Breath of the Wild Understandable Failures

[YIGAhim]

BoTW did not live up to the expectations of many, for various reasons.

Most of what I am hearing, is how Nintendo could have done so much better with what they had.

Well, I want to hear what some of the BoTW failures or pitfalls were understandable and why they can be excused.

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

The most common complaint I see is the lack of dungeons and the simple story, which... well I can understand where they're coming from. The best part of most Zelda games is exploring the many dungeons and fighting a wide array of different enemies. Breath of the Wild took a different approach, with not only having less dungeons than usual, but making them all essentially just large puzzles. It's a definite departure from what the series is known for, so it's understandable that people dislike that aspect of the game, especially considering the game world is so large.

But is it excusable? Absolutely. Because everything else the game does right, it does excellently. I wish there were more dungeons myself, but I don't hate that there aren't. The 120 shrines and many different environments in the overworld make it so there is still a lot to do and see. I would have liked the dungeons to be a bit longer, more difficult, and less repetitive, but it's a relatively minor point that I can forgive in the long run. I like what they tried to do with the dungeons anyway, with the different gimmicks and making them more puzzle based, I just think they could have been more interesting. The main problem with puzzle based areas like the divine beasts is that they're only fun the first time. After that, you know the puzzles and don't need to figure anything out for yourself, and can just breeze through them. But as I said, it's a relatively minor point that I can look past when the rest of the game is great, and I at least give them props for taking a risk.

 

[Spirit]

Its different being a fan of a game than the developer.

A lot of Aonuma's focus (as it always is) will have been ganeplay. He had to reimagine a lot of tropes of the previous games and this will have taken a lot of energy. He'll have had to come up with the idea of runes, the ways to get around the world, the enemies and weapons and how each will work. Come up with the concepts of the beasts in the first place.... etc.

He will have put a lot more work into botw than what we see. It will have been tiring and feel like a lot more to him than it will have to us.

I'm not excusing botw for the simplistic gameplay or bare story but Aonuma has had a lot of work put into making Zelda into something different.

I cant imagine how stressful it must have been or how careful he has had to be in changing the foundation of Zelda for BotW, if you **** (pronounced Other M) Zelda up then that's your career.

Nintendo always takes baby steps.
Now we have an open world engine we'll probably be given a bit more with dungeons, combat, enemies, dungeons and story next time.

 

[Azure Sage]

Honestly there wasn’t much I had a real problem with in BotW. Sure, some things could use improvements, like the durability system, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t manageable. Like @Spirit said, most of this stuff was brand new and took a ton of work from the developers. Now that they have this glorious open world and physics engine, it’ll be possible to focus on other areas next time. And like @Tristan said, everything else BotW does right is done spectacularly. The pure fun this game offers, enough fun that I’m still not bored after 850 hours, more than makes up for its flaws.

 

[Fierce_Deity]

Considering it had been 6 years between console releases, the shallow story and overall quickness of going through the game can't really be excused.

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

Considering it had been 6 years between console releases, the shallow story and overall quickness of going through the game can't really be excused.

The whole point of the game though was to have a massive open world that can be explored at the will of the player. Every action a player makes in the game is completely optional, aside from the Great Plateau stuff. That's the beauty of it, the game is only as quick as the player makes it. You could just do the story stuff if you want, or skip it entirely and go straight to Ganon. But you don't have to, and the game encourages you to explore in between story stuff. If the game is too quick, that's entirely by choice. You can even turn off objectives if you want, or turn off the map entirely.

Considering the entire point of the game was the open world and exploration aspects, I'd say they succeeded. The story is simple, but it fits. Just try to imagine how long the game's world itself must've taken to create, plus they had to design 120 shrines and a unique item system, plus create 100s of different weapons and outfits and make them believable, all the while creating unique ideas such as the divine beasts and the guardians. The amount of detail put into the game completely excuses the simple story imo.

 

[Nicolai]

This game is one fantastic effort, and I think a few of their flaws are excusable, in that they couldn't have been changed without consequences in other areas. Games truly are intricate networks, and striking gold without a few flaws is rare. Though, there are still a number of easy fixes and missed opportunities I shake my head at.

To start with excusable flaws: my biggest complaint is that total freedom in a video game lacks certain benefits that limits can bring. However, this same total freedom is beloved by so many people, and the giant labyrinth of an overworld that I envisioned in my head would have frustrated many players if they had gotten lost. Such a labyrinth would work better in a smaller world, which of course would disappoint anothet set of people.

Some people criticize the durability system, but it makes perfect sense to me. In BotW its critical that everything points towards helping you beat Ganon, and if you kept everything you got in this game, you would eventually have everything you need early on, and you would have no need to go out and find new things. Other open-world game solve this problem by having more sophisticated difficulty scaling, but those games don't link the main quest to the rest of the game like BotW does. Those games usually make the time and effort it to beat the game pretty rigid. You can either blow through it really quickly like in Skyrim, or you're force to spend a lot of time in the game to level up like in Xenoblade Chronicles. Keep in mind, BotW is not an RPG, and its freedom from the shackles of the XP system allow players to gobble up the necessary upgrades at their own pace. But just in case they gobble them up too quickly, BotW makes sure you're always needing to replenish your weapons supply.

Even the monotony of the dungeon themes can be understood, since the theme made perfect sense. The fact that each of the divine beasts were all the same giant mechanical monster is made up by the sheer awesomeness that these dungeons are... actual giant mechanical monsters! Don't forget the incredible feeling that comes from seeing your dungeon rampage through the overworld, and it just felt awesome to feel liking you were hacking and taking control of it! And Nintendo even went as far as they could by giving wind, fire, water, and electricity themes to Medoh, Rudania, Ruta, and Naboris respectively. The same could be said about your basic shrines, too, as they also contain elemental theming, as well as a number of stand-out overworld puzzles.

There are a few easy fixes, though, and to keep on the subject of shrines, I admit that it wouldn't have defied any reasoning to have a few alternating aesthetics. And while the structure of the story fit perfectly with the open-world go-out-and-find-it gameplay, there's still no reason why they didn't have a more satisfying ending that references the memories, when they already had a two-ending system in place! And lastly, I say bupkis at the Dark Beast Ganon fight. Final Boss fights are meaningless if they aren't challenging.

But considering how big this game is and how new and different it is and how much it does right, it's easy to give these things a pass.

 

[LastSagas]

Its different being a fan of a game than the developer.

A lot of Aonuma's focus (as it always is) will have been ganeplay. He had to reimagine a lot of tropes of the previous games and this will have taken a lot of energy. He'll have had to come up with the idea of runes, the ways to get around the world, the enemies and weapons and how each will work. Come up with the concepts of the beasts in the first place.... etc.

He will have put a lot more work into botw than what we see. It will have been tiring and feel like a lot more to him than it will have to us.

I'm not excusing botw for the simplistic gameplay or bare story but Aonuma has had a lot of work put into making Zelda into something different.

I cant imagine how stressful it must have been or how careful he has had to be in changing the foundation of Zelda for BotW, if you **** (pronounced Other M) Zelda up then that's your career.

Nintendo always takes baby steps.
Now we have an open world engine we'll probably be given a bit more with dungeons, combat, enemies, dungeons and story next time.

But I doubt we will get a game with such a intresting concept. It could of been some amazing rather then medicore.

 

[DJ Twitch]

BOTW's flaws were fundamental flaws, so I would say no. Their first mistake was basing the entire game on exploration and open world, which are concepts that need to be backed up by interesting content and actual rewards. The game would have been at least passable if they hadn't screwed this part up.

Second mistake was abandoning tradition simply for the sake of abandoning tradition. Taking away the dungeons, bosses, weapons system and other classic elements was a fatal mistake to begin with, but what we got in exchange only made the it worse.

Finally, they had the courage to take some forward steps, but couldn't be arsed to put a little effort into them. Take the cutscenes for example; bad acting aside, it would have been awesome if it weren't for half of them being about Zelda telling us about a frog or whatever.

I could go into more detail on this whole thing, but I'd be here all day, so to wrap it up; the only flaws I can ignore are the superficial ones like the story and artstyle.

 

[AncientPoe]

The more I think about my response to this question, the more I think it might be better off as its own thread.

 

[pyjamas5189]

I ften wonder how many imilar conversations were had when Zelda 2 came out and the had deviated so much from the first one. I know we have a lot more material to go on now but I don' see the problem testing the waters and trying something new.

 

[BV502]

I don't get why the dungeons of breath of the wild get so much hate, I didn't think they were that bad. Vah Ruta is even among my favorites in the entire zelda franchise. I also didn't think the shrines were that boring (excluding tests of strength). For me this game was well worth the wait.

 

[the8thark]

BoTW did not live up to the expectations of many, for various reasons.

Most of what I am hearing, is how Nintendo could have done so much better with what they had.

Well, I want to hear what some of the BoTW failures or pitfalls were understandable and why they can be excused.

None of the game's bad issues should be excused. However we should not be ignoring all the things that the game did very well. We need to be objective here, not just start a witch hunt trying to look for bad points that do not exist.

Breath of the Wild is a very good game. But of cause it's not perfect and the few issues it had should be discussed to the next game can be even better. The bad points are a little polarising, some of them we all agree on and some not everyone agrees is a bad point. The weapon durability is a good example. Many people (myself includedO think the weapon durability was just fine and added to the charm of the game, however others say it's a flaw that hurt the game experience. That's more a design choice that not everyone liked, it's not a hard game flaw.

@DJ Twitch makes some good points that are design choices that are not flaws, just ideas in the game that not everyone liked. However what people like and do not like is still good to know whenmoving forward.
I'll go through the ones he mentioned above.

Their first mistake was basing the entire game on exploration and open world
That's not a flaw. It's a design choice that not everyone liked. I thought it was amazing and I really liked the whole exploration thing being the core focus of the game. But others did not like it and that's fine. Either you liked this or you did not. Difference of opinion, not a game flaw.

Second mistake was abandoning tradition simply for the sake of abandoning tradition
I would say E3 2017 proved this was not a flaw. The reaction to this was good. And to this day the reaction to it is still relatively good. It's another of those differences of opinion being the thing here. Either you like it or you didn't like it. It's not a game flaw. On the other hand if BotW was an OOT clone, everyone would be complaining about that. You can't win either way, so just take the risk and see how the people feel about it. Traditions are good but only to a point. If people rely on them as a crux and don't ever take risks to innovate and move forwward then nothing improves and we get the same style of games for decades and decades. Some people liked this and others did not. That's fair, no one has to like it. It's not a game flaw though.

Finally, they had the courage to take some forward steps, but couldn't be arsed to put a little effort into them.
In the point above you say moving away from tradition is bad but here you say they didn't put enough effort into the move away from tradition. You can't have it both ways. You can't keep tradition and break away from tradition at the same time. However I agree with your point here. . . mostly. Nintendo did put effort into the whole game. That's an objective fact. However there were a few parts of the game that were not good. Cut scene acting was bad, I agree with you. A lack of narrative variety within the cut scenes was another issue. I would have preferred the story to have been told through the hundreds of NPCs around the game, not just a few rather average cut scenes. I do think Nintendo should not do the whole narrative in cut scenes thing like this in the next game. Or at leastmake it more structured. Like the cut scenes come at certain points in the game, not just when you randomly find them in the game.

 

[Azure Sage]

I would have preferred the story to have been told through the hundreds of NPCs around the game, not just a few rather average cut scenes.

Um, it was. Did you even talk to anyone? The old folks in Hateno in particular give a lot of backstory elements. Many NPCs throughout the world talk about how the world got the way it is, which is the entire point of the story. It wasn’t just the memories that helped you figure out what happened, which I overall enjoyed. I can understand the complaints about learning the story being entirely up to you, but as you said before it’s a design choice and you either liked it or you didn’t. I liked it a lot.

 

[the8thark]

Um, it was. Did you even talk to anyone? The old folks in Hateno in particular give a lot of backstory elements. Many NPCs throughout the world talk about how the world got the way it is, which is the entire point of the story. It wasn’t just the memories that helped you figure out what happened, which I overall enjoyed. I can understand the complaints about learning the story being entirely up to you, but as you said before it’s a design choice and you either liked it or you didn’t. I liked it a lot.

I am aware of this. I just wish it was done more overtly, that's all. However you are correct it's just a design choice. However player likes and dislikes are factors taken into consideration when making future games in the series. ALTTP is proof of this. I do think many of the less popular design choices in BOTW will not make it into the next game. I do think weapon durability might not make the cut for the next game. I liked it but enough people didn't and that might be the reason it's cut.