Linear Zelda; poetry in motion. BotW; free verse

[Spirit]

So, having spent probably close to 500 hours with BotW (my god) i finally went back to Wind Waker to contrast the two.

I do love BotW. Its optional story makes it feels hollow as hell and thus makes its shrine hunting feel like a pointless grind but i still enjoyed it (the fact it was Zelda is what mostly got me through).

So, going back to WW i wondered if i'd have a reverse culture shock like BotW gave me (Y for sword? Get out of here.)
The major thing i noticed though was how much i enjoyed having things i HAD to do. I HAD to go to Dragon Roost, I HAD to go Greatfish Isle. But the story made me want to, i knew the game wanted to show me cool things so i let it take me there. Had i gone off on my own i would have maybe found Three Eyed Reef or a Triangle Isle, not a volcano with a dragon sitting on it...

Even though WW was forcing me to go places the world still felt open because i could see for miles around. It felt like i could go there at that point, i just didnt want to because i was taken with the story... this wasnt something BotW gave me. If i found something boring while pottering around looking for the next shrine i just had to deal with it. The game wasnt intent on giving me grand reveals of cool places.

Secondly i didnt realise how much i'd missed the mechanical structure of things. In Zelda games there's usually only one way around a puzzle, this is why i dont like dungeons in Zelda because if i cant figure it out I'm stuck in that one place until i do.

But knowing WW really well it felt good to go into Dragon Roost and know exactly what to do; break the pot, light the stick on fire, throw it at a wall, grapple that handle, pick up that pot, make a platform, go outside, beat some enemies... it was like refined poetry in motion and it had a nice flow. Always something to do...

BotW was different, you COULD go about it one way OR you could do it another way and probably do things out of order and make it look goofy or miss things entirely.



Really with BotW i dont think being so free was such a good idea. Had it had structure we all maybe would have felt compelled. Had the story been exactly the same but held within a structured game i think we would have all maybe been a bit more interested because we knew we'd be rewarded if we pushed on. Rather than having lots of things we could do if we wanted.


Have you guys gone back to pre BotW Zelda since its release, 2D or 3D, did it surprise you how much you missed a linear structure as opposed to the freedom in BotW?

Or has BotW solidified your stance that Zelda should always be free?

Is the sense of discovery in a structured Zelda more awe-inspiring and compelling than finding things for yourself?

 

[Fraxinus]

I think it's important to have a good balance. I think BotW was a little too unstructured in that regard, but also I believe it was a very important stepping stone as the Zelda team works to find the right balance. I think one way to possibly achieve this is have tasks/dungeons broken into "arcs" as they were in past titles (i.e. in OoT you had child dungeons and then adult dungeons and while the adult dungeons are arguably nonlinear to a degree, you have to do the child dungeons first). If you took this further and had a set of dungeons that you could do however you liked, such as in BotW, but you were required to do the dungeons in this set before proceeding to the next set, that may be a step in the right direction. A big complaint about BotW was about how the difficulty didn't really scale at a certain point because it was designed with the nonlinearity in mind, so they wanted all dungeons to be accessible if you so wished to do them.

I like not being restricted in my explorations because I haven't done x dungeon yet, though. It's one thing when the restriction is an item or something like in earlier titles (and usually it's just a minor location that takes you to a piece of heart or something), but in TP for instance, Midna would not let me check out Hyrule Field before I did the Forest Temple, for no particular reason except "YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED" and I hope to never see something like that again in a Zelda game.

I expect the next title to take a step back as far as the freedom goes, but I don't expect them to take it away fully. I think they're still feeling around for the right amount of non/linearity.

 

[Dio]

I didn't like how nonlinear the structure of BoTW was. It gave far too much freedom. The first problem is that you could defeat the final boss right from the get go and therefore everything felt as though you were just doing it to have an easier ride rather than doing a quest you actually had to do.

In no other Zelda has this been the case. Just using OOT as an example, in that game you need all the spiritual stones to progress past the first part of the story. Then you need to awaken all the sages to progress past the second part.

Going forward I hope they bring back more linearity and ensure that none of the main story content is optional. I quite like having some choice in dungeon ordering but dungeons should generally get harder as you progress through the main story so having them in blocks for instance where the first three are doable in any order and then the next three harder dungeons are doable in any order would be better than total freedom.

 

[Cfrock]

BotW was too open for me. The total lack of structure meant that, by sheer chance, I didn't see or do anything remarkable or engaging for the first ten or so hours. By that time it was too late, the game was boring to me. I didn't have any strong impulse to carry on because the impression I'd been left with was that the world, while gorgeous and well designed, just wasn't interesting enough for me to spend time in.

Compare that to OoT. Twenty minutes in I've done the first dungeon and the world opens up to me with a purpose and a direction.

Compare that to WW. Two hours in I've infiltrated a huge fortress, mingled with the people of a merchant island, and am on my way to see what that giant spire on the horizon is.

Compare that to TP. Three hours in I've done a robust dungeon, met a whole cast of characters, and been immersed into a world.

The complete freedom to do whatever and go wherever I want wasn't a problem for me in, say, Oblivion, and I think the reason is because the fantasy of that world was far more robust. Cyrodiil felt like it had history; Hyrule feels like it's just geography. Everywhere I went in Oblivion had a story. Not just quests, but just stuff. Walk down a road and you see a burned out building with an old sign declaring it as an alchemy store. What happend? Why was this shop out so far on its own? Was it an accident? Bandits? Caves and ruins would have notes lying around, characters you'd meet, the evidence of previous adventurers and explorers. Every inch of the map had things to surprise and engage me. Hyrule has very little like that. Even when I find ruined buildings I know that it was the Calamity and don't think about it. I just move on. There's no reason to linger anywhere. Nowhere has weight.

Exploration is great, but without a real sense of discovery it's hollow. WW manages to find a balance by using a rigid, linear structure early on, forcing you to go to a set of specific points before opening up the ocean. Yes, you have to go to Dragon Roost, but because you can see it on the horizon you want to. The player is in sync with the game, naturally motivated to do the thing it tells you to do. And, by putting another island between Windfall and Dragon Roost, Nintendo introduce the thrill of finding islands on your travels and taking the detour to explore them. By the time you get free reign the game has commanded your attention, you're invested, and now finding small islands has that sense of discovery attached, that thrill, because you've seen some of what the Great Sea has to offer and you want to find more.

BotW, by letting me just wander anywhere from the beginning, completely missed that opportunity to draw me in. For ten hours (the entire length of many games) all I saw was hills, trees, rocks, and water. No dragons, no dungeons, not even a story beyond "You should probably help Zelda, you know." If BotW segmented the world up, blocked off chunks of the map and opened it up gradually after completing Divine Beasts (for example, a powerful river blocks you into a quater of the map and you have to beat Vah Ruta before you can swim; you have to beat Vah Rudania to resist the heat of the desert, opening up that chunk of the map) I think I would have stuck with it til the end. I'd have had that structure guiding me to the grand sights and goals that would engage me, while still having a wonderful open world to explore at my leisure.

Reading this thread, I'm reminded of Metroid Prime and how much worse that game would be if you could just go everywhere right from the beginning. Acquiring weapons and upgrades that allow you to return to areas and make the jump you couldn't before, open the door you couldn't before, roll through the pipe you couldn't before, means that the world is constantly piquing your curiosity and setting you goals, which gives you motivation, and then giving you a satisfying sense of progress when you go back and delve deeper than you did before. It's what makes that game worth playing.

The total lack of structure to BotW made it not worth playing to me, and the lack of lore and stories in that huge world meant that there was no reward from just wandering around except to say you'd been there.

I've not been back to any Zelda games since BotW came out but I've been thinking of OoT a lot and it's appealing to me more now than it has since they announced OoT3D. I also appreciate that Nintendo like to mix things up from game to game and, with some exceptions (*cough*New Super Mario Bros*cough*) every entry in a franchise is distinct from the rest. BotW is a part of that long tradition and I accept it as that. Personally, I'd like them to pull back a little in future. Give us another open world, sure. Just guide us through it a bit first to make sure we feel compelled to explore it on our own.

 

[athenian200]

You've heard me complain about this in the Shoutbox before, more than likely. But Breath of the Wild's open structure has actually caused me to see the game as an inferior version of Skyrim with a worse story. I've been playing the game somewhat aimlessly for a while now, and haven't done a good job of figuring out what I'm supposed to do. I get more and more frustrated every time I play, because I find myself wasting time, getting distracted, and generally being unable to set priorities or make real progress. I keep running across camps of enemies and getting treasure chests, but not actually finding what I need to find.

I like to say that the game is overwhelming, and always gives me enough rope to hang myself. There's always too much information coming at me at once. There's the weather, there's the weapon breaking, there's a thousand little details I have to worry about all at the same time. To be honest, the reason I hate this game is because it's basically giving me exactly what I play video games to escape from in the first place. It's the same reason I don't want to learn how to drive a car. You have to worry about traffic, the rules of the road, what the other cars are doing, what speed you're going, the weather, your destination, navigation, etc... and you have to just process all that information at once, you can't just separate it out and focus on one thing at a time. You have to deal with it all at once. Worse, you usually have a destination in mind when you get in the car and drive... but with BoTW, you aren't even given that. You pretty much just have to wander aimlessly, dealing with too much information overwhelming you. It's like getting in the car and going for a drive without even knowing your destination or how you're going to get back.

I have to admit, I'm pretty sure this this game was created for people who are far more flexible in their thinking, resilient, determined, self-starting, good at setting priorities, and just more adaptable than I am. People who are pretty much the opposite of me in a lot of ways. The only way this game could be less suited to me, is if they made it a twitch game like an FPS or something, and required me to play it in multiplayer. Then it would also require quick reflexes and social interaction, completing the list of things that make Athenian miserable. It's as if someone created this game to watch me suffer and make me dislike Zelda after all these years. I've been waiting years for a game that turned out to be so far from what I wanted, that I'm seriously considering whether I want to continue calling myself a Zelda fan or buying future Zelda games. I'm on the verge of just trading in the game at GameStop and trying to find something else to play. There are better games, less frustrating games.

The title of this thread is actually appropriate... I enjoy most rhyming forms of poetry with a consistent rhythm that follows rules, but I never really appreciated free verse. I basically consider it sloppy prose that shouldn't even be called poetry. That's very much how I feel about BoTW. That it's a sloppy Skyrim clone that shouldn't even be called Zelda.

That being said, I haven't tried playing the game with a walkthrough yet. One of my friends on Skype told me that he just uses a walkthrough on every single game he plays, and that he had no trouble beating this game with a guide. When I told him about my problems, he pretty much said he didn't have any of them because he used a guide, and didn't have to run at the game cold with no idea what to do like I did. I was hoping to try and get some kind of enjoyment of how the game is, but apparently I'm not having any fun with it, so I probably won't suffer much from following a walkthrough. That's pretty much the last hope this game has... that following a walkthrough will give me enough structure and guidance that the game might become enjoyable. If it doesn't work, this may be the first Zelda game I just pass on entirely.

 

[Spirit]

BotW was too open for me. The total lack of structure meant that, by sheer chance, I didn't see or do anything remarkable or engaging for the first ten or so hours. By that time it was too late, the game was boring to me. I didn't have any strong impulse to carry on because the impression I'd been left with was that the world, while gorgeous and well designed, just wasn't interesting enough for me to spend time in.

Compare that to OoT. Twenty minutes in I've done the first dungeon and the world opens up to me with a purpose and a direction.

Compare that to WW. Two hours in I've infiltrated a huge fortress, mingled with the people of a merchant island, and am on my way to see what that giant spire on the horizon is.

Compare that to TP. Three hours in I've done a robust dungeon, met a whole cast of characters, and been immersed into a world.

The complete freedom to do whatever and go wherever I want wasn't a problem for me in, say, Oblivion, and I think the reason is because the fantasy of that world was far more robust. Cyrodiil felt like it had history; Hyrule feels like it's just geography. Everywhere I went in Oblivion had a story. Not just quests, but just stuff. Walk down a road and you see a burned out building with an old sign declaring it as an alchemy store. What happend? Why was this shop out so far on its own? Was it an accident? Bandits? Caves and ruins would have notes lying around, characters you'd meet, the evidence of previous adventurers and explorers. Every inch of the map had things to surprise and engage me. Hyrule has very little like that. Even when I find ruined buildings I know that it was the Calamity and don't think about it. I just move on. There's no reason to linger anywhere. Nowhere has weight.

Exploration is great, but without a real sense of discovery it's hollow. WW manages to find a balance by using a rigid, linear structure early on, forcing you to go to a set of specific points before opening up the ocean. Yes, you have to go to Dragon Roost, but because you can see it on the horizon you want to. The player is in sync with the game, naturally motivated to do the thing it tells you to do. And, by putting another island between Windfall and Dragon Roost, Nintendo introduce the thrill of finding islands on your travels and taking the detour to explore them. By the time you get free reign the game has commanded your attention, you're invested, and now finding small islands has that sense of discovery attached, that thrill, because you've seen some of what the Great Sea has to offer and you want to find more.

BotW, by letting me just wander anywhere from the beginning, completely missed that opportunity to draw me in. For ten hours (the entire length of many games) all I saw was hills, trees, rocks, and water. No dragons, no dungeons, not even a story beyond "You should probably help Zelda, you know." If BotW segmented the world up, blocked off chunks of the map and opened it up gradually after completing Divine Beasts (for example, a powerful river blocks you into a quater of the map and you have to beat Vah Ruta before you can swim; you have to beat Vah Rudania to resist the heat of the desert, opening up that chunk of the map) I think I would have stuck with it til the end. I'd have had that structure guiding me to the grand sights and goals that would engage me, while still having a wonderful open world to explore at my leisure.

Reading this thread, I'm reminded of Metroid Prime and how much worse that game would be if you could just go everywhere right from the beginning. Acquiring weapons and upgrades that allow you to return to areas and make the jump you couldn't before, open the door you couldn't before, roll through the pipe you couldn't before, means that the world is constantly piquing your curiosity and setting you goals, which gives you motivation, and then giving you a satisfying sense of progress when you go back and delve deeper than you did before. It's what makes that game worth playing.

The total lack of structure to BotW made it not worth playing to me, and the lack of lore and stories in that huge world meant that there was no reward from just wandering around except to say you'd been there.

I've not been back to any Zelda games since BotW came out but I've been thinking of OoT a lot and it's appealing to me more now than it has since they announced OoT3D. I also appreciate that Nintendo like to mix things up from game to game and, with some exceptions (*cough*New Super Mario Bros*cough*) every entry in a franchise is distinct from the rest. BotW is a part of that long tradition and I accept it as that. Personally, I'd like them to pull back a little in future. Give us another open world, sure. Just guide us through it a bit first to make sure we feel compelled to explore it on our own.

What you said about Prime is bang on the money. BotW has been making me want to replay Prime just to have some detail and history in a world i love to explore.

Metroid Prime had so much detail in it; the Chozo Lore you could find went into so much detail about their culture and the catastrophe that befell them. The scanning had a lot of information too, from info on flora and fauna, to characteristics and behaviours of certain enemies, to the cause of death on Space Pirate corpses and even data entries on computers written by Space Pirates bored of their admin jobs.

Coupled with a wonderful world, Prime's world felt like a deep and functioning one where you actually made a difference. It felt as if you'd constantly find new things, like the world would change if you stayed long enough.

By comparison BoTW has absolutely nothing in terms of motivating history. The fact that its hyrule and we've seen it nearly 20 times in other games doesnt help that the BotW version seems to be devoid of anything past or present.

Even WW did better than BotW for its world history. We saw races havong to evolve to survive. Old traditions were based on folklore from an age long lost. The characters were very aware that their world had changed from what they knew....

By comparison no one in BotW really seems to be bothered about the big purple cloud of doom.

We also didnt see Ganon wreck anything. Hyrule has moatly always been a masive field. Botw is a very massice field so it isnt new to us. Aside from a few busted houses and structures we really dont know how much damage Ganon did. Thus we dont get a sense of urgency or the notion to give much of a damn.

 

[Cfrock]

Metroid Prime had so much detail in it; the Chozo Lore you could find went into so much detail about their culture and the catastrophe that befell them. The scanning had a lot of information too, from info on flora and fauna, to characteristics and behaviours of certain enemies, to the cause of death on Space Pirate corpses and even data entries on computers written by Space Pirates bored of their admin jobs.

Emphasis mine.

This is such a subtle thing that makes such a big impact that I want to draw attention to it. Details like this can be the difference between a good game and a great game.

The log entries of Space Pirates complaining about their job gives us a the illusion that the game world exists independently of Samus. The game is focused on her and her mission but log entries like that show us that even if she were not there this world would still exist, things would still happen, there would still be substance. The effect that has to make the world immersive, and thus the game more engaging, is incredible. Being able to believe that this game isn't just a fantasy built entirely around you, the player, makes it so much more convincing and easier to sink deeper into it.

The Thief series is fantastic (let's pretend Thi4f never happened, ok?) because the designers had immersion in mind from the outset. They used a concept they called 'Lived spaces' that governed how they desinged levels, and it's such a simple thing. An example. Thief II. First mission. You break into a mansion. It has fancy new electric lights. Which means they need a generator. So there's a room in the basement with a generator. The room is a dead end, it's not patrolled by guards, there's no loot in it. There is literally no reason at all for the player to ever go into that room, but it exists, they spent the time to construct it, to create assets to fill it, because having the room there makes the entire level more believable and thus more immersive. The fact that room exists makes the game more engaging. Thief games are littered with that stuff and that design philosophy is part of why those games are so good.

BotW doesn't have that. I don't get a sense that the world really exists and operates in any meaningful sense without me. That connects with what I said about Oblivion above. There is no explanation for why that alchemy shop burned down, but the fact that it did and isn't related to a quest means it isn't related to me, means things happen in Cyrodiil outside of my existence. Like a real world. It's small but it draws you in. I need that in an open-world game. BotW doesn't deliver it.

 

[Hyrulian Hero]

That's a whole lot of hate for one of the highest rated games of all time. The hipster-flavored backlash is to be expected once the honeymoon phase is over but let's not overreact. BotW is a fantastic game. I, for one, prefer a linear Zelda, although admittedly, that's probably partially nostalgia. I'm a fan of Zelda's classic formula of gameplay and storytelling but instead of pulling an, "Ocarina of Time totally sucks", I instead keep in mind that, whatever my personal preferences, BotW is incredible. Nintendo attained almost complete success in what they were shooting for with this game and they deserve credit for that.

I'm a fan of, to use the analogy at hand, poetry in motion and free verse both. I hope Nintendo returns to linear storytelling and gameplay for some future Zelda games but BotW was also Nintendo's first attempt at this kind of open-world game and they not only knocked it out of the park, they put up their assets as collateral, threatened some financiers, robbed a star cruiser, and bought the park, then rebuilt it to suit their wishes with brawn and mustache sweat. Free verse isn't for everyone but it has its place and the way Nintendo poetry-slammed everyone's expectations, I think the gamble deserves some respect.