Breath of the Wild What if the Koroks caused a BotW delay?

[Spirit]

We all know that BotW was supposed to release in 2015 (which it didn't) and then 2016 (which it didn't) and finally 2017 (which it did).

There were obviously a few delays and porting the game to the Switch was probably the reason for maybe a couple...

But there are 900 Koroks in BotW and these Koroks are triggered by solving puzzles, some puzzles need you to navigate terrain and so are placed in very exact locations in order for the puzzles to work and be sometimes challenging.

Exactly placing 900 mini puzzles in precise locations throughout the map will have taken a lot of time and effort and planning...

We'll never know if they did cause a delay, but with many people not thinking the Koroks were a worthwhile inclusion in BotW, how would you feel if they were a cause of a delay for BotW?

 

[beste-spellen]

That would be a shame, really. I did not like korok hunting at all and when I found out that it were 900 of them, I really was not bothered to actively search for them..
I would rather have had BotW a year earlier without koroks if I could choose.

But I suspect most delay indeed was caused by porting the game to Switch. Although little Switch-specific things were added, the architecture of these systems is completely different so porting it had cost a lot of time. Possibly, the technical people had to do so much work, that the game developers got more time, which they used for the koroks...

 

[DarkestLink]

It's because they were screwing around with new stuff and didn't know what they were doing. Same reason SS took so long. The gimmicks end up being big time wasters. The fact that this was a new team that had no experience with game development and Aonuma couldn't be bothered to keep any of the senior members on board to mentor them probably didn't help.

 

[Dio]

If that were the case I would be most dissapointed. What I experienced of the game should have taken less than three years to develop for an experienced team. And I know monolith soft were involved too. Not only that Twilight Princess was pretty much an open world game but with loading screens due to technical limitations of the console it was made for. Other open world games besides BoTW with much more meaningful and deep side content have been made in less time. So no excuses.

 

[Jirohnagi]

If Koroks caused the Delay then it was a pointless Delay koroks honestly add nothing to the game after the first half.

 

[DarkestLink]

What I experienced of the game should have taken less than three years to develop for an experienced team.

Wasn't this literally their first game?

Not only that Twilight Princess was pretty much an open world game but with loading screens due to technical limitations of the console it was made for.

How was TP an Open World game? It's as linear as the Zelda games before it. Zelda itself thrives off a closed world that is progressively opened as you gain items. Also, I never understood the "technical limitations". Morrowind was released in 2002 on the Xbox, technical limitations be damned.

 

[Dio]

Wasn't this literally their first game?



How was TP an Open World game? It's as linear as the Zelda games before it. Zelda itself thrives off a closed world that is progressively opened as you gain items. Also, I never understood the "technical limitations". Morrowind was released in 2002 on the Xbox, technical limitations be damned.

Aounuma has made many Zelda games and they even had monolith soft on board.

TP is an open world game because you can go anywhere in the world once you have access to each area. I am sure in Vice city you need to meet certain requirements to access the whole world too.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Keep in mind when the game was first revealed back in 2014 the game wasn't actually anywhere near complete, and that was why we didn't get to see actual gameplay. I've seen people analyze the map from the 2014 Game Awards playable demo, and compared it to the map in the final product, and while there are some similarities, it was clearly a very rough and early staged version of the map. Plus the scale was expanded afterwards too, and changes were made to it as well, which confirms that even by 2016 the game was far from being ready for release.

I think the issue here, and the same could be said of SS before BotW, was the developers were not properly anticipating how long it was going to take them to get the game complete.

I want to believe the Koroks were just added in because of the extra time they had.

 

[weirdinin]

TP is an open world game because you can go anywhere in the world once you have access to each area. I am sure in Vice city you need to meet certain requirements to access the whole world too.

I wouldn’t call TP as an open world game. Story is linear and very structured and lots of limitation where you can go. Sure the world opens when you do progress in story but still no. In TP it feels that different parts of the world are too separate from each other and there’s no connection between them mostly due to the loading screens and meaningless transition pathways. Those pathways were like tubes that guided the player to the next section of the world. In open world game I expect that you can literally go everywhere i.e climb over obtacles to achieve next destination faster. Not saying TP is a bad game. It’s fantastic game but not an open world game.

I liked finding koroks. It was fun to search them while exploring the world so it would have been just a minor upset if the game had been delayed due to koroks. But surely I would have preferred to get to game earlier rather than waiting them to implement koroks if that had been the case

 

[HeroOfTime]

Considering you could just print out the map and use a salt shaker to plan Korok interactions, I highly doubt it. They certainly didn't put any thought into the final reward.

Also, I never understood the "technical limitations". Morrowind was released in 2002 on the Xbox, technical limitations be darned.

And Arena and Daggerfall before it were even larger. Daggerfall was exponentially larger than BotW in fact, and they still managed to fill it with quests, towns, and NPCs. This was back in the mid 90s, mind you, made over the course of two years, with a small development team.

 

[Dio]

I wouldn’t call TP as an open world game. Story is linear and very structured and lots of limitation where you can go. Sure the world opens when you do progress in story but still no. In TP it feels that different parts of the world are too separate from each other and there’s no connection between them mostly due to the loading screens and meaningless transition pathways. Those pathways were like tubes that guided the player to the next section of the world. In open world game I expect that you can literally go everywhere i.e climb over obtacles to achieve next destination faster. Not saying TP is a bad game. It’s fantastic game but not an open world game.

I liked finding koroks. It was fun to search them while exploring the world so it would have been just a minor upset if the game had been delayed due to koroks. But surely I would have preferred to get to game earlier rather than waiting them to implement koroks if that had been the case

Without the loading screens it would unquestionably be an open world game. Although you need to meet certain requirements first you can go anywhere you want in the world once they are met. It's not level based. The only barriers between places by the end of the game are the loading screens.

The only open world games I can think of where you climb obstacles to get to places quicker are Assassins creed, shadow of Mordor and BoTW. In the Witcher there is no climbing and that is widely known as an open world game. Which also happens to have loading screens between certain areas. If you simply mean going off path you can do that in the various fields of Hyrule and Gerudo desert where there is no path. You can even Jump down to lake Hylia from a couple of places near Hyrule castle rather than take the road if you desire.

 

[DarkestLink]

Without the loading screens it would unquestionably be an open world game.

Why does that matter? Both Xenoblade games, BOTW, and every TES game has loading screens and they're still Open World.

Although you need to meet certain requirements first you can go anywhere you want in the world once they are met.

So Super Mario 3D World is an Open World game now? By the end of the game, you can go anywhere you want...

It's not level based.

Dungeons...aka the entire focus of Zelda.

 

[Vanessa28]

I don't think the 900 Koroks were the reason why the game got delayed. I think the main reason was the release of the Switch. They knew people were waiting impatiently for the BotW and a brandnew game with a brandnew console means money money moooooney! They could've released BotW sooner but why do that if you can wait a bit longer to release it with a new console?