I've also seen elsewhere on the internet and even off the internet a lot of people saying they straight-up hate this game, to the point they can't believe it even exists. I personally wouldn't go that far, but it's definitely not the magnum opus others claims it to be. So if BotW is supposedly a masterpiece, how come the backlash is the biggest I've ever seen for a Zelda title?
The biggest backlash for a Zelda title? I must not be picking up on whatever you are because, as well as the number I've already given you, most online activity seems to spout praise for the game.
Here's the google results for "Breath of the Wild review". I scrolled 3 pages in without finding any overall negative results
https://www.google.com/search?q=zel...ogle:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}ie=UTF-8
Here's the amazon buying page for the game. Only 5% of customers rated it 3 stars or less
https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Breath-Wild-Nintendo-Switch/product-reviews/B01MS6MO77
Here's the youtube video for the 2017 trailer for the game. Within the comments you find overwhelming positive things to say about the game, even within the trailer that you found so offensive to your experience with the game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE
And finally the metacritic scores submitted by users gives the game an 8.5/10 based on nearly 13,000 scores.
I'm not here trying to argue that public opinion is the sole determining factor in how good a game is. Rather, I'm demonstrating that I simply do not see this backlash that you're talking about. Yes, there's been backlash from some fans. Just as there was with Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword to varying different degrees, but there is far from any sort of overwhelming majority of fans who share your opinion. That does not make your opinion any less valid just as yours does not make mine. I may claim the game to be a masterpiece, one of the metacritic users may do the same. We are not wrong to hold such opinions.
Well, a huge part of that comes down to marketing hype. Because it was released the same day as the Nintendo Switch, there was no fear BotW wasn't going to sell. No one was going to buy a Switch to play 1-2 Switch or Bomberman R, it was purely for Zelda. Nintendo knew if they had stuck to their original plan of releasing it only on the Wii-U, BotW wouldn't have made near the number of sales it has made to this day. So they cleverly delayed the game to fall in line with the Switch's release, and that's the marks of a true salesman.
I see nothing wrong with their decision to release on both platforms. They did it with Twilight Princess too, did they do wrong there as well? Again, as in my previous post, Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild were in the same boat release wise and, despite the Wii being the vastly more successful of the two consoles sales wise, Twilight Princess was beaten out in lifetime sales by Breath of the Wild in a single year.
But while huge sales were a guarantee at this point, whether the game would actually be good was still debatable. I for one was really hyped for this game before it came out. I was a little concerned that they would go for an Open World style game but at the same time, my hopes were still strong, especially when I saw that story trailer. Everything I saw in that trailer got me excited for all the kind of things you'll get up to. It wasn't until I got the game and popped it in that the root of my hatred for this game sprouted.
While the Story trailer technically didn't lie, the way it presented itself compared to how it turned out actually created two completely different games. I envisioned a game where you'd actually encounter Zelda in the overworld and travel with her to all these fascinating places and meet all these characters where you ask for their aid to rescue the divine beasts as well as on the side learn from the environment what happened before you went into that 100-year slumber.
Instead of all that, you're on your own like always, Zelda is imprisoned yet again and the story, which in the trailer made out you would unfold in the present, ended up being pushed to the side in the form of memory flashbacks. And, yeah while it does show us what happened in the past and, while they are done pretty well, just didn't seem as powerful if you saw an in-game present-day cutscene and it was shown through the environment and with one of the characters giving a subtle exposition of what really happened, and maybe then go into the flashbacks. I know this isn't a movie, it's a game and that comes first. but if you are going to have a narrative, at the very least make it engaging. How more invested in the story and the characters would you have been had the game not shoved that to the side in favour of exploring an oversized empty overworld with nothing to show for it?
The trailer that I've linked above displays no such interactions with Zelda as you've described. In fact I feel it's quite open with what is and is not gameplay. Regardless, you are allowing the efforts of a marketing team to affect your opinion of a development teams work. Yes, if you believe the marketing to be shady that's certainly something to speak up about. However, using it as leverage to try and argue the game is bad is like me going to a supermarket and calling the cashier a bad person because their CEO hunts deer in his free time.
In fact, a lot of the negative I've seen about this game typically comes from a similar place yours is now, that being hype and expectations. There's nothing wrong with getting pumped up ready for a games release, but I always view it as problematic when fans create an image in their head of how the game should be and then judge it based on how closely it follows such expectations. Breath of the Wild could have been the greatest game ever created yet if I had believed it to be a first person shooter and forbade my opinion of it to be swayed by anything other than how closely it followed my mental image, I would never have seen it as anything but bad.
Yes, the company creating the game has a certain responsibility to not lie to us. Such company is in charge of hiring the team that will create promotional material and such business relationship is done under the assumption they will handle it responsibly. We, as customers, deserve to be given an honest if somewhat exaggerated representation of what to expect in the product we are buying. That's why, as I said above, it's important to speak up about instances of what we believe to be deceptive marketing. A distinction must be made, however, between speaking up about such grievances and taking your frustration out on the game itself. A game's quality is not changed by the quality of it's promotional material. It is still the same game.
I still can't believe once you've completed the Great Plateau you can head straight to Hyrule Castle and take on the final boss with nothing but a stick, and it actually works!
Did you do this on your first play through? I certainly didn't, and I don't know of anyone who did. In fact, the game is rather specific in pointing you in the right direction if you wish to advance the story. Is it not better than a game provides a course of action but allows deviation than to keep them strictly on course at all times? I know the speedrunning community have benefited greatly from having the freedom to take on Ganon straight away if they wish. No casual player would achieve such a feat first try and so they can follow the path laid out for them. I see nothing wrong with granting extra freedom in a game, particularly if endgame content such as fighting Ganon requires an enormous level of skill to pull off.
Compare these two pages for Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword respectively on Speedrun.com
https://www.speedrun.com/botw
https://www.speedrun.com/lozss
Breath of the Wild has a total of 6 categories whilst Skyward Sword has only 4. Notice that 2 of the BotW categories are Any% and All Main Quests. The opportunity to take Ganon down straight away is there does not lessen the options in game, it expands it. The fact that you could take on Ganon did not impact your experience of the game in the same way that being able to Wrong WWarp to Ganon's Tower in Ocarina of Time should not, because neither of them have any impact on your experience with the game unless you are a speedrunner.
When Link's Awakening finally arrived, I instantly said to my self while playing it "this is so much better than BotW" because we knew exactly what to expect and we weren't lied to. I needed something to get that sour taste out of my mouth, and Hyrule Warriors, as great as it is, wasn't enough. I even said before Link's Awakening even came out I would enjoy this a lot better, even though I had huge doubts about the art style.
I would echo my comments above in that it doesn't matter what you expect of a game, it does not change it's quality. Am I to claim that a game I expected to be bad and was is rendered a good game as a result? Whether Link's Awakening lived up to your expectations or not should not have any sway on how you rate it, because your experience with the game is a distinct event from your initial learning and awaiting of it. I'll say it again, if you had particular expectations of a game and it did not live up to them, that's a shame and certainly a negative experience for you. However, that experience, and the experience of actually playing the game are two separate things.
I do wonder though, what you really expected to find that wasn't to your expectations in the game? Being a remake of a game we're all well aquainted with now, and being given as much gameplay footage as we were, is it really a surprise that you expected exactly what you got? We didn't even get much of a trailer for the game other than a remake of the pre-game cinematics.
I'll conclude by reiterating that I am not writing these posts to argue that you are somehow wrong in your opinions of these two games. I liked Breath of the Wild, but I may like Link's Awakening more when I finally play it. That would not change my stance on this thread, though. This thread was created with the explicit intent to argue that Breath of the Wild is an objectively bad game and that your opinions on how the series should handle itself are the only way Nintendo will see true artistic success with their games. However, the numbers I've given you previously and the examples I pasted above tell a different story entirely. You are not wrong for wanting more traditional Zelda games. However, other fans are not wrong for wanting to stick with the BotW formula. We exist in a world that allows both camps and it's the subjectivity of our experiences with games that makes them truly stand up as an art form in it's own right. As it stands, we had BotW and a remake of LA to enjoy, so both camps have been satiated in their requests this time around. That should be a cause for celebration among gamers rather than further ammunition to fuel debates that are ultimately never going to be universally settled.
It's this artistic resonance that dictates we cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of demanding particular action from the games we enjoy. You brought up a few of the mechanics that you didn't like about the game such as weapon durabiltiy, difficulty etc, and I will never argue against your distaste towards those. However, I will always argue against people trying to insist that their experience with the game should be mine. You hated the game, I liked it, others count it as their favourite game of all time. Your views on this matter are not substantiated by claims about Breath of the Wild drifting away from series roots as that is it's own distinct argument. Neither are your views substantiated by claims such as the marketing being deceptive, as my sentiments have displayed the notion that there are those who did not find the marketing to be deceptive.
You stated in your opening post "I still don’t get how this is the best selling Zelda game when it has very little in connection to its roots". The crux of this entire thread hinges on the fact that you are assuming the game had to have a strong connection to it's supposed roots, when not everyone allows that to influence their opinion of a game. You claim to not understand why BotW enjoyed such success but it's a matter as simple as lots of people enjoyed playing it and spread the word enough to get more people to buy it. It isn't some conundrum in which we need to rectify why so many people enjoyed it but you didn't, that's the nature of games as a subjective expression of art.