what bugs me is that BOTW is not really a "return to form" of the original zelda like people say it is, because there was always a big emphasis on dungeons and getting new key items to progress since the very first game. BOTW completely sidelined dungeons, and you get every ability you need to beat the game in the first area.
THA THANK YOU Very well said BOTW is not really a return to form all it did was take more of the Skyrim - GTA road with a more freedom approach it didn’t really take the nature free element classic of Zelda 1 or even a link between worlds for that matter hell I still put wind waker above this to since it’s still my favorite in the series along with 4 swords adventures and OOS -OOA lol
Yep you get all the cool toys and get reply on your brain and ability to play the game as opposed to being gated behind needing to find a hammer to smash these posts in this one spot to unlock the rest of the map... Been there done that a billion times. And they are still there to go reply anytime you like.
I hope that the next open world Zelda combines the segmented/Metroidvania world of 2D Zeldas, the intricate level design and meaningful story of 3D Zeldas, and the exploration of Breath of the Wild.
the fact that for most newgen people, botw and totk was their first zelda games and they'll typically only prefer the Wild format is crazy to me, i like them but they gotta play some gems like twilight princess and wind waker for true zelda goodness. but STUPID nintendo isnt porting them.
I am actually surprised at the amount of people whose first foray into zelda were botw or totk and when they go back and play those toher 3D titles, they end up likeing them more.
I’ve been playing Zelda since OofT on the N64 and my favorite is still twilight Princess. I find I have a ton of fun with the new Switch Zelda games, but they really feel so different from what I grew up with, I’m worried Nintendo won’t make another classic 3D Zelda game now that they’ve found a new formula.
...yeah maybe loz, aol, or albw Anything else is like a completely different series. One that cares more about forcing you to scroll through hours of text to experience the world's most overdone story on repeat instead of being a game. And if story is so important go read a friggin book. If you need puzzles in it go read a mystery book.
From the moment BOTW released, I knew that i really enjoyed the game, but I found it to be super disappointing. Not because it was bad (because it wasn't) but because it decided to throw away so many things that were key elements of Zelda - large dungeons, heart pieces, the triforce, the goddesses, unlockable items that open up new areas, a meaningful and active story, a compelling villain, boss variety, and even Link's iconic tunic. Had the game been a completely new IP, I doubt many people would say "this is like Zelda!" When TOTK was announced, I was excited for the game to bring back various Zelda elements that BOTW took out. It ended up being fun to play, but it didnt bring back much of what BOTW removed, and it even contradicted both BOTW and traditional Zelda lore. Now, I i feel so conflicted about Zelda. I really enjoyed playing the new games, but they are not the Zelda that i know and love.
Sometimes you have to change things up. No Zelda game has ever sold over 10 million copies and the last Zelda game before BOTW couldn't even sell 4 million copies. I understand your disappointment but Zelda was moving towards irrelevant sales wise. Less and less people play it. BOTW was a breath of fresh air and it's good for the series as a lot more players are excited to play it. As times goes by things that you like will probably come back like regular dungeons. They didn't include that in TOTK because its the same Hyrule and a sequel.
I mean...heart pieces never left they just became spirit orbs, and the triforce and goddesses aren't gone either but they aren't mentioned much. And it did have a meaningful story just one with a different format. I mean there is Link's iconic tunic but it isn't easy to get. I mean TOTK brought back a compelling villain and better boss variety at least. And how did it contradict any lore?
Dude only has 400 subs and is making Zelda content that is short, sweet, and insightful. Gets to the point and dips. I like that. You remind me of Literature Devil in a good way.
In Traditional Zelda, dungeons have a predictable number of items and only one entrance, and they never linked to other dungeons, which is not very immersive. But I love old style Zelda anyway.
@@AlexMakovsky The fact that they're self-contained and that they can be solved by getting their item is what makes them good though - especially when they also build off of items you already have.
There are some absolutely amazing mechanics and elements to the Wild era, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the old games style. I just don't care for open world games anymore
Not kidding about the minecraft part. So much of these games are celebrated for their supposed "creative thinking" and building things, but in the end the simple solutions, like that sexy hoverbike, ended up being both the most effective and the most fun. The open-endedness is also kind of hard to take when I walk into a shrine and spend -2 seconds trying to figure out what to do, because five obvious solutions are staring me in the face. The moment I realized a bomb arrow can activate those green pressure buttons, a third of the shrines became obsolete and the another third were already obsolete by the rocket fused to my shield.
I love how the back of the case for BotW says "Craft your survival" when there is zero survival aside from just the standard not losing all your hearts and the only crafting is collecting x amount of stuff to upgrade armor.
@@Moonboogie and cooking, which is just crafting, but food. But I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth about the survival thing. I would not be able to tolerate a hunger meter in Zelda.
Meanwhile in traditional Zelda there is always just one insanely obvious solution staring right at you, because it’s spoiled by the formula itself. That’s not really any better. It just gives puzzles less replayvalue and makes them potentially less fun if the intended solution is boring. I’d actually enjoy TP‘s Goron Mines a whole lot more of I could just cheese those slow and boring iron boots sections.
The Era of the Wild Zelda games taught me *nothing* aside from the fact that Nintendo wanted to start a whole new continuity but was hesitant doing so. Everything Nintendo commented about both Zeldas’ connections to past titles made absolutely no sense. What they said was so random and out of context. “Breath of the Wild is at the end of the timeline, but let’s have the fans interpret which.” “Hyrule got destroyed and time itself started over like it’s Xenoblade…” (Can’t imagine why… AHEM! Monolith Soft codeveloped this!) Why bother saying that instead of admitting that both games are an entire reimagining of the series lore? To make matters worse, these timeline theorists don’t get the message! They just wanted to make the timeline more complicated than what it already is. They opted to continuing to believe that the 3 branching timelines somehow “converge” into one resulting the events and backstories of both games… like it’s Xenoblade Chronicles 3! (Can’t imagine why… again…) Converging timelines and realities is like asking for WWII to open a spacetime rift to present day. It’s like asking for the sci-fi futuristic technology to merge into the time of the Roman Empire. “It can't be done. Not shouldn't be done. It CAN’T be done.” Even if it is the case…. The entire universe would just be a living hell and collapse upon itself. 6 years of fan speculation and utter secrecy until Day 1 of TOTK’s release, and we’re still left with more questions than answers. The answers we got are absolutely lame. No Triforce, the prime catalyst of all the conflicts in Hyrule. Ganondorf’s Secret Stone (he stole from Queen Sonia) gave him this god-boost power-up that makes the Triforce of Power seemingly more of a joke in comparison. The fact that he can literally manifest and materialize his hatred and malice into Calamity Ganon has got to be done with immense power… all from just one measly stone that all the others combined couldn’t do jack against him in the first place… The Gerudo eighth Heroine turns out to be a man! (Ace Ventura vomiting 🤮) The ancient hero in the BOTW tapestry turns out to be an animal… Ok, so what about the leviathans and the Dark Skeletons… STILL NOTHING but drag quests! Ok, fine! I’ll devise my own headcanon and say that the Three Mage Sisters from Kirby Star Allies were originally raised by the leviathans until the environmental disasters occurred. C’mon, I gotta fill the gap somehow! Come to think of it, there was a rumor that given how much time it’s been since BOTW started development, members of the Zelda dev team got so fed up making THIS specific era of Zelda that they never cared about how TOTK was shaping and what was missing from it… I mean, 10 years of focusing on one specific world and story, two mainline entries plus a Warriors spinoff that contradicts everything from the from the source material (still can’t tell for the life of me why it exists in the first place), all of it with the same assets… could you really blame them for getting fed up with it and wanting to move on? Not to justify their actions, but I never cared for the Era of the Wild to begin with. I never wanted to associate it with ANY past Zelda and I no longer want to associate myself with this era. I’m tried and true to the events that occurred between Skyward Sword all the way to Twilight Princess in THAT specific chronology (not dismissing the others to say the least). But if Nintendo never cared for this era, then I never cared from the very start… This is the Era of the Wild games in a nutshell: m.ruclips.net/video/Tv2d0tlVmAo/видео.html
Based take. Glad someone finally said it like it is. Which makes me want to say im not excited for the upcoming TOTK Master Works book. BOTW had some interesting potential for cool lore and made somewhat sense. Even the buildup to TOTK with all the trailers and speculation over the years were hella hype. Then TOTK comes and gives us a full 10 mins of lore dump in the intro, making is think it would be a dark, lore-deep and respectful game and sequel. Only to bait and switch us for the rest or the game with retcons, contradictions, and boring lore that doesnt even tie to past games like everyone thought it would and should. The story and new lore is, boring, crap, and makes no sense anymore. Ima just stick to old Zelda games and its old lore and gameplay. They're way more fun anyways. Gotta be cautious about new Zelda games going forward if TOTK is the standard now after how badly it fumbled and killed high expectations. Nintendo dropped the ball bad and unfortunately, its cemented its failings in official Zelda history forever.
@ACW-dn9wb From this point on, I’m more than worried about all things Nintendo going forward… I don’t know about you, but if anything, their next system could be my last. Just looking to retire from gaming.
@@TomMooreT2S We definitely gotta be careful with Nintendo in general going forward. But surprisingly, Mario Wonder, RPG, and TTYD actually had effort and care put into them, unlike TOTK which came before, which really surprised me. It just seems that Nintendo has random mood swings where theyre either super lazy or actually wants to put effort behind their games. But it seems to be a game-by-game basis now.
@@TomMooreT2S the Switch is literally the best era for Nintendo in terms of how good their games are since the Nintendo 64 (Gamecube was fine but a downgrade, Wii was a mess, Wii U was okayish but lacked games)
Loved the series so much that i named my first daughter after it. This isn't zelda. Its a really well made ubisoft game. There is a reason why people use to call dungeon fantasy based games "Zelda likes". This games are just called open world games.
It's basically just a Ubisoft open world sandbox game with some flashbacks attached to it. Remember how we used to rack on Ubisoft for bloating their games with generic bandit camps, towers and upgrade points? Well say hello to shrines, towers and korok seeds.
@@richle905 I can't recall any games having dungeons filled with intricate puzzles solved through engsging items. Only thing that comes to mind is Darksiders and that came after Zelda.
@@richle905 I don't think there was anything like the first zelda...I'm not sure there was anything like a link to the past. There was certainly nothing as well done as OoT when it came out. It may not create genres persay but it certainly tends to have a heavy influence on the games that come after it.
Wow thats a cope. Did you seriously "rack on ubisoft" because you thought the problems people had were "its an open world with things inside of it"? What you're talking about started with ac and ended with ghost recon, and it involved a large map that had gameplay sets which were divided by barren land, essentially making it a tedious version of a level select screen.
I love Minish Cap but I wanna more immersive dungeons in Zelda... like in Thief or Deus Ex games and there's not so fun when every dungeon have only one entrance.
in years to come whos really going to remmeber the devine beasts or these temples. compared to the other zelda games . they always had a special feel to them .
I got into Zelda due to botw. My best friend got a switch and botw, and I, immediately hyperfixating, immediately got Phantom Hourglass because I couldn't afford a switch back then and my ds was my only console. I've played several Zelda games by now. Funnily enough, Skyward Sword has become my favorite Zelda game. I love botw as a game. It's in my top ten games of all time for sure. But it's not my favorite Zelda game by far. I've enjoyed Skyward sword a lot, actually replaying it currently. I adore Minish Cap and have a strong love-hate relationship to phantom hourglass.
aside from the still glaring issues of dungeons and story, I think _TOTK_ did fix most of the issues that _BOTW_ had, and ironically most of _TOTK’s_ other flaws were things _BOTW_ did right… and I think the core problem holding the new games back is that they simply give the player _too much freedom._ what if you technically could beat the final boss right after completing the tutorial, but it’s so difficult and time consuming that it’s virtually impossible to do so? what if you can’t climb literally anything in the overworld, but just things a normal person could climb, like trees and craggy rocks, and you eventually acquire items and abilities to climb farther and faster, and or more surfaces? so you can actually climb any mountain early in the game, but you have to find just the right path, rest frequently, and it takes forever? etc, etc, etc…
I think climbing should be ditched for the next game and I think you're right - too much freedom and just so many inane things to collect. I think most of what people are asking for is the open world with linear dungeons.
@@LittleBeanGreen - yes! take the Divine Beasts, for example… even just requiring you to change the state of the Beast from specific points within the dungeon, rather than just the map screen, would’ve improved their experiences significantly, in my opinion. compelling games need rules and limits… the new games, _TOTK_ especially, are more like sandboxes, where anything goes 🤷🏻♂️
The freedom to do anything means the "story" is more or less an illusion. Everything is written with the right amount of ambiguity such that you can do it in any order. But that ambiguity removes basically all depth to the story.
I honestly think that is Nintendo's easy way out - they use ambiguity so they don't have to think about all those things in depth. They're not ambiguous for intrigue, they're ambiguous because the answers haven't been considered.
they could have done world building nd lore and let you find it by exploring. They did some environmental storytelling, but few and far between and hamfisted if done at all
Good video. Would like to see both merged in some way. Get rid of shrines and seeds. Bring back heart pieces and item progression. Make the world open ofc because it's nice to explore. Make sure that exploration is rewarding unlike the wild era. And make combat not flurry rush rinse and repeat. Looking forward to the next one. earned a sub! Side note/edit. With the recent interview between aonuma and whatever the fuck other dudes name is. I dont think they understand what made zelda good in the first place
@@LittleBeanGreen even now that I know his name. I refuse to say it. It's like Voldemort to me. He who should not be named brings up trauma 😂😂 looking forward to the vid brother!
I personaly hate the new "wild" style Zelda games. I miss the old school Zelda games. After playing 40 hours of breath of the wild, I sold my switch and all my games and haven't even thought of getting back into Zelda into they go back into the old school "metroidvania" design. Breath of the wild feels more like off brand worse skyrim to me than zelda.
I never played any of the Skyrims or Morrowinds or whatever so I don't really have anything to compare too but these Wild Era games are sure a shock coming off of the older games.
@@LittleBeanGreen I mainly use skyrim as a catch all for "Open World, Third Person/First Person, RPG", as skryim having sold over 60 million copies is by far the most popular, thus easiest example to use in this instance.
To me, even if I did play some of the Gamecube games, as those were some of the first Zeldas I played, I did enjoy how BOTW and Tears tried to mix up the formula a fair bit, even if it wasn't perfect
Tbh, when I saw botw booming with all the survivalcraft design ideas, I realized the old formula was going to die. They can always make a new game with that, sure, like they didn't entirely abandon 2D zelda when OoT came out, so there's always a dim hope, but I just accepted this is not "my" franchise anymore and that it will change to meet the new audience's standards, like many franchises did. It's less painful this way. The things you say here are exactly the same things I said to my friends back in 2017, specially the "big empty map for korok seeds and shrines" part. I like the idea of various shrines around the world. What I don't like is that they're so small, their puzzles are so obvious, you get a hint to solve the puzzle in its name, many puzzles you can just "cheat" with a rune (mostly stasis), you need to rely on physics for quite a lot of them (meaning you can have the right idea but the physics screws you up and so you doubt yourself about the solution until trying again bc you're autistically stubborn) and their rewards are always the same. One of the things I liked about Zelda was to dive into a dungeon and wonder what item I would get next. That feeling is removed in botw. I mean, I understand that it would be frustrating to backtrack in a map this size to get items you couldn't before bc you lacked the required powerup, like one of those korok metal tetris-like puzzles (and that it would also become Map Stamper Simulator 2017, with all the 900 seeds around the world), but having access to new runes or just new useful upgrades for the existing ones, to create more actions (i.e. magnesis could create a magnetic aura around Link to bring metal objects close together, or cryonis could gain the ability to create an ice platform to work like a raft) would bring back this feeling and give another reason to search for shrines. Even new active abilities through armor, like the Zora Armor does, would be enough. Sure, we can get armor and weapons in some shrines, but, first, weapons are not only disposable but you probably keep full inventory almost all the time as well; second, I really doubt anyone played this game with the 'oh, I wonder what gear/arrow this shrine holds' in mind; and finally, armor only gives passive abilities that you can easily get with food.
Its such a shame that BotW wasn't just the brand new IP it always should have been. We lost something unique forever in exchange for open world survivalcraft number 428,074,500.
I really enjoyed BotW but found TotK to be a chore after a few hours. You’re pretty much just grinding the same ol’ overworld looking for materials to upgrade your stuff so that you’re not a noob. Occasionally you find something epic. The depths are underwhelming after two hours. The sky is surprisingly a small part of the game. Ultra hand is tedious. Overall, it’s too much of the same.
...but I loved the shrines in BotW. ;_; Ok, not more than the classic dungeons, but I'm not lying when I say I was genuinely excited to find and complete them all (minus the repeating combat shrines, anyway). TotK's basically all relying on Ultrahand, though, did nothing for me, with only a few being interesting. You have no idea how sad this made me... But yeah, man... the dip in story quality is really what hurts the most. I wound up being ok with it in BotW because I felt the exploration and NPCs and shrine puzzles were all fun, but I found myself really not caring about the story in TotK. Which REALLY should not happen considering what we find out about Zelda. But it did not help that I was able to easily figure out "where" Zelda was after, what, two Tears? Knowing how her story was going to "end" (for the moment) made the Tears feel extremely underwhelming, which had never been the case in BotW. Man, I just miss a good Zelda story... though I admit that as much as I enjoyed SS's, I'm still much more likely go back to BotW, so it's clearly not the end-all-be-all, either. Fingers crossed for a good balance in the future.
Part of the problem with TotK was that it doubled down on BotW and gave us more of the same in different packaging - finding all the shrines wasn't something I to do but I wanted that completion check and to see the prize for getting them all...not sure it was worth it ha. I just don't like that style of challenge. They really need to find a better way to integrate the story.
4:25 Screw this dragon reversal, the game constantly tells you its irreversible but pulls ghost magic out of it's ass to get a happy ending. Mind you this Zelda deserves a happy ending after all the crap she's been through, I just wish they did it differently. I bet you if we took the most notable zelda based things out of BotW and TotK and replaced it with stuff that's from a bog-standard RPG game they wouldn't have sold as well. For example: zora are now merfolk, Gorons are just sentient golems, the rido are now birdkin, and the gerudo are just amazonian warriors while hyrule could be called Kastolov kingdom. Princess Lena and her bodyguard Lance must defeat the evil beast Baorkus from reclaiming the kingdom after a 100 year sleep seal is broken. The kingdom asks a champion from each nation to help control magical beasts that had stopped Baorkus before, however Baorkus has a secret plan of hypnotism on the magical beasts and turns them against the nations. ......................yeah judging from what I just put down I can tell this game would've been bog-standard without the Zelda title.
Don't get me wrong I LOVE ToTK, but to call it a Zelda game is a stretch, it's more of a spinoff than mainline game imo and it's sure as hell no Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess, that's for sure.
Both games‘ final trailers make me emotional for games that don’t exist, by effectively lying and suggesting adventures with involved stories where you meet and interact with lots of interesting characters. TotK being marketed as a sequel to BotW, only to go out of its way to not be that, only amplified that feeling for me. Let‘s hope Nintendo takes the criticisms to heart for the next game.
I'm a big fan of the Wild games, they do give me the same kind of wonder the N64 titles gave me and I would be lying if I didn't say I have 150h+ on BOTW & TOTK respectively. However I do prefer the 3D stye of games. I think I miss the items the most, the importance of them and actually finding them, especially the hookshot. The stories are also kinda uninteresting in the new games, I understand what they were going for the lore just never appealed to me. The dungeons in TOTK looking like the classic 3D Zelda dungeons but functioning like the divine beasts was kind of disappointing. I could go on but I think those games (mostly TOTK) already been criticized to death. With that being said I do think this whole discourse about if these count as Zelda games does a little bit of a disservice to all the good things they offer, I understand that I'm in the minority and I'm a bit sad that the rest of the Zelda community didn't enjoy TOTK as much as I did even though I think the criticisms are valid. I wouldn't be too worried about the future of the franchise though. I think the way we feel right now kind of mirrors the perspective of people who grew up on the 2D games felt about the 3D games, I'll take Egoraptor as an example. This might be a good foundation of what's to come who knows. TOTK was only made because of all the left over assets from BOTW so I doubt we'll get a BOTW 3. Hopefully we'll get all the good stuff from both eras in the next game.
You can fight the final boss early, but there's a catch. You have to fight the other bosses. In totk, you need to fight a wave of Boko's, Lizalofo's, Gibdo's, and Moblins, before eventually fighting an addition 6 bosses.
This is a good breakdown even though I slightly disagree with a few points and agree with many others. I don't think I'm on board about your Hero's Journey point. I never found old Zelda games to do a good job of taking Link on the Hero's Journey, he never has that denying the call part, which is usually step 2, and he never has transformation in the sense of his character. Instead, it's usually the partner characters who experience the Hero's Journey, such as Wind Waker's King of Hyrule, Twilight Princess's Midna and Colin (that game tried to do too much narratively), A Link Between Worlds' Ravio, and most relevant to your point, Breath of the Wild's Zelda (she is the partner character of the game, she speaks up unprompted telling you where to go and what to do). I think Breath of the Wild does a really good job using Zelda's hero's journey as a foil for Link's, and thus the player's, journey, framing her journey as a denial of self-expression, reflecting the self-expression Link and the player is encouraged to engage with in every facet of the game design. On the mechanical front, I think the Hero's Journey is felt for Link entirely through gameplay in Breath of the Wild. Sure you can fight Ganon right after the tutorial, but on your first playthrough I bet you didn't succeed. I tried and got my ass handed to me. Exploring the rest of Hyrule, learning the mechanics and acquiring different resources so I could eventually beat Ganon not because of some rigid narrative that told me it's time to, but because I actually felt ready to, is a much more compelling Hero's Journey than Ocarina of Time giving me a rainbow bridge just because I completed a checklist. I think Tears of the Kingdom is a harder nut to crack here given it's a sequel, but I also believe Zelda should not try to tell the Hero's Journey every game. My issue with Tears is the gameplay is still very much telling a Hero's Journey while the narrative very much is not, either for Zelda or Link. Rauru maybe, but he's given such little focus it doesn't land for me.
what i dislike is how people always wanted an open world zelda game, but when they get it, they get mad. botw wasn’t bad not does it not feel like zelda, it’s a good game, just not for everyone
Oh boy here I go. I've said this before and I'll say it again. I can't enjoy the old games. Sure I can get myself to play them and I even did a whole twilight princess playthrough. However, I just can't do it long-term. I got about halfway through windwaker and I thought it would be a smash hit but I found it to be lackluster to me in the same way that TP was. I think I just enjoy the modern format way better. I don't care about all the stuff that the "traditional zelda" fans do. EDIT and tl;dr i suppose: I guess what I mean to say is that it makes me frankly heartbroken to see that my love for the new games isn't reflected all that much (in the uber enthusiasts anyway). I've tried to join the old school community in what they like but I just can't. sure I love the lore videos but no gaming on those titles for me. Let's try to give the new stuff a shot! I like it, a butt-ton of normies like it, I'll hold out hope that the next game can show us what the devs can do when they have another clean slate. note: I've only played TP and WW. No I haven't played OOT and frankly I have zero motivation to off of my previous experiences. In my experience, the old games feel about the same to play. to me, it feels like every aspect of each game is just copied and put in a new skin for a new title. yes, I know thats very hypocritical seeing as totk and botw are like the same but that kinda makes sense because whether we like it or not totk is just a re-imagining of botw. I really really tried to enjoy the old games. There are certainly some enjoyable aspects, but for the most part the gameplay feels somewhat dated. The clunky "you can only use this key item for JUST THIS" system just hurts me. There are better ways to design a game now. it may not even be that the old formula is bad, for example, I really enjoy TUNIC which is essentially a 2D zelda clone but with souls mixed in. But yeah idk its a rough situation. if we're being honest, without BOTW, Zelda would probably have faded into obscurity and become a dead series that was more beloved by the remaining 5 fans than the devs *cough* metroid. So why do I say this? well, I don't like the new games being crapped on. yes absolutely totk is kinda weird, but it truly feels like BOTW belongs as a zelda game. For sure we can discuss what could be improved on. I don't want to suggest there isn't room for improvement. But saying "new zelda bad. old zelda was better cuz blablabla" and proposing to just go back feels absured to me. It kinda makes my enthusiasm about the new games get quailed because it seems like a lot of the people who are enthusiasts about the series seem more interested in pounding down the idea that there are elements in the new games that are good. Zelda became a prized series off of its innovation. So why is it that once we as fans find what we deem "perfect", we no longer allow the devs to continue to try new things? note 2: yes I'm taking this way too seriously and yes I have the emotional stability of a teaspoon.
I have another video that gives both types their do and what a lot of old Zelda fans are asking for is not a complete 180 from the new games, but to try to actually blend the incredible open world of the new games with the intricate dungeons and more present storytelling of the old games.
Definitely agree on the comparison between BOTW and TOTK's stories. There were definitely things I liked in TOTK (like seeing the actual results of clearing the dungeon happen in the landscape), and I did enjoy the game in general, but..... It felt kind of hollow? And I think you're correct about why that that feeling isn't just because the sky islands were basically all the same with a couple exceptions (the depths similarly), but because the story itself is unclear. And while I prefer BOTW's story to TOTK...that's not saying much either. Also the item situation is just sad. I'm awaiting Echoes of Wisdom with mixed anxiety and anticipation. I hope they found a way to bring back at least some of the features you discussed as missing from TOTK and BOTW.
Also, I don't have anywhere near as many hours in TOTK. I basically played BOTW twice, since I played most of it up to the final visit to Hyrule Castle (including 100%ing the shrines) on a friend's switch before I moved cross country, then bought it for myself and played it again to compete the story this time (not including 100%ing the shrines, lol) a couple months before TOTK released. I think I had more hours just in that second playthrough than I've put into TOTK. I hit a certain point in the latter game where I recognized "if I don't just beat the game now, I'm going to get bored enough to start spending my time on something else and never come back and beat this".
Having a completed 'dungeon' affect the landscape is a great idea, they just didn't really do anything with it. I was enthralled with the game as I played it. But it was just constant little hits of dopamine. Once you took a step back and examined it, it just wasn't all that meaningful what was being done. I do hope they also integrate a few non-breakable weapons. Echoes of Wisdom by default will have 'breakable weapons,' because everything will just be an echo on a timer. The long scrolling UI has me worried, but I'll wait and see what to think once the game comes out. I beat all the shrines in TotK just for the hell of it and I gotta say, finding all the shrines buried in caves using a combination of the light roots, the Purah Pad sensor, and the Satori blessing thing was a real slog.
@@LittleBeanGreen Yeah I'd imagine so! I don't even feel an interest 😅 Haven't felt any particular need to play again since I beat it either. I get that a lot of people have fun playing with the emergent gameplay mechanics, I just... kind of wish they put those in a different game.
It's not because open worlds are trending that it's necessarily great, Aonuma is wrong, he seems like an old guy who willingly adheres to all the whims of young people just so as not to seem too out of step with the times because he has difficulty accepting the reality of growing old, I may be exaggerating but that's how I see him now. The open worlds were great with Skyrim, pushed even further with the Witcher and Fallout 4 but then they all started to look the same until the arrival of Elden Ring then nothing after that,I hope that at Nintendo we will reconsider this decision, this is not the first time they have changed their mind, in 2011 Aonuma said that the next Zelda games would be played entirely in motion gaming without any buttons, 2 years later releases "A link between world" with 100% buttons and 0% motion gaming!
Gotta say, I totally get where you’re coming from and I agree 1000% with your points, but the games are hella fun and they do feel zelda. Just not the way we’re used to. I agree I think the other way is better but I wouldn’t mind if they kept going in the same direction but tried to make it more zelda. They’re kind of in the baby stages of this new open world idea. They’re still figuring it out too. I’m confident that Nintendo will figure it out and get it right. They take a lot of pride in their games especially zelda and they’ve been a lot better at listening to fans. They know zelda means a lot to so many people
I am with you - and there's nothing to say that what I deemed 'the pillars of Zelda' aren't allowed to change over time. I'm excited to see what they do next!
Totally agree. I have played every Zelda game since playing Link to the Past as a little kid a few years after it came out. But BotW and Totk instantly felt like Zelda games to me. They have perfectly captured what my little ten year old mind felt like when I was playing in OoT or MM. I think if they had stuck to the old formula, it would have just felt like playing to nostalgia, which is Metroids current problem.
I have a feeling that they actually don't compare Breath of the wild and Tears of the Kingdom to the Zelda Franchise in general, I feel more like they compare it to Ocarina of Time, nowadays they say Zelda 2 doesnt feel like Zelda Because it isnt like Ocarina of Time eventhough Ocarina of Time wasn't a thing yet and Nintendo did some experiments with Mario and Zelda I am convinced that for them only Ocarina of Time is the True Zelda Because Ocarina of Time was revolutionary as well, then came Breath of the wild and the OGs were about to be dissapointed Because it is... another Revolution, a new Age of Zelda has begun. and they dont like it that it changes after like tons of Decades
My wife and I were let down when we realized we had beaten all of the shrines with puzzles and only had Rarus blessings left. The puzzle solving was one of the highlights of the game.
imho they really dropped the ball on world building and lore. and the zonai being the original hero of time was just weird and not really built on. Just oooo crazy reptile people /done... also there's definitely a way to have open world with some level of linear progression in story/dungeons/abilities.... spread the dungeons out over the world and lock and key them with abilities. Put one deep under water you need a diving scale for, put one behind a hook shot point... etc. Or soft-gate areas by putting a bunch of high level enemies around there like in the Gothic games. Also - have more enemies types ... if you're talking creativity give me more challenges and situations with which to be creative. if You're gonna go way lax on dungeons saying that "the overworld is a mega-dungeon bc you have to be so creative" then follow through on that.
@@LittleBeanGreen same here. I forgot I owned it. I immediately bought a spice orange gamecube and a copy of tp(120 goddamn dollars for a cib) and I had more fun. Played skyward sword recently (one I used to not be so great on) and I had extreme amounts of fun. My heart felt warm playing that. I think I'm just not a fan of this gameplay style. It doesnt feel fulfilling.
I think the bass is too great in your voice (from an editing standpoint, not your "real voice" if you get what I mean). It's a bit uncomfortable to listen to it with headphones, at least for me.
another issue that I can see is that the games lack replayability. with skyward sword, the only other zelda game I've finished to date (my oot save got messed up and I'm trying to get back into it and figure out what's missing lol), I can go back to that again and again and again and I'll still have some of the same wonder that I had the first time I experienced it. but with botw and totk, I'd need my memory of the game completely wiped because there isn't a story to keep me hooked and a lot of the fun of exploring botw (and to a lesser extent totk, because of the shared map) was just the great big unknown. I know that unknown now, and there's so little story to thread through the world that I couldn't see myself starting over with those games like I do with skyward sword, and likely oot if I ever get back around to it. I think some of the backlash comes from the fact that it's because the games are such a break from tradition that they don't yet feel like zelda. the wind waker probably felt the same way, since it was a very different direction to what had come before, and it's worth waiting until some time has passed and a new game in a different direction has come along to give some perspective. I personally think whilst the games are great, there are interesting mechanics and challenges and other pros, I do agree that the wild era games lack some of the elements that make a game in the zelda franchise feel like a zelda game, because the series has built itself off of those exact elements and those have, over the years, become crucial to the feeling of a game in the series. but maybe with a bit more distance and more games to compare it to, this could change. idk I find myself incredibly neutral on the wild era
I feel the exact same. I currently working on another playthrough of OoT and Oracle of Seasons, which I hadn't played since I was...11? That's a great game.
i gotta disagree there, challenge runs of botw were so much fun, now granted the only traditional zelda games i own are windwakerHD and OoT 3D and I haven't gotten very far (i played both as a kid, i got scared of the prison segment of wind waker and I think i got stuck in jobujobu's, might be making that name up, stomach). That said your arguement are totally fair
I believe they should go back to a nice linear Zelda game like Skyward Sword. The era of the Wild games are over and they should go back to true dungeons and actually experience the cutscenes as you get to that part of the game not in memorys.
I too think they should go back to linear storytelling where you're actually acting on the story...but I also think there's a balance with a more open world. I may have something up my sleeve for what that could look like. Stay tuned!
@@LittleBeanGreen I agree. There should be a perfect balance between an old school Zelda with a linear structure, and the open world freedom of the Wild games. I think Tears did that a little better than Wild, but it still wasn't enough. And bring back proper old school dungeons damn it. The Lightning Temple was the closest to that in the Wild games.
I haven't played SS since it was first released but I remembered REALLY liking it - except for the anxiety-inducing tear collecting in the silent realm or whatever it was called.
@@LittleBeanGreen yassss (that game is amazing) I just feel like they stepped a few steps too far away from the Zelda formula that games had established before and threw in a bunch of Zelda-themed items, locations, and easter eggs to make people happy.
They would show you the wind and water temple and a cheesed fire temple and tell you any good grace won with the lightning temple was lost with those three.
as som1 who has played most zelda games, breath of the wild is my favorite. I also think that the exploration, freedom, and replayabilty is second to none when it comes to the wild games. Just be cause its different, doesn't mean its bad. Also the new dungeons in totk are just as good as old dungeons like from oot or tp and the shrines and side quest are fun things to do that older games didn't have.
I'm glad you like the games - replayability is where we differ. I have no interest in combing either of those games again and I honestly think that, even though the older games didn't have shrines, I'd rather they weren't included. The lightning temple may be a middling dungeon as compared to those older games (and maybe the fire temple if it isn't cheesed), but the wind temple and water temple are some of the worst (if you don't count the lead up to them...and even still) and the spirit temple is really just a boss fight after a series of disconnected puzzles which can also be seriously cheesed.
You're gonna put gluing 3 icicles to gears as on par with puzzles like the Sandship or Forest Temple? Most of the shrines are in the same realm as explorative side grottos/caves. Like the Iceblock cavern in TP is on par with the average puzzle shrine.
No TotK's dungeons are NOT on par with past Zelda games. You look at those 5 platforms in the sky they call a water temple and tell me its equal to a dungeon from pre-Breath Zelda. Nu-Zelda's "dungeons" are a joke. Every last one of them.
@@LittleBeanGreen I've definitely been playing the Zelda games since I was a kid and playing ALTTP on the SNES... And played so much OoT and MM specifically on the 64. I prefered WW over TP. But still, the BOTW/TOTK, despite being a departure for the initial Zelda "formula", just steered closer to the "creative" gameplay I enjoy the most out of a video game. So now I've played *checks notes* 850h of TOTK.
What the fuck. Grow up, its a video game, your precious oot was literally about growing the fuck up and here you're saying two people not even involved in the design on the games anymore should die?
The entire Nintendo leadership needs to go, to paraphrase Palpatine "They've forgotten their place!" They USED to be cool and great innovators, but now they pussy out and sit inside the worlds smallest box all day, incapable of thinking outside it, due solely to their massive egos.
@@megaman37456 I think they can still make it work. Honestly take ultra-hand and this physics engine and all the survival-crafting stuff and make it into a new franchise that it's better suited for.
@@LittleBeanGreen Honestly after ToTK I never wanna see another open world Zelda game again, not because it's a bad game, but because it doesn't work with what makes modern Zelda popular.
I definitely feels some of this especially after venturing back into OoT and MM like I do every new year and then I picked up WW and TP to reconfirm my feelings. But I do feel that the Wild era games still feel like Zelda. All the elements are there some just lessened (story) and most just deconstructed (full dungeons to the beasts or temples and then the shrines) but the Exploration like you said in the last video is expanded on. Especially in TotK. They even hid a whole third of the map from us. I haven't had that feeling since the first time I picked up BotW and before that Skyrim and before that TP. (I love SS but exploration isn't it's strong suit).
I said this in a different video - I think TotK has some of the greatest moments in any Zelda game. But I think it loses focus and puts TOO much emphasis on exploration and TOO much emphasis on collecting things....and I really don't like shrines haha. I think there's still a lot of room for great games to be developed though - looking foward to what comes next!
@@LittleBeanGreen I quite like the shrines myself but I would sacrifice them down to around 60-80 in favor of 4-5 traditional dungeons rather than the kinda sorta mini dungeons we get with both games.
@@LittleBeanGreen yeah man there's too many. Half as many wouldn't be so bad. Just cut out all the ones that you don't have so anything with. In both games there were ones where the task was just finding it. Thats redundant.
They won't care. The Zelda team had SIX GODDAMNED YEARS to fully understand the main issues people had with BotW and chose to double down on nearly all of them in TotK.
@@pitshoster401 dude making video games of this caliber is hard. Cut a little slack they’re still good games. Sold millions. Zelda fans are so tough on Nintendo. They can’t please everyone at once
@@hyrumstephens2002 they had an entire already made overworld to use and even confirmed in an interview that they were able to quickly make the depths in a short amount of time, and it shows. They killed my favorite gaming franchise and whore it out for the latest trends, I'm holding back on my harshness if anything.
Zelda's main focus from Miyamoto himself has always been gameplay over story. Sure the story got better going from The legend of Zelda to aLttP and again going to Ocarina of Time. But the games aren't flooded with cutscenes or even voice's that most story driven games reply on. And ToTK's memories were the most cutscenes we have ever had in a Zelda game. If you don't like it play something else. BotW singlehanded held the switch together for its first year. The vote is unanimous. Gamers love it. Themes of separate games are allowed to contradict. They are SEPARATE games. If you think the Zonia were invented for ToTK then you missed ALOT of hints in the world of BoTW showing an entire advanced civilation suddenly disappeared. Theirs multi-hour long videos speculating on it before ToTK even came out and they were right! So it was there the whole time. If you need game on rails that holds you hand and provides no freedom then there are alot easy laid back games i'm sure you would enjoy. If you want use your imagination to create fun in a game as wide open as ToTK where every problem has like 9 answers then definitely isn't for you. Handholding with no choices or different paths to follow has been done a million times. Go reply those. BoTW launched and sustained the number 1 selling console of all time. Call it what you want but all I hear is noise and whining about a few needed innovations. Besides I have a feeling the next Zelda is going to be the same open style but will incorporate larger traditional dungeons and continue to get better at the story. But for all the crying, even if they did insert 6 traditional dungeons into the game, there would still be crying and moaning. We new exactly the style of game they were going to make well well in advance and then got to see the nintendo direct and then now a year after the game launches and people have had a year to play it and move on with their lives they are still complaining about it. Disappear. Byeeee
First of all - the best selling console of all time is PS2. Secondly, no one is asking for a game on rails. Third, no on is saying the themes of TotK contradict old games, they're saying they aren't good. And yeah, people may have made hour long videos about the Zonai but back in BotW times they were believed to be a barbarian race, not a race of heavenly goat people. This isn't complaining, it's comparing.
I don't think that's a valid argument, it's just like saying the old games are only good because of nostalgia. Every Zelda game that's come out in my lifetime that I've played, I've loved. And when I replay them, they still hold up for me. TotK was legitimately the first Zelda game I've played that disappointed me.
Yeah I know what you’re going to say aka the cycle of the formula that got tiring with OOT and onwards right? but that’s the thing with the old formula everyone was able to enjoy differently aspects of the old formula the whole fan base Zelda 1 Zelda 2 Link to the past Links awakening OOT MM Wind Waker PHG ST OOX games FS FSA Twilight princess Skyward Sword ALBW All these games magical for many of the fan bases different taste and actually for the most part stuck with lore continuity which I love And as a example of the biggest continuity ADULT blue 🌊 flood Zelda wisdom Child green 🌳 prosperity link courage Downfall red 🔥 power ganon decline This really can’t be said for BOTW with TEARs at all ugh 😑
That's a paradoxical statement. Isn't "Zelda" defined by the majority of the series? How can two games feel more like Zelda than the vast majority of Zelda games?
@@hist150project5 You've made an assumption that "Zelda" is defined by the majority of games. Why? I say "Zelda" is defined by a sense of exploration paired with wonder while you get stronger in the process of driving evil from the world. Y'know... the feeling Miyamoto got from exploring the forest as a child, which inspired him to make the first game. Things headed in a more linear direction due to hardware limitations while also taking on a design philosophy of their own. BotW's entire concept was inspired by looking back at the original LoZ and bringing it into the 2010's.
@@BoojieD yeah no. Zelda is a game. Zelda is its gameplay. And the botw series of games are the farthest from what the original zelda was. Zelda 1 had item progressions. Dungeons (most of which you can only do in a certain order. ) a link to the past was the same. Oot was the same. Mm was the same. Ww was the same. That's what zelda was and has always been. Zelda is "defined" by its gameplay. Item progression. Dungeons. Yk what makes it zelda. Not the sense of wonder you feel when you find the 87th shrine.
"memories and npcs don't connect to the first game" you really put bolson while saying that? the whole reason to why bolson is on lurelin village is implied in botw, as he says that he's gonna search for a partner after seeing hudson getting married and lurelin village is precisely a touristic place because of the heart shaped lake where it is said that you'll find your true love, there's a ton of npcs which just directly continue their own story from botw and it almost feels like majora's mask level of detail for npcs, at the point where they really advanced from botw and yes i totally understand that is kind of annoying that story npcs don't seem to fully recognize you, but that's exclusive to story related characters and most of them just recognize you easily and it actually makes sense having in mind that due to ingame events they though link and zelda died on the castle on other point, there's many clothes that actually change stuff outside of the zora outfit, like making you inmune to elements or directly manipulating those elements to attack, increasing your stamina capacity, making you undetectable for enemies or even making them think you're one monster, clothing like these has been a staple in many og zelda games and really unlocking clothes through missions just reminded me to getting masks in majora, of course many of the important ones coming from past games are in the dephts but some of them (not all) are interesting to find and the implications of their sole existance its a complete mystery now, have you tried to do any of these games temples without abusing the phisics?, totk temples specially give past zelda vibes and divine beasts heavily rely around spesific sheikah runes as much as past dungeons do with their own item and by the way, dungeons that revolve around a spesific area aren't something new to zelda games, infact they actually became a staple with the 3d ones because of the freedom and slightly affected 2d games like minish cap, the shrines are something that exist because of the switch design, the console is hybrid, shrines are made to be bitesize temples with a piece of heart as a reward, this very same thing happened with mario oddesey since there are almost a thousand moons and they were designed to have easy ones and hard ones because precisely of the switch being hybrid so you can play short sesions and still make progress or simply it helps for people that isn't exactly a "pro gamer" and now, the "hero's journey" does exist and you have too many reasons to have a journey starting from the fact that even if you try to fight the final boss since the start, you'll more than probably die, the sole path to reach ganon is almost imposible to beat if you're starting your savefile and on top of that, the game world is designed to make you end up in lookout landing since its directly infront of the castle, thus starting your concept of hero journey, meanwhile botw literally traps you in the great plateu where your "hero journe" starts with the king of hyrule giving you instructions at the end these games do are different to the past games but the biggest difference its on the fact that it gives you options, many points of your argument on what is a zelda do are on these games but they are optional
I don't buy the shrine argument, as there are many 2D games for handheld systems that came out at a time when battery life would barely allow you to play long and even those games have full dungeons. Shrines aren't there because they offer small play time options, they are there because 150 of them can be spread across the map, which entices you to explore every nook and cranny for them. Yes, these games are different to the past games because they give you options - the irony is that in doing so, the most efficient options are often what are used to solve the puzzle. In this way, too many ways of solving a puzzle ends up working against the idea of unlimited restriction because when you have to do 150 shrines, you end up solving them the same. "Have you tried to do any of these games temple without abusing the phisics [sic]?" Why shouldn't I abuse the physics? That's an option the developers gave me, isn't it? Are you implying the temples would have been better with restrictions? Some people may find the mechanics inherently fun and therefore find puzzle solving in constantly new and iterative ways with the same tools appealing. But I don't.
@LittleBeanGreen 1, no, that's the purpose of the koroks. Shrines work as the heart pieces in past games, which didn't necessarily be the only thing to seek as other games had other smaller collectibles to reinforce the exploration 2. You're perfectly able to solve the puzzles however you want but the game constantly invites you to have creative ideas for solving each puzzle but if you're in a hurry and need or don't want to finish the puzzle the "intended way" you can still get over it by Amy other means, it's designed to prevent someone from frustrating and stopping doing the shrine or directly stop playing; The line "have you tried to finish any of the temples without abusing the phisics" was to let you know that the design of each temple still has the soul of past games but as with the shrines, they are designed to not frustrate you, you can play the temples as a zelda fan who wanted past temples back and you'll have a great experience or you can either play it using everything around you to solve them easily That last line is just what replaying a game is about, finding new paths to finish the same puzzle even if you have the same equipment, looking at how the game interacts with differently depending on your knowledge of the game, did you know that in oot you can go to gerudo training grounds before the water temple and freeze the spike enemies in the room leading to morpha?, or that in oot itself you can do the temples in almost any order you want, being the only blocked one the shadow temple, requiring that you have beated, the water, fire and forest temple to enter, even if we add glitches into the convo, did you knew that king dodongo interacts with the boomerang? Replaying a game is not only because you want to experience the same again. Replaying a game is entering that world again to interact with it in many special ways, which you can even see differently depending on your own experience with it, and that's tloz main essence, exploring an alive world filled with thousands of interesting interactions, puzzles and meeting charismatic characters with captivating stories
@@LittleBeanGreen in totk the whole map is a puzzle to traverse, the npcs have unique stories that even connect and develop from botw, not all of them are that much charismatic or have a dramatic story comparable to a movie, but all of them really feel in universe and help the game more alive, being the secondary quests the ones that mostly have those interesting stories like i mentioned with bolson, who between games traveled around necluda seeking for his true love, but it didn't found anyone even in the heart shaped pound, but he decided to live in lurelin village which later he helped to repair after the monster invasion at the end we have different points of view and videogames are mostly a subjective medium due to their interactive experience, but i think we both agree the legend of zelda is a master piece in many aspects
@@zeromontalvan1514 I disagree with this. The map is not a puzzle - it's little pieces of candy arranged to string you along, the world doesn't feel alive because it hasn't been taking seriously. Zelda is a masterpiece of gameplay, and in other titles it is a masterful piece of art, both gameplay and story. But not in Tears of the Kingdom.
I respectfully disagree with your points. What I like of this video is that you don't take more than an hour to say that you didn't like these games. Thank you!
Hey that's why we post the video - to see how others think about the things we like/dislike. I try to keep it short for my own sanity as much as yours 😅
I agree with you but I still prefer this new open air format for the series onward I’m more interested in Zelda team refining this new formula which promotes exploration at the cost of storytelling. But I believe they can improve this new formula a lot more and strike a better balance between traditional and open air. Many open world games already have amazing narrative within an open world,it’s just Zelda team that felt afraid to change the botw formula in its sequel. I hope Zelda team tries new approaches to an open world and don’t entirely repeat botw in the next game. It’s understandable a sequel is too similar but the next game they have no excuses to do memories again
@@ivancastro365 No - I'm saying the dungeons and overworld of the original - which couldn't be all it could because of technical limitations - if extrapolated to today, do not equal botw and totk, at least from the dungeon side.
My first Zelda wasn’t one of the Wild era games. It was A Link Between Worlds, which I love, and Ocarina of Time 3D, which I’m mixed on. Between Ocarina of Time and the other classic Zeldas I’ve played on NSO like Minish Cap and Majora’s Mask, I have to say that I just don’t really enjoy “traditional Zelda”. No matter which game it is I never feel motivated enough to keep playing, each dungeon feels like a chore, and when there’s so little to do outside of dungeons I find it difficult to have any fun. Funnily enough, the only older Zelda I truly enjoyed was the NES game, which is closest to the Wild era games in structure. I feel like the change in structure to a more open-ended style was a great choice. They’re not perfect, but BotW and TotK are some of the most fun and most impressive games I’ve ever played.
Absolutely based comment. "Traditional" zelda isnt traditional, it was a radical change to the series brought on by the limitations and strengths of the hardware. "Traditional" zelda starts at oot because ootpeople were either not playing games during the true traditional era, or they, unlike you and I, never played the originals -presumably because they considered them lesser.
@@LittleBeanGreenyou're gonna pull a muscle if you keep trying to stretch so far. There is nothing you can say to someone who knows the truth that will convince them of a lie. Botw is LoZ if it were made today, and Totk is what LoZ was always meant to become. Thats the truth of it, if you want to play oot again, theres plenty of options. You can also play darksiders, tunic, or any number of games that just mimick the nuZelda formula.
@@LittleBeanGreen They’re obviously pretty basic, and it was relatively easy to get lost or stuck, but it didn’t bother me too much because I had a backup option of going back to the overworld to find more items so I’m more prepared. Also being able to do them in different orders is always nice. Games like Ocarina of Time don’t have this, because there are no options outside of just banging your head against the wall until you figure out what the game wants you to do.
I'd argue "traditional" Zelda starts with ALttP - OoT just deployed it successfully into 3D. I'd also argue Zelda 2 was a more radical change to the original zelda than ALttP was. I also think the limitations of the hardware are what made the overworlds of the later games so barren. What BotW and TotK did was make those overworlds interesting, but at the price of the other gameplay element of the original.
Thats weird, because it seems like all the people who played the games you all pretend dont exist find them to be the very same games they all expected before oot ruined it with fetchquests and shoot-eye-for-key "puzzles"
Uh, have you even played the games before OoT? Zelda has always had fetchquests and shooting eye puzzles. ALttP and LA in particular play just like OoT but in 2D.
No it isnt. The first zelda wa limited by item progression. You could not go into any dungeon out of order except for 2. You needed to get a raft item from a dungeon to cross the lake. You needed the bow and arrow to beat certain bosses. You needed a candle to see in the dark. You were limited in many many many many ways. You could go all over the map sure. But what you could do is limited. They took one tiny aspect of zelda 1. The most zelda zelda is a lttp. It blends everything
I played versions on SNES, and both N64 games. The new wild zeldas blow the past out of the water. Nostalgia fanboys can cry all they want, it's just a fact.
what bugs me is that BOTW is not really a "return to form" of the original zelda like people say it is, because there was always a big emphasis on dungeons and getting new key items to progress since the very first game. BOTW completely sidelined dungeons, and you get every ability you need to beat the game in the first area.
that's what I'm saying!
THA THANK YOU Very well said BOTW is not really a return to form all it did was take more of the Skyrim - GTA road with a more freedom approach it didn’t really take the nature free element classic of Zelda 1 or even a link between worlds for that matter hell I still put wind waker above this to since it’s still my favorite in the series along with 4 swords adventures and OOS -OOA lol
@@thatjrpganimefanplayerjusi8003 I just replayed OoS recently and started OoA for the first time and those games SLAAAAAAAP.
Yep you get all the cool toys and get reply on your brain and ability to play the game as opposed to being gated behind needing to find a hammer to smash these posts in this one spot to unlock the rest of the map... Been there done that a billion times. And they are still there to go reply anytime you like.
@@M0rebid you realize every time I hit the button under your comments I'm 'replying' and not 'replaying' right?
Ive come to think of the games in three pillars: 2D games, traditional 3D games, and Wild style games
I think there is definitely more overlap between the 2D and traditional 3D games, but you're right - we've certainly entered a new phase.
I hope that the next open world Zelda combines the segmented/Metroidvania world of 2D Zeldas, the intricate level design and meaningful story of 3D Zeldas, and the exploration of Breath of the Wild.
@@frewtlewps1152 Sounds like a winning formula.
Unfortunately, judging by what Aonuma says, there's only the Wild style, and traditional games never should've been like that.
@@Pheicou yep, Echoes of Wisdom solidifies this. There's only Wild era's "break the game as you see fit" style now
the fact that for most newgen people, botw and totk was their first zelda games and they'll typically only prefer the Wild format is crazy to me, i like them but they gotta play some gems like twilight princess and wind waker for true zelda goodness. but STUPID nintendo isnt porting them.
I am actually surprised at the amount of people whose first foray into zelda were botw or totk and when they go back and play those toher 3D titles, they end up likeing them more.
I’ve been playing Zelda since OofT on the N64 and my favorite is still twilight Princess. I find I have a ton of fun with the new Switch Zelda games, but they really feel so different from what I grew up with, I’m worried Nintendo won’t make another classic 3D Zelda game now that they’ve found a new formula.
@@dylantippetts1541 All I ask is that they mix them together just once...to see what happens.
...yeah maybe loz, aol, or albw
Anything else is like a completely different series. One that cares more about forcing you to scroll through hours of text to experience the world's most overdone story on repeat instead of being a game.
And if story is so important go read a friggin book. If you need puzzles in it go read a mystery book.
@@dylantippetts1541were you worried for your older relatives when Nintendo changed the zelda formula on them to please you?
From the moment BOTW released, I knew that i really enjoyed the game, but I found it to be super disappointing. Not because it was bad (because it wasn't) but because it decided to throw away so many things that were key elements of Zelda - large dungeons, heart pieces, the triforce, the goddesses, unlockable items that open up new areas, a meaningful and active story, a compelling villain, boss variety, and even Link's iconic tunic. Had the game been a completely new IP, I doubt many people would say "this is like Zelda!"
When TOTK was announced, I was excited for the game to bring back various Zelda elements that BOTW took out. It ended up being fun to play, but it didnt bring back much of what BOTW removed, and it even contradicted both BOTW and traditional Zelda lore.
Now, I i feel so conflicted about Zelda. I really enjoyed playing the new games, but they are not the Zelda that i know and love.
I feel you - I hope they can find a happy median somewhere in between.
Sometimes you have to change things up. No Zelda game has ever sold over 10 million copies and the last Zelda game before BOTW couldn't even sell 4 million copies. I understand your disappointment but Zelda was moving towards irrelevant sales wise. Less and less people play it. BOTW was a breath of fresh air and it's good for the series as a lot more players are excited to play it. As times goes by things that you like will probably come back like regular dungeons. They didn't include that in TOTK because its the same Hyrule and a sequel.
Im in same boat as you except I didnt enjoy playing the 2 new games that much.
@@gustafadolfsson4904 TotK slowly wore on me
I mean...heart pieces never left they just became spirit orbs, and the triforce and goddesses aren't gone either but they aren't mentioned much. And it did have a meaningful story just one with a different format. I mean there is Link's iconic tunic but it isn't easy to get.
I mean TOTK brought back a compelling villain and better boss variety at least. And how did it contradict any lore?
Dude only has 400 subs and is making Zelda content that is short, sweet, and insightful. Gets to the point and dips. I like that.
You remind me of Literature Devil in a good way.
I really appreciate this comment...not familiar with Literature Devil - I'll have to check him out!
I would like to see traditional Zelda style releases along with Wild style games in the future.
There's just something so special about the 3D Zelda's that not having more traditional elements in them kinda suuuuuuuuuucks.
In Traditional Zelda, dungeons have a predictable number of items and only one entrance, and they never linked to other dungeons, which is not very immersive. But I love old style Zelda anyway.
@@AlexMakovsky The fact that they're self-contained and that they can be solved by getting their item is what makes them good though - especially when they also build off of items you already have.
There are some absolutely amazing mechanics and elements to the Wild era, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the old games style. I just don't care for open world games anymore
The ENTIRE thing doesn't have to be open...
Not kidding about the minecraft part. So much of these games are celebrated for their supposed "creative thinking" and building things, but in the end the simple solutions, like that sexy hoverbike, ended up being both the most effective and the most fun. The open-endedness is also kind of hard to take when I walk into a shrine and spend -2 seconds trying to figure out what to do, because five obvious solutions are staring me in the face. The moment I realized a bomb arrow can activate those green pressure buttons, a third of the shrines became obsolete and the another third were already obsolete by the rocket fused to my shield.
That's my issue with so many things having unrestricted freedom - weirdly many end up with the same solution.
I love how the back of the case for BotW says "Craft your survival" when there is zero survival aside from just the standard not losing all your hearts and the only crafting is collecting x amount of stuff to upgrade armor.
@@Moonboogie and cooking, which is just crafting, but food.
But I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth about the survival thing. I would not be able to tolerate a hunger meter in Zelda.
@@Moonboogie would've been a better tagline for totk
Meanwhile in traditional Zelda there is always just one insanely obvious solution staring right at you, because it’s spoiled by the formula itself.
That’s not really any better. It just gives puzzles less replayvalue and makes them potentially less fun if the intended solution is boring. I’d actually enjoy TP‘s Goron Mines a whole lot more of I could just cheese those slow and boring iron boots sections.
The Era of the Wild Zelda games taught me *nothing* aside from the fact that Nintendo wanted to start a whole new continuity but was hesitant doing so. Everything Nintendo commented about both Zeldas’ connections to past titles made absolutely no sense. What they said was so random and out of context. “Breath of the Wild is at the end of the timeline, but let’s have the fans interpret which.” “Hyrule got destroyed and time itself started over like it’s Xenoblade…” (Can’t imagine why… AHEM! Monolith Soft codeveloped this!) Why bother saying that instead of admitting that both games are an entire reimagining of the series lore? To make matters worse, these timeline theorists don’t get the message! They just wanted to make the timeline more complicated than what it already is. They opted to continuing to believe that the 3 branching timelines somehow “converge” into one resulting the events and backstories of both games… like it’s Xenoblade Chronicles 3! (Can’t imagine why… again…) Converging timelines and realities is like asking for WWII to open a spacetime rift to present day. It’s like asking for the sci-fi futuristic technology to merge into the time of the Roman Empire. “It can't be done. Not shouldn't be done. It CAN’T be done.” Even if it is the case…. The entire universe would just be a living hell and collapse upon itself. 6 years of fan speculation and utter secrecy until Day 1 of TOTK’s release, and we’re still left with more questions than answers. The answers we got are absolutely lame. No Triforce, the prime catalyst of all the conflicts in Hyrule. Ganondorf’s Secret Stone (he stole from Queen Sonia) gave him this god-boost power-up that makes the Triforce of Power seemingly more of a joke in comparison. The fact that he can literally manifest and materialize his hatred and malice into Calamity Ganon has got to be done with immense power… all from just one measly stone that all the others combined couldn’t do jack against him in the first place… The Gerudo eighth Heroine turns out to be a man! (Ace Ventura vomiting 🤮) The ancient hero in the BOTW tapestry turns out to be an animal…
Ok, so what about the leviathans and the Dark Skeletons… STILL NOTHING but drag quests! Ok, fine! I’ll devise my own headcanon and say that the Three Mage Sisters from Kirby Star Allies were originally raised by the leviathans until the environmental disasters occurred. C’mon, I gotta fill the gap somehow!
Come to think of it, there was a rumor that given how much time it’s been since BOTW started development, members of the Zelda dev team got so fed up making THIS specific era of Zelda that they never cared about how TOTK was shaping and what was missing from it… I mean, 10 years of focusing on one specific world and story, two mainline entries plus a Warriors spinoff that contradicts everything from the from the source material (still can’t tell for the life of me why it exists in the first place), all of it with the same assets… could you really blame them for getting fed up with it and wanting to move on? Not to justify their actions, but I never cared for the Era of the Wild to begin with. I never wanted to associate it with ANY past Zelda and I no longer want to associate myself with this era. I’m tried and true to the events that occurred between Skyward Sword all the way to Twilight Princess in THAT specific chronology (not dismissing the others to say the least). But if Nintendo never cared for this era, then I never cared from the very start…
This is the Era of the Wild games in a nutshell:
m.ruclips.net/video/Tv2d0tlVmAo/видео.html
well said
Based take. Glad someone finally said it like it is. Which makes me want to say im not excited for the upcoming TOTK Master Works book. BOTW had some interesting potential for cool lore and made somewhat sense. Even the buildup to TOTK with all the trailers and speculation over the years were hella hype. Then TOTK comes and gives us a full 10 mins of lore dump in the intro, making is think it would be a dark, lore-deep and respectful game and sequel. Only to bait and switch us for the rest or the game with retcons, contradictions, and boring lore that doesnt even tie to past games like everyone thought it would and should. The story and new lore is, boring, crap, and makes no sense anymore. Ima just stick to old Zelda games and its old lore and gameplay. They're way more fun anyways. Gotta be cautious about new Zelda games going forward if TOTK is the standard now after how badly it fumbled and killed high expectations. Nintendo dropped the ball bad and unfortunately, its cemented its failings in official Zelda history forever.
@ACW-dn9wb
From this point on, I’m more than worried about all things Nintendo going forward… I don’t know about you, but if anything, their next system could be my last. Just looking to retire from gaming.
@@TomMooreT2S We definitely gotta be careful with Nintendo in general going forward. But surprisingly, Mario Wonder, RPG, and TTYD actually had effort and care put into them, unlike TOTK which came before, which really surprised me. It just seems that Nintendo has random mood swings where theyre either super lazy or actually wants to put effort behind their games. But it seems to be a game-by-game basis now.
@@TomMooreT2S the Switch is literally the best era for Nintendo in terms of how good their games are since the Nintendo 64 (Gamecube was fine but a downgrade, Wii was a mess, Wii U was okayish but lacked games)
Loved the series so much that i named my first daughter after it. This isn't zelda. Its a really well made ubisoft game. There is a reason why people use to call dungeon fantasy based games "Zelda likes". This games are just called open world games.
we need them dungeons!
But it has the name The Legend Of Zelda so it’s Zelda😎
@@TheOctoJules 😂
BOTW/TOTK are a good template for future games but still need to bring some things from older games.
I think that's the absolutely best take.
"Everyone can have their own experience...but so few are having an impactful one." Great summary. Customization is overrated.
Thanks for watching!
I had an impactful one
@@TheOctoJules Good to hear!
Another high quality video. Could listen to you talk about zelda games for hours. You do a great job making these interesting and engaging
I've got a lot to say! A something special in the works ;)
I just don't want weapons to break and the Master sword to actually be the best sword
Or let us at least work our way up to non-breakable weapons.
It's basically just a Ubisoft open world sandbox game with some flashbacks attached to it. Remember how we used to rack on Ubisoft for bloating their games with generic bandit camps, towers and upgrade points? Well say hello to shrines, towers and korok seeds.
I'm right there with ya.
And old zelda was just like every jrpg. Games imitate other popular games. Zelda games never invented new genres.
@@richle905 I can't recall any games having dungeons filled with intricate puzzles solved through engsging items. Only thing that comes to mind is Darksiders and that came after Zelda.
@@richle905 I don't think there was anything like the first zelda...I'm not sure there was anything like a link to the past. There was certainly nothing as well done as OoT when it came out. It may not create genres persay but it certainly tends to have a heavy influence on the games that come after it.
Wow thats a cope.
Did you seriously "rack on ubisoft" because you thought the problems people had were "its an open world with things inside of it"?
What you're talking about started with ac and ended with ghost recon, and it involved a large map that had gameplay sets which were divided by barren land, essentially making it a tedious version of a level select screen.
Is this the right place to say that I liked the Minish Cap more than Links crossbow training
I haven't played either so I'll have to take your word for it 🤣
@@LittleBeanGreen ok
I love Minish Cap but I wanna more immersive dungeons in Zelda... like in Thief or Deus Ex games and there's not so fun when every dungeon have only one entrance.
@@AlexMakovsky I don't think I've ever been bothered by the number of entrances...
@BeanGreen Yeah! But I love more advanced level design in games. So it's just my IMHO, sorry.
in years to come whos really going to remmeber the devine beasts or these temples. compared to the other zelda games . they always had a special feel to them .
the divine beasts/new temples just...aren't good.
I got into Zelda due to botw. My best friend got a switch and botw, and I, immediately hyperfixating, immediately got Phantom Hourglass because I couldn't afford a switch back then and my ds was my only console. I've played several Zelda games by now. Funnily enough, Skyward Sword has become my favorite Zelda game. I love botw as a game. It's in my top ten games of all time for sure.
But it's not my favorite Zelda game by far. I've enjoyed Skyward sword a lot, actually replaying it currently. I adore Minish Cap and have a strong love-hate relationship to phantom hourglass.
Minish Cap is on my list to play. I haven't played Skyward Sword since its release but remembered loving it...will have to give that one another go.
aside from the still glaring issues of dungeons and story, I think _TOTK_ did fix most of the issues that _BOTW_ had, and ironically most of _TOTK’s_ other flaws were things _BOTW_ did right…
and I think the core problem holding the new games back is that they simply give the player _too much freedom._ what if you technically could beat the final boss right after completing the tutorial, but it’s so difficult and time consuming that it’s virtually impossible to do so? what if you can’t climb literally anything in the overworld, but just things a normal person could climb, like trees and craggy rocks, and you eventually acquire items and abilities to climb farther and faster, and or more surfaces? so you can actually climb any mountain early in the game, but you have to find just the right path, rest frequently, and it takes forever? etc, etc, etc…
I think climbing should be ditched for the next game and I think you're right - too much freedom and just so many inane things to collect. I think most of what people are asking for is the open world with linear dungeons.
@@LittleBeanGreen - yes! take the Divine Beasts, for example… even just requiring you to change the state of the Beast from specific points within the dungeon, rather than just the map screen, would’ve improved their experiences significantly, in my opinion.
compelling games need rules and limits… the new games, _TOTK_ especially, are more like sandboxes, where anything goes 🤷🏻♂️
@@Sam_T2000 Plus I really don't like the crafting mechanics
The freedom to do anything means the "story" is more or less an illusion. Everything is written with the right amount of ambiguity such that you can do it in any order. But that ambiguity removes basically all depth to the story.
I honestly think that is Nintendo's easy way out - they use ambiguity so they don't have to think about all those things in depth. They're not ambiguous for intrigue, they're ambiguous because the answers haven't been considered.
Why dont you just...I dunno, read a book?
@@daniel8181 L response. Games have had great stories since the beginning. Why dont you go play with a stick or something
they could have done world building nd lore and let you find it by exploring. They did some environmental storytelling, but few and far between and hamfisted if done at all
I’d like to see the Zelda team go back and play the Forest Temple or Great Bay Temple. Or read the Twilight Princess manga.
I played the Great Bay Temple recently and that shit was awesome.
To be fair, I think totk needed more old Zelda elements and a linear story so that way best of both worlds
That seems to be the conventional thinking.
Good video. Would like to see both merged in some way. Get rid of shrines and seeds. Bring back heart pieces and item progression. Make the world open ofc because it's nice to explore. Make sure that exploration is rewarding unlike the wild era. And make combat not flurry rush rinse and repeat. Looking forward to the next one. earned a sub!
Side note/edit.
With the recent interview between aonuma and whatever the fuck other dudes name is. I dont think they understand what made zelda good in the first place
Fujibayashi - I've got something in the works along those lines coming in the future.
@@LittleBeanGreen even now that I know his name. I refuse to say it. It's like Voldemort to me. He who should not be named brings up trauma 😂😂 looking forward to the vid brother!
I personaly hate the new "wild" style Zelda games. I miss the old school Zelda games. After playing 40 hours of breath of the wild, I sold my switch and all my games and haven't even thought of getting back into Zelda into they go back into the old school "metroidvania" design. Breath of the wild feels more like off brand worse skyrim to me than zelda.
I never played any of the Skyrims or Morrowinds or whatever so I don't really have anything to compare too but these Wild Era games are sure a shock coming off of the older games.
@@LittleBeanGreen I mainly use skyrim as a catch all for "Open World, Third Person/First Person, RPG", as skryim having sold over 60 million copies is by far the most popular, thus easiest example to use in this instance.
To me, even if I did play some of the Gamecube games, as those were some of the first Zeldas I played, I did enjoy how BOTW and Tears tried to mix up the formula a fair bit, even if it wasn't perfect
here's hoping the next one can still feel fresh while still keeping the gameplay elements that made the Gamecube era games great.
Tbh, when I saw botw booming with all the survivalcraft design ideas, I realized the old formula was going to die. They can always make a new game with that, sure, like they didn't entirely abandon 2D zelda when OoT came out, so there's always a dim hope, but I just accepted this is not "my" franchise anymore and that it will change to meet the new audience's standards, like many franchises did. It's less painful this way.
The things you say here are exactly the same things I said to my friends back in 2017, specially the "big empty map for korok seeds and shrines" part.
I like the idea of various shrines around the world. What I don't like is that they're so small, their puzzles are so obvious, you get a hint to solve the puzzle in its name, many puzzles you can just "cheat" with a rune (mostly stasis), you need to rely on physics for quite a lot of them (meaning you can have the right idea but the physics screws you up and so you doubt yourself about the solution until trying again bc you're autistically stubborn) and their rewards are always the same.
One of the things I liked about Zelda was to dive into a dungeon and wonder what item I would get next. That feeling is removed in botw. I mean, I understand that it would be frustrating to backtrack in a map this size to get items you couldn't before bc you lacked the required powerup, like one of those korok metal tetris-like puzzles (and that it would also become Map Stamper Simulator 2017, with all the 900 seeds around the world), but having access to new runes or just new useful upgrades for the existing ones, to create more actions (i.e. magnesis could create a magnetic aura around Link to bring metal objects close together, or cryonis could gain the ability to create an ice platform to work like a raft) would bring back this feeling and give another reason to search for shrines. Even new active abilities through armor, like the Zora Armor does, would be enough.
Sure, we can get armor and weapons in some shrines, but, first, weapons are not only disposable but you probably keep full inventory almost all the time as well; second, I really doubt anyone played this game with the 'oh, I wonder what gear/arrow this shrine holds' in mind; and finally, armor only gives passive abilities that you can easily get with food.
It's like they replaced all the things that made the game interesting with less meaningful, but more of, those things.
Its such a shame that BotW wasn't just the brand new IP it always should have been. We lost something unique forever in exchange for open world survivalcraft number 428,074,500.
I miss the old Zelda.
She misses you too.
@@LittleBeanGreen I used to love Zelda, I used to love Zelda, I even had the green clothes I thought I was Zelda. Lol
@@darthtitteous1215 oh yeah I love playing as Zelda.
As a new Zelda fan, I kinda wanna experience it too
@@TheOctoJules A lot of them are on Switch Online
I really enjoyed BotW but found TotK to be a chore after a few hours. You’re pretty much just grinding the same ol’ overworld looking for materials to upgrade your stuff so that you’re not a noob. Occasionally you find something epic. The depths are underwhelming after two hours. The sky is surprisingly a small part of the game. Ultra hand is tedious. Overall, it’s too much of the same.
As some one who hadn't played BotW in 6 years and barely spent 100 hours there anyway, even I was growing bored of TotK.
...but I loved the shrines in BotW. ;_; Ok, not more than the classic dungeons, but I'm not lying when I say I was genuinely excited to find and complete them all (minus the repeating combat shrines, anyway). TotK's basically all relying on Ultrahand, though, did nothing for me, with only a few being interesting. You have no idea how sad this made me...
But yeah, man... the dip in story quality is really what hurts the most. I wound up being ok with it in BotW because I felt the exploration and NPCs and shrine puzzles were all fun, but I found myself really not caring about the story in TotK. Which REALLY should not happen considering what we find out about Zelda. But it did not help that I was able to easily figure out "where" Zelda was after, what, two Tears? Knowing how her story was going to "end" (for the moment) made the Tears feel extremely underwhelming, which had never been the case in BotW.
Man, I just miss a good Zelda story... though I admit that as much as I enjoyed SS's, I'm still much more likely go back to BotW, so it's clearly not the end-all-be-all, either. Fingers crossed for a good balance in the future.
Part of the problem with TotK was that it doubled down on BotW and gave us more of the same in different packaging - finding all the shrines wasn't something I to do but I wanted that completion check and to see the prize for getting them all...not sure it was worth it ha. I just don't like that style of challenge.
They really need to find a better way to integrate the story.
4:25 Screw this dragon reversal, the game constantly tells you its irreversible but pulls ghost magic out of it's ass to get a happy ending. Mind you this Zelda deserves a happy ending after all the crap she's been through, I just wish they did it differently.
I bet you if we took the most notable zelda based things out of BotW and TotK and replaced it with stuff that's from a bog-standard RPG game they wouldn't have sold as well. For example:
zora are now merfolk, Gorons are just sentient golems, the rido are now birdkin, and the gerudo are just amazonian warriors while hyrule could be called Kastolov kingdom. Princess Lena and her bodyguard Lance must defeat the evil beast Baorkus from reclaiming the kingdom after a 100 year sleep seal is broken. The kingdom asks a champion from each nation to help control magical beasts that had stopped Baorkus before, however Baorkus has a secret plan of hypnotism on the magical beasts and turns them against the nations.
......................yeah judging from what I just put down I can tell this game would've been bog-standard without the Zelda title.
BOARKUS
Don't get me wrong I LOVE ToTK, but to call it a Zelda game is a stretch, it's more of a spinoff than mainline game imo and it's sure as hell no Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess, that's for sure.
I love TotK like I love being addicted to pills.
It says Zelda, made by the Zelda team. It is a Zelda game, to say otherwise is just whining. Pretty much like this entire video.
@@Wing0Alchemist guess I'm a whiner.
@@LittleBeanGreenPretty much
@@Wing0Alchemist Thanks for feeding me.
Both games‘ final trailers make me emotional for games that don’t exist, by effectively lying and suggesting adventures with involved stories where you meet and interact with lots of interesting characters.
TotK being marketed as a sequel to BotW, only to go out of its way to not be that, only amplified that feeling for me.
Let‘s hope Nintendo takes the criticisms to heart for the next game.
I still some times watch that TotK trailer to remember the feeling of what I thought the game would actually be haha
@@LittleBeanGreen The music and how it compliments the editing is insane. I love and hate the trailers so much 🥲
@@lmnt66 What's worse is it'll make so many of us skeptical of the next game's trailer ha
@@LittleBeanGreen yeah, I probably won‘t trust any marketing for the next game until I play it myself 🥲
@@lmnt66 I will be VERY suspicious until I turn the power button on.
I'm a big fan of the Wild games, they do give me the same kind of wonder the N64 titles gave me and I would be lying if I didn't say I have 150h+ on BOTW & TOTK respectively. However I do prefer the 3D stye of games. I think I miss the items the most, the importance of them and actually finding them, especially the hookshot. The stories are also kinda uninteresting in the new games, I understand what they were going for the lore just never appealed to me. The dungeons in TOTK looking like the classic 3D Zelda dungeons but functioning like the divine beasts was kind of disappointing. I could go on but I think those games (mostly TOTK) already been criticized to death.
With that being said I do think this whole discourse about if these count as Zelda games does a little bit of a disservice to all the good things they offer, I understand that I'm in the minority and I'm a bit sad that the rest of the Zelda community didn't enjoy TOTK as much as I did even though I think the criticisms are valid. I wouldn't be too worried about the future of the franchise though. I think the way we feel right now kind of mirrors the perspective of people who grew up on the 2D games felt about the 3D games, I'll take Egoraptor as an example. This might be a good foundation of what's to come who knows. TOTK was only made because of all the left over assets from BOTW so I doubt we'll get a BOTW 3. Hopefully we'll get all the good stuff from both eras in the next game.
I'm hoping we get a mix too!
You can fight the final boss early, but there's a catch. You have to fight the other bosses. In totk, you need to fight a wave of Boko's, Lizalofo's, Gibdo's, and Moblins, before eventually fighting an addition 6 bosses.
I'm aware - that still doesn't do much for a hero's journey.
This is a good breakdown even though I slightly disagree with a few points and agree with many others. I don't think I'm on board about your Hero's Journey point. I never found old Zelda games to do a good job of taking Link on the Hero's Journey, he never has that denying the call part, which is usually step 2, and he never has transformation in the sense of his character. Instead, it's usually the partner characters who experience the Hero's Journey, such as Wind Waker's King of Hyrule, Twilight Princess's Midna and Colin (that game tried to do too much narratively), A Link Between Worlds' Ravio, and most relevant to your point, Breath of the Wild's Zelda (she is the partner character of the game, she speaks up unprompted telling you where to go and what to do). I think Breath of the Wild does a really good job using Zelda's hero's journey as a foil for Link's, and thus the player's, journey, framing her journey as a denial of self-expression, reflecting the self-expression Link and the player is encouraged to engage with in every facet of the game design.
On the mechanical front, I think the Hero's Journey is felt for Link entirely through gameplay in Breath of the Wild. Sure you can fight Ganon right after the tutorial, but on your first playthrough I bet you didn't succeed. I tried and got my ass handed to me. Exploring the rest of Hyrule, learning the mechanics and acquiring different resources so I could eventually beat Ganon not because of some rigid narrative that told me it's time to, but because I actually felt ready to, is a much more compelling Hero's Journey than Ocarina of Time giving me a rainbow bridge just because I completed a checklist.
I think Tears of the Kingdom is a harder nut to crack here given it's a sequel, but I also believe Zelda should not try to tell the Hero's Journey every game. My issue with Tears is the gameplay is still very much telling a Hero's Journey while the narrative very much is not, either for Zelda or Link. Rauru maybe, but he's given such little focus it doesn't land for me.
Interesting points that I'll have to give some more thought to!
what i dislike is how people always wanted an open world zelda game, but when they get it, they get mad. botw wasn’t bad not does it not feel like zelda, it’s a good game, just not for everyone
I don't know if people always wanted an open world Zelda.
@@LittleBeanGreen there were a lot of people wanting one back in 2014, from my pov
@@giganticmoon that makes one of us
@@LittleBeanGreen wdym?
@@giganticmoon That that was not something I thought was common. Or else they thought the games were mostly already open world.
I will never call Breath/Tears Zelda games. I refer to them as Nu-Zelda or Ubi-Zelda instead.
Yeah weird Bethesda/Ubisoft conglomeration.
Oh boy here I go. I've said this before and I'll say it again. I can't enjoy the old games. Sure I can get myself to play them and I even did a whole twilight princess playthrough. However, I just can't do it long-term. I got about halfway through windwaker and I thought it would be a smash hit but I found it to be lackluster to me in the same way that TP was. I think I just enjoy the modern format way better. I don't care about all the stuff that the "traditional zelda" fans do.
EDIT and tl;dr i suppose: I guess what I mean to say is that it makes me frankly heartbroken to see that my love for the new games isn't reflected all that much (in the uber enthusiasts anyway). I've tried to join the old school community in what they like but I just can't. sure I love the lore videos but no gaming on those titles for me. Let's try to give the new stuff a shot! I like it, a butt-ton of normies like it, I'll hold out hope that the next game can show us what the devs can do when they have another clean slate.
note: I've only played TP and WW. No I haven't played OOT and frankly I have zero motivation to off of my previous experiences.
In my experience, the old games feel about the same to play. to me, it feels like every aspect of each game is just copied and put in a new skin for a new title. yes, I know thats very hypocritical seeing as totk and botw are like the same but that kinda makes sense because whether we like it or not totk is just a re-imagining of botw. I really really tried to enjoy the old games. There are certainly some enjoyable aspects, but for the most part the gameplay feels somewhat dated. The clunky "you can only use this key item for JUST THIS" system just hurts me. There are better ways to design a game now. it may not even be that the old formula is bad, for example, I really enjoy TUNIC which is essentially a 2D zelda clone but with souls mixed in.
But yeah idk its a rough situation. if we're being honest, without BOTW, Zelda would probably have faded into obscurity and become a dead series that was more beloved by the remaining 5 fans than the devs *cough* metroid.
So why do I say this? well, I don't like the new games being crapped on. yes absolutely totk is kinda weird, but it truly feels like BOTW belongs as a zelda game. For sure we can discuss what could be improved on. I don't want to suggest there isn't room for improvement. But saying "new zelda bad. old zelda was better cuz blablabla" and proposing to just go back feels absured to me. It kinda makes my enthusiasm about the new games get quailed because it seems like a lot of the people who are enthusiasts about the series seem more interested in pounding down the idea that there are elements in the new games that are good.
Zelda became a prized series off of its innovation. So why is it that once we as fans find what we deem "perfect", we no longer allow the devs to continue to try new things?
note 2: yes I'm taking this way too seriously and yes I have the emotional stability of a teaspoon.
I have another video that gives both types their do and what a lot of old Zelda fans are asking for is not a complete 180 from the new games, but to try to actually blend the incredible open world of the new games with the intricate dungeons and more present storytelling of the old games.
@@LittleBeanGreen Aye, I could go for that.
@@illuminate4 and my ax!
Remove Link and Zelda from BOTW and it's not Zelda. Remove Link and Zelda from the other Zelda games and it's still Zelda.
That seems to be a recurring sentiment.
Definitely agree on the comparison between BOTW and TOTK's stories. There were definitely things I liked in TOTK (like seeing the actual results of clearing the dungeon happen in the landscape), and I did enjoy the game in general, but..... It felt kind of hollow? And I think you're correct about why that that feeling isn't just because the sky islands were basically all the same with a couple exceptions (the depths similarly), but because the story itself is unclear. And while I prefer BOTW's story to TOTK...that's not saying much either.
Also the item situation is just sad.
I'm awaiting Echoes of Wisdom with mixed anxiety and anticipation. I hope they found a way to bring back at least some of the features you discussed as missing from TOTK and BOTW.
Also, I don't have anywhere near as many hours in TOTK. I basically played BOTW twice, since I played most of it up to the final visit to Hyrule Castle (including 100%ing the shrines) on a friend's switch before I moved cross country, then bought it for myself and played it again to compete the story this time (not including 100%ing the shrines, lol) a couple months before TOTK released. I think I had more hours just in that second playthrough than I've put into TOTK. I hit a certain point in the latter game where I recognized "if I don't just beat the game now, I'm going to get bored enough to start spending my time on something else and never come back and beat this".
Having a completed 'dungeon' affect the landscape is a great idea, they just didn't really do anything with it. I was enthralled with the game as I played it. But it was just constant little hits of dopamine. Once you took a step back and examined it, it just wasn't all that meaningful what was being done. I do hope they also integrate a few non-breakable weapons.
Echoes of Wisdom by default will have 'breakable weapons,' because everything will just be an echo on a timer. The long scrolling UI has me worried, but I'll wait and see what to think once the game comes out.
I beat all the shrines in TotK just for the hell of it and I gotta say, finding all the shrines buried in caves using a combination of the light roots, the Purah Pad sensor, and the Satori blessing thing was a real slog.
@@LittleBeanGreen Yeah I'd imagine so! I don't even feel an interest 😅 Haven't felt any particular need to play again since I beat it either. I get that a lot of people have fun playing with the emergent gameplay mechanics, I just... kind of wish they put those in a different game.
@@dirtywhitellama I think they should make a new IP that's a complete sandbox that utilizes the ultrahand mechanic.
@@LittleBeanGreen totally agree! Might be hard to wrangle now that they've already gone that way, but, maybe...
Shrines are repetitive and I just love fighting enemies with new ways and different items
and some times you run into a shrine that tells you how to do sometihng you already know.
It's not because open worlds are trending that it's necessarily great, Aonuma is wrong, he seems like an old guy who willingly adheres to all the whims of young people just so as not to seem too out of step with the times because he has difficulty accepting the reality of growing old, I may be exaggerating but that's how I see him now. The open worlds were great with Skyrim, pushed even further with the Witcher and Fallout 4 but then they all started to look the same until the arrival of Elden Ring then nothing after that,I hope that at Nintendo we will reconsider this decision, this is not the first time they have changed their mind, in 2011 Aonuma said that the next Zelda games would be played entirely in motion gaming without any buttons, 2 years later releases "A link between world" with 100% buttons and 0% motion gaming!
I haven't played many open world games but when I see the maps I get concussed.
Gotta say, I totally get where you’re coming from and I agree 1000% with your points, but the games are hella fun and they do feel zelda. Just not the way we’re used to. I agree I think the other way is better but I wouldn’t mind if they kept going in the same direction but tried to make it more zelda. They’re kind of in the baby stages of this new open world idea. They’re still figuring it out too. I’m confident that Nintendo will figure it out and get it right. They take a lot of pride in their games especially zelda and they’ve been a lot better at listening to fans. They know zelda means a lot to so many people
I am with you - and there's nothing to say that what I deemed 'the pillars of Zelda' aren't allowed to change over time. I'm excited to see what they do next!
Mostly only felt zelda to me in the sense that zelda is in it
@@Didmikedothis2023 they do have that going for them
Totally agree. I have played every Zelda game since playing Link to the Past as a little kid a few years after it came out. But BotW and Totk instantly felt like Zelda games to me. They have perfectly captured what my little ten year old mind felt like when I was playing in OoT or MM. I think if they had stuck to the old formula, it would have just felt like playing to nostalgia, which is Metroids current problem.
They've been in the "baby stages" for the better half of a decade.
I like Breath of the Ocarina and Tears of Majora the best.
A true connoisseur
0:22 Where can I find that video?
If you head over to @BanditGames channel and go to 'Live' there's a 4.5 hour video titled "Zelda Creators Debate Tears of the Kingdom"
I have a feeling that they actually don't compare Breath of the wild and Tears of the Kingdom to the Zelda Franchise in general, I feel more like they compare it to Ocarina of Time, nowadays they say Zelda 2 doesnt feel like Zelda Because it isnt like Ocarina of Time eventhough Ocarina of Time wasn't a thing yet and Nintendo did some experiments with Mario and Zelda
I am convinced that for them only Ocarina of Time is the True Zelda Because Ocarina of Time was revolutionary as well, then came Breath of the wild and the OGs were about to be dissapointed Because it is... another Revolution, a new Age of Zelda has begun. and they dont like it that it changes after like tons of Decades
OoT does live rent free in a lot of heads - both Zelda fans and non-fans alike.
Dude I thought shrines we’re fun 😭😂
hahaha there are just too damn many!!
My wife and I were let down when we realized we had beaten all of the shrines with puzzles and only had Rarus blessings left. The puzzle solving was one of the highlights of the game.
@@dylantippetts1541 Those blessing ones are rough.
imho they really dropped the ball on world building and lore. and the zonai being the original hero of time was just weird and not really built on. Just oooo crazy reptile people /done... also there's definitely a way to have open world with some level of linear progression in story/dungeons/abilities.... spread the dungeons out over the world and lock and key them with abilities. Put one deep under water you need a diving scale for, put one behind a hook shot point... etc. Or soft-gate areas by putting a bunch of high level enemies around there like in the Gothic games. Also - have more enemies types ... if you're talking creativity give me more challenges and situations with which to be creative. if You're gonna go way lax on dungeons saying that "the overworld is a mega-dungeon bc you have to be so creative" then follow through on that.
The overworld doesn't even feel like a dungeon. Eventually you just fast travel and hover bike everywhere because it's not even worth exploring.
I still haven’t finished tears of the kingdom because it’s so fun!
I haven't played it since May 😅
@@LittleBeanGreen same here. I forgot I owned it. I immediately bought a spice orange gamecube and a copy of tp(120 goddamn dollars for a cib) and I had more fun. Played skyward sword recently (one I used to not be so great on) and I had extreme amounts of fun. My heart felt warm playing that. I think I'm just not a fan of this gameplay style. It doesnt feel fulfilling.
Get mentally checked and play an actual good Zelda game
(/s)
@@omorifan6011what does (/s) mean?
@@TheOctoJules it indicates I am sarcast8c
I think the bass is too great in your voice (from an editing standpoint, not your "real voice" if you get what I mean). It's a bit uncomfortable to listen to it with headphones, at least for me.
Could be my real voice....we'll see what we can do.
Thank you being so kind all mighty loving God help me and these people become more like u
And with your spirit
another issue that I can see is that the games lack replayability. with skyward sword, the only other zelda game I've finished to date (my oot save got messed up and I'm trying to get back into it and figure out what's missing lol), I can go back to that again and again and again and I'll still have some of the same wonder that I had the first time I experienced it. but with botw and totk, I'd need my memory of the game completely wiped because there isn't a story to keep me hooked and a lot of the fun of exploring botw (and to a lesser extent totk, because of the shared map) was just the great big unknown. I know that unknown now, and there's so little story to thread through the world that I couldn't see myself starting over with those games like I do with skyward sword, and likely oot if I ever get back around to it. I think some of the backlash comes from the fact that it's because the games are such a break from tradition that they don't yet feel like zelda. the wind waker probably felt the same way, since it was a very different direction to what had come before, and it's worth waiting until some time has passed and a new game in a different direction has come along to give some perspective. I personally think whilst the games are great, there are interesting mechanics and challenges and other pros, I do agree that the wild era games lack some of the elements that make a game in the zelda franchise feel like a zelda game, because the series has built itself off of those exact elements and those have, over the years, become crucial to the feeling of a game in the series. but maybe with a bit more distance and more games to compare it to, this could change. idk I find myself incredibly neutral on the wild era
I feel the exact same. I currently working on another playthrough of OoT and Oracle of Seasons, which I hadn't played since I was...11? That's a great game.
i gotta disagree there, challenge runs of botw were so much fun, now granted the only traditional zelda games i own are windwakerHD and OoT 3D and I haven't gotten very far (i played both as a kid, i got scared of the prison segment of wind waker and I think i got stuck in jobujobu's, might be making that name up, stomach). That said your arguement are totally fair
@@thefruitman3200 I don't think I ever want to play it again - JABU JABU!
@@thefruitman3200 I forgot about challenge runs, botw is a good game for those
The video was too damn short…
the videos are never too short or too long, they are exactly the run length they intend to be
Sure thing, Gandalf. 😆
you videos have such a strange structure. Most videos like yours have the things you talk about near the end as the midpoint.
I'm not sure what to do with this information.
At the very least it means your channel is unique
@@brandyjohnson9272 I'll take it.
I believe they should go back to a nice linear Zelda game like Skyward Sword. The era of the Wild games are over and they should go back to true dungeons and actually experience the cutscenes as you get to that part of the game not in memorys.
I too think they should go back to linear storytelling where you're actually acting on the story...but I also think there's a balance with a more open world. I may have something up my sleeve for what that could look like. Stay tuned!
@@LittleBeanGreen I agree. There should be a perfect balance between an old school Zelda with a linear structure, and the open world freedom of the Wild games. I think Tears did that a little better than Wild, but it still wasn't enough. And bring back proper old school dungeons damn it. The Lightning Temple was the closest to that in the Wild games.
@@Crichjo32 I don't think that's too much to ask.
I think Skyward Sword was a bit too linear. OoT/MM/WW/TP were more the perfect balance
I haven't played SS since it was first released but I remembered REALLY liking it - except for the anxiety-inducing tear collecting in the silent realm or whatever it was called.
Botw/TotK definitely feels like the SM/USUM of Pokémon.
Haven't played a pokemon game since emerald or leaf green so can't confirm 😅
They are Zelda-themed games.
like a particular subset of the Crypt of the Necrodancer series?
@@LittleBeanGreen yassss (that game is amazing) I just feel like they stepped a few steps too far away from the Zelda formula that games had established before and threw in a bunch of Zelda-themed items, locations, and easter eggs to make people happy.
@@LittleBeanGreen also, great job on your videos man. I stumbled here today and am currently marathoning them :D
@@TrimmTrab Key jangling!
@@TrimmTrab Thanks :D ENJOY!
I enjoyed both styles, not sure why people are complaining, and totk dungeons were actually fun, especially the lightning dungeon.
They would show you the wind and water temple and a cheesed fire temple and tell you any good grace won with the lightning temple was lost with those three.
Yup.
;)
The better 3ds zelda games were oot,majoras mask,twilight princess and the wind waker these were excellent games.
excellent indeed
as som1 who has played most zelda games, breath of the wild is my favorite. I also think that the exploration, freedom, and replayabilty is second to none when it comes to the wild games. Just be cause its different, doesn't mean its bad. Also the new dungeons in totk are just as good as old dungeons like from oot or tp and the shrines and side quest are fun things to do that older games didn't have.
I'm glad you like the games - replayability is where we differ. I have no interest in combing either of those games again and I honestly think that, even though the older games didn't have shrines, I'd rather they weren't included. The lightning temple may be a middling dungeon as compared to those older games (and maybe the fire temple if it isn't cheesed), but the wind temple and water temple are some of the worst (if you don't count the lead up to them...and even still) and the spirit temple is really just a boss fight after a series of disconnected puzzles which can also be seriously cheesed.
You're gonna put gluing 3 icicles to gears as on par with puzzles like the Sandship or Forest Temple?
Most of the shrines are in the same realm as explorative side grottos/caves. Like the Iceblock cavern in TP is on par with the average puzzle shrine.
No TotK's dungeons are NOT on par with past Zelda games. You look at those 5 platforms in the sky they call a water temple and tell me its equal to a dungeon from pre-Breath Zelda. Nu-Zelda's "dungeons" are a joke. Every last one of them.
Fair points. Still my favorite Zelda game by far though!
fair enough!
@@LittleBeanGreen I've definitely been playing the Zelda games since I was a kid and playing ALTTP on the SNES... And played so much OoT and MM specifically on the 64. I prefered WW over TP. But still, the BOTW/TOTK, despite being a departure for the initial Zelda "formula", just steered closer to the "creative" gameplay I enjoy the most out of a video game. So now I've played *checks notes* 850h of TOTK.
@@TiltCntrlz Yikes that's a ton 😅I don't prefer that playstyle but if it works for me.
@@LittleBeanGreen I just beat it with 3 hearts and no paraglider. Easy game, just shoot arrows at Ganondorf's face mid-suavemente.
@@TiltCntrlz Just like every action-adventure game intends.
Miyamoto and Eiji need to go to a tsunami
Something's gotta give.
What the fuck.
Grow up, its a video game, your precious oot was literally about growing the fuck up and here you're saying two people not even involved in the design on the games anymore should die?
The entire Nintendo leadership needs to go, to paraphrase Palpatine "They've forgotten their place!" They USED to be cool and great innovators, but now they pussy out and sit inside the worlds smallest box all day, incapable of thinking outside it, due solely to their massive egos.
@@megaman37456 I think they can still make it work. Honestly take ultra-hand and this physics engine and all the survival-crafting stuff and make it into a new franchise that it's better suited for.
@@LittleBeanGreen Honestly after ToTK I never wanna see another open world Zelda game again, not because it's a bad game, but because it doesn't work with what makes modern Zelda popular.
Make more Nintendo / zelda content!!!
I'm going as fast as I can!!!
This is a great essay in where you explain a lot but answer nothing.
you obviously didn't watch to the very end ;)
This is perfect
Thanks!
Ocarina of time didnt "feel like zelda" at first and then people got over it an enjoyed the Progession of the series.
it doesn't seem like people are getting over TotK
After LTTP and Link's Awakening? Buddy, that's revisionist history and nobody was saying that.
History revision at its finest
@@blueshellincident yes they were, unless you were not old enough to remember how the first 3 Zeldas felt before ocarina of time
I definitely feels some of this especially after venturing back into OoT and MM like I do every new year and then I picked up WW and TP to reconfirm my feelings. But I do feel that the Wild era games still feel like Zelda. All the elements are there some just lessened (story) and most just deconstructed (full dungeons to the beasts or temples and then the shrines) but the Exploration like you said in the last video is expanded on. Especially in TotK. They even hid a whole third of the map from us. I haven't had that feeling since the first time I picked up BotW and before that Skyrim and before that TP. (I love SS but exploration isn't it's strong suit).
I said this in a different video - I think TotK has some of the greatest moments in any Zelda game. But I think it loses focus and puts TOO much emphasis on exploration and TOO much emphasis on collecting things....and I really don't like shrines haha. I think there's still a lot of room for great games to be developed though - looking foward to what comes next!
@@LittleBeanGreen I quite like the shrines myself but I would sacrifice them down to around 60-80 in favor of 4-5 traditional dungeons rather than the kinda sorta mini dungeons we get with both games.
@@MrYutbe57 I think I could get behind that - perhaps part of my dislike is just how freaking many of the there are.
@@LittleBeanGreen yeah man there's too many. Half as many wouldn't be so bad. Just cut out all the ones that you don't have so anything with. In both games there were ones where the task was just finding it. Thats redundant.
@@MrYutbe57 And those were my least favorite ones.
Hope @nintendo sees this
GET AT ME, NINTENDO.
They won't care. The Zelda team had SIX GODDAMNED YEARS to fully understand the main issues people had with BotW and chose to double down on nearly all of them in TotK.
@@pitshoster401 dude making video games of this caliber is hard. Cut a little slack they’re still good games. Sold millions. Zelda fans are so tough on Nintendo. They can’t please everyone at once
@@hyrumstephens2002 they had an entire already made overworld to use and even confirmed in an interview that they were able to quickly make the depths in a short amount of time, and it shows. They killed my favorite gaming franchise and whore it out for the latest trends, I'm holding back on my harshness if anything.
Zelda's main focus from Miyamoto himself has always been gameplay over story. Sure the story got better going from The legend of Zelda to aLttP and again going to Ocarina of Time. But the games aren't flooded with cutscenes or even voice's that most story driven games reply on. And ToTK's memories were the most cutscenes we have ever had in a Zelda game. If you don't like it play something else. BotW singlehanded held the switch together for its first year. The vote is unanimous. Gamers love it. Themes of separate games are allowed to contradict. They are SEPARATE games. If you think the Zonia were invented for ToTK then you missed ALOT of hints in the world of BoTW showing an entire advanced civilation suddenly disappeared. Theirs multi-hour long videos speculating on it before ToTK even came out and they were right! So it was there the whole time. If you need game on rails that holds you hand and provides no freedom then there are alot easy laid back games i'm sure you would enjoy. If you want use your imagination to create fun in a game as wide open as ToTK where every problem has like 9 answers then definitely isn't for you. Handholding with no choices or different paths to follow has been done a million times. Go reply those. BoTW launched and sustained the number 1 selling console of all time. Call it what you want but all I hear is noise and whining about a few needed innovations. Besides I have a feeling the next Zelda is going to be the same open style but will incorporate larger traditional dungeons and continue to get better at the story. But for all the crying, even if they did insert 6 traditional dungeons into the game, there would still be crying and moaning. We new exactly the style of game they were going to make well well in advance and then got to see the nintendo direct and then now a year after the game launches and people have had a year to play it and move on with their lives they are still complaining about it. Disappear. Byeeee
First of all - the best selling console of all time is PS2. Secondly, no one is asking for a game on rails. Third, no on is saying the themes of TotK contradict old games, they're saying they aren't good. And yeah, people may have made hour long videos about the Zonai but back in BotW times they were believed to be a barbarian race, not a race of heavenly goat people. This isn't complaining, it's comparing.
Why are nu-Zelda fans like this??
@@pitshoster401 🤷♂
this isn't a jab at anyone who doesn't like the games but did people just forget the zelda cycle?
I don't think that's a valid argument, it's just like saying the old games are only good because of nostalgia. Every Zelda game that's come out in my lifetime that I've played, I've loved. And when I replay them, they still hold up for me. TotK was legitimately the first Zelda game I've played that disappointed me.
Yeah I know what you’re going to say aka the cycle of the formula that got tiring with OOT and onwards right? but that’s the thing with the old formula everyone was able to enjoy differently aspects of the old formula the whole fan base
Zelda 1
Zelda 2
Link to the past
Links awakening
OOT
MM
Wind Waker
PHG
ST
OOX games
FS
FSA
Twilight princess
Skyward Sword
ALBW
All these games magical for many of the fan bases different taste and actually for the most part stuck with lore continuity which I love
And as a example of the biggest continuity
ADULT blue 🌊 flood Zelda wisdom
Child green 🌳 prosperity link courage
Downfall red 🔥 power ganon decline
This really can’t be said for BOTW with TEARs at all ugh 😑
@@thatjrpganimefanplayerjusi8003 don't think it got tiring.
The Zelda cycle is a meme. It isn't real.
yeah... but they were still really fun to play through. And i honestly think that's all that should matter.
Hm maybe - although for me at least, the longer I played, the less fun it was.
I've been playing Zelda games since 1992 and the Wild games feel more like Zelda than any others.
That's a paradoxical statement. Isn't "Zelda" defined by the majority of the series? How can two games feel more like Zelda than the vast majority of Zelda games?
I've been playing Zelda for almost as long and I feel almost completely the opposite.
Same and completely agree
@@hist150project5 You've made an assumption that "Zelda" is defined by the majority of games. Why?
I say "Zelda" is defined by a sense of exploration paired with wonder while you get stronger in the process of driving evil from the world. Y'know... the feeling Miyamoto got from exploring the forest as a child, which inspired him to make the first game. Things headed in a more linear direction due to hardware limitations while also taking on a design philosophy of their own. BotW's entire concept was inspired by looking back at the original LoZ and bringing it into the 2010's.
@@BoojieD yeah no. Zelda is a game. Zelda is its gameplay. And the botw series of games are the farthest from what the original zelda was. Zelda 1 had item progressions. Dungeons (most of which you can only do in a certain order. ) a link to the past was the same. Oot was the same. Mm was the same. Ww was the same. That's what zelda was and has always been. Zelda is "defined" by its gameplay. Item progression. Dungeons. Yk what makes it zelda. Not the sense of wonder you feel when you find the 87th shrine.
"memories and npcs don't connect to the first game"
you really put bolson while saying that? the whole reason to why bolson is on lurelin village is implied in botw, as he says that he's gonna search for a partner after seeing hudson getting married and lurelin village is precisely a touristic place because of the heart shaped lake where it is said that you'll find your true love, there's a ton of npcs which just directly continue their own story from botw and it almost feels like majora's mask level of detail for npcs, at the point where they really advanced from botw and yes i totally understand that is kind of annoying that story npcs don't seem to fully recognize you, but that's exclusive to story related characters and most of them just recognize you easily and it actually makes sense having in mind that due to ingame events they though link and zelda died on the castle
on other point, there's many clothes that actually change stuff outside of the zora outfit, like making you inmune to elements or directly manipulating those elements to attack, increasing your stamina capacity, making you undetectable for enemies or even making them think you're one monster, clothing like these has been a staple in many og zelda games and really unlocking clothes through missions just reminded me to getting masks in majora, of course many of the important ones coming from past games are in the dephts but some of them (not all) are interesting to find and the implications of their sole existance its a complete mystery
now, have you tried to do any of these games temples without abusing the phisics?, totk temples specially give past zelda vibes and divine beasts heavily rely around spesific sheikah runes as much as past dungeons do with their own item and by the way, dungeons that revolve around a spesific area aren't something new to zelda games, infact they actually became a staple with the 3d ones because of the freedom and slightly affected 2d games like minish cap,
the shrines are something that exist because of the switch design, the console is hybrid, shrines are made to be bitesize temples with a piece of heart as a reward, this very same thing happened with mario oddesey since there are almost a thousand moons and they were designed to have easy ones and hard ones because precisely of the switch being hybrid so you can play short sesions and still make progress or simply it helps for people that isn't exactly a "pro gamer"
and now, the "hero's journey" does exist and you have too many reasons to have a journey starting from the fact that even if you try to fight the final boss since the start, you'll more than probably die, the sole path to reach ganon is almost imposible to beat if you're starting your savefile and on top of that, the game world is designed to make you end up in lookout landing since its directly infront of the castle, thus starting your concept of hero journey, meanwhile botw literally traps you in the great plateu where your "hero journe" starts with the king of hyrule giving you instructions
at the end these games do are different to the past games but the biggest difference its on the fact that it gives you options, many points of your argument on what is a zelda do are on these games but they are optional
I don't buy the shrine argument, as there are many 2D games for handheld systems that came out at a time when battery life would barely allow you to play long and even those games have full dungeons. Shrines aren't there because they offer small play time options, they are there because 150 of them can be spread across the map, which entices you to explore every nook and cranny for them.
Yes, these games are different to the past games because they give you options - the irony is that in doing so, the most efficient options are often what are used to solve the puzzle. In this way, too many ways of solving a puzzle ends up working against the idea of unlimited restriction because when you have to do 150 shrines, you end up solving them the same. "Have you tried to do any of these games temple without abusing the phisics [sic]?" Why shouldn't I abuse the physics? That's an option the developers gave me, isn't it? Are you implying the temples would have been better with restrictions?
Some people may find the mechanics inherently fun and therefore find puzzle solving in constantly new and iterative ways with the same tools appealing. But I don't.
@LittleBeanGreen 1, no, that's the purpose of the koroks. Shrines work as the heart pieces in past games, which didn't necessarily be the only thing to seek as other games had other smaller collectibles to reinforce the exploration
2. You're perfectly able to solve the puzzles however you want but the game constantly invites you to have creative ideas for solving each puzzle but if you're in a hurry and need or don't want to finish the puzzle the "intended way" you can still get over it by Amy other means, it's designed to prevent someone from frustrating and stopping doing the shrine or directly stop playing;
The line "have you tried to finish any of the temples without abusing the phisics" was to let you know that the design of each temple still has the soul of past games but as with the shrines, they are designed to not frustrate you, you can play the temples as a zelda fan who wanted past temples back and you'll have a great experience or you can either play it using everything around you to solve them easily
That last line is just what replaying a game is about, finding new paths to finish the same puzzle even if you have the same equipment, looking at how the game interacts with differently depending on your knowledge of the game, did you know that in oot you can go to gerudo training grounds before the water temple and freeze the spike enemies in the room leading to morpha?, or that in oot itself you can do the temples in almost any order you want, being the only blocked one the shadow temple, requiring that you have beated, the water, fire and forest temple to enter, even if we add glitches into the convo, did you knew that king dodongo interacts with the boomerang?
Replaying a game is not only because you want to experience the same again. Replaying a game is entering that world again to interact with it in many special ways, which you can even see differently depending on your own experience with it, and that's tloz main essence, exploring an alive world filled with thousands of interesting interactions, puzzles and meeting charismatic characters with captivating stories
@@zeromontalvan1514 I agree with your last paragraph, but I don't think Tears of the Kingdom does that.
@@LittleBeanGreen in totk the whole map is a puzzle to traverse, the npcs have unique stories that even connect and develop from botw, not all of them are that much charismatic or have a dramatic story comparable to a movie, but all of them really feel in universe and help the game more alive, being the secondary quests the ones that mostly have those interesting stories like i mentioned with bolson, who between games traveled around necluda seeking for his true love, but it didn't found anyone even in the heart shaped pound, but he decided to live in lurelin village which later he helped to repair after the monster invasion
at the end we have different points of view and videogames are mostly a subjective medium due to their interactive experience, but i think we both agree the legend of zelda is a master piece in many aspects
@@zeromontalvan1514 I disagree with this. The map is not a puzzle - it's little pieces of candy arranged to string you along, the world doesn't feel alive because it hasn't been taking seriously. Zelda is a masterpiece of gameplay, and in other titles it is a masterful piece of art, both gameplay and story. But not in Tears of the Kingdom.
I respectfully disagree with your points.
What I like of this video is that you don't take more than an hour to say that you didn't like these games. Thank you!
Hey that's why we post the video - to see how others think about the things we like/dislike. I try to keep it short for my own sanity as much as yours 😅
I agree with you but I still prefer this new open air format for the series onward
I’m more interested in Zelda team refining this new formula which promotes exploration at the cost of storytelling. But I believe they can improve this new formula a lot more and strike a better balance between traditional and open air.
Many open world games already have amazing narrative within an open world,it’s just Zelda team that felt afraid to change the botw formula in its sequel.
I hope Zelda team tries new approaches to an open world and don’t entirely repeat botw in the next game.
It’s understandable a sequel is too similar but the next game they have no excuses to do memories again
They are fully capable. Hopefully moving on from this Hyrule helps spark some of that.
They were what Zelda was always meant to be
Potentially but that original Zelda also seemed pretty intent on having a series of dungeons that restricted you in ways the overworld didn't...
@@LittleBeanGreenthe latest Zelda games?
@@ivancastro365 No - I'm saying the dungeons and overworld of the original - which couldn't be all it could because of technical limitations - if extrapolated to today, do not equal botw and totk, at least from the dungeon side.
So you're telling me that Zelda was always meant to be a cooking, crafting, climbing, and vehicle building simulator? I think not.
@@hist150project5 yes
My first Zelda wasn’t one of the Wild era games. It was A Link Between Worlds, which I love, and Ocarina of Time 3D, which I’m mixed on. Between Ocarina of Time and the other classic Zeldas I’ve played on NSO like Minish Cap and Majora’s Mask, I have to say that I just don’t really enjoy “traditional Zelda”. No matter which game it is I never feel motivated enough to keep playing, each dungeon feels like a chore, and when there’s so little to do outside of dungeons I find it difficult to have any fun. Funnily enough, the only older Zelda I truly enjoyed was the NES game, which is closest to the Wild era games in structure. I feel like the change in structure to a more open-ended style was a great choice. They’re not perfect, but BotW and TotK are some of the most fun and most impressive games I’ve ever played.
How do you feel about the labyrinths in that original Zelda game?
Absolutely based comment.
"Traditional" zelda isnt traditional, it was a radical change to the series brought on by the limitations and strengths of the hardware.
"Traditional" zelda starts at oot because ootpeople were either not playing games during the true traditional era, or they, unlike you and I, never played the originals -presumably because they considered them lesser.
@@LittleBeanGreenyou're gonna pull a muscle if you keep trying to stretch so far.
There is nothing you can say to someone who knows the truth that will convince them of a lie.
Botw is LoZ if it were made today, and Totk is what LoZ was always meant to become. Thats the truth of it, if you want to play oot again, theres plenty of options.
You can also play darksiders, tunic, or any number of games that just mimick the nuZelda formula.
@@LittleBeanGreen They’re obviously pretty basic, and it was relatively easy to get lost or stuck, but it didn’t bother me too much because I had a backup option of going back to the overworld to find more items so I’m more prepared. Also being able to do them in different orders is always nice. Games like Ocarina of Time don’t have this, because there are no options outside of just banging your head against the wall until you figure out what the game wants you to do.
I'd argue "traditional" Zelda starts with ALttP - OoT just deployed it successfully into 3D. I'd also argue Zelda 2 was a more radical change to the original zelda than ALttP was. I also think the limitations of the hardware are what made the overworlds of the later games so barren. What BotW and TotK did was make those overworlds interesting, but at the price of the other gameplay element of the original.
Well it‘s Zelda.
expertly argued.
@@LittleBeanGreenI agree😎
Thats weird, because it seems like all the people who played the games you all pretend dont exist find them to be the very same games they all expected before oot ruined it with fetchquests and shoot-eye-for-key "puzzles"
Uh, have you even played the games before OoT? Zelda has always had fetchquests and shooting eye puzzles. ALttP and LA in particular play just like OoT but in 2D.
You don't know what you're talking about
what.
@@hist150project5 So you forgot LoZ and AoL then?
Convenient. Its funny you were careful to omit them.
@@pitshoster401 Okay ootbaby.
I think the past Zelda’s don’t feel like Zelda besides the first one. This IS Zelda just like the first one.
No it isnt. The first zelda wa limited by item progression. You could not go into any dungeon out of order except for 2. You needed to get a raft item from a dungeon to cross the lake. You needed the bow and arrow to beat certain bosses. You needed a candle to see in the dark. You were limited in many many many many ways. You could go all over the map sure. But what you could do is limited. They took one tiny aspect of zelda 1. The most zelda zelda is a lttp. It blends everything
I also think the first Zelda had quite a heavy emphasis on dungeons.
BotW/TotK are NOTHING like the first Zelda. In fact, I'd argue that even ALttP and OoT are far closer to Zelda 1 than this.
Cooking and building simulator is just like Zelda 1 😂
@@femboycutieUwU Yeah right hahaha
20 million copies bruh
Refer to video where I say "to great financial success."
Because those kids see a "cool open" world brainless game and go to their mommies to buy a literal piece of shit for €60
@@omorifan6011 I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'a literal piece of shit' but it definitely left something to be desired.
@@LittleBeanGreen oh yeah, I, just tend to get VERY carried away when discussing those games. I'm sorry if I might have come off as rude
@@omorifan6011 Ain't no thang!
I played versions on SNES, and both N64 games. The new wild zeldas blow the past out of the water. Nostalgia fanboys can cry all they want, it's just a fact.
To each their own I guess.
That's just a brain dead take from a 12 year old
yeah lets not even mention wind waker or twilight princess