Since we're not going back to linear handholdy Zelda games, what's next for the franchise? hard mode: declare you miss linear handholdy Zelda

Fuck nuZelda

>>717268760 (OP)
Not neccesarily BotW 3, but They will be aiming for an even bigger map and even more complex physics now that they have a way more powerful system to work on

>>717268760 (OP)
Fuck NuZelda
If I wanted to play Minecraft I'd turn on my PC and play some Minecraft. tired of Nutendo and their "emergent gameplay" slop at this point

I still can't believe how shit totk was. There was so much potential after botw but instead they just slapped on some shitty building mechanics and added more empty space.

>>717269630
I lowkey hope it's Mole Mitts from Minish Cap, but now we can tunnel through the landscape anywhere lol

>>717268760 (OP)
More open world slop. It will suck, BotW was a fun novelty at first but it's not a Zelda game and gets old around the 50hr mark. I can replay OoT every year and enjoy it, you would have to pay me to replay BotW or TotK .

Sure the formula was getting stale by the time Skyward Sword released but there is this magic of going on a hand crafted epic adventure that nu-Zelda lacks

>>717268760 (OP)
What's next is underwater exploration, good, interesting can captivating water exploration. It's clearly taking a lot of braincells to make it good because not even the devs of bananza dared to include underwater exploration.

>>717268760 (OP)
It’s a shame that OoT is the only classic 3D Zelda that lets you do the dungeons in a slightly varied order. Linearity wouldn’t be bad if they actually incorporated all your items into the dungeon design but they rarely if ever did.

>>717271991
Get the fuck out of there boy, everybody does the shadow temple last. Stop getting your opinion from youtube.

>>717271212
>Muh potential of BotW
Joke's on you, you didn't already see the "template" that BotW was for future slop. they did exactly what people told them to: produce more of the same thinly-stretched boilerplate slop that 90% of BotW already was, but just with "more shit".
The reviews and fan-reception of BotW told them nothing short of "this is great, MORE!"

>>717272117
You can do Fire Temple before Forest too, you’d know if you actually played the game.

>>717268760 (OP)
>what's next for the franchise
I imagine they take TotK to the logical conclusion and do Subrosia or something similar on top of the basic map. The BotW formula is rife with issues in the long term unless they heavily iterate on it each time and they also need brand new maps each time instead of whatever the hell they were thinking with TotK.

The open-endedness of everything and "You get everything at the start" nature of it just makes the game feel worse because you know everything you encounter can be solved with what you have so you lose that specific sense of wonder. Making it so that combat also feels like a detriment all the time was a baffling decision too. Then there's the elephant in the room that collectibles don't feel special or interesting anymore thanks to the Korok Seeds and shrine items. Sure, Korok Seeds are a solution to not knowing where the player will go, but they needed so many more puzzles and to instantly complete the rest once you finished upgrading your inventory slots.

They also desperately need to rethink the durability system entirely. It's unnecessary when you can do something like TotK with the monster parts but give the player set equipment they can modify with monster parts to change how they function overall. Give the player some infinite durability axes, polearms, swords, and so on but slapping a Lizalfos tooth on a sword suddenly grants it the boomerang capability, or let the player unlock each weapon permanently once they've obtained it and let them modify those new weapons too. Make it so when the player picks up a Meteor Rod and slaps a Moblin Horn on it it now rains gigantic Moblin horns on the enemies. Make it so that if you attach it to your armor you gain buffs relative to item quality and armor quality.

They also need to bring unlockable sub items. Having everything unlocked at the start will always be garbage. It was garbage in BotW, it was garbage in TotK, and it was garbage in ALBW.

Reminder that BotW and TotK are currently the highest rated games of 2025 and this fact makes /v/troons shit blood.

>>717268760 (OP)
when was zelda ever linear

BotW 3 in a new map with a focus on liquid physics.

Just have some fucking real dungeon man.

>>717273015
I replayed Wind Waker when I got my Switch. It's definitely not entirely linear but I get what people mean that after Ocarina of Time they really did just reuse that template but linearize it fully. In Wind Waker you're not allowed to explore the sea on the way to Dragon Roost. You're not allowed to break off from the direction the game tutorialized when you have to go to Forest Haven. The game actually only opens up once you've been to Windfall Island after the second dungeon, once you're ready to open Tower of the Gods.
And after that you're not allowed to do Wind Temple before Earth Temple even though they could've made it work very easily. There are no puzzles in Wind Temple that require a Mirror Shield and there are no puzzles in Earth Temple that require Hookshot or Iron boots. But Makar doesn't spawn under the waterfall before Earth Temple is done, so effectively you can only do the game's dungeons in order.

All we need IMO is a much smaller game that has some isms of BotW, but it's, again, way smaller, and then it just has the ALttP layout but in 3D. 9 dungeons across the game -- you can only reach 3 of them by the game's opening act, which could be like a larger version of Great Plateau, and then afterwards you're free to enter and leave dungeons however you please but you just have to figure out the specific items you need and where to find them, inside and outside of dungeons, and voila, suddenly you have a very very traditional Zelda game in an almost completely Open World format.

ALBW proved Nintendo can still do it well after many years. It did simplify dungeons a bit with the Rental system, but ultimately it is a game where you can just enter a bunch of real-ass Zelda Dungeons and have a narrative that actually had some pretty satisfying beats and catharsis to it.

That's what I expected from BotW but in a larger world like 3D Land to 3D World... and then we just got this generic, empty boring Open World "AAA" game instead.

>>717273170
BotW3 is going to be a Live Service Co-op game where you explore a "changed version" of the BotW Hyrule that's fallen into dimensions, and then parts of the existing world are sold in expansion packs like it's Destiny, and they're nickling and diming you, and making the player stay in the game as long as possible to pay for microtransactions.

Have you seen the NSO Playtest game they're making? Have you seen the "Search" tab in the Switch 2 eShop that ONLY promotes 6 categories with "Multiplayer" or "Play with friends" in it?

Nintendo is fucked. They're going full TikTok with the Switch 2. It'll only be games made for people who are glued to their friends on Social Media, and exploitable with algorithms.

>>717273985
I'm not reading all that bro
@grok summarize this

>>717269213
>>717269967
anyone who adds "nu" before anything doesn't play video games

>>717272117
I always do Spirit last thougheverbeit

>>717268760 (OP)
I'm fine with an open world style for travel, it's quite fun, I just think dungeons need to be focus point and make use of conventional puzzle systems, instead of being able to brute force your way through it with the overworld physics jank.

Likewise enemy variety needs to be pumped through the roof, and I really wish combat was focused on using tools and sword tricks to "solve" the enemy instead of just menu spam and ripostes

>>717275097
But if the enemies had a "solution" then you couldn't "solve" them however you want! Where's the CREATIVITY?
>drops physics prop on enemy for 1/100th of its health

>>717271936
>What's next is underwater exploration
I need this

>>717272915
>The BotW formula is rife with issues in the long term
I dont see how?

>>717273985
I hope dungeons are designed like the sky island of TotK from now on, that was a nice big dungeon

>>717275097
Dungeons aren't really needed anymore and they hold back adventure games

>>717272225
Yeah and I'm saying they shouldn't have got away with that. Obviously they made the right decision though since totk was ridiculously successful anyways.

>>717275649
Damn bro, you right, I never thought of that

>>717274696
I'm playing BotW again on Switch 2 right fucking now. I'm almost done with it. Probably spent another 100 hours on it, and I hate the feeling it leaves me with. It always feels good for a while but then like a huge effort wasted on a mid experience that doesn't really soar like it's supposed to.
I hated Open world before BotW, so I thought BotW would be "The One" but in the end it's just another franchise succumbing to the failures of an overhyped genre.

Make Great Fairies sexy again.

>>717268760 (OP)
Aonuma has deliberately pushed out anyone who could gain power and has a very bad management style with each Zelda since MM being progressively more sloppy. The current team probably can't create real Zelda games anymore, so he's mostly just going to be pitching bad ideas to Grezzo.
The linear and handholdy nature of post-MM Zeldas are almost entirely a result of Aonuma's management, not an issue with the Zelda formula.
>>717269630
The massive development times are too prohibitively long and we've seen with the Wii U that they can't continue to massively overbudget a supposed system seller if it just never comes out.
>>717275496
It's a frontloaded game that you play until you get bored. It blows through its premise and never builds towards anything.

>>717275767
Not quite. It did not outsell BotW ultimately, and it often appears behind BotW in Charts even on Switch 2 with the upgrade packs and new editions.
That's not how sequels are supposed to perform. It's still astronomically larger than old games. Like no shit, like people wanna listen to Taylor Swift no matter what age or demographic, people wanna play zoom zoom slop and Minecraft clones no matter who or where tehy are. But the fact that TotK isn't outpacing BotW by any stretch is a sign that the formula isn't properly sustaining itself.

AC2 was a leap compared to AC1, and Ubisoft is the best example that you can only repeat a "surefire success" enough times so it eventually killed off both casual interest and core-fanbase interest. Zelda is rapidly killing its core fanbase right now, and eventually casuals will also move on because "Zelda" was a "yesterday" thing to them.

>>717275496
If you keep getting everything at the start of the game and having literally only arbitrary preference guide where you go first, it's going to get repetitive a lot sooner than the old formula did.
>but this is what we've always wanted with games! I never wanted any sort of rules, I just wanted to do everything in the game unchallenged!
Sure you did buddy. Sure you did.

>>717268760 (OP)
Any series that replicate old Zelda?

>>717275952
I appreciate you elaborating on your issues with the game. Funnily enough, I've also been replaying BotW on Switch 2. I'm enjoying it, and its making me reevaluate how I feel about the sequel. I'm only about 30 hours in. Got the Master Sword before doing any divine beasts. Playing on Master Mode ( still mad totk didn't get one ). Its certainly not my favorite Zelda game, but I still like it for what it is.

>>717268760 (OP)
Zelda in space

>>717276027
They're still "sexy" in BotW/TotK. They're built like Telma which we know is Eiji Aonuma's fetish.

>>717276080
That's very superfluous statements. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it? I guess Zelda isnt for you

>>717276214
You get to invent dungeon items using those abilities, that's so much better than any other game in the series.

>>717276238
Darksiders or Elden Ring or Tunic, I guess. What other series lack is the idea that an enemy itself is a "puzzle" and the hard part isn't so much making it's health go to zero so much as finding a way to pierce their particular defenses.

>>717276080
Tell me anon.

Is Aonuma in the room with us right now?

>>717276450
Personally I think Minish Cap was peak Great Fairy.

It's only been 2 years since TOTK came out and I'm already suffering from open-world sandbox Zelda withdrawal. When's Aonuma and team going to announce the next game? The wait is so painful....

>>717276238
Yes.
>Darksiders 1 & 2
>Okami
And this is a bit more subjective but I found a lot of Old-Zeldaness in Batman Arkham City. the second game specifically, because Asylum really is just a normalized Metroidvania game where it's all 1 sequence from beginning to end. Knight is more like an Ubisoft thing where you spend a lot of time repeating checklists in the world. But City has the same vibe of being in a central "mini-open-world" that leads to really iconic indoor locations, like the Penguin Museum, the Ace Chemicals factory or the Ice Lounge, and then over the course of the game you're given new bat-gadgets which unlock previously block off places in each location, and that really leads to a couple of moments that feel Zelda-like to me.
There's also 1-on-1 boss battles at the end of each "dungeon" in the game, where it has that "Do the thing that weakens them" and then you go in while they're knocked out to punch them, and you typically end up doing it 3 times before they're dead.

And that has a really solid core combat system that sustains the rest of the game. it's one of the best video games ever made, and really made me believe in Batman video games after playing it. It's not 100% a Zelda-clone but it was very obviously inspired by it. The Lead Designer Paul Crocker went on to work on Narrative for Halo Infinite afterwards which... funny enough, has "Zelda Puzzle sounds" and 1-on-1 bosses that reminds me a bit of Arkham baddies.

Batman Arkham Origins is also pretty good and sticks quite closely to City's formula.

>>717268760 (OP)
>what's next for the franchise?
See Bananza, replace bananas with triangles.

>>717276752
It's the only main Zelda game left at this point which I haven't played. Just something about it. I find it very bland, like Spirit Tracks but I finished Spirit Tracks because I played Nintendo DS all the time back in the day.

>>717276506
>if you don't think BOTW is a masterpiece you don't like zelda
Go play Majora's mask, Minish cap, ALTTP, or ALBW, zoomer. Get some taste.

>>717276903
I did play all of those, I'm guessing you're stuck replaying them over and over. Must suck to be you.

>>717276956
Why are botw super fans all such pedantic, reddit speaking faggots like yourself?
I'm guessing you're stuck playing Botw and totk over and over. Must suck to be you.

>>717276309
I still thought TotK was overall the better game but I also understand why people seem to give it flack and not BotW when replaying it again. Simpler is often better, and it's very similar to Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks's dichotomy. The sequel is a lot more polished in many ways and definitely more "epic" and adventurous in a dramatic way... but it's just kinda overbearing at times, especially the sense that its story doesn't earn how much more epic it's aiming to be. Something I feel right during the opening in TotK where it feels like they put this "BWAAAAM" moment into their music and I'm just really not feeling that vibe with Zelda.

Also the Depths was a mistake. As if the main world isn't big enough, just double the game's run-time by making an inversed underground copy where you can't see. I thought it was this cool little moment I found when the NPC Robbie takes you there the first time. I thought TotK was gonna have actual surprises and variety unlike BotW, and then I spent 5 uninterrupted hours and realizing it was still WAY larger. Then I realized it's literally the size of the Main Map just copy-pasted but turned upside down. And my heart sank. Because at that point you're just trying to squeeze the player for more artificial game time.

There's a cool interplay with Lightroots revealing where Shrines are in TotK, and BotW/TotK are really good at the whole "Ooh I see a point of light way off in the distance, I must go there" but sometimes the journey isn't even the reward because it's just me running awkwardly up a really vertical hill that my stamina can't withhold, and gliding for a while, and then climbing more... and ultimately there's no point to the light roots. When you get all of them you just get another "Golden Poop" reward. And there's nothing else to the Shrines other than a dumping ground for repeated content. They put 2 copies of the Dungeon Bosses down there just so you can take pictures of them.

>>717276784
>spin off action platformer where you play as toon link
Would actually be kino

>>717276576
And yet the whole point was navigating a large, shifting, complicated space, interspersed with some engaging, but narrowly focused combat to avoid giving you an aneurysm.
The dungeon items are a means to develop how the player interacts with those two states, not an end in and of themselves.

>>717276869
I don't see what's bland about it compared to other top down Zeldas. Yes it's more in line with a "contemporary" Zelda formula but I feel it presents everything I like about Zelda and just does it extremely solidly. A core Castle Town you return to and whose secrets unlock as you get more dungeon items, a sword fighting system that gives you tools to more effectively deal with particular enemies, diverse locations that each have their distinct environmental hazards. Good dungeons with lots of character.

Though I understand what you mean by it seeming "bland" on the outside, it's probably one of the most memorable Zeldas to me having played it.

>>717277325
I'd argue the point of dungeon items was to benefit the player's sense of power fantasy and Hero's journey.
A large part of old Zelda was the fact that they were fantasy at all. Nintendo based most of their early games on popular movies and favorite Disney Cartoon classics, like Sword & The Stone especially. I strongly felt there's a similarity to the whole Sword in the Stone tale where it's a monomyth, a little normal boy who is the "real hero" when others who think they're brave and heroic are actually not worthy, but the boy can pull out the special sword without using any particular raw strength, but part of getting to the point where he can pull out the sword he must learn about "Life" first. That involves a lot of trials with the wizard Merlin (very similar to the owl in Ocarina of Time) who keeps correcting him and guiding him, and sends him his way to find the macguffins. So over the course the child grows in wisdom and experience. I think of the items as that growth in OoT and its alikes. It's the player "gaining more tools and experience" by going deeper into their adventure, so that they become the "hero" so that by the midway point when you find the Master Sword, Link is ready to pull it.

BotW's way of simulating that is more pedantic. There's nothing "learned", you're just doing more Shrines and stacking up a generic item, until your HP is large enough to take the sword out. But the player may feel like they've seen a lot at that point, so there is a sense of "turning the page" when you finally pull out the sword.

So I feel that Items in Traditional Zelda was largely there to give the player a sense of growth by the expanding item screen, which they earn by the sense of "overcoming" that items provide inside the dungeons as you're able to go through previously inaccessible contraptions. The player has an "aha" moment in realizing that the thing they couldn't get across had a solution, but they had to experience the "I can't do it" first.

>>717277505
I've just taken a dis-liking to Fujibayashi's written games since Skyward Sword lol. I don't like his "fanfiction" plots.

>>717268760 (OP)
Open world with 200 shrines 1000 korok seeds set in Hyrule but now its shaded blue.

>>717277932
The Master Sword is entirely based on this
https://youtu.be/LrFO0UM34Q4?si=FWoge9H2b_KoGPUo&t=77

>>717277932
The problem I found with BOTW is that the master sword is one of the few true "I can't do it" moments in the entire game. Almost everything I "couldn't do" in BOTW for more than a second had its solution within visible distance, or could be bypassed, or guided me back in front of it as soon as I could do it. Contrary to feeling like I did everything myself, it made everything feel like it was on autopilot. There wasn't any of the old Zelda
>oh, that looks interactive, but I don't think I have the complete picture yet...
Once I was past the Plateau.

>>717268760 (OP)
The "open world" should be the Overworld that connects to more dense fleshed out areas and dungeons.

Also change the artstyle and make it set somewhere other than Hyrule. Make dungeons and towns feel mysterious and interesting. It's literally that easy for them and they will refuse because Aonuma wants to make toys instead of adventures.

Nintendo makes games for everyone you will never get a focused game out of them again
MKW is so much more than a 3 lap online sweat fest
in DKB you can tailor your experience however you want, bananas aren't even required to beat the game

>>717277990
Not that anon, but Minish Cap is what got me wanting Fujibayashi on board because of how good it was. Talk about a monkey's paw situation.

>>717278297
This. Nintendo always made games based on where they were at the time and where their market is. Right now they're larger than ever before, and the market sensibilities have changed. They always aimed to make games kids want to play, even Ocarina of Time -- they just didn't have a concept then, of games not being for kids because age ratings weren't really that prominent yet, and the truth is simply that today's youth is so distracted from video games that gaming has to follow the same patterns of low-attention-span content design and instant convenience, or they will be ignored right away with all the million other entertainment outlets people have with their devices.

That's why Nintendo and many things have gotten "shallower". Wider, more expansive than ever, but kind of shallower and less focused, because kids actually can't focus anymore.

>>717275496
The games are a minimum of 40-150 hour open world experiences instead of 15-30 hour experiences even when 100%ing them. This already makes the game overstay its welcome and makes replaying them far less enjoyable, especially 100%.
They already have the Ubisoft issue where you are running region to region to unlock the towers so you can see the damn map properly.

You are never given anything unique that's not armor pieces when exploring. Shrine rewards are functionally rupees you trade in for either an HP upgrade or a stamina upgrade and feel generic. You are not finding PoHs or Pieces of Stamina around the world and hoping you'll find another one, you are just gaining a limited currency to buy them instead taking away that excitement of finding them.
There's no such thing as a "Bottle" level reward for the player or a Biggoron Sword/Bombchu to look forward to, there's just another shrine unlock or another random piece of armor to find. This leads to most of what you obtain feeling incredibly generic as a whole because anything you find could be found as soon as you started the game and isn't used for anything outside of activating something some other item could have (Like fire arrows or even a Bokoblin at a campfire compared to a Fire Rod).

You are given everything possible at the start of both BotW and TotK (Barring the camera but come on now). By not being restricted and given free rein to do whatever you want every area has to account for that and everything you find has to supplement that immediately. You never get locked out of areas because you're missing an item and never given that "I want to see what will unlock" feeling because it doesn't exist. You also never really have a reason to backtrack because of the game, only because you got sidetracked.

Combat is disincentivized due to everything crumbling in your hands as you hold it and somehow even less fun than before since it's just sidestep fishing or parrying.

t. 100%ed BotW three times.

>>717278539
I hear you, but after SS I was like "Okay this is kinda bad" and it's negatively painted my experience with Minish Cap and the DS games.
But I already thought the DS games didn't capture the vibe of Toon Zelda anyway, and it's how I feel too when I go back to retry Minish Cap.
Ultiamtely Wind Waker doesn't feel as "kiddy" to me as those do. Wind Waker has a soul that's as dark and profound as Ocarina of Time. It has scary enemies in the Forsaken Fortress, and the bird taking the sister is pretty heartwrenching as far as setting up the narrative goes. Link facing the "duty" of Old Hyrule slowly peel off the true layers of the narrative, where it's about aging generations who can't see the needs of the younger generations because they're still thinking about how good things were "when they were kids".
That's why Wind Waker has this soulful profundity at the end of the day, and even ends on an, at the time, end-state of the whole Zelda mythology. The fact that Medli and Makar appear in the end-cutscene reveal that along with washing away the ghostly figment of Hyrule under the ocean, you've washed away what the franchise used to be, replacing it with this new potential future that is free to be something different.

Nothing they do in OoA/S, Minish Cap or the 2 DS games and definitely not Skyward Sword even come close to reaching that state of artistry. That's why I liked Toon Zelda. It's like one of those old great cartoon features where it tells a genuine feature film narrative, not a "Direct to DVD" plot, but the handheld games really did feel like Direct to DVD plots, including Minish Cap.

>>717268760 (OP)
I'd like to see them commit to an open world that has actual progression. There's nothing really in BotW or TotK that you can't do as soon as you get there due to the way the abilities work.

While I like the open world thing, they need to move away from shrines and incorporate puzzles etc in to the world itself, and most of them should require an item or upgrade to complete. Ie, you get to an area with an impossible chasm so you need to return with the hookshot. Simple as. Stop assuming players will get frustrated when they come across something they can't solve - trust they'll be invested enough to mark their map and come back when they have the necessary item

>>717269213
Surely you mean AoNUma Zelda.

>>717278690
>the game is longer and is bad for it
??? it's not even longer if you choose for it not to be

>>717279113
That progress you people bring up is such a worse game design, it's crazy you people keep regurgitating your desire for it. The progress in BotW and TotK is completely at the player's discretion.

I don't miss linear handholdy Zelda, but I miss distinct locations and the unique themes of the later series dungeons.

Echoes of Wisdom was the best 2D Zelda since Link's Awakening but the dungeon themes were so dull

>>717280043
The problem with "open progress" is that it's completely anonymous, and lacks pacing.
A little bit of gating like they do in ALttP would make for a fantastic BotW-experience, and all they have to do is make it and prove it and all you Zoomers and gen-alpha retardposters are gonna realize it.

>>717280043
>The progress in BotW and TotK is completely at the player's discretion.
And that feels like shit. Progression is good game design. Substantiate your argument.

>>717271924
>BotW was a fun novelty at first but it's not a Zelda game
BotW is the closest thing to a Zelda game since ALttP.

>I can replay OoT every year and enjoy it
OoT is anti Zelda as fuck (and the fact they chose to use it as a template for the sequels slowly killed the franchise until they had to go back the drawing board to salvage it), and if you're content with that, you should thrive on any piece of shovelware putting the dev before the player.

>>717279965
Unless you bumrush things like Ganon's Castle immediately to get that 30 minute clear time the game is at minimum double the length of any normal Zelda game by default playing casually. It takes an eternity to actually go to each main story location, do whatever requirements are necessary for the main story, survive the fights (Which might require armor upgrading or shrines to do so unless you plan on fairy spamming or save scumming while getting one-shot over and over), do the bosses and dungeons, and then finally do the final boss content + postgame or DLC in the case of BotW.

You can be done with a 100% run in LA without rushing and completely blind in the time it takes you just to find and complete a few main story dungeons in BotW on a casual playthrough.

>>717268760 (OP)
>what's next
Unironically a Genshin clone. You will pretend they're above that but we both know they're not

>>717280368
>OoT is anti Zelda as fuck
No, it's the core of Zelda distilled into 3D. Item gating was the main feature of Zelda 1 through LA, """open world""" was a design-ism to showcase it, not the inverse.

>>717280368
>slowly killed the franchise
It did not. What killed the franchise is refusing to treat the players like they had a brain and dumbing down basic concepts and puzzles to the point of outright being insulting like with Fi pointing out puzzle solutions from being in a room for like one minute while also making the player functionally invincible with even Hero mode only having you take like one or two hearts from most high tier enemies.

>>717278690
Everything you wrote was utter gibberish. You don't even have your first horse by the time you leave the Great Plateau.

>>717279060
I agree, WW is much more kino. I just think Minish Cap nails the pop medieval world aesthetic and progression.

>>717280641
>You don't even have your first horse by the time you leave the Great Plateau.
You only ever use a horse to solve puzzles in designated horse areas (Near stables and Hyrule Field) and it does not even remotely solve more than like five Korok Seed puzzles in all of BotW for example. It is also treated like the camera and functionally an unnecessary mechanic because why are you using a horse in games where you have to climb 24/7, it regularly forces you onto specific paths forcing you to push it off, you can't interact with ground objects while on one, and it's an absolute pain in the ass to fight on one? It's like using a horse in modern AC games. You will be off of it in two seconds to climb something, why even use it?

>>717269213
/thread

>>717280992
Universal climbing was a mistake

>>717280043
Yes. The end result is a flat difficulty curve and having basic shit explained to you multiple times because things can be done in any order.

>>717278278
I counted it as I was playing. It is literally the only "I can't do it" thing in the entire game.
TotK actually has 1 puzzle in the desert that requires completion of the Lighting Temple first. You have to use the sage's ability to open a metal grate somewhere, from the outside. I was really happy to see that but I was near 100% completion when I found it and really sad to realize it was the first time the game did such a thing at all.

>>717280809
Once they update the GBA Online app on Switch 2 I might play it. I'm not playing it in 720p upscaled to 1080p. they just updated the SNES app with Mario Paint releasing and it's pixel native now, so I'm counting on it.

>>717280560
>No, it's the core of Zelda distilled into 3D
OoT is a pretense. It lloks like Zelda on a superficial level but from the moment the game starts, it absolutely and utterly betrays its roots.

>>717280619
>What killed the franchise is refusing to treat the players like
players. Which is the entire game design philosophy behind OoT, to rob the player from having any way to meaningfully express themselves.

>>717281324
I like it, but too much of the game is designed without factoring it properly in, and I wish they did more playtesting to account for the player that wants to take the simplest route through everything. Don't just allow me to walk around a puzzle and climb over it. That isn't a rewarding sense of freedom. It just makes me climb up somewhere, look to the right and see a whole setup of level-design that I didn't interact with. That's not a great feeling at all. Climbing isn't fun, but it's very satisfying overall to see somewhere high and go "I'll find some way up there" by your own accord.

I literally think they're just not thinking of players sidestepping their design in most cases, and I'm just tired of seeing fans reward them for it as if it's all intentional. It's literally just because they're not testing all scenarios.

>>717276238
The Adventures of Elliot

>>717281971
>from the moment the game starts, it absolutely and utterly betrays its roots
How so? Is this about the minute or two of cutscene? Annoying and suboptimal but not nearly as "anti-Zelda" as getting all your items in the tutorial area.

>>717281971
>to rob the player from having any way to meaningfully express themselves.
The player meaningfully expresses themselves by finding solutions to puzzles by themselves, finding secrets via trading sequences or completing tasks people asked of them, finding Skulltulas, finding the hidden grottoes, and most importantly pointing themselves where they want to go. Having road signs put up to stop you from going somewhere isn't "robbing you of expression", it's gating you which they then use to push you in specific directions so that you can unlock items to then go those directions giving you a feeling of being freer and granted more autonomy by design.

The Oracles games in particular do this astoundingly well with how Ages makes you work up from just having a Shovel to having the Mystery Seeds to suddenly having an entire forest open up to you.

>>717281971
LttP fanboys are insufferable. What is the difference between vague linearity and requiring 20 different items to go from point a to point b, which serves the same purpose?

>>717281971
OoT is literally ALttP with a different narrative in a game-composition manner.
It starts, there's a little tutorial that doesn't let the player break off. Then the first dungeon happens, and you leave to the Open World.
Now the game instructs you where the next goal is, and you're free to go there.
After 3 goals done, it triggers a central event with the Antagonist and a shift to a "Dark World".
Now there are 5 more dungeons, and they can be done any time the player knows how to get to them. Some is scripted through scenes with Sheik but a lot of it is reachable and you can sequence break it.

ALttP is also more linear than people give credit for. A lot of the overworld can't be traversed until you have certain items from certain dungeons, which gates it into a linear experience compared to Zelda 1, because Zelda 1 allows you to beat the game without "finishing it", but ultimately it too had the same rule that if you wanna see all the dungeons and ending, you gotta get all the items inside and outside of dungeons. OoT follows that but ever so faintly added more guardrails to it in the form of event-triggers.
Majora's Mask is the first game that blocks the player from progress through artificiality of story-triggers, even though it could've been designed to allow all 4 regions to be accessed in the player's desired order with a few tweaks.

The fundamental problem BotW gets wrong is that it entirely neglects the idea that items should be found in order to overcome specific secrets and obstacles in its world. You NEED a raft in Zelda 1 to reach Dungeon 3. And the entire game follows a similar pattern, where the "destinations" in the world are the dungeons, and the dungeons are a handful, not a quantity>quality pattern, so the story of the game effectively becomes "Link going into the dungeons, and then going to Ganon".

BotW is the one that betrays the Zelda core the most in that sense, of any game in the entire franchise.

>>717282186
>How so?
>Zelda NES
You don't want my sword son? It's fine, go on.

>OoT
Go get a sword! Go get a shield! Or you shall not pass!

>>717282427
It creates a hidden ebb and flow to how you feel going from place to place over the course of the full game, creating a sense of wholeness towards the end, and a sense that the game wasn't dragging on for hours where you just did a lot of boring crap that wasn't worth remembering.

>>717282571
>Go get a sword! Go get a shield! Or you shall not pass!
The tutorial is worse in OoT than ALttP. So what. They were concerned you would get frustrated in one of your first 3D games if you ran off directly to the Deku Tree and didn't know about Z-targeting or having to spend some time teaching sword-moves before having the 40 rupees to buy the shield. FWIW it's a good little underwritten tutorial that relies on gameplay in a kiddy sandbox.

>>717280992
>You will be off of it in two seconds to climb something, why even use it?

Low IQ.

Reminder that this official OoT artwork is more reminiscent of BotW than it is of OoT.

BotW is the purest Zelda.

>>717282571
>Zelda NES
I can do just about nothing without a sword, so I'd never refuse to take it.
>OOT
I can do just about nothing without a sword, so I'd never refuse to take it.
I don't see a difference.
>but you CAN in one!
And it adds nothing to the game. I only care about choices that add things. I'd like being able to go to Jabu Jabu without getting bombs at all, but that's really it for places I want choice.

>>717282784
>three points of interest visible at a glance in the same shot
>all places where you get brand new abilities
It doesn't resemble BOTW at all.

>>717282784
You still haven't answered the question. Why would you ever use the horses in BotW or especially TotK? You are guaranteed to climb something within a minute or two of wandering around any direction you can think of and the horse not only constantly gets caught on stuff but magnetizes to the road if you do anything other than slow gallop at which point you are faster on foot, especially abusing whistle cancelling. It doesn't allow you to do like 99% of Korok puzzles unless they're the acorn tree shooting ones, it doesn't allow you to reasonably fight at all since you take longer to attack unless using a bow (At which point you're bouncing throwing off your shots instead), it constantly gets spooked unless it's higher tier or when hit once, and overall it's an enormous hassle for no reason.

In TotK you have less of a reason because hoverbikes are just objectively superior from every metric under the sun and cost nothing to make.

>>717268760 (OP)
>linear handholdy Zelda

You misspelled “handcrafted well-paced adventure that takes you to a variety of different interesting locations, a compelling story and cast of characters, and serve up a plethora of atmospheric labyrinthine dungeons to explore, rarely throwing the same thing at you twice.”

>>717283239
Its the quickest method of travel for crossing large distances. I feel like you are trying really hard to make this non argument. You are absolutely not climbing every "minute or two"

>>717283378
So did Aonuma.

>>717283472
>Its the quickest method of travel for crossing large distances.
Which you never do without getting sidetracked leading to climbing seconds later anyway. I have spent like 400ish hours in BotW's world at this point over multiple playthroughs and I've used a horse maybe four or five hours total and that's mainly just to unlock Ganon's, Zelda's, register Epona, and then get the joke options with. I am never in any situation where I need to run across a massive field that's not Hyrule Field. The Hebra Mountains have that Lynel area but tat also has a shrine and you literally have two mountains to the side of it you can climb again making the horse pointless.

The Master Cycle is an example of one of the worst unlocks you can get in BotW. It's completely and utterly useless because it has all the limitations and uselessness of a horse but now causes constant loading and requires materials to keep it moving.

>>717268760 (OP)
granular difficulty and somewhat roguelike dungeons, make it so journalists can beat the game but also offer challenge to older players
>"le roguelike"
it is good and it's perfect for zelda

>>717283192
>places where you get brand new abilities

You get new magical abilities at each of the 4 corner in BotW. Maybe play the game before you talk shit.

>>717283729
Nah horseback is pure kino and a great way to scope out the world. Only a fake Zelda fan would try to undermine the importance of horse riding in a Zelda game and BotW is the first game in the series where it makes sense.

>>717282294
>The player meaningfully expresses themselves by finding solutions to puzzles by themselves
The puzzles are linear. LINEAR. Thet aren't designed for the players' expression, they're literally about devs expressing themselves. You're a puppet performing the way the devs want you to the ENTIRE game because the entire game is designed with e LINEAR mindset that takes the player's expression out of the equation. The ONLY meaningful choice you have left in OoT is to turn the game off.

>>717282612
Man, I love wandering around to find the one place where the stupid bullshit I just picked up actually lets me progress, that's not linear at all.

>>717284083
>a great way to scope out the world
If you aren't getting sidetracked for shrines or something pulling your attention to get you to stop going on a set path you are playing both BotW and TotK wrong. They are designed around not having you going in a straight path to a destination.

>>717284208
>The puzzles are linear.
It doesn't matter. YOU are solving them. YOU are using your brain power to figure out how they work and the accomplishment from solving them to obtain items that will actively help you progress is the entire focal point of the Zelda games. There is a reason why everyone remembers the Power Glove room in Ages. Being locked off from progression and being forced to turn around or find alternate paths on your own time in your own way are the crux of the formula. Being able to do whatever you want feels like garbage and ALBW shows you that with how it never gets harder and never feels like you're exploring because you can just rent everything and unlock everything whenever. It's the perfect example of why having pure ungated freedom doesn't enhance the games at all.

>>717282542
>OoT is literally ALttP with a different narrative in a game-composition manner
ALttP was already going in the wrong direction, but OoT makes everything worse with its 3D shit. The way they designed content is a massive problem because everything is designed around linear interaction.

-You can light a torch! It opens the door!
-Why not just put a switch?
-Sh-Shut up, I lit a torch and the door opened up!
-Okay. Wow.

-Look I shoot the eyeball above the door and it opened!
-Was it challenging to shoot the eyeball?
-What? No! It's just there above the door! I shoot it and the door opened!
-Oh. Wow.

The Z targeting is the biggest offender of all. It semi automated everything, prevent you from facing multiple enemies and basically turn a 3D game into a 2D one (the game even has black bars to reduce you field of view!). The first Zelda had you being swarmed by octoroks right from the get go, it was basic 2D and yet, it had so much more depth than OoT fancy 3D bullshit. That's on top of enemy design that are pretty much all designed around waiting (do not bullshit me with the deku nut, the real point is that enemies are worthless, the deku nut only adds insult to injury).

>>717284646
>They are designed around not having you going in a straight path to a destination.

If you can't understand the whimsical delight of racing across Hyrule on horseback then the allure of adventures is lost on you.

>>717284984
>then the allure of adventures is lost on you.
The "allure of adventues" is literally why I am getting sidetracked at all. The horse doesn't matter for that and actively gets in my way of adventuring.

>>717284646
>It doesn't matter
Yes it does, because it means you're a puppet.

>YOU are solving them
Go do fucking sudoku, you'll use actual brain power then. The biggest fuck up in your reasoning is that the value is in the solving, but since the puzzles are linear and rob the player from having any meaningful input means that replaying the game gas NO value.

>There is a reason why everyone remembers the Power Glove room in Ages
The what? I remember Ages being terrible, Aonuma shit in 2D. Seasons was somewhat decent, there was a half assed attempt at making a real Zelda game there.

>>717283967
>super fairy
>super shield
>super updraft
These are not new abilities.
I could give you Urbosa's Fury though.

>>717268760 (OP)
>>717269213
Going back to TRUE (1 to AlttP) Zelda. Abd not OoT slop

>>717285071
>but since the puzzles are linear and rob the player from having any meaningful input means that replaying the game gas NO value.
Sounds to me like you just want pure freedom instead of what the Zelda series excels at which is a curated experience, linearity, and gating for the benefit of the player and want to rob Zelda of the best parts of itself.
>replaying the game gas NO value.
Replaying BotW or TotK has no value either by your logic. The only thing that changes at all is the direction you approach stuff as you still have solved puzzles and know where everything is.

Your mindset is what gets us games like Echoes of Wisdom and I absolutely hate it.

>>717285228
Based.

>>717285038
>The horse doesn't matter for that and actively gets in my way of adventuring.

Wrong. I would always prefer to travel by horse than fast-travel. Because the world is magical to me. And the horse stables are the comfiest locations. A saddling up my horse and heading out into Hyrule is a sensation of pure adventure few games can muster. Sorry I had more fun than you.

>>717285372
>Sounds to me like you just want pure freedom
I do not want "pure freedom", I want the bare minimum of meaningful player input. OoT is the total opposite of that, it's devs input, devs expression, the player is a puppet and the devs are pullilng the strings. OoT is pure gaming poison because it's anti player.

>Replaying BotW or TotK has no value either by your logic
These games offer the minimum of meaningful player input, the problem with these lies elsewhere (Aonuma poison).

>Echoes of Wisdom
isn't a Zelda game for different reasons.

>>717268760 (OP)
If they are continuing with the BotW games, the next game is themed red and is on the moon. Too much lines up. Kohga gets blown into the sky like team rocket. The Blood Moon came back. The shrines look like moon stones. Low gravity sections were tested out in ToTK for seemingly no reason. The Zonai are almost moon rabbit people.

>>717285859
Also Ganondorf immediately made the moon red once he got his SECRET STONE and seemed to know a lot more about the Zonai then anyone else.
ToTK also dipped it's toes into rocketry to make the Hyrule Moon Mission less jarring. Game will suck, by the way.

>>717278278
I'm just sick and tired of the fucking weapon system. Throw that shit in the trash. Give me a real variety of weapons with unique move sets that I can take to a blacksmith somewhere and upgrade. Each town has a unique blacksmith that can only upgrade certain weapons.

>>717284984
I fucking wish horses were good in modern zelda like OoT.

>>717268760 (OP)
I think we can avoid the handholding and still have nice linearish dungeons

please don't bring back the handholding though

Anyone else just plain tired of irony?

>>717268760 (OP)
if totk is any indication, botw was where all the appetitite for innovation was. they're never going to iterate or innovate for another few decades now, botw is now the "template" for future games.

what else are we supposed to take away from the fact that totk was literally just botw again? clearly botw represents the new "formula" that they're going to stick to

>>717280368
>BotW is the closest thing to a Zelda game since ALttP
This is fucking retarded for 2 reasons.
>Zelda 1 is nothing like BotW
But no one on /v/ knows thay because it would require playing video games. And
>Zelda 1 isn't the gold standard for Zelda
Its a fine game for its time but its aside from Zelda 2, its the worst game in the whole series (not counting spinoffs). The notion that future Zeldas should all aim to mimick it as closely as possible is fucking retarded.

>>717286675
>Its a fine game for its time but its aside from Zelda 2, its the worst game in the whole series
Go back to bed Aonuma.

>>717276450
I can dislike Aonuma for a lot of reasons, but his appreciation of chubby mature ladies is pretty based.

>>717276027
ill let aonuma have his weird gay okama fairies if he keeps the sex machine gerudo girls around

>>717276775
just 10 more years anon, reusing the same map a third times takes lots of effort

>>717284208
>The puzzles are linear. LINEAR. Thet aren't designed for the players' expression, they're literally about devs expressing themselves. You're a puppet performing the way the devs want you to the ENTIRE game because the entire game is designed with e LINEAR mindset that takes the player's expression out of the equation. The ONLY meaningful choice you have left in OoT is to turn the game off.
Man fuck you and the need to express yourself when solving the absolute brain dead encounters that BotW and TotK dare to call puzzles. The rest is still the same but you're too retarded to see that since you need the optional side content to be copied and pasted a thousand times so you can encounter it with ever decreasing variances to give your tik tok riddled brain the fix it needs.

>>717281624
it starts hard, gets a bit easier, and then there's harder stuff the longer you play *yawn* you fags are disingenuous

>>717268760 (OP)
I do not care for 3D Zelda at this point. What I want is for Aonuma to stop infecting the top down Zeldas with his retardation. Just make more ALttP/LA/OoX in top down and feed the 3D fags whatever shit you want.

>>717280159
the game is really well paced, you faggots dont care about pacing you want lack of it

>>717289942
nintendo don't really make 2d zeldas anymore. they don't really make many games in general anymore really, the dev cycles have ballooned out to a ridiculous degree

>>717268760 (OP)
Can we just get an open world Zelda with no gimmicks?

>>717290075
I don't care who makes them, Grezzo or Capcom or whatever, just don't make mini clones of the new 3D shit.

>>717289963
>you want the game itself to have pacing rather than it coming 100% down to how fast I play?
>well that's not pacing that's a lack of pacing!

>>717269213
fippy

BoTW2 is proof that there will never be a good Zelda game ever again. BoTW 1 was mediocre and boring enough, but 2 is the same thing but longer, more boring, more poorly written, and even less memorable.

>>717290231
I'm hoping that totk starting out as dlc for botw is the reason they didn't change anything. Like, I'm hoping something built from the ground up to be a sequel won't just keep everything exactly the same. If the next zelda game is just botw again AGAIN for a 3rd time then that'll be very unfortunate

>>717268760 (OP)
OoT is only a subpar version of alttp. As it stands, it could only be that. A weaker version of a different maybe carried by graphics.
Any "changes" brought by botw don't matter. At least now it stands as itself, something that isn't on the shadows of alttp and still has 3d graphics, atmosphere or riding an epona.

>>717289873
>there's harder stuff the longer you play
Such as? Fighting the same three or four enemies you've been fighting the whole game in a new color, so it uses up six weapons instead of just four?

>>717268760 (OP)
>what's next for the franchise?
Ideally? Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi dying in a tragic 'accident.'

>>717290640
>carried by graphics
The novelty of 3D, FTFY

>>717268760 (OP)
>handholdy
can we stop pretending difficulty in a game is a requirement in order to make a good game.
OP expect to get anally raped by a nigger while he plays vidya.