Breath of the Wild Too big for its story?

[Spirit]

BotW is huge and can last you as long as you want it to.

The drawback to nailing BotW as fast as you can means the story is pretty optional and non invasive meaning it can feel like nothing is happening.

But if BoTW was a traditonal Zelda, with one way forward and one way to do things like OoT, WW and TP, would the story feel better?

If the memories were worked into specific points as you pushed your way forward because the game says would it have felt more involved and would you have preferred it?

 

[Castle]

The story presentation has nothing to do with how big the game is or its structure or where you encounter narrative segments... there just has to be more of it.

 

[Jirohnagi]

There was no story bar a few jumbled bits. I spent the vast majority of my play time messing around or farming materials.

 

[Dio]

The story isn't any good to begin with so wouldn't necessarily feel better just because you were made to do it in a certain way.

That said with a game world that size even with a good story, it would be wasted having all that world without the plot involving you exploring most of it.

 

[Lozjam]

Nope and that's not the point. The story for BotW is what you, as a player do. The memory and bits and bobs just serve as slight context to what you are doing. Most of the story is in the gameplay, and it is 100% your story.

To really take in the story of BotW take in what you have done. That is the story of the game. Some people want hand holdy stories with cutscenes similar to FF games, but that's fine. However, when you think about what you have done as a player, things get far more interesting.

I certainly would prefer riding up a waterfall, trying to take down a mechanical beast in a tunic that was meant to be an engagement gift while having the most sly Zora at my side and trying to avenge a person who was once loved, and doing that in person, over merely watching a cutscene.

 

[athenian200]

Honestly, I would have preferred a more balanced approach. The game as it exists now feels more like a sandbox game like Skyrim, where as you said, most of the content is optional. In a game like Skyrim or Morrowind, you can skip much of the story, and it's possible take a different route through the game and have a different experience each time.

While I appreciate BoTW for what it is, I've never really liked this approach. In fact, I've never played an Elder Scrolls game to completion because I get bogged down halfway through not being sure what to do next. I have a bad feeling that I may play this game off and on while never beating it because, like Elder Scrolls, it "gives me enough rope to hang myself," and doesn't really keep a goal in focus.

It seems like they've never really gotten the formula right since Twilight Princess, honestly. I would say that Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess had a very good mix of required content and optional content (with Wind Waker being my favorite game). Majora's Mask was the one exception from that period, and is actually the game that reminds me most of BoTW (other than the original LoZ)... nearly all the content is optional, and you could beat the main story fairly easily if you skip around avoiding sidequests.

Skyward Sword actually made the opposite mistake in my opinion... it was very linear to the point that the game world didn't seem to "flow." I mean, arguably so were past Zelda games, but it was more obvious in that one because the main hub world was so detached from the main areas where the game took place. This was rightly criticized, and Nintendo took it to heart so much that the next Zelda game was not linear at all, and did nothing but flow. Which means the story suffers.

I would prefer to see something that's a bit more open than Skyward Sword, but with a stronger story and a little more hand-holding than BoTW. What I like about BoTW is the number of different clothing options, the large world, and the amount of optional sidequests. Cooking, climbing, and stamina are also good mechanics. But I really don't like weapon damage and shield damage. I think they need to dial back the realism a bit in order to keep it from being overwhelming.

The one word I would use to describe this game, and someone else used it first, is overwhelming. That's honestly why I almost don't want to pick it up again... I get so overwhelmed with information/options, and I wear myself out trying to sift through everything. Honestly, I'd probably be fine if I just followed an online guide from beginning to end, but I don't really want to do that with this game, because it would really change the experience of the game compared to what was intended. In a more linear game, a guide doesn't matter... but in one like this, it could change the whole experience.

 

[Dio]

Nope and that's not the point. The story for BotW is what you, as a player do. The memory and bits and bobs just serve as slight context to what you are doing. Most of the story is in the gameplay, and it is 100% your story.

To really take in the story of BotW take in what you have done. That is the story of the game. Some people want hand holdy stories with cutscenes similar to FF games, but that's fine. However, when you think about what you have done as a player, things get far more interesting.

I certainly would prefer riding up a waterfall, trying to take down a mechanical beast in a tunic that was meant to be an engagement gift while having the most sly Zora at my side and trying to avenge a person who was once loved, and doing that in person, over merely watching a cutscene.

But that's not a story. Thats just trying to justify bad storytelling and pass off the players messing around as part of the story. You can mess around in any open world game or even a shooter but that doesn't make the story good. 'Link wandered around for hours finding seeds' or 'Link was bored and led a lynel to Zoras Domain to see if he could' arent great plot points are they?

 

[misskitten]

Nope and that's not the point. The story for BotW is what you, as a player do. The memory and bits and bobs just serve as slight context to what you are doing. Most of the story is in the gameplay, and it is 100% your story.

To really take in the story of BotW take in what you have done. That is the story of the game. Some people want hand holdy stories with cutscenes similar to FF games, but that's fine. However, when you think about what you have done as a player, things get far more interesting.

I certainly would prefer riding up a waterfall, trying to take down a mechanical beast in a tunic that was meant to be an engagement gift while having the most sly Zora at my side and trying to avenge a person who was once loved, and doing that in person, over merely watching a cutscene.

I highly agree with all of this. I have commented in the past that one of the things that put me off the original LoZ was how it had zero story, so I felt like I had no purpose to what I was doing. This is really not the cast in BotW. There's a clear setting, a story, a purpose. But that isn't the important thing in the game at all. It's a backdrop for you to shape your own story. Because unlike every single other Zelda game, you actually have a real choice here. Because everything apart from the end-game goal is actually optional. You don't have to hunt down any shrines after the first four, you don't have to do any of the beasts, you don't have to hunt down memories. It's probably in your best interest to do at least some of it, but it's up to you what and how much you do. So this is your story with a backdrop.

 

[Vanessa28]

I don't think the game is too big for the story. You can make it as long or short as you wish. The game has many quests for you to do and it's entirely up to the player to make it as big as they want. You can go straight to the final boss if you want to. So if you miss out on the story by not collecting any of the memories or beating the Divine Beasts, it's entirely your own choice. That's why I totally love this game so much. The complete freedom. And we don't know what will come to us through the DLC. Maybe some gaps will be filled.

 

[Castle]

While I do think video games are meant to be played first, there is something to be said for an engaging narrative. Still, I flat out don't trust Ninty to tell a decent story at this point. Better to have no story than some drivel the likes of Suckward Sword or (God forbid!) Other M had.

And since ninty's production capacity seems to be woefully inadequate, I'd rather they spend their time developing a game rather than cruddy looking cutscenes.

 

[YIGAhim]

I suppose that the story would get a bit better if the game was linear, but I don't think it'd do much...

 

[SinkingBadges]

Alright so first off I'll get out of the way that I get a knee-jerk reaction at the premise of this thread. If the story doesn't work for the game or vice-versa, change the story. If the game is to be changed, then it should be for a gameplay-relevant reason. I don't say this to defend the open world or to diss linearity, it just seems like such a basic thing.

Anyway, I agree having a set sequence of events does provide space for a more deliberate structure, which can give less variables to consider when writing a story since you don't have to worry about where the player is. I remember when I started getting the memories involving Zelda I didn't feel like I understood the story they were trying to tell because I didn't get the one in the area in front of the castle first, which set up Zelda's relationship with Link. I imagine getting that one first would have made the others easier to follow rather than make it look like Zelda just hated Link which is the impression I got at first.

On the other hand though, the cutscenes are so short that it's not like that structure would help. I got the impression that the story sections were supposed to work more like quick glimpses into the past to set up questlines as some sort of episodic narrative rather than making a big comprehensive one anyways, which honestly is not a bad fit for a non-linear game. However, there were parts where I felt like the impact some parts of the story should have just wasn't there since the cutscenes seemed more focused on delivering basic beats as fast as possible. Zelda's story got like barely the time it needed, but characters like the champions I didn't feel all that invested on since you just get like surface-level information about them.

I don't consider myself much good at story criticism so I'm sure I'm off about something, but that's what comes to mind.