- Joined
- Jun 14, 2011
You didn't mention the boring fetch quests that almost every Zelda has. These started with Zelda 2, if you don't include fetching the letter for the medicine lady in Zelda 1, mind you that is still a fetch quest of sorts. They started getting annoying in Ocarina of Time onwards. Though I will say fetching hundreds and hundreds of rupees for the bomb/arrow capacity upgrade fairy in ALTTP got boring real quick.
I find it interesting you bring up fetch quests being annoying when BotW is the biggest insult to that idea in the whole franchise. Whether it was optional or not or down-right tedious, at least in previous games they amounted to something. Like if you went out of your way to complete them, you would have got something beneficial to aid you in your quest or in some cases actually progress the story.
In BotW, there really isn't much point in doing them with the exception of the Tarry Town side-quest. Apart from that quest which was well worth doing, the rest of them were pretty pointless. The awards you get for them you're better off finding them lying around the overworld.
And do I even need to bring up the Korok seeds? There is no doubt that the biggest up-yours to a fetch quest is finding every Korok seed in the entire game. There are so many in the game that the real benefit of collecting them stops after finding roughly half of them. But if you actually went out of your way to collect all 900, the award you get for putting in all those hours looking under every nook and cranny amounts to a big slap in the face and an unpleasant item in your inventory.
Breath of the wild has demonstrated that it has staying power beyond it's initial marketing. Look anywhere online other than these forums and the overwhelming response to the game is that it is a modern day masterpiece, with many lauding it as their game of the year at the time and praising the very aspects that you claim to be nontraditional and should be abandoned. It really sucks that you don't like it, but the sales figures and general opinion seems to be that it was a step in the right direction for the life of the series.
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?
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.
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?
Not only was the story aspect completely shattered, but the exploration was a bore, weapons breaking constantly during a battle, death was frustratingly common as well as cheap and the whole climax was a complete joke. 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! So what's the point of having this huge depressing backstory and the Master Sword that's supposed to destroy the Calamity if it can be beaten down with a bit of shrapnel?! That to me really destroys the foundation of the plot this game created! The only times BotW felt anywhere like a Zelda game is at the beginning on the Great Plateau, doing any of the shrine puzzles or if you actually follow the main quest. The rest of the game where it focuses the most is completely, utterly, unbearable.
That's where the majority of the backlash comes from, and while fan expectations have been dashed before, it was never done to this scale. And I am so glad I am not the only one who feels the same way. Say what you want about Skyward Sword, but at least it was more obvious what we were going to end up with. BotW completely tricked us with its trailers and marketing and it didn't matter because regardless, it was guaranteed a sale because of the joint release of the Nintendo Switch.
Now if you like BotW, great! More power to you, enjoy it to your heart's content! You clearly have a keen eye for something in the game that sparked your interest and you were able to bypass the marketing facade. But it's also important to understand that a huge amount of people were not so lucky and were decieved by the marketing hype and understandably feel betrayed by the final product and thus have a deep grudge against it. That's why when you ask one of them if they are looking forward to BotW2, they don't even want to know about it.
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.
While it is too early to judge if Link's Awakening has won over fans or not, from early impressions, it seems to be mainly positive. not only have people said it may actually be better then the original thanks to its quality of life changes, but they also say the visual upgrade is a very stylized update which holds up very well compared to today's standards. Sure it's not going to sell as well as BotW, there's no doubt about that, but unlike BotW, Link's Awakening is not banking on people buying a Switch the very same day. Even if Link's Awakening doesn't sell as much as people hope it will, at least it will be easier for it to be universally praised and is unlikely to form a huge backlash because it knows what it is and is straight-up honest about the type of Zelda game it's going to be.