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- Apr 22, 2020
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This is a rant thread about my disappointment when it comes to the TotK dungeons. I can't believe there is no thread about the TotK dungeons in any kind of way but either way, here is it now. In contrast to my experience, y'all can also voice your opinion about this matter whether you agree with me or not.
The Zelda team had 6 years of development and they merely designed 5 dungeons with mediocre puzzles and weak architecture. No keys, although some shrines also have keys, very weak navigation and you often don't lose your way in a DUNGEON, enemy variety improved but there is still no mini boss, zero linear progression because the puzzles are made with the intention that you can do them in any order, so there is no increased difficulty of the puzzles the more you progress through the dungeons because they all are equally designed with the intention that the player might choose this particular puzzle first.
The terminals clearly replaced the master keys but it is so cheaply implemented into a dungeon because the very first objection you get is "See those 4 -5 terminals? Go activate them" and then you go solving those individual puzzles, linked to a particular terminal and they all are disconnected to each other. That's why you barely feel real progression in comparison to older dungeons. Something like the Forest Temple in OoT or TP isn't simply possible with the way how TotK dungeons are designed.
"This game should show true freedom in an overworld and that's why we have to make this gameplay design into the dungeons as well!" - what kinda BS logic is that? They know it's enough that the player can decide which dungeon shall be finished at the chosen order, there is no need to make the actual dungeons "open-world" as well because it simply doesn't work and while it gives the player limitless options, the developers are way more limited at designing a dungeon to consider so many paths how players might finish the puzzles. It's a joke.
See Elden Ring - it broke traditional Soulsborne game gameplay elements and it's open world but what begs to differ is the fact that Elden Ring gives you new experience with new gameplay elements while you get the good oldschool Soulsborne experience in the mini and main dungeons. The dungeon "Farum Azula" beats all TotK dungeons combined in scale, intensivity, creativity and atmosphere. I liked every corner of this dungeon, it was large, had several mini bosses, many enemies and one of the best bosses in the game.
Meanwhile, Botw/TotK dungeons are a far cry to older Zelda dungeons and it comes in hand with lazy design and lesser priority in comparison to the new Zelda formulars. The shrines are new and that#s why they got higher priority than the freaking main dungeons in the game. How does it make sense that mini dungeons are getting higher priority than the main dungeons? It's stupid.
Now on to the actual flaws of each individual dungeon:
In comparison to the Wind Temple and the Sandship in SS, the Sandship is basically the dude your girlfriend tells you to not worry about. It's a very watered down version of the Sandship, it looks like a ship but the interior architecture is anything but like a ship in this dungeon. Idk why they decided for this kind of design but there are just some large coridoors with maybe 3 rooms at max. The puzzles were also basic af, I had already seen better puzzles at some shrines at the beginning of this story. After my 2nd playthrought, I just brute force'd through all the puzzles and the dungeon was done in maybe 15 - 20 minutes max.
The Water Temple? They included 3 platforms, one main platform, one single room in the basement floor, with approximately 5 puzzles at best and called it a dungeon. It's an insult to call this huge failure a dungeon. I've seen better shrines.
Fire Temple is nicely designed, in both architecture and puzzle variety, as well as dungeon navigation. However, the cheese factor is simply way too much. It's one thing to solve a puzzle in your own way and to skip nearly 60% of dungeon content with Zonai equipment... or the climbing mechanism. I think people can have their fun if they play this dungeon the "right way" but aside of that, it is simply not a well designed dungeon if many of these puzzles can be entirely skipped. It destroys the whole structure within this dungeon.
Lightning Temple is the best dungeon in this game but it is still not comparable to older Zelda dungeons. It started with a linear progression till you reached the main room, then rinse and repeat with the terminal concept. Yet, I liked that this was the first dungeon which felt like a dungeon and the first part was really a continuous progression of individual puzzles till you reached the main room. But at least, the mirror puzzles also made up for some sort of connection and changes in this dungeon unlike the other temples like Wind and Water Temple.
Construct Factory is basically like a slightly more improved Water Temple. You immediately get slapped with the terminal objective, then you have to go to 4 buildings, solving 2 puzzles to collect the missing robot parts. At least it was better than the Water Temple but this didn't feel like a dungeon at all. There were just enemies outside the buildings but nothing else. The Zonai focused puzzles were good but I still felt the same issue of the rinse and repeat progress like all the other dungeons.
You really don't have to do anything to change the dungeons interior, there is no consequence of going in any kind of building in the Construct Factory.
There is no dungeon map either, it is completely implemented into the overworld and I'm sure, if I were to enter this dungeon without doing the main quest, I'd think this is just one of the many small puzzles in The Depth.
But my most disappointment was the fact that this was the dungeon, not the Spirit Temple. Nintendo completely baited older fans with the Spirit Temple because the actual temple wasn't the dungeon, it was the boss room. It also didn't make it better when you got the robot but had to go through several enemies and an annoying path to reach the boss room. This part isn't concluded in the actual dungeon because it's completely illogical.
Yes, I carefully tested all dungeons at my 2nd playthrought and I disliked them even more after thoroughly analyzing them.
They developed 120 shrines again and even added 32 in the sky, of which the majority was just copy & paste. I can't describe how disappointed I was about finding out how TotK turned out to be. They rather developed 152 repetitive mini dungeons instead of keeping higher priority and main focus to the main dungeons... What we've got is a straight insult to the fans. They really thought "Let's just artistically change each dungeon design to make them more themed and hopefully, the fans will shut up" because they are just themed Divine Beasts minus the unique mechanism which made each Divine Beast at least unique in its own way, unlike the TotK dungeons.
And for that BS, they changed the entire dungeon formular...
Now, these are my reasons why I completely detested the TotK dungeons. They said we'll get themed dungeons but what we got are watered down Divine Beasts which are at least designed unique. GREAT STEPS! Is it baby steps? Yes, literally... lol. However, maybe I'm just capping hard rn and I see these dungeons at a wrong perspective, it's possible.
The Zelda team had 6 years of development and they merely designed 5 dungeons with mediocre puzzles and weak architecture. No keys, although some shrines also have keys, very weak navigation and you often don't lose your way in a DUNGEON, enemy variety improved but there is still no mini boss, zero linear progression because the puzzles are made with the intention that you can do them in any order, so there is no increased difficulty of the puzzles the more you progress through the dungeons because they all are equally designed with the intention that the player might choose this particular puzzle first.
The terminals clearly replaced the master keys but it is so cheaply implemented into a dungeon because the very first objection you get is "See those 4 -5 terminals? Go activate them" and then you go solving those individual puzzles, linked to a particular terminal and they all are disconnected to each other. That's why you barely feel real progression in comparison to older dungeons. Something like the Forest Temple in OoT or TP isn't simply possible with the way how TotK dungeons are designed.
"This game should show true freedom in an overworld and that's why we have to make this gameplay design into the dungeons as well!" - what kinda BS logic is that? They know it's enough that the player can decide which dungeon shall be finished at the chosen order, there is no need to make the actual dungeons "open-world" as well because it simply doesn't work and while it gives the player limitless options, the developers are way more limited at designing a dungeon to consider so many paths how players might finish the puzzles. It's a joke.
See Elden Ring - it broke traditional Soulsborne game gameplay elements and it's open world but what begs to differ is the fact that Elden Ring gives you new experience with new gameplay elements while you get the good oldschool Soulsborne experience in the mini and main dungeons. The dungeon "Farum Azula" beats all TotK dungeons combined in scale, intensivity, creativity and atmosphere. I liked every corner of this dungeon, it was large, had several mini bosses, many enemies and one of the best bosses in the game.
Meanwhile, Botw/TotK dungeons are a far cry to older Zelda dungeons and it comes in hand with lazy design and lesser priority in comparison to the new Zelda formulars. The shrines are new and that#s why they got higher priority than the freaking main dungeons in the game. How does it make sense that mini dungeons are getting higher priority than the main dungeons? It's stupid.
Now on to the actual flaws of each individual dungeon:
In comparison to the Wind Temple and the Sandship in SS, the Sandship is basically the dude your girlfriend tells you to not worry about. It's a very watered down version of the Sandship, it looks like a ship but the interior architecture is anything but like a ship in this dungeon. Idk why they decided for this kind of design but there are just some large coridoors with maybe 3 rooms at max. The puzzles were also basic af, I had already seen better puzzles at some shrines at the beginning of this story. After my 2nd playthrought, I just brute force'd through all the puzzles and the dungeon was done in maybe 15 - 20 minutes max.
The Water Temple? They included 3 platforms, one main platform, one single room in the basement floor, with approximately 5 puzzles at best and called it a dungeon. It's an insult to call this huge failure a dungeon. I've seen better shrines.
Fire Temple is nicely designed, in both architecture and puzzle variety, as well as dungeon navigation. However, the cheese factor is simply way too much. It's one thing to solve a puzzle in your own way and to skip nearly 60% of dungeon content with Zonai equipment... or the climbing mechanism. I think people can have their fun if they play this dungeon the "right way" but aside of that, it is simply not a well designed dungeon if many of these puzzles can be entirely skipped. It destroys the whole structure within this dungeon.
Lightning Temple is the best dungeon in this game but it is still not comparable to older Zelda dungeons. It started with a linear progression till you reached the main room, then rinse and repeat with the terminal concept. Yet, I liked that this was the first dungeon which felt like a dungeon and the first part was really a continuous progression of individual puzzles till you reached the main room. But at least, the mirror puzzles also made up for some sort of connection and changes in this dungeon unlike the other temples like Wind and Water Temple.
Construct Factory is basically like a slightly more improved Water Temple. You immediately get slapped with the terminal objective, then you have to go to 4 buildings, solving 2 puzzles to collect the missing robot parts. At least it was better than the Water Temple but this didn't feel like a dungeon at all. There were just enemies outside the buildings but nothing else. The Zonai focused puzzles were good but I still felt the same issue of the rinse and repeat progress like all the other dungeons.
You really don't have to do anything to change the dungeons interior, there is no consequence of going in any kind of building in the Construct Factory.
There is no dungeon map either, it is completely implemented into the overworld and I'm sure, if I were to enter this dungeon without doing the main quest, I'd think this is just one of the many small puzzles in The Depth.
But my most disappointment was the fact that this was the dungeon, not the Spirit Temple. Nintendo completely baited older fans with the Spirit Temple because the actual temple wasn't the dungeon, it was the boss room. It also didn't make it better when you got the robot but had to go through several enemies and an annoying path to reach the boss room. This part isn't concluded in the actual dungeon because it's completely illogical.
Yes, I carefully tested all dungeons at my 2nd playthrought and I disliked them even more after thoroughly analyzing them.
They developed 120 shrines again and even added 32 in the sky, of which the majority was just copy & paste. I can't describe how disappointed I was about finding out how TotK turned out to be. They rather developed 152 repetitive mini dungeons instead of keeping higher priority and main focus to the main dungeons... What we've got is a straight insult to the fans. They really thought "Let's just artistically change each dungeon design to make them more themed and hopefully, the fans will shut up" because they are just themed Divine Beasts minus the unique mechanism which made each Divine Beast at least unique in its own way, unlike the TotK dungeons.
And for that BS, they changed the entire dungeon formular...
Now, these are my reasons why I completely detested the TotK dungeons. They said we'll get themed dungeons but what we got are watered down Divine Beasts which are at least designed unique. GREAT STEPS! Is it baby steps? Yes, literally... lol. However, maybe I'm just capping hard rn and I see these dungeons at a wrong perspective, it's possible.
