>Once we set up the dev pipeline to make an Open World, we realized there wasn't a budget for '''real''' dungeons this time.
>Game produced by one of the biggest companies in its field
>Game from one of the biggest licenses in its field
>Well, uh, sorry dear customer, we didn't have the budget
Yeah, that's it, just like Game Freak can't afford to hire people to optimize their shit they call games

>>717139476
>Open World
Kirby still uses the level-by-level structure with Forgotten Land being more like 3D World
>Voice Acting Focus
I mean technology has advanced, why not more voice acting. Also both Bananza and Kirby only have one character in their latest games that speak English.
>Customization
There’s really nothing wrong with this. It’s cool to deck your character in different outfits, bonus points for reference costumes.
>Fake Languages
I’m not sure if that’s a thing, except for Bananza with the animal gibberish
>Lore focus
Yes games have story, also Kirby and Zelda have had lore for a long time
>Modern Club Music
The only example I can think of is Groove Layer from Bananza, and even then Conker had a rave level on N64.

>>717143073
>The only example I can think of is Groove Layer from Bananza
Splatoon is built with it as its identiity, Bananza incorporates it everywhere, and Pikmin 4 had a boss themed around it. New Horizons also had the KK party but it's more excusable there

>>717143221
Mario Kart 8 had the Disco Groove track, but World actually doesn't.

Overall I found world to be a deliciously divergent experience from what I thought has become the Nintendo standard. It has a failed open world mechanic that the game didn't even put into its own mode, just kind of a bonus feature, and the races are really all the same as normal, but the themes are pretty classic Mario.

The only issue that's "Nu-tendo" with World is how they went for 100 OST Remixes and put them in a shuffling playlist. That speaks to the same "quantity > quality" Nintendo has shifted to and the modern capitalist notion that Remake Songs is the only way to keep the content slop going.

Like they're good remixes, but they're just remixes and they mass produced them for the sake of having a playlist to make the game feel more "emergent" and randomized, and I kinda hate that whole aspect of New Nintendo.

There was nothing wrong with Mario Land 2 on Gameboy just being a 4 hour game with completely prescripted levels that you played through and got done with it. I dislike the whole notion that single player modes in games should be "living worlds" that tries to keep the player glued to their console for months at a time. It adds to the market saturation where no games get proper attention because people are still completionist about 5 other open world grindathons, and I often find myself demotivated to touch games these days because I know they're wasting my time with content slop instead of a better curated experience that ends after it's shown its best ideas.

>>717140984
Thats tendie pedos for you, they probably voted for trump. Get a ps5 instead

>>717136928
They're literally tombs, while the ones in the sequel are alrars to the first king and queen.

>>717137275
After 2 games and a combined 12 years development time, it would seem they must have forgot how to do this.

>>717137301
Good way to articulate what I wasn't able to put my finger on. I like TOTK a lot more than BOTW because where BOTW lacked in story, TOTK made up for in spades.

I think one of the big things with Zelda is the sense of not just exploration, but the discovery within exploration. I could scrub my nutsack across every square inch of a Ubisoft game and as big as they are, there's no sense of finding anything, because there genuinely isn't anything to find. BOTW made up for this gameplay philosophy by putting in Deku scrubs everywhere to find, or small encounters with a nice little weapon or item to find. The only problem is that, as fun as having a map that big is, there's not enough in there to justify a map that big. Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time were as big as they needed to be for the amount of unique content was in each game.

BOTW and TOTK could easily get by with having maybe HALF as many shrines as they did, and having the Piece of Heart stand-ins not just be obtainable from shrines, but quests and exploration. Maybe even capitalize on the world bosses by having them drop pieces of heart if they're a particularly tough fight, like the Gleeok fights. Or maybe some scripted Dark Ganondorf boss fights in notable locations.

You're right in "Multiplicative Design" in that they got EXTREMELY formulaic with enemies and weapons. I wasn't a fan. I'd rather have a huge variety of enemies that at least look and move differently, even if what they do is essentially the same. And I think it's not just a design flaw that affects BOTW/TOTK, but most open-world games. Developers try to make the world first, then fill it in afterwards, rather than planning cool stuff and then making the world to fit that stuff in. Dragon's Dogma is a game that definitely gets it right. Super unique enemies and boss fights, and a big semi-open world that's only big enough to justify the amount of content that's in it.

Sorry for the essay. Pic related.

>>717137275
I wouldn't mind shrines and the challenge levels from zelda, odyssey, and bananza if they didn't look like an abstract obstacle course in a void that reuse the same aesthetics and music over and over.

>>717137425
I don't hate the guy because he did fine when he worked at Capcom, but I really hope they have someone new direct Zelda, or bring back Koizumi if I'm being unrealistic. It's the only way to be sure Zelda will not be the same shit again with the next game.

>>717137498
The next 3D Mario is 100% going to be open world now. They already played with the idea in Bowser's Fury, and even fucking Mario Kart is open world now. Mario has already gone 3D, to vacation, to space, done multiplayer, and traveled the world. Open world is probably the next logical step for Nintendo whether we like it or not.

>>717143073
>I’m not sure if that’s a thing, except for Bananza with the animal gibberish
Fake languages are pretty common in Nintendo games. Cappy and New Donk City residents in Odyssey, Pikmin has always had it, Splatoon, and now DK Bananza,

BUMP

>>717139206
>>717137275
I like how Zelda I had more visual variety in its dungeons even if it was just a simple recolor and some reused colors here and there.