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Breath of the Wild To What Extent Should The Overworld Be - Scale Wise?

Justac00lguy

BooBoo
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Gender
Shewhale
I want to get straight to the point here and focus on the overworld in the next installment for Wii U. I feel overworld size is a fairly controversial matter. The general consensus seems to be - [quality > size], which is of course true in many regards, but size is still a key figure.

However, it depends on how the scale is used, I'm a big fan of having overworld differentiation in terms of sparse and compact areas, I feel it gives the player a sense of variety. Looking at the two largest overworlds; The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess , we have two games that encouraged exploration, maybe not massively but the size and activities, in a way, forced you to explore. However, should Zelda games go bigger or smaller?

Many fans seem to look at Skyrim for inspiration, but does this kind of scale really fit in a Zelda game? The question is where is the line and where can a Zelda game go, realistically, in overworld size? So focusing on the upcoming installment, what should the overworld be, in terms of scale?
 

Curmudgeon

default setting: sarcastic prick
Joined
Dec 17, 2012
Gender
grumpy
As large as it they can make it while avoiding large, unoccupied or unimportant stretches of land. Even though part of the charm of Oblivion and Skyrim for me was trudging through hundreds of acres of unexplored wilderness, it's not really what I look for in a Zelda game.
 

Ventus

Mad haters lmao
Joined
May 26, 2010
Location
Akkala
Gender
Hylian Champion
As large as possible while still retaining mobs and things to do. I prefer it to be GW2 size if even possible <3
 

Salem

SICK
Joined
May 18, 2013
It should only be as big as it needs to be, the size of the world should fit the content they designed for the game. Hopefully the overworld will more dense and compact, thus the player will feel there a lot to do in small areas.
 

Mellow Ezlo

Spoony Bard
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
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eh?
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Slothkin
The Wind Waker's overworld was too big. Twilight Princess' overworld was a relatively good size. What I would like is something in between them, but increase the exploration aspect. Hyrule Field in Twilight Princess is too open, which makes traversing it quite tedious. I would like it if they increased the size, but closed it up a bit. Maybe make the towns bigger, or make the dungeons bigger, or something.
 
Joined
Jun 5, 2013
Location
In another castle
Preferably rather large, but only what accommodates the game best. I'd much rather take a smaller overworld brimming with life than a vast, void expanse of field and road just for the sake of sheer size. I would love to see an underground network of caves and mini-dungeons to explore too :)
 

Twilight King

The Actual Hero of Time
Joined
Jun 17, 2013
Location
Skyloft
I think that if Nintendo fills it wisely, a huge overworld would be enjoyed far more than a small one where it takes less than a minute to trudge across the entire land of Hyrule. They could do this by filling it with differing terrain and little things to look for along the way (Kind of like the bugs in TP), or by having maybe little camps of people across the land that Link could interact with and do small sidequests for.
 

ILU

i luv u
Joined
Dec 17, 2011
I would LOVE it if the overworld could be as expansive as an Elder Scrolls game, but dense as well. That's not really a possibility though.... or maybe I should say that it's not at all likely. Nintendo could do it if they really wanted to, but there isn't a need for it. Certainly, though, even if the world was a quarter of the size of an ES game, it'd be a great improvement.

Quality is best, of course, but when it comes to world scale, I personally feel that if you go below a certain quantity, then quality scales down with it. I know I'm in the minority when I say Termina was much too small despite being dense, but I would be very disappointed if another Zelda game had such a small explorable world as Majora's Mask or Skyward Sword. You know, I think Twilight Princess' overworld was a decent size, it's just that it was so empty. I'd love to see it larger than that, but even something that sized packed with a lot to see and find would probably be riiiiiiight around "just right for Zelda". Or at least Zelda as we know it.

I personally feel that the world should be large enough to be relative to its population (and lore). If there are farmers (Ordon), then shouldn't there be enough farmland to feed the population as well as conduct trade? If Lon Lon Ranch is the leading merchant in Hyrule, shouldn't there be more farm animals and farmhands? If Hyrule is an established kingdom, then there need to be locations that reflect its growth and success. At the same time, finding ruins of the Temple of Time or some other legend should be a treat that isn't always forced on us, but rather is something that we are rewarded with for being brave and curious enough to explore lost or forgotten territory. So, the world should be dense enough to make sense, but there should be vast areas of seemingly nothingness that really holds a lot more than meets the eye.

*shrug* I would really love to see large-scale. Again, not so much ES-large, but larger than what Zelda has given us so far.
 

The Jade Fist

Kung Fu Master
Joined
Jul 17, 2012
I want to get straight to the point here and focus on the overworld in the next installment for Wii U. I feel overworld size is a fairly controversial matter. The general consensus seems to be - [quality > size], which is of course true in many regards, but size is still a key figure.

However, it depends on how the scale is used, I'm a big fan of having overworld differentiation in terms of sparse and compact areas, I feel it gives the player a sense of variety. Looking at the two largest overworlds; The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess , we have two games that encouraged exploration, maybe not massively but the size and activities, in a way, forced you to explore. However, should Zelda games go bigger or smaller?

Many fans seem to look at Skyrim for inspiration, but does this kind of scale really fit in a Zelda game? The question is where is the line and where can a Zelda game go, realistically, in overworld size? So focusing on the upcoming installment, what should the overworld be, in terms of scale?

Hyrule is supposed to be a country. I want it to feel like one. Even if skyrim is a tiny country or provence (compared to real life countries) It was still big enough to hold several cities, so much wilderness, and several dozen dungeons.

Unless you lived and breathed skyrim, there was no way to see it all.

It gave the feeling of you were in this massive place. Granted, skyrim had a problem of mountains in the way every time you had to go some where, Hyrule isn't that mountainous.

edit:

to add in, Skyrim did fill it vast land scape with things to do, and random encounters from simply a guy traveling down the road, to bandits to dragons and what not.

If Nintendo was smart and thru in something like oh, random people going down the road, to make the country side be more alive. Rather then Link walks this lonely road, shadow Link is the only one that walks beside him...

Skyrim had an absurd amount of caves, camps, ruins, and tombs to just come crossed while walking some where else.

So while big is good, its only good if they know how to make use of the space.

MM over world was small, but was filled with so much to do, it didn't feel that small.

Then again after at least a dozen 100% play throughs of MM over the years, I've probably spent more hours in Skyrim in the past 2 years.

Skyrim had a huge world and it was so filled with content, even if not quite as dense as MM, its scope made it feel like there was never not something to do and explore.

edit again:

To some who say that isn't Zelda, remember the original Zelda and Zelda 2, even OoT's concept was supposed to be much more expansive and the player have real impact on its world, for production/ technical limitations those elements were never published but were part of the vision.

Maybe thats why Wind Waker wanted to be so big as soon as gamecube happened, to kinda allow for that huge world exploration that Miyamoto wanted.
 
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Justac00lguy

BooBoo
Joined
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Gender
Shewhale
The Jade Fist said:
Hyrule is supposed to be a country. I want it to feel like one. Even if skyrim is a tiny country or provence (compared to real life countries) It was still big enough to hold several cities, so much wilderness, and several dozen dungeons.
In fact Hyrule, in most cases, is referred to as the actual "world". The space of land that was occupied by the descendents of Hyrule actually became to be a Kingdom.

Now this doesn't directly relate to the potential size and scope but I think it would be an unreal fluctuation to the land mass, if it does take on this sheer scale. To me, I think a more realistic approach would be to include foreign lands or maybe do something like The Wind Waker; have a catastrophic event to drastically change the land mass etc.
 

The Jade Fist

Kung Fu Master
Joined
Jul 17, 2012
In fact Hyrule, in most cases, is referred to as the actual "world". The space of land that was occupied by the descendents of Hyrule actually became to be a Kingdom.

Now this doesn't directly relate to the potential size and scope but I think it would be an unreal fluctuation to the land mass, if it does take on this sheer scale. To me, I think a more realistic approach would be to include foreign lands or maybe do something like The Wind Waker; have a catastrophic event to drastically change the land mass etc.

Huge over world could still only part be like Hyrule.

Of course zelda 2 had a huge hyrule with 2 separate land masses.

It could go off west into the desert beyond the gerudo and have another nation, or perhaps beyond the mountains or the lost woods, or in all directions.

The entire world map could be skyrim scale. Even skyrim was broken up into several area's for each Hold. If Hyrule could take up just a corner of the map or skyrim, and have near by countries would make the game quite the adventure.
 

Ventus

Mad haters lmao
Joined
May 26, 2010
Location
Akkala
Gender
Hylian Champion
Welcome to Queensdale.
FWl5dU6.jpg
JjSwhuz.jpg
jr7XudZ.jpg
HkY8fjU.jpg
mYjdJ5u.jpg

As you can see in the first three images, there are tons of different types of structures in a populated area. We have bridges, slopes, farmland, main cities, wooded areas (with realistic placement of trees), rivers, and a crap ton of stuff. With the fourth image, you can see that the spot that I showed you was just a little bit of Shaemoor Fields/Village of Shaemoor. With the fifth image, you see that Queensdale isn't just one tiny area. ;) Oh, but something I didn't tell you? Queensdale is actually a small zone, with so many more zones that are larger with more things to do awaiting the player. ;) :right:

Now, I know the Wii U isn't a PC and thus we won't get that size of an overworld. We probably won't get a ton of things to do either. But, I do want that sort of density. There's stuff to do within 20 paces bar areas obviously marked as wilderness. Give that to me in ZeldaU and it might be perfect.
 

EmptyElegy

Soldier of Ikana
Joined
Jul 26, 2012
Location
Stone Tower Temple
I would like a rather large overworld, but I don't want it to be just empty stretches of land with nothing interesting. I would like to have a place where you could go and do lots of things all over the place, like in Twilight Princess, where you could do the many side places that were all over Hyrule.
 

Mangachick14

Nerdy and Proud
Joined
Jul 8, 2012
Location
Behind My Computer Monitor
I think the size of Twilight Princess's Hyrule was perfect. Not so big that walking around felt utterly tedious, but not claustrophobic and small, either. But please, pretty please, give us more to find and more towns. Don't leave the overworld bare, like TP's Hyrule and SS's sky. I'd rather have an overworld that's small and detailed, than one that's expansive and naked.
 

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