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Breath of the Wild Was the hype train for Breath of the Wild better than the game?

Breath of the Wild was a very wild ride from 2014 all the way up until ita release in 2017.

Before the release of BotW we thought we had some idea of how things would be. Bit BotW ended up being so different from the other 3D Zelda games before it.

The controls and world structure were different, the story was optional and the lore was... a mess in a worse way than usual.

I have my own likes and dislikes for the game but i think i've come to a realisation that I enjoyed the hype more than the game.

I still like the game, but it did a lot of things that have really challenged my ideals as a Zelda fan and I'm not sure where I stand with the series now.

What about you?

Was the hype train more fun for you than playing the game?
 
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Vanessa28

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Actually I missed the hype train a bit. I didn't follow much of the news about BotW and avoided spoilers. I didn't even plan to buy the game but on the release date I found myself in the store ending up buying it. And the game did fullfill my expectations so yeah to me the game was even better than the hype. But mainly because I didn't pay atention to the hype.
 

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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I was present near the beginning of the hype. I remember the beta version we saw at E3 2014 and a bunch of fans thinking BotW Link was a girl, up until Aonuma confirmed that wasn't the case.

I didn't really get too hyped over BotW mainly because I didn't keep up with the hype, especially at its height. I logged on around November 2016 and someone on the SB linked the E3 reveal trailer for me. I watched it, and for me that was the last bit of BotW info I looked into until buying the game a few months ago.

Getting hyped for SS screwed me over in the end. With BotW I didn't want that to happen so I took everything with a grain of salt. By time I started playing the game I had no expectations really. So actually playing it was better than the hype, because the hype I mainly missed.
 

Dio

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Playing the game was hardly any fun for me at all bar a few moments because it was all a big letdown in terms of the content. But the hype train was amazing. The trailers they showed made it seem like an exciting game that would have an intriguing story, unfortunately the reality was much different. My excitement was great and my dissapointment even greater. It's turned me off getting excited again for the next game because I worry it would be just the same again and it is literally years of my life I spent getting excited over nothing before and I consider that a huge waste of time. I don't want that to happen again.
 
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Mido

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The jury's still out on this question for me, if only because my expectations were never too, too high save for the hype surrounding the narrative after that February 2017 Direct. I was expecting a narrative on the level of Xenoblade Chronicles or something akin to the stories of grand, epic RPGs after watching snippets of the game's cutscenes. Instead, we got something similar to how the 2014 hype machine in Destiny operated with optional exploration of the story with the game's main narrative being simple in nature (BOTW at the very least let players explore the story from within the game rather than having to go online to read up on it by comparison). On the gameplay, while I was caught off-guard by many of the game's changes to the formula, I ultimately did not mind the changes in the big picture. After all is said and done, I think I am somewhere in the middle on this question. On the game's story, it would perhaps be accurate to say the hype triumphed over the game; however, the rest of the game had not the same expectations, so I ultimately found myself enjoying the game fine for the most part from what I have played of it.
 

DarkestLink

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Can't say I was all that hyped. Granted, I try to avoid hyping myself up because I find I enjoy the product more if I come in with low expectations and, despite their flaws, I found SS and ALBW to be quite enjoyable for all the doom and gloom I was giving here. And yet...BOTW still managed to disappoint me. Getting rid of all the Zelda developers was stupid. Trying to turn a linear dungeon crawler with no story emphasis into an Open World was stupid. Bringing back tedious SS elements was stupid. Durability almost never works in games where it's implemented.

Still I wanted to have faith, because some of Aonuma's comments made it seem like he understood why exploration didn't work in previous titles. Essentially because exploration brought the game to a screeching halt. Aonuma pointed out that exploration works best when getting lost in the world and simply exploring still allows you to progress. This was spot on. With the concept of an Open World Zelda, my main concerns were that:

1) It would feature a boring empty overworld...like every previous 3D Zelda title.

2) Combat would be dumbed down.

3) Durability would be a failure of a mechanic.

4) Nintendo would commit the age old sin of quantity > quality that many Open Worlds are guilty of these days.

5) There wouldn't be much towns at all.

6) There would be no story.

7) Grinding would rear its ugly head again.

8) There would be no real dungeons.

9) The world would either scale with you or be set so low that there wouldn't be any challenging areas.

10) The puzzles would be over simplified like ALBW's.

Still, I was really surprised to hear that from Aonuma. It did sound like he was learning, so I put aside my doubts for the time being. When the trailer came out, there were two things I noticed, one good, one bad.

The Good: It sounded like story was going to be a massive focus in BOTW and there would be a huge mystery to solve about "What happened 100 years ago". For an Open World, title, this was great. Having a mystery adds more for the player to discover. Creating a larger narrative was exactly what was needed for an Open World title like this and I was thrilled to see that Nintendo seemed to realize how critical story was for an Open World game.

The Bad: ...Link...wasn't doing anything. I didn't notice this the first time I watched the trailer, because I was focused on the narrative, but when I went back to watch it for the gameplay...I noticed Link spent most of the time just...walking or climbing without actually doing anything. The world looked so damn barren. Like holy ****, there was just nothing but landscape for miles. It was the emptiest overworld I had seen since No Man's Sky. When I brought this up, I was just told that it was probably because the game was unfinished. I chose to entertain that possibility for now.

Eventually I heard of how you could fight Ganon immediately and, to me, this seemed to be Aonuma's pitch for the game: Your goal is to fight Ganon. You can fight him now, but he would be insanely challenging and only the best players/speedrunners would be able to pull it off. This isn't for your typical Zelda casual. If you don't fight Ganon, you can explore the world, uncover a deep history and lore for Hyrule and unwravel the mystery of how it ended up in this state. You will journey with Zelda and other comrades, growing in strength as you aid them. By the end of it, the more casual players will be able to face Ganon. It'll still be an insanely tough fight, but with your new abilities and your friends, you can pull it off.

Seemed like a solid idea to me. But in the end, what ended up happening was that Calamity Ganon was pretty easy. If you go rush to fight him, the fight is about at the same difficulty I'd expect from your standard Zelda boss. If you play the basic game (Divine Beasts), he dies in like...30 seconds, not counting Beast Ganon (because come on, who's going to count that?). The story was practically non-existent. The hype from the trailer was so overblown that it bordered false advertisement. -_- Exploration was kinda pointless. You didn't learn anything by exploring. Hearts were meaningless in this game due to the armor/damage system. The Master Sword was breakable...and redundant by the time you get it and already have 70+ Lynel weapons. The only thing that's going to have a real effect on your fight with Ganon is whether you do the main quest and grind for decent armor. And in a way, it felt like the game was punishing you for doing the main quest by making crippling a final boss that was already easy to deal with.

I should have known better. Aonuma has less gaming prowess than my nephew, so him hyping up difficulty really shouldn't mean anything. I really wanted to believe Nintendo had learned from their mistakes and finally understood how to make a decent Open World focused game, but in the end every single one of my initial worries ended up coming to fruition. Except #5, they actually did a great job with the towns, implemented MM's schedule, and had excellent presentation with most of Hyrule's famous landmarks. The makeover for Rito and Zoras were also a nice touch. It's a shame the sidequests were botched though. I really didn't see that coming. Zelda has good sidequests, Open Worlds tend to focus on sidequests, I thought this was the one area Nintendo would have no issues adapting towards.
 

Jirohnagi

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Honestly i gotta say yes, the made this game out to be a massive gamechanger and open world and what was it populated with? barely anything, they claimed it'd change a lot of zelda mechanics and yes it did for the worse, i didn't enjoy running around searching out 120 shrines just actually have max hearts.

It's big gamechanger seemed to be durability over anything else, all i ever saw for ads was how combat has been revolutionized via it, how stealth is now an option, it is but far more easier to just run in and beat them to death.

The divine beasts were hyped and well suffice to say the lacked just plain ole lacked, the blights weren't all that exciting and for 3 of them not even tough
 
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I recently re-watched the Story Trailer for Breath of the Wild after seeing a spoiler of Super Smash Bros Ultimate and I can't help but feel anger towards how the game eventually turned out. BotW's story was one of it's biggest letdowns for me simply because of how hyped that Story trailer made it. What could of been a fantastic story that would of saved the game for me turned out to be pushed aside in the game's past in favour of exploring an empty overworld which I never really cared for in the Zelda series.

I'll admit there are some good things about BotW, but overall it did not live up to the hype that the trailers showcased and it became, in my opinion, one of the weaker titles in the whole series.
 

Cfrock

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Absolutely. Breath of the Wild is one of the few games in my life I got obsessively excited for. I was watching trailers and gameplay clips daily. I was so in love with the way fires would spread and the thought of all the crazy crap you could do with the game's physics and systems all interacting with each other. It looked gorgeous, a wonderful art style that drew my eye without ever losing its allure. The idea of having a new Zelda that looked this good as the first game on a new console made me feel like I was sixteen again waiting for Twilight Princess. I couldn't contain myself, I was so hyped for BotW.

And then I got it and didn't have fun. It was a shame and I just stopped playing. Then I sold my Switch.

The hype train was a lot of fun for me because I wasn't following the game in a fanboy kind of way, trying to make it out to be the best game ever and tearing other games down to make this one seem better. It was more an optimistic hype, just enjoying how good this specific thing looked and taking pleasure from it. I enjoyed the first hour or two of the actual game and then lost all enthusiasm for a number of reasons. Even now I still get excited when I see videos and clips of people doing crazy and creative things on it. I just know that I wouldn't feel that way if I were to play the actual game again myself.
 

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