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.