Aonuma: OoT was restricting, the BotW format will continue

[BloodyKun]

Man the salt in the vocal minority is crazy. Aonuma’s been around since Majora’s Mask, made plenty of games that surpass Ocarina of Time, still has the humility to take criticism and let’s the guy who was in charge of the best 2D games try his hand at mainline titles, and the last two have been a massive success.

Quite frankly the “Minecraft” bs holds no water unless you have never played anything that is not a Zelda game before in your life, which I guess would be kind of telling if you’d really want to go back to “oh doi i need the slingshot shaped key to get through the only locked door here” kind of “adventure”. Hardly exploration when it’s even more linear than Final Fantasy 13. If that’s what you want, plenty of other games out there. BotW and TotK are natural realizations of the best of what the series has had to offer when they take off the training wheels, which has admittedly not been very often. Even so, the general feel of the first game, being able to do a majority of the content in either ALttP or OoT out of order, at least having the whole Great Sea to explore at your leisure after the 2nd dungeon, even SS in its own much smaller ways offering little segments you could do stuff a bit differently if you were creative - that is all reflected in the newer titles.

 

[Hyrulian Hero]

My disagreeing with some things that Aonuma says about the Zelda series doesn't make him wrong. As soon as we make a much better Zelda game than Aonuma has, I'll start taking our criticism and whining seriously. Sounds like we're going to get at least one more "of the" style Zelda game so I'm going to buckle up and try my best to enjoy the ride. I would have argued that AoL shouldn't have gone side-scroller, that LA shouldn't have stepped backwards with inferior hardware, that OoT should have been top-down, that MM should have been longer, that WW shouldn't have been cell-shaded, that PH shouldn't have been set on the Great Sea, that SS shouldn't have been a prequel, that FSA shouldn't have been multiplayer, etc. but I don't make video games, I just know what I HAVE and HAVEN'T liked. These are good guidelines but Zelda will never progress without growing pains. I hope they never forget their roots but I'm going to trust the Aonuma will guide the series better than I could, which is pretty likely.

Funny how the game everyone lauded as a return to the series' roots ended up making people long for the series' roots.

 

[thePlinko]

“oh doi i need the slingshot shaped key to get through the only locked door here” kind of “adventure”. Hardly exploration when it’s even more linear than Final Fantasy 13.

I don’t think that you know what the word “exploration” means.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

I don’t think that you know what the word “exploration” means.

Do you?

 

[thePlinko]

Do you?

ex·plo·ra·tion
/ˌekspləˈrāSHən/

noun
1.the action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it.
"voyages of exploration"

2.thorough analysis of a subject or theme.
"an exploration of the religious dimensions of our lives"



Linearity vs. Non-linearity has nothing to do with exploration and every Zelda ever fits this. Now is that enough for you or are you going to come up with some barely coherent reason why it doesn’t mean what it very clearly means like usual?

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

ex·plo·ra·tion
/ˌekspləˈrāSHən/

noun
1.the action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it.
"voyages of exploration"

2.thorough analysis of a subject or theme.
"an exploration of the religious dimensions of our lives"



Linearity vs. Non-linearity has nothing to do with exploration and every Zelda ever fits this. Now is that enough for you or are you going to come up with some barely coherent reason why it doesn’t mean what it very clearly means like usual?

I'll take that as a no.

 

[thePlinko]

I'll take that as a no.

Ah, there it is. Ignore the definition presented before you that inarguably proves me right because it hurts your feelings to be wrong.

 

[GZ Zelda]

1.the action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it.

This is BotW? Or SS?

 

[thePlinko]

This is BotW? Or SS?

This is every Zelda. Hell, this is every game ever, at least every game that takes place in a fictional location.

 

[Zettafleya]

Exploration is about exploring. Self explanitory.

But it does make me wonder if the new games will be bigger, smaller, have more to do, do things differently, have mini dungeons and more.
Open worlds and big worlds can be nice, but still suffer from emptiness at the same time.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

what really irks me about what aonuma said is that it's clear he doesn't get it, and thinks we can only like more restrictive games b/c we're nostalgic for it, he might as well have said "why do you guys want to play that old ****?"

 

[Zettafleya]

Restriction and open world both have good and bad, so there is no correct way, only rather what people may think is right in their personal views that they state as fact.

But majority rules, so yeah, open world and non-linear and whatnot. It does make sense for some people, as the old way is nothing but a restriction to them, at least in terms of gameplay and exploration.

Would still be interesting to get a linear game again, though.

 

[Apple34]

I was neutral about Aonuma until I learned he basically didn't play games at all until someone showed him Dragon Quest and it was a game he could actually make progress in and thought was ok.

This is in contrast to Yoshiaki Koizumi, who I think at least tried Mario and was like oh yeah this is just kinda hard, I like Zelda better, that's the more typical video gamer reaction.

Meanwhile I spent one summer downing like 30 straight sega genesis action games, not because they were hard or something, but because they were what I liked. Zelda was the relief unit, an action game series that was relatively smooth and polished where I wasn't stuck repeating some weird jump/dodging some crazy boss move/whatever you had to do to game in the 8 bit and 16 bit eras. So I'm kind of on the same page as Koizumi, just with higher tolerance for living with only 3 hits in a Mario game.

Either way, both of them injected Zelda with flavor, but I wonder how much video game sensibilities Aonuma has, and now I understand the WW thing it was Aonuma just having ho hum game ideas but with a lot of imagination in the world itself.

At any rate, at this point, I have no hesitation in concluding that BotW and TotK are unequivocally RPGs, in contrast to all the other Zelda's, including really Zelda 2 even, for the simple reason that they create a massive gameplay safety blanket in the form of armor upgrades, weapon upgrades, and hp restoratives and buffs that is equivalent to levels in a Final Fantasy game. The massive increase in the number of shrines you need to find to upgrade both hearts and stamina and needing guides to actually find them also pushes in that direction.

And incidentally, that "safety blanket" doesn't make the game easier per se, for me, it usually makes the gamer harder, because all those "in case you need it" secrets usually become mandatory.

And really, they are RPGs on par with Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasy 6, or whatever one might consider the best, it's as imaginative and compelling an RPG as there can be, but they did so by sacrificing and converting their premier action game franchise into it. The Switch already has RPGs like Xenoblade and well a lot of other things.

I felt very little difference between slugging out 85 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles X and some 60 hours or so of BotW, it's like they were made by the same team.

Now there's just Metroid as the "it's still an action game but it's polished" so I'm looking forward to playing Metroid Dread and Zelda is like, well maybe one day it won't be an RPG again and that would be nice.

I guess I should add it just so happened that all these marathon RPGs like Persona made me question my interest in RPGs as a genre, being so demanding, because if I still really liked RPG I probably wouldn't care that TotK and BotW weren't really action games (IMO).