[cogitoergofutuo]

There’s probably a very high price ceiling for diehard Zelda fans! I was one myself until BotW, which in my opinion is the worst game with the Zelda name attached to it ever made.

I hope by the time they get shake off the “endless grind for crafting materials in a giant featureless grass field” high they won’t be charging an arm and a leg for a proper Zelda game.

[naikrovek]

> worst

if you consider BotW "a giant featureless grass field" then I don't believe that you are talking about the same game that everyone else is.

that BotW fails to handhold the player through Link's progression, is by far the game's greatest feature.

absolutely 0% of the overworld (excepting the four shrines of The Great Plateau) is required to beat the game. ok maybe 0.2% because you have to travel to the castle.

Breath of the Wild is as much of a game as you want. It is as much of an endless grind as you make it, no more, no less. BotW is as difficult as you make it, or as easy as you make it. Combat is as easy or as difficult as you choose.

it was extremely well received for good reasons.

is it perfect? absolutely not. when everything has a difficulty level that is actively determined by the player, as they play, the "game" kinda falls out of it, because rules become very fluid. you can eat everything you have in battle for effectively infinite life or you can choose to fight using only sticks and forbid yourself from healing. or you can fight with sticks then discover that your skills aren't where they need to be and you need to eat to stay alive. or you can stick to your guns and avoid healing and take the L if you want.

I'm trying to say that the game you want is probably in there, somewhere. it's up to you to enforce your own rules for progression on yourself, though. you can fight Ganon with three hearts or with 30. up to you.

don't want to grind? Don't.

[cogitoergofutuo]

> I don't believe that you are talking about the same game that everyone else is.

I’m talking about the one where you wander pretty aimlessly through a big field picking up sticks and stuff and occasionally get ethered by those stone robot things on sight. It’s the one where instead of getting key items by beating many different dungeons as you progress, you get a small handful of magic powers in the first hour of gameplay and then set out to collect ingredients for soup or whatever.

> that BotW fails to handhold the player through Link's progression, is by far the game's greatest feature.

I don’t quite understand this. Did you feel like previous Zelda games “handheld” you through progression? Were you a fan of the games that came before BotW?

> absolutely 0% of the overworld (excepting the four shrines of The Great Plateau) is required to beat the game. ok maybe 0.2% because you have to travel to the castle.

Unlike every single other previous Zelda game! It’s almost like a game thats only connection to the Zelda series is the character model and name!

> it was extremely well received for good reasons.

I’m sure it was! “Universal appeal” isn’t one though, as that’s not a real thing.

> don't want to grind? Don't.

I don’t! I just uninstalled it lol

[naikrovek]

> Did you feel like previous Zelda games “handheld” you through progression?

yes, absolutely, but the franchise definitely did not start out like that.

The original Legend of Zelda plopped you on the map and gave you nothing. zero guidance. I consider this very good.

Skyward Sword (the mainline release immediately prior to Breath of the Wild) was extremely linear and even gave you the solutions to puzzles so you never felt stuck. I consider this very awful.

prior to Breath of the Wild, this linear hand-holding style of Zelda game was apparently loved by the creators within Nintendo and was definitely not loved by players who considered themselves Zelda fans.

I remember reading how Nintendo doubted that Breath of the Wild would be well received because it was so much like the original Legend of Zelda, once you left the great plateau. zero guidance (almost) and complete freedom to go anywhere, if you could survive.

after a couple of months of extreme praise, Nintendo promised to continue the "open world" style of Zelda game going forward. this will change, no question.

I felt choked when I played Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. you were Link on a rail, and you did what you were told. horrible.

> Were you a fan of the games that came before BotW?

extremely so very early on, and less and less as time went on, especially the last two or three 3D mainline games prior to BotW.

[cogitoergofutuo]

> The original Legend of Zelda plopped you on the map and gave you nothing. zero guidance. I consider this very good.

You literally can’t get far off the beach until you hit a specific milestone. And then the next milestone and so on. Zelda NES was very strictly linear, as was ALTTP, Ocarina, Majora, GC Wind Waker etc.

As for “handholding” I’ve never felt that way for a moment while playing e.g. Link’s Awakening or even the later titles like Oracle of Time/Seasons (Seasons was incredibly difficult but ultimately still linear!)

I personally did not find “But you can technically just go fight Ganon with a stick!” a plus. It’s about as much of a Zelda game as Zelda 2.

[naikrovek]

"zero guidance" and "zero requirements to proceed" are not the same.

I'm talking about "zero guidance" mostly, but I'll switch to progress requirements since that seems to be what you're interested in.

in Breath of the Wild, you are free to go up against Ganon unarmed, if you choose. you will lose, but you can do it. in LoZ, you can't reach Ganon without meeting the prerequisites to gain entry. those are both gates to progress, but one is implicit and one is explicit. in both cases, the games give you very little help on how to proceed until you seek out that info yourself. I prefer when you are given the choice about how to proceed yourself.

in BotW, if I am a skilled player, I can make whatever weapons and food I have go much further than I could if I were an unskilled player.

in LoZ, the requirements are the same for everyone, even if you are capable enough as a player to kill him before you collect all the gear, you can't. you have to do it all. those are rails. rails are bad. it's not handholding, though, which is good, because handholding is also bad. to me.

I liked Zelda 2. A lot. you may choose to use that little factoid to dismiss all I've said, and that's your prerogative, but I also loved the first Zelda, and the third. and Ocarina of Time. and many others. it's when the game leads you by the nose to the end that I dislike things, and that's what Skyward Sword was, very much.

[cogitoergofutuo]

> in LoZ, the requirements are the same for everyone, even if you are capable enough as a player to kill him before you collect all the gear, you can't. you have to do it all. those are rails. rails are bad.

So every other Zelda game has rails, and rails are (to you) bad. Got it.

I personally find the “rails” (being a fundamental and defining feature that distinguishes the gameplay of every Zelda game) to be a good thing.

I’m a bit confused here. You’re a fan of the Zelda series, but the “rails” that are a fundamental mechanic in every other game are “bad”? Wouldn’t that mean that BotW is the first fundamentally “good” Zelda game from your perspective?

If so, that makes sense! We are in fact talking about two different definitions of what is “a Zelda game”! For me that’s a continuation of a very enjoyable and distinct game design style that began with the NES, for others it might be “the playable character is named Link”

[yamtaddle]

I enjoyed and beat BOTW (I think I even did all the shrines) but spent most of the time wishing it were the game they almost made. There's just not quite enough body to it, not enough content. Lots of great-looking empty space, lots of cool stuff that punishes you for actually using it (the horse taming is such a good little system... but you're not going to ride horses much, unless you like getting places less efficiently), stuff that feels half-baked or weirdly dead (all the towns), et c. Lots of cookie-cutter shrines, four forgettable and way-too-similar dungeons, some labyrinths that are trivially bypassed and don't really reward you for going through them "properly", et c. The lazy "our economy and game-loop-incentive system are broken so we'll just make weapons break really fast to make the player give a shit about mob drops" thing that lots of people hate (I was OK with it—but I'd have much rather seen a better solution to that problem)

The best large element was probably the upgrade-nut (I forget what they were called) puzzles and a couple puzzley sidequests, but even those only had a few types, aside from a handful of (great!) one-offs.

Mostly, it made me dream of a world in which Bethesda uses that engine or one like it for the next Elder Scrolls.