Also he doesn't understand that freedom does not equal variety, and variety is what we want. I still think the masks were more fun than any other ability in the other games.
BotW and TotK has the absolute worst enemy variety I have ever seen in a modern AAA game. So this hits home. That was a major disappointment for me in both games.
Which has become so obvious with TotK. People complained about BotW being "empty" but what Aonuma took from that is that they needed to just add more stuff. Not better, more diverse stuff, just more stuff. More shrines, more koroks, an entire second map that's also filled with more repetitive content. It's as if he thinks being able to do everything in any order somehow makes up for it being lackluster. I'd much rather have 6 or 7 fully fleshed out dungeons that have to be completed in a specific order than 150 tiny shrines I can tackle at any time.
@@BryanOrion-m5i Thats a stretch, its bad but the worst out of any AAA game is a huge stretch. Lynels and gleokks are still extremely fun to fight, but the other enemies sure. Bokoblins have really good AI but I don't understand why its just those enemies
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Those are literally the only 2 enemies in the game that present some kind of challenge. 2 ENEMIES. Dude for a game this size, that is absolutely atrocious. Look at the enemy variety in FF7 Rebirth that just came out. It has hundreds of completely unique enemies with completely unique movesets. Look at Elden Ring. Look at God of War...those games have HUNDREDS of enemy types. 95% of combat is against 3 enemy types - bokoblins, moblins, and lizalfos...which is exactly the same as BotW...ridiculous.
@@BryanOrion-m5i I agree when you compare it with botw, it’s very unimpressive. I think for botw part of it is made up for the fact that the enemy ai is extremely well done to the point where it somewhat replaced having more enemy types Also I don’t really agree with elden ring. A lot of enemies do get reused and despite having a lot of variety at tines, the enemies still don’t feel like something I would want to fight since they don’t have anything particularly interesting going for them
Having played the original Zelda from the NES... BotW is nothing like it. I'm tired of that argument. Sure, you can go to areas early, but you still need to find dungeon items to reach new areas, you need to complete all the dungeons to beat the game, dungeons EXIST, weapons don't F-ing BREAK, no stamina, hearts are found in the world, and the most egregious fault that BotW did... Original Zelda you start with the GREEN TUNIC... Why can't I play Zelda through from start to finish with that iconic green tunic. It's the only game series that let's me wear it. I like that outfit. It's cool, unique, and is more than just clothes, it's a uniform. I'm fine with being able to change my clothes to something else, but why not give me the option if I desire it? Why make it available only after finishing every shrine!?... ugh.
Why is this so difficult? This debate has the EASIEST solution. Just reduce the number of shrines from like 150 (INSANE btw) to like 75. Use that dev time to build mid-size, traditional dungeons (complete with unique theme, small keys, puzzles, maps, unique item, and unique boss), and hide those well throughout the world in the caves and underground. That's literally it. Those medium trad dungeons will make every single traditional fan happy. Everything else can stay the same including the open world freedom aspect.
I fully agree. I Disliked the dungeons in TotK even more than the divine beasts, but the Shrines were excelent this time. They could have made the dungeons big multi leayered shrines, with the same climbing/ascend limitations.
@@BaldorfBreakdownsbotw I agree(although it does have less good songs than other Zelda’s) but totk best songs are remixes or new themes that have tons of bits and pieces of old songs, there’s not a lot of good and original music in totk
As someone who has ACTUALLY played Zelda 1 I can assure you, the people saying BotW is the true sequel to it, are yapping, yapping like little kids regurgitating some shit on the playground. It is completely false, the game is so obviously the foundation for A Link to the Past and what followed that you are ignorant and wrong for suggesting otherwise.
Yep. The groundwork for alttp was there from the beginning. 8 dungeons with an intended order, item based progression, semi-open design with areas blocked off via difficulty. All of it theree in a very rudimentary form. People who say that as funny as it is to say are regurgitating propaganda given to them by Nintendo. I'm very cynical and think it's just cashing in on modern open world crap because it makes money.
Couldn't agree more. "a feeling of pleasure and sometimes slight sadness at the same time as you think about things that happened in the past" -Cambridge Dictionary. The feeling of pleasure comes from the game. You couldn't feel pleasure for it unless that memory was happy. Most of the time, happy memories are formed by moments where you are happy recalled. You couldn't have been happy in the first place if the game didn't do that for you. Most people are of the opinion that the vast majority of Zelda games are pretty good, so the happiness is usually made from enjoyment. Nostalgia may play a part in revisiting an old game, but it couldn't be nostalgia if you didn't have some joy when playing the first time.
Is not only Nostalgia. Is also the fact that we traditional Zelda fans are mostly not "young" adults anymore with less time to play VideoGames , so many of us prefer a linear, shorter, tight designed games than an Open World +100 hour game. I just played the gameboy color Zelda Games and it was great, specially because I could finished them in less than 10 hours.
I never played Zelda as a child, so there’s no nostalgia factor for me. But, I played Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, BOTW, and Ocarina of Time in my early twenties, and BOTW was the least memorable. BOTW feels open, empty, and confused; it takes way too long to get from one main mission objective to the next due to the ridiculous distances to traverse without reliable transportation like the dragon boat in Wind Waker (horses can’t climb up various cliffs in BOTW).
Yeah just like games where you play as Peach. Still doesn't discredit what I said. I don't think anyone realistically expected a mainline title to be about Zelda but to say that nobody seriously wanted this is silly
As I've gotten older and revisited my favorite Zelda games over and over again, the idea that Aonuma doesn't understand what made the old ones good gets more and more believable. Like so many forms of art, not _every_ little thing is deliberate or under the author's control, and perfect storms of happy accidents can lead to lightning in a bottle. George Lucas retroactively editing the original Star Wars films comes to mind.
You don't accidently get lighting in a bottle multiple times in a row for 30 years. Also more people then just Aunouma make these games and I'm gonna use your Star Wars example, the later edits feel wrong because George didn't edit those movies originally, his ex wife did. He didn't edit them, she did, she literally save A New Hope in the editing room becauee George's cut was awful. It's not a bunch of happy accidents that doesn't happen for a solid 20 years straight, it's a collaborative effort between a group of people with their own strengths and weaknesses they bring to the project. The people working on Zelda now are not the same ones who started 30 years ago. The new director came from Capcom, he made the old Oracle games. These are new people, with new ideas, and new thoughts on what Zelda is and can be.
@@aureateseigneur5317 You're assuming I believe that all old-form Zeldas are total bangers (I don't). They all had their charms, but by my tastes there was a continual decline after Ocarina, until a nadir with Skyward Sword. That game was so hated that it forced them to make nu-Zelda. I don't understand your point about George's wife, because it's in line with my point. Lucas wanted to make Star Wars a lot goofier than his editors let him, and we saw that maligned goofiness with the prequel trilogy where no one could stop him. Likewise, Aonuma came up with the Wind Waker art style, which he knew Miyamoto wouldn't like, and had to be forced to make Twilight Princess. Only to bring it back with SS and then BotW. You may like the cartoony style and more childish executions, but sales figures up until BotW support my position. What I realized is that the N64 and older Zeldas felt more immersive because the technology wasn't good enough to distinguish between "realistic" (for the time) and cartoony. Likewise, the lower quality allowed them to get away with more mature content without raising the "E" rating. (Content they had to edit out of the remakes). That more than anything, is what I mean by "lightning in a bottle." Though it would be more appropriate to say "external circumstances beyond the authors' intentional creative control." Speaking of remakes, that's another good comparison to George Lucas. The Majora's Mask remake butchered the bosses, zora swimming, and ice arrows. *No one* asked for that, and those were *unique* features of MM. Why on earth would you remove some of the most unique and memorable aspects of a thing when remaking it? You would if you had no understanding of why people liked the original, unable to differentiate between killing the soul of the source and a QoL fix. If they were keyed-in to the fan base, they'd know, "Navi is annoying and unnecessarily explains things" was a big meme in the community for *years* . Then _why on earth_ would they create Fi, who's easily 10x worse?! BotW was a breath of fresh air because it fixed everything SS got wrong, but at the cost of creating different problems. That was acceptable given the circumstances, and allowed people the hope that Tears could fix _all_ the problems and come out _the_ superior game. It didn't. The whole thing reminds me of how Niantic seriously fumbled Pokémon Go, and then instead of improving that game, Gamefreak made the source franchise worse by incorporating its stupid mechanics into Let's Go.
At least George Lucas intended for Star Wars to have good political commentary, it was supposed to be an allegory for U.S. imperialism and things like the Vietnam war.
I've been playing Zelda since day one, and i don't know wtf some of these others are on about arguing over the term "Classic Zelda". Regardless of the term, since LoZ 1, you had to complete all the dungeons before you could go to the final one. The order of dungeons wasn't as defined in some of the earlier games as the later ones, but still you had to complete them! Not to mention the fact that the dungeons had interesting designs and puzzles you have to think through, and solve. In the Wild games, all too often the path of least resistance to a puzzles solution is to avoid or circumvent the puzzle all together. Even since LoZ 1, there was the idea of new items opening up secrets or accesing new area of the world. Things like the Candle, Power Bracelet, Step Ladder and others. You find them throughout the game and there is a sence of progression and increasing your capabilities. Unlike the Wild games, where your capabilities are pretty much flat after the tutorial. The Wild games definitely take inspiration from LoZ 1 by taking away alot of the handholding that had built up over time and culmunating in Skyward Sword. It's that spirit of exploration and just letting you go off into the world from the start. But they have also seem to have forgotten something in the process. There really is a middle ground here for a stellar Zelda style. But it's some of the recent Zelda team statements that's got me worried.
THANK YOU! I've been screaming this from the rooftops. Botw fans love to say it's like zelda 1 and have never even played zelda 1 let alone any zelda pre botw
The most frustrating part about modern Zelda is that there already is a game in the series that blended open world exploration and linear progression. It was called Wind Waker and it was awesome. Unlocking the Skull Hammer, Bombs, Boomerang, etc. felt great because as you found stronger items, the more of the map was available. However, because of the sailing mechanic you could get to those places where you needed late game items to unlock more of an island, so you built anticipation as you unlocked more items. It had a great blend of open world and restrictive puzzle solving, which is a formula I think would fit well with a Breath of the Wild style physics based puzzle game if taken enough time and care to craft the world and its puzzles. Heck, it's not like the Breath of the Wild format is bad in of itself. I like the idea of having open ended solutions to traversing the overworld, something that Breath of the Wild for the most part succeeded with. There were a couple of mechanics that could break the game's traversal system, but they weren't directly obvious and not always easy to pull off. You still felt like you had some sense of progression thanks to the upgraded Stamina bar, armour with environmental resistances, and unlocking fast travel to easier move around the giant map. Still, having new items to unlock later into the game would do a lot to add worthwhile rewards that would be more exciting to find and explore. The massive problem with the new format did not show its ugly head until Tears of the Kingdom where the game completely breaks down thanks to building mechanics that trumps all other mechanics by being very easy and cheap to pull off. The hover bike alone breaks the gameplay loop that Breath of the Wild established by being so powerful that everything can be accessed at all times for a very small cost of resources. Cheap mechanics like rocket shields break the vast majority of puzzles while other more costly mechanics like throwing pinecones into fires for updraft are removed. It's bizarre. The game is also trying to restrict you in the most random places while being completely unrestricted in others. The fact that a lot of Zonai devices break much faster than others makes the hover bike completely busted when it is better than using wings despite the latter being specifically designed for traversing the sky. The battery is also too restrictive and time consuming to grind more charges for, so any cool device you would want to build beyond the most basic stuff is never going to come into play until several hours into the game. However, by that point you are basically already done with the game, so for you to actually have fun with the system you must spend much more time grinding the Depths than actually playing the main content. Most people won't do that and instead rely on the cheaper methods that already are powerful enough to get you anywhere you want, thus removing any sense of meaningful character progression. The new systems are supposed to provide freedom to experiment, but in reality they do the exact opposite unless you deliberately go out of your way to do repetitive grinds just to have a chance to make something cool. They also completely undermine character progression by making you basically a god, especially since there is very little stuff in the end game that provide any substantial boost in power that make you feel properly rewarded for your efforts. The old Zelda formula worked because the rewards felt rewarding and gave you meaningful character progression while also having excellent puzzle designs with a story that made you feel invested. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom would be much better games if they embraced some of that old formula like Wind Waker did. The best content in the new Zelda games was the stuff that provided restrictions. The Lightning Temple while too short is the closest that the new games have come to recapturing that old Zelda magic. I want more quality gameplay like that and less quantity. Sadly Tears of the Kingdom decided to fall into the latter category with the Depths and having more Shrines and Koroks than its predecessor. If this is how mainline Zelda games are going to be going forth I will be having a hard time to call myself a Zelda fan. If I wanted to play a grindy, repetitive game I would just go back and play MMOs again.
im not even gonna sugar coat i did not read everything but wind wakers open world was just empty sea. all they gotta do is slap the old zelda formula and progression onto the new games and we have a masterpiece, aint that difficult
Zelda 1 is a metroidvania just like traditional zelda. It has new items in every dungeon, some required to reach other dungeons. Full music everywhere you roam. An upgradable unbreakable sword. REWARDING sidequests. A story you couldn’t just skip if you wanted to, and a true order that progressively got harder even if you could do most out of order
@@ellagage1256 sidequest 1: you gather heart pieces to get the white and magic sword. Sidequest 2: you find the magic rings to upgrade your defense. Sidequest 3: you find the medicine recipe to unlock potion shops. Sidequest 4: you save up enough rupees to get the game changing bow. Nes zelda had sidequests which were revolutionary for the time period.
@@ellagage1256 it’s side content that involves a chain of tasks that end with a reward. They are sidequests, merely primitive ones, but again, revolutionary for their age.
@@ellagage1256 ok, so this isn’t a sidequest but collecting 30 rushrooms for a pointless ingredient is? Stopping a sign from falling over multiple times is?
@@ellagage1256 a ring and sword that doubles your attack and defense, a permanent long ranged weapon, and easy access to potions is far more rewarding than a food ingredient that you can collect everywhere or another disposable weapon
@@ellagage1256 in zelda 1 you have 2 sword upgrades, an armor upgrade, ulockable infinite supply of potions, discoverable fast travel, heart pieces that you can find in multiple ways, and secret shops with unique items. Keep in mind that this was a 1980’s nes game. Botw has spirit orbs ( which are all locked behind the same shrines) And korok seeds( which are all behind the same handful of barely puzzles) And armor, most of which you buy. Almost every treasure chest contains expendable weapons that don’t matter, or ingredients that are irrelevant thanks to heart ingredients. Botw is a modern console game and somehow has less variety, and less rewards than a 1980’s nes game.
Having more restrictions / limited choices can sometimes make for a more interesting, creative, engaging, and resourceful experience. If you give too many options, you might either get bored or overwhelmed.
Also has BoTW and ToTK sold becouse they were insanely good or becouse of the proliferation of video games and video games consoles? There are more people into video games and have the accessibility to consoles than there ever was during the N64 days, it was still a niche thing back then. These new games could sell more but it doesn’t mean they are better than the previous ones
Skyrim still beats BOTW and TOTK as open world. The game gives you total freedom, several storylines, you can go to any dungeon, but the main story won't kick in if you do not complete all the requirements you need. It is a free world with a linear story, and once you reach the end of such story, you still have so much to do. Like joining the Imperials against the Stormcloaks.
The thing about TotK's dungeons iterating on the Divine Beasts is that they kind of left in the least interesting thing about the DBs (the open structure and lack of linearity), and removed what made them actually unique (being able to manipulate the dungeon itself). TotK's dungeons have higher highs but lower lows than BotW's.
Developing Majora's Mask basically traumatized him, it's totally understandable why he wouldn't understand the greatness of it considering the conditions in which it was made, and he's totally valid for that, everyone would've felt the same way in his place
Aonuma basically said all his prior work is garbage with that nostalgia comment. He surely doesn't really believe that he just wanted to be an insulting $@%#.
The craziest thing to me is that BotW was a response to the other formula stagnating and going too far in one direction, and in that regard TotK has to be the most uninspired game in the entire series. It's simply too open to the point where the new formula has ALREADY stagnated. It treads the exact same ground as BotW, both in design philosophy, and in LITERALLY THE SAME GROUND.
This feels like classic Nintendo designer gaslighting. Like, their mind is made up and they aren’t going back, for whatever reason. But rather than just say that that, and why, they’d rather act with this misdirection so as to make it seem like we’re coming to the same conclusions they are, which is complete insanity.
The first Zelda is a combat focused game with a lot of longform dungeons and it has good enemy variety. It feels nothing like open air Zelda in terms of gameplay. The only similarity is that the map is open from the start and that the games are non linear.
but that point that he made that zelda can't have a hero's journey.. why? he brought up that a hero's journey needs a princess, but that's.. not what Hero's Journey is. you can easily have a playable zelda who goes on her own Hero's Journey.
if only the new free and open _Zelda_ games wouldn’t give you every ability at the very beginning of the game… you’d still have the freedom to explore the world, but the game would control when or how we get the tools to exploit that freedom, and with each upgrade it allows the player to dig deeper into the world and get more and more out of that “freedom.”
@@TheRealNintendoKid - freedom doesn’t mean given all the stuff at the beginning… maybe you’re free to climb a mountain, but at the beginning of the game you can only climb on foot, but by the end you have three or options for getting to the top of that same mountain?
It's crazy that Elden Ring solved this problem (by giving the player the freedom to go anywhere but structuring the world in a more linear way so players will most likely go through the game in the intended order), and then TotK learnt nothing from it or BotW.
@@marchmelloow - well by the time _Elden Ring_ came out _TOTK_ was probably almost finished… but that wouldn’t learn anything from the criticisms of _BOTW,_ at least with regards to story and structure, is disappointing.
@@marchmelloow Yes it did, TOTK nudges you in specific directions far far harder then BOTW ever did, they just do it through diologue and quest giving where as Elden Ring structures it's world in specific ways instead, tho you can still very easily wander in Caelid without much effort.
That’s because its a very top heavy game that promises much but delivers little so people like me were overwhelmed by the first impression of the vast ocean of content before we realized it was as shallow as a ubisoft puddle
@@firenze6478 I'm glad a lot more people are starting to see this and be more vocal about it. I stood in line in the cold outside of Best Buy for hours to get my hands on a Switch and Breath of the Wild and after 80 hours was so let down with what I got. The switch was a hardware failure and a piece of junk and any time I tried to voice my opinions on how bad the game was, I was barraged with insults and told I was crazy and had no clue what I was talking about and people tried to invalidate my opinions because of "nostalgia". It made me so sick that I officially sold all of my consoles and vowed to never give another cent to Nintendo and their disgusting business and game design practices as I saw the direction they were taking their mainline games and hardware. I don't care what comes out in the future, they lost a lot of life long fans of the games who were in diapers playing their older games, I was one of them.
Yeah, but, they also put out Dread not that long ago. Mario is still going strong with a mix of open and side scrolling games. Kirby has been doing Kirby's thing for a decade and only just broke the formula with Forgotten World. Frankly, I think Aonuma's just kinda talking out of his a** here. Or at least, he's only really talking about projects he is leading in particular. There's basically nothing saying that they can't be working on smaller titles like Link's Awakening or even brand new titles but under a different lead.
"Why would you want restrictions?" Because it's a game. A game is a series of restrictions called rules. You cannot do X, you can do B. Solve the puzzles with those rules in mind.
Games themselves aren't defined by restrictions, on a game specifically so just saying a sweeping "Games have restrictions" is enherently false as Games have whatever freedoms and restrictions the rules makers and then layer the player wish to impose on the game.
@@aureateseigneur5317 I do not understand this. A game by definition will always have restriction, things you just cannot do. Nothing about the statement "Games have restrictions" is false.
@@aureateseigneur5317 Dude, you have to dribble the basketball. you cannot pick it up, that's the restriction that makes basketball different from football.
@@aureateseigneur5317 Bro what are you talking about? All games have rules and restrictions. Try playing a game of soccer without a closed field, it would not be fun.
I really wanted to love totk. If it had an adventure where the atcual events took place like skyward sword, i would have loved the game even more but i hate the memories. And the barren land that is hyrule
Exactly. I was scared for the botw sequel when I played Elden ring. I really doubted they could top it. And not only did they not top it, they seemed to have regressed. Elden Ring is just so much better. How did they now copy the horse mechanics???
@@Bearlytherely It's crazy how Miyazaki got inspiration from Zelda, and now Elden Ring was a better open world than modern Zelda. It's crazy. I actually had hope for TotK, since they could take inspiration from Elden Ring to better their open world, but then they just made BotW 1.5
Openworld exploration is way more better in totk. There are way more variety. The focus of elden ring is combat and once you hit Altus, you essentially see everything game offers you. On the other hand Elden Ring dungeons are much better.
@@hododod246 There are a lot of places to "explore" in totk and botw, but they are ultimately empty and void of any reason other than another shrine or a weapon that breaks in seconds. There needs to be tangible rewards for exploration and there are none in these past two open world Zeldas. In Elden Ring there are weapons and abilities, and most importantly LORE to uncover when exploring.
@@SolidLoach Nobody cares item descriptions. People who care Souls lore go and watch souls lore channels because fromsoft is terrible in terms of story telling. People don't read item description. RUclips channels read that stuff to make content. In terms of weapons most people pick one weapon they comfortable and play entire game with it, so most of the weapons are useless. If you are playing without summons spirits are useless. If you are playing with summons, 3-4 spirits are usefull out of dozens of them. If you are not caster spells are useless. So most of the awards are useless in Elden Ring. Crafting mechanic is completely ignored by many players. For totk, shrines offer real gameplay. They have great puzzles. Even if they are one of those raru's blessing shrine, you get spirit orb. And spirit orbs are useful because they give you stamina and heart, end especially stamina directly impacts gameplay. Weapon reward is not useless because they are breaking. They are useful because they are breaking. Unlike Elden Ring, you cannot get comfortable with 1 weapon and play with it rest of the game. You need to circulate. And this makes weapon reward much more meaningful. On top of that weapon and shield fusions are utility. They are just not attacking. They protect you from weather, they can create wind, you can surf on them on snow they can create light source, they can break stones etc... Also weapons and shrines are not only rewards. There are Zonai devices, ability upgrades, rare materials, armours, build schemas, side quests etc... Most of the armours have direct gameplay impact. They give you actual abilities. In addition to that this is an open world game. Of course there are some empty areas. And open space is very important for this game because this game allows you to make military grade satellite and you need a space for it.
"2D Zelda is linear Zelda at its best." I can agree with that. I tend to gravitate more toward linear games in general, but especially 2D Zelda. I played the first one and just got exhausted with scrolling through seemingly random screens of trees and enemies to get to the fun parts of the game. When people talk about how BOTW is a 3D version of Zelda 1, they conveniently ignore how linear the dungeons were. I'm also not big on A Link Between Worlds for the same reason. The dungeons are intentionally non-linear, so they're very simple and surface level. You don't even have to figure your way around obstacles to find the dungeon item, cause you already have it right from the start. And it's the only item you need, so you just kind of spam it.
so, as one of those “gross” Zelda 1 people, the reason why many of those comments sound parroted, is that they kinda are. And I’m saying that as someone who agrees with it and has that opinion myself, but there IS a rehearsed portion of that for many people. A) cuz we’ve been saying the same thing since the friggin Wind Waker (which is already sorta that marriage of old and new… and it MOSTLY works. i mean, it is one of my top favorite Zelda games for a reason), but B.) Aonuma literally stated that they went “back to the drawing board” and made a program to test out things in BotW that was basically just Zelda 1 . there’s even clips of this program online (probably still on RUclips). this second point is where most of the “it’s like Zelda 1” really started for many younger fans. Now, i think i was probably one of the first people to mention how Botw felt like a return to Zelda 1 for me, so maybe that’s why it felt rehearsed? because this is the first time you’ve actually brought that position up… (and i must say, if you think Auonuma was dismissive of people’s feelings 🤨… jk… mostly) but seriously, if you’ve essentially been saying this same argument, that you’ve wanted a return to the NES/Snes Zelda feeling since Wind Waker came out, TWENTY TWO YEARS AGO, yeah, it’s gonna start sounding rehearsed. heck, even just 5 years ago with BotW- many us were saying this same thing to the people saying “oh, so they made Zelda a Ubisoft game”. we’ve been saying this the whole time, some of you just haven’t been listening (kinda like being dismissed as being “just nostalgic”) basically, hi, i’m a middle aged man here to tell you that your generation “wanting Zelda to return to it’s roots” already happened 20 years with Wind Waker. or rather, that game felt like the first “return to form” for many of us, which is part of the reason why at the time when Twilight Princess came out after that, despite being essentially Ocarina “but this time it plays better,” many were really disappointed. i mean shit dude, i was born in the early 80s, i literally been playing these games since i was a kid, this is not the first time fans felt “betrayed” by Nintendo. for instance, WW was Nintendo doing what it wanted, and before it came out, people were PISSED that the art style wasn’t realistic, but by the time TP came out to “please the fans” some years later, it felt dated and people felt like it was a step backwards. i could continue, but i have to go take care if my parents now (the wonders of middle age- first they wipe your butt, then you wipe theirs) Anyhoo, give it 15 years, and you’ll have young whippersnapers telling you that the arguments you’ve been spitting out for years that the younger kids ignore are “rehearsed” 🫠😉 edit1 (just like no one has been listening to me apparently yell at the clouds about how Elden Rig dlc was probably never planned and how people need to stop looking at how From operated before Miyazaki was president and look to their dlc decisions after that- i.e., no dlc as standard after 6 months. been saying that since the game came out, so i can pull that speech outta my rear at a moment’s notice.) so go back an play the first 3 Zeldas. one of them were perfectly open world, there was some linearity. but unlike WW, where that open map feeling was mostly a facade (sure you could go to the island, but you couldn’t do anything there until you had the items you needed) there was a lot of sequence breaking you could. Also. play Zelda 1 through twice. it essentially has ng+ where the dungeon layouts are all different and they are located in mixed up order on the over world map. that, or the dark world section of ALttP, where you could sequence break the hell out of everything, is what us old fuddy duddies want back, and have wanted back since Majora’s Mask (a timer in a Zelda game??. the controversy that stirred up!) edit 2: snarky old man in a cave gripes aside, i do want to reiterate that BotW is NOT a 1:1 recreation of Zelda, more like how many of us look back on the feeling playing Zelda as kids. in reality, you can’t just do everything you want in what ever order, but if you ever play the game without a guide, it gives you that similar feeling of just having your main goal being “Destroy Ganon” and just being thrown to the octoroks to figure it out. it IS actually a bit of nostalgia, and that really shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of. it is ok to be nostalgic, and i get it, the anger comes from Aonuma missing the point, but it does sound like some people treat nostalgia as a sort of “dirty word” nowadays. back on track, the point being, if you do go back and play the old games, there ARE linear elements. the argument was always more about returning that feeling of adventure that seemed to get stripped from the games the more they focused on the plot. (what From does really is quite hard it seems 😅)
Miyamoto said something along the lines of Breath of the Wild was the sort of game he saw in his head as he made Zelda 1, and I think that's where a lot of the parallels are drawn from. The problem that can happen with nostalgia (and I think the point Aonuma was trying to make), is that it can make you long for something that was never really there. It can get you stuck in a state of inertia, longing for an incomplete feeling you once had that can't ever be replicated, and that's a terrible place to be for a creative mind. Nothing can ever measure up to the idealized thing you've locked in your mind. Now where I agree is that Aonuma doesn't get what the "old guard" of Zelda fans are asking for, but I wonder if he's not WILLFULLY oblivious to it. They want a game that he has no interest in making. Whether for creative reasons (the quickest way to hate your job is do the same thing long enough), business reasons (let's be honest, the Zelda series in terms of sales WAS stagnating until BotW and TotK launched the franchise back into the stratosphere), or some combination of both... Aonuma and his team have no designs or intentions to go back to the style of Zelda games this "old guard" wants. The best you're going to get is some mild concessions like on the dungeons we got with TotK, and that's simply not good enough for the sake of the "old guard." They're getting left behind, and perhaps reasonably are pissed off about it.
Aonuma in my opinion, He shares his mind, he is very opinionated, he puts a lot of polite feeling into what he says but at the end he does think of the fans.
0:40 I agree that playable Zelda isn't really something we need. It would change the character of the story way too much. Among other things that are less easy to put into words, her character was always supposed to be a bit ethereal and transcendent. If you make her just the vehicle for gameplay, that is destroyed. But I still hope we get a female hero (or the option of it) one day. It does not affect the story in the slightest. It would only if some romance between Link and Zelda were an element (which it isn't. Also, of course I mean they'd be straight), or if the game were hyper-realistic or historical. But it's neither. Male Link is strong enough to throw large Gorons to the side without a power bracelet, so that means it's plausible if female Link can also do such feats.
I've never been in the "Zelda should be playable" camp (though she was my favorite character in AOC), but It I wouldn't be against her having a bigger presence in the newer style games going forward. BOTW/TOTK era Zelda games were 2/2 for having the most interesting part of the story happen in the past through cutscenes and having Zelda be offscreen for nearly the whole game outside of said cutscenes. I guess she was in the intro of TOTK as well as being the LD. She does important stuff in both games but I've really grown tired of the memory formula. Guess we'll see in 2030, I highly doubt it'll have changed to be honest.
I have no nostalgia BOTW was my first Zelda ( witch I beat ) and I dropped TOTK after a week, I found it to similar to the first game and switched to playing OOT 3ds for the first time witch I completed. Edit: Now playing LTTP.
I've got to say, the more time passes from TotK's release, the less impressed I am with it. This is a game I would have adored if it had come out one or two years after BotW, but now it feels like they have run a whole formula into the ground in just two games, and I want something different. I'm tired of the same stuff being copypasted over and over without rhyme or reason
Part of BotW being "classic" Zelda is probably partly cus of th promotion and marketing. While I'll always have a soft spot for Wind Waker but I definitely play the very 1st Zelds more often. Certainly held my attention more than TotK. Other than better dungeons, I think remove the player scaling and have zones with set difficulties. They could create a pseudo linear narrative, and it would enhance the exploration imho. They would probably have to rework the weapon breaking system for this tho. In BotW, if they had zone levels, it could make the guerrilla combat more viable outside the tutorial, and theres that hero/power fantasy of gaining more power over time instead of being the same relative power. Also looking morr closely at the very first game how certain design decisions impact the game. An example is how the 1st game is very open, but ut wasn't afraid to lock content behind other content, like to enter this dungeon you need a key item from another dungeon. And like what I said earlier, every area/screen was a set difficulty that didn't change.
I disagree they've been remaking alttp for 20 years. Oot itself was alttp 3D I don't even care for alttp but that's what oot is. It's also a good way to dismiss the dismissive "you just want oot again" argument.
Nintendo needs to hire Vanillaware to handle Oracle remakes. I can't help but imagine some almost water color kind of artstyle and Vanillaware is the master.
I've has some unnecessarily angry comments from people saying how TotK was an improvement on BotW in every way, shape and form, and I'm stupid for liking aspects of one game over the other, or vice versa. One guy ended a comment with "TotK is in every way an upgrade.", and I replied, yes, exactly, it feels more like an upgrade, or expansion, than a proper sequel. Also, remakes of the Oracles games similar to Link's Awakening? I've been hoping for such a thing for years. The same art style, or each with a slightly unique variation, doesn't matter.
Just because the current producer/man in charge is bored with traditional zelda, doesn't mean fans are. Especially life long fans. We love zelda games like OOT, MM, WW, TW, SS, MC, etc. BOTW was enjoyable, but TOTK was a disappointment. It was overrated in my opinion.
If fans are interested in traditional Zelda, they’ve clearly failed to prove it. SSHD, despite being fantastic, sold only 3 million copies on Switch. Same with Link’s Awakening, which only sold 6 million.
A)I wouldn't mind the idea of a playable Zelda, I do like it when the damsels aren't just frozen, dead, asleep or completely helpless, It's a lot more interesting that while she is still in need of rescue she still gets to do something to make it easier for the hero to rescue her when he arrives, that's thematically, gameplay wise she could be using some magical device/ability that's quite different from what Link gets in that game. B)It's a bit baffling to hear a game designer not understand that there are pros and cons to linear game design, some of the best and most influential games in gaming history were linear experiences, for example .. a well-paced more structured experience where the designer knows what you have at any given moment of the game can allow them to create more fine-tuned encounters and set-pieces that take into account everything you have seen and done up to that point.
I quite like stories where the one in distress is a capable warrior, and she doesn't need you to do all the work, she just needs you to open the door or bring her a sword so you can kick ass and make your escape together.
The Zelda series actually does a sufficient job at making Zelda an active dynamic character, she does so many cool things in the background of games and we never get to see it. The "mystery" of Zelda was honestly the only truly effective narrative beats of TOTK. and it requires us NOT seeing her ultimate fate. Letting the player discover it in multiple ways made it more impactful. And this story beat REQUIRES Zelda to be "benched' until the climax. But we learn almost immediately that shes brought to the past, and the devs have no care for what order you find tears in, or when you finally make it to the forest, or if you just go directly to The *REDACTED* and find the *REDACTED* there and put the details together. So from the period shes taken back to the end of that story is fair game to show us a LOT of content... but they... don't.. Getting to that climax required her to team up with a crew of sages who are BARELY characters. Before we knew about Zelda going to the past, a lot of people assumed that the "depths" section might be some survival horror segment with Zelda... Nintendo would never do that but the desire is deeper than "I want damsel to be better character" its "Already badass diplomat woman is doin shit and I want to be doing shit". So rather than just watching a 2 minute flashback where we only get a glimpse of the people and world shes exploring... LET US DO THAT SHIT. Playable Zelda is partially just the same concept as playable Vergil, cool character needs to be playable so I can do that cool shit. But its also just an acknowledgement of leaving potential on the floor, there are story and gameplay opportunities lost by implying Zelda and other side characters are doing shit but not letting us experience it. Not letting us play as Zelda in the past, not letting anyone outside of Rauru, Sophia, and Mineru be ACTUAL CHARACTERs like the Champions were... its more than a missed opportunity, its a disservice to the fans of BOTW, the same way that the constant "recontextualization" of every aspect of Hyrule's overworld is... L-like am I REALLY going to have to admit that Age of Calamity was a BETTER follow up to BOTW than TOTK? Thats where we're at now. Nintendo made a "direct sequel" that refuses to expand on or follow up on any of the world building set in the previous game, so now I have to praise a NONCANONICAL, FANSERVICE PILLED, ANIME BS, SPINOFF WARRIORS GAME as a more rewarding experience... Nothing that happens in AoC beats TOTK's EBST moments, but those best moments are few and far between and AoC is just letting us eat with back to back fun callbacks and character beats. There I fuckin said it. Even Ganon, you can say that TOTK Ganon is more impressive design wise than that Majora's Wrath knockoff from AoC... but they are BOTH surface level baddies.
I agree with a lot of what Arlo is saying, and part of me thinks Anouma may have been a bit annoyed by the question. As for Ratatoskr...wasn't he saying it was a "masterpiece" in his mostly negative review? Kind of a drastic change to go from that to saying "it's not that good". Honeymoon phase is a hell of a drug huh lol? That being said, I'd personally give TotK around an 8, good but not a 9-10 quality game. Hopefully they do find a balance between old and new. It can't be THAT hard for a team as talented as them.
There has to be a term for like an anti-honeymoon phase where after a certain point people are more likely to be negative to something that initially received widespread acclaim due to either contrarianism, thoughts of what could have been, or any other reason. Like, I *wish* tears of the kingdom was set in a different location, but I believe they did the best that could’ve been done to make the same location fresh. I also wish that we had gotten more linear set pieces and classic style dungeons, but the dungeons that we did get *are* better than botw even taking into consideration the criticism here. And they expanded on the idea of freedom with the combination system and new ways to get around the vast map that they expanded. In almost every way totk *is* a better botw, it succeeded in presumably every goal it sought to achieve so by all rights it should be seen as much of a masterpiece as the original if not more so. But it’s not. And I also haven’t beaten it yet.
@@maninblack3410 There's a degree in which it is VERY obvious that Tears of the Kingdom was a Breath of the Wild DLC that greatly expanded beyond the original scope to the point where it became its own game. That, in and of itself, makes any "objective" improvements less significant to the minds of the audience. Whether that is fair or not can be debated, but that's simply the breaks.
@@thomasknapp6434 but what does that matter? The additions absolutely were significant enough to warrant a sequel, if that’s what you’re arguing. In terms of both effort and pure amount of content they unquestioningly added more in this sequel than they added in majora’s mask from ocarina of time. In fact, if we lived in an alternate reality where the development of only Zelda was delayed in the games industry and everything else was the exact same, if oot was released on the switch in 2017 and mm was released in 2018 or 2019 the people in that universe would probably feel more strongly about mm being dlc than the people in our universe feel about totk. Silly as that analogy is, I think my point is that clearly totk took more man hours, used more new environments/art, and integrated more new mechanics (honestly, that’s debatable depending on how you view the mask system. Like they were simple changes compared to the complex fusion system, but they also greatly impacted the gameplay) but still has this stigma of feeling like dlc. It’s interesting.
People and their paradigm shifts. They are not generational improvements with little to no dissadvantages, Things are lost in paradigm shifts and things are never they same.
My sister and I love old zelda more but she preferred skyward sword while i loved majora's mask, but even I can say botw is better than its sequel i put hundreds of hours in botw yet i still haven't finished tears... seeing what the series producer says about nostalgia isn't true . I fell in love with this series because of majora's mask being my first real 3d zelda and lifted the veil on my eyes to retro games , so I went back despite bad graphics and low framerate . I recently played kings field and armored core 1 , Games that are older than I also I played age of empires 2 for the first time it was good and so was the sims 1 and 2 . I didn't grow up on these games especially the sims and animal crossing because as a kid I saw them and thought those games where for girls back when I was a child now I love life sims .
The irony is that we still have wildly successful franchises that are linear like Resident Evil. Because of this new directions, dungeons are far worse and items have what less diversity. (Dont tell me you don't miss the hookshot or gale boomerang)
So having played Zelda 1 a very long time ago before BotW was even revealed I can tell you that the notion that the new open world Zelda games are more classic or traditional Zelda than everything from AlttP to AlbW is only true in a strictly vibes kinda way. I didn't play Zelda 1 when it came out in 1986,. wasn't until they released it as part of Zelda Collector's Edition as part of a Gamecube bundle that I did but even by 2002 standards the game's world did feel huge in a way the 3D ones hadn't yet and you could TECHNICALLY go anywhere and do the dungeons in any order except that you needed the raft from one of the dungeons to access part of the map where 3 of them were and you had to do the last one last but the similarities end there. The basic gameplay loop in the first game was "find dungeon, complete dungeon", that was 90% of the game and there's actually less apart from that to be done in the over world than there is in any Zelda game apart from perhaps Zelda II which I can't say because that I never got very far in. The dungeons themselves were very much a more primitive version of what we know Zelda dungeons to be now and they were literally called Level - 1, Level -2 and so on so even thought you could walk into Level - 4 let's say without having done any of the previous dungeons the difficulty is meant to be harder than the first 3 and would be far more difficult to complete without having done some of the prior ones. Now, the finding the dungeon half of that core gameplay loop was a HUGE part of the game and something that did get phased out a lot as the games went on so the idea that there was something it lost along the way is true but BotW doesn't exactly bring that back. It's no great mystery where in this great wide world the Divine Beasts are, right at the start of the game if you look around on the great plateau you can see where they are clear as day and in TotK they basically tell you where they are. So mechanically it's not even close, Zelda 1's world worked more like and Easter Egg hunt than a Sandbox.
Honestly, before BoTW, mainline console Zelda games were becoming even more and more linear, Skyward Sword was AWFULLY linear. What people want is more distinctive dungeons, and I understand that, but that's not what we are talking here, Aonuma probably understand that people want a linear game.
What I find strange is that TotK feels far more linear than BotW to me. I feel like there is more of a push to do things in a specific order, more of a definitive path than BotW had. The placement of the glider alone really makes that seem intentional.
@BaldorfBreakdowns TOYK deffinitly pushes you in specific directions more then the BOTW did but it's still as free as BOTW ever was, I didn't find Auto Byild till after I beat Ganon because I forgot about the quest and went elsewhere. Also did the Spirit Temple completely put of order. Games as open as the previous one, it just nudges you harder then last time. You're fully free to ignore it tho.
Linear games are good if they aren’t a digital museum. In my opinion games rely too heavily on the open world aspect, which leaves the overall game bland, or it leaves many areas of the map useless. Hogwarts legacy was really bad about this. They made 80% of the map near completely useless, which basically just turns into background for riding the broom. If there isn’t a specific reason for a world to be open then it really just is for the gimmick.
What I want from Zelda games with a modern perspective is more durable weapons. Not saying they can't break but they should last a bit longer if they're good quality weapons. Sticks should snap easy. An iron sword shouldn't shatter so easy. I do want classic dungeons more similar to how they're mentioned in this video. Shrines should definitely stay because they're fun little puzzle breaks but not full dungeons. also I want items that are staples of the series. The hookshot in an open world game is SUCH A MISSED OPPORTUNITY! What if we had a magic instrument again so we could play sun song or song of storms to force certain NPC behaviors. Lastly I think memories need to go. Many have stated that they're the only real hindrance to botw and totk's stories. It sucks having to find the story of the game instead of living it.
I have no nostalgia for majoras mask. I played it when I had just become a fully grown man. Game scared me like no other and it very well may be my favourite game of all time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s normal for creative people to focus on one of their works of art and try to forget about the other ones. Or perhaps he thinks he and his team is improving over time so the last thing they created is “the best”. There are trade offs with more intricate designs. That’s not for everyone either. Just like more open design isn’t for everyone. But Zelda is about intricate puzzles. That is Zelda. So you gotta lean into it in the right moments. Not lessen the dopamine hit as Arlo was getting at. There’s a reason why I bet a lot of people like me played the dungeons in TOTK but didn’t feel compelled to get to the end of the story for awhile. It’s because the dungeons don’t hit you in an exciting way and they also don’t make you care about the story being in the past. So they basically dropped the ball on both things. I still love the game, but I’m with Arlo on this.
I felt so disappointed about the fact that Breath of the Wild only had 4 divine bests as the dungeons and a crap ton of shrines. I honestly felt that shrines were just a crutch. I think the game is still fun and worth playing. I just think it stinks no biggoron sword, no bug collecting, no treasure hunting from Wind Waker, or stopping to explore a strange island or house. I just hope stuff like that comes back while keeping what Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom started.
I love your videos but please don't go down the asmongold react hole. What I mean is your title and thumbnails are identical to the videos you are reacting to, and in this case the video isn't even linked in the description
The playable zelda intro is just kinda weird why cant the heros journey be for her?we had links pov and plot like 20 times,as for the reason i would want this is to have a character that has a personality while i play if she becomes sillent tho i probably wouldnt care about the change
People like this shouldn't be ABLE to lead a dev team for a video game, istg. Assuming it isn't some poor translation / clickbait bullshit, it reads like he doesn't even begin to comprehend that there are fundamental design differences between linear and non-linear game progression systems. "Why would you want a more limited game?" Because the devs also have a more limited scope. Meaning the devs have an easier time producing higher quality content within that scope. This is a problem that we still cannot solve in 2024. The more "open" the world is, the more dynamic expression you're allowing players to have. And as a natural consequence of this dynamic expression, you have to account for more depth per instance of expression. Well, you don't *have* to, but the more times you don't, the more it feels like the "open" quality of your open world is irrelevant and has no bearing on gameplay. It's a balancing act of playing with player expectations. Consequently, a pseudo-linear game might have 5 possible states for a 4 part sequence. A, B, C1, C2, and D, where A -> B -> C -> D but you've some variance in which C you get based on some change in prior areas. This is linear done right, where you're implementing variance in how the game unfolds by tracking SOME dynamic parameters, but the over-all flow of the game is still very much linear by design. Inversely, however, a non-linear open world game would ideally allow for (less than but up to) A->B, A->C, A->D, B->A, B->C, B->D, C->A, C->B, C->D, D->A, D->B, and D->C possible paths, where not just the path taken but the order matters as well. This causes a potential exponential increase to the workload a dev team has to take on. Any corners cut here create dissatisfaction because you're no longer living up to the ideal you've set for your players' expectations. But since a dev team has limited resources, they HAVE to cut corners. So what is a natural consequence? Look at BoTW. Copy and pasted shrines. Uncompelling "dungeons". Bullshit collect-a-thon-style side-quests. A world that feels quite empty. Copy and pasted enemy encampments. Over time, each one of these issues create a potential pain point as players inevitably face the divergence between a truly open world, expansive experience, and a game that feels like the embodiment of meaningless ctrl + c, ctrl + v. Linear games don't have to balance on this tightrope by their very nature. They can deliver a constant stream of unique high quality content that is designed to do a specific thing a specific way. They don't have to account for infinite permutations to retain a dynamic and open "feeling" in their game as the players aren't expecting there to be one. Then, additionally, any dynamic elements introduced feel all the more special as a result. But nah. It's gotta be nostalgia. If you don't get the fuck out of here with that shit, Aonuma...
You do realize that Aonuma is largely “ to blame” for the Zelda franchise being what it is, right? The titles everyone moans over right now were made by Aonuma. So this is a creative looking back on his past work amd saying “ I’m not interested in that anymore, this new thing is what I want to make next”.
You're not wrong and it's totally understandable, but I don't think his credentials should matter much in assessing whether or not his sentiment is even sensible. He can do what he wishes with his franchise and that's great. I mostly liked BoTW. I don't have anything against him as a creative. But it's absolute nonsense to presume there isn't a fundamental difference in game design philosophy between the games, and to act as though the fans would have no legitimate reason to expect consideration feels disingenuous. If you don't want to go back to making a more linear game, then just say that. Don't put it on the fans. Don't put it on the world at large as though it's their responsibility to reach some "freedom" enlightenment and look at these products with the same rose-colored glasses. There are very real arguments as for why designing games in this way destroys a lot of the integrity of what players are expecting out of the game, especially when you're factoring in a franchise that players have come to love. IPs have an identity. That identity is harmed in the process of making such a radical shift. Let someone else make a game with the same IP if you don't want to do it. Don't just pretend there's no good reason why it should be done. TLDR: He speaks as though he doesn't care to remain loyal to the product he's been loved for making in the past, and that makes him sound unfit to lead. At least solely. It's his thing, he can do his thing, that's great. But it's coming at the cost of what a lot of fans used to love about "his thing" and maybe it shouldn't be just "his" if he isn't going to care anymore. @@orlando5789
@@datboi_gee So many fans loved this product and this identity that Zelda had, that in 2011, Skyward Sword bombed on release and then everyone wanted a shift in the formula to happen.
I think Skyward is a bit of a mixed bag in that you can't easily attribute it's failure to the game itself. Circumstantially it wasn't in the best of conditions to be released in, but that's neither here nor there. Regardless, I still think it's the wrong mentality to have, to *completely* disregard the past because of one misstep. Clearly there's something to the "old formula" that is missing in BoTW. And I think it can be easily quantified in one statement: I don't think anyone who's played and enjoyed the last two main-line releases has thought to themselves, "Wow I'm sure glad they got rid of old-school temples. Who needs those?" It's at least half of what it has historically meant to play a Zelda game. You want to solve the puzzle of the dungeon and be tested in new ways as your abilities become broadened. And they so easily could have done it within the new games. But they're antithetical to this new worship of "freedom", whatever the fuck that means. Freedom does not directly translate to quality experience. It just feels like a total misunderstanding of what they're even doing. Again, I didn't dislike BoTW. But I don't think it's an unfair assessment to consider it kind of empty. 80% of the game feels like a copy / paste job with meaningless exploration, and less of an emphasis -- by design, no less -- on narrative. @@orlando5789
I agree with the playable zelda. I don't really need to play as every character I like. Link is the playable character. Give me a side game where I play as a sheikah or something. Not even necessarily zelda, just a ninja game in the zelda universe. That's all I need. I also agree with the koizumi thing.
Darn it Ratatoskr, why are you uploading at THREE A.M.! yer killing me I said it before in TotK reviews, I think Zelda is a dead franchise, this initial Aonuma quote solidifies that. Unless someone else takes the wheel, we will never get another Zelda rich in Celtic/Briton lore where you are surrounded by Brother Grim or Shakespearian fairy tales where you pursue an chivalric Arthurian quest to obtain the legendary sword and save the princess, and the world from evil with light Christian influence (or heavy if you've seen the pic of Link praying before a Crucifix). It's a dead franchise, and what comes after TotK for Aonuma will be an open-ended, inoffensive, game that lacks any of the old Zelda from the gameplay loops, to map design, to lore and aesthetics. You will have Characters named "Link" and "Zelda" which is basically nothing more than nostalgia baiting fan service. IRONICALLY. The only thing that could save Zelda is the same thing that is saving Dragon Ball. The Fans just start making their own material in the likeness of the old material. Dragon Ball is a great example because DBS is just fan service and holds little to no continuity with DBZ. it sucks, I hate it but it is the truth. We will not get another Forest Temple or anything like that. I doubt we'll even get a dang hook shot.
Yea it's like after 30 years those themes have been pounced into fucking Mud and everyone making the game is tired of it want to explore new themes and ideas.
@@TheRealNintendoKid That's your copium to smoke. There will continue to be a series of games with Zelda fan service that people will call Zelda, like every good franchise - corporations would rather drag their IPs through the mud to make $$, ruining them in the process than than providing a serious work that is in continuity with its heritage or letting the series finish by having a good death. Which is far preferable than this Weekends at Bernie garbage. Like Star Wars, like Lord of the Rings, like Dragon Ball, like The Avengers, etc. You'll have endless corporate slop dressed up as Zelda and you'll delude yourself into thinking they are doing you a service by providing you with great content and keeping your childhood alive just because you can climb vertically with a blond hair pawn and "Zelda" is on the box. But the franchise is dead and that isn't bringing it back.
I like tears of the kingdom and I had a lot of fun. Until I watched that RUclips video about the air bike then the game became so easy especially the depths. In the beginning the depths was hard and difficult but then the bike ruined my mind I wish I could play the game again but delete that knowledge
You don’t want a playable Zelda. That doesn’t mean a lot of the fan base doesn’t want it. Link can save literally all of hyrule, he doesn’t always need to save Zelda. She can have some more agency (without being playable ofc but it would be better if she was playable) and it can still be a hero’s journey. We don’t need this false equivalency. We can have a sick heroes journey without a damsel. There is a reason Zelda’s ballad (BotW Zelda mod) has been downloaded 140,000+ times.
It’s not about nostalgia, it’s about a ‘type of game’ people loved! It doesn’t have to be linear. It was about going on an adventure of discovery and journey. Keep the new style of open world and exploration, but hide some of the older style immersive dungeons for players to unlock and trawl through for hours on end. The new dungeons were boring! They were not dungeons, so much as a small area to unlock terminals. I want labyrinths and temples to get lost in, have puzzles and bosses. Bring back dungeon keys!! Simply add the old style of 3D Zelda dungeon into the new games and it’s the perfect Zelda game!!!!
@@Level_Eleven Why does Zelda being a playable character, mean she will be a "strong independent woman". The games from basically Ocarina of Time onwards have had Zelda doing shit in its world with Link. Zelda and Link both together save the day. I wanna play that cool shit. Even in a post game situation. Play the events of the game from Zelda's perspective. Make it 3-5 hours long and it would be amazing. I would love to play as sheik, tetra or skyward Sword Zelda on there journey through the lands of hyrule helping save it along side Link.
@@Level_Eleven holy fucking shit. Do women being independent bother you? Are you genuinely that much of a snowflake? Make Zelda playable. Make her a lesbian also. Just so they can all of the conservatives
I didn't "hear somewhere" about BOTW/TOTK being classic Zelda. I observed it on my own. But so did Nintendo themselves. Tons of promotional artwork for BOTW is directly inspired by the original game. Dueling Peaks, that little opening cinematic view of it, that's all Zelda 1 stuff. The game was released during a big anniversary year for the original. It reused the old japanese text from the original game. Nintendo even said it's a spiritual remake of the original.
Puzzles in TotK rely mostly on creativity with logic sprinkled in (multiple solutions). Older games past BotW relied on logic with creativity sprinkled in (one solution). I don't prefer one over the other, but I do miss the older formula to puzzle solving, seeing as how the last old school blueprints were used in Tri Force Heroes (October 24th, 2015). Like I said, I don't prefer one over the other. I just miss the older one.
Twilight Princess had you using multiple items in dungeons. I remember Snowpeak and City in the Sky requiring 4-5 items from the whole game to solve puzzles. TotK literally feels like you just ultrahand everything.
Honestly a game where we play as Zelda saving link would be kind of cool, but in a more way, we know exactly is and can see him whenever kind of like a snow white situation.
If they went that direction, I'd prefer a Link gender swap. There's no fun in playing royalty and trying to save a former nobody. Unless Zelda was born the nobody hero and Link was a prince. That might be a cool direction.
@BreadCatMarcus honestly was thinking of instead of Gannon kidnapping Zelda he instead decided to take out the hero of time early on, and it's up to Zelda to set everything back to normalcy. And would love for ot to be a more mage like game.
Honestly I don't think I'd ever be happy without just scrapping botw influence altogether. The characters are garbage, the over reactive humor is garbage, the designs are garbage. I think what I loved about Zelda is even basic npc had charm maybe outside of crowds. Every character was intentionally designed for the most part where in these open world games they're ugly like what royalty thought commoners looked like. Zelda was always a package deal where no particular part is out of this world but it comes together to form an experience we call Zelda. The limitations and tight design is what made it. I just don't think it lends itself to an open world design. The only reason people say botw is the sequel to one is that they're both open world...that's it. Everything else about Zelda 1 was like every other Zelda that came after. They fell for the propaganda nintendo fed them cause they didn't know better and a lot of those same people will use the open air term nintendo also fed them. To give a fair argument maybe it's a case of what it was intended to be coming to fruition but even that I feels is wrong. Zelda wasn't about freedom but about adventure of going through a dangerous world, beating the bad guy, and saving the day. That sense you're going through actual dungeons and places like stops on your journey is important which those piece meal same looking shrines can't do.
I think this is a cultural thing because there is just no way that Aonuma actually believes that. I refuse to believe that he is actually that delusional.
I don’t get the hype on Tears of the kingdom the story was MID! What was Ganons goals idk who cares. Want to see 4 identical cutscenes here you go! Want a predictable story here it is like man it just wasn’t enjoyable
Also he doesn't understand that freedom does not equal variety, and variety is what we want. I still think the masks were more fun than any other ability in the other games.
BotW and TotK has the absolute worst enemy variety I have ever seen in a modern AAA game. So this hits home. That was a major disappointment for me in both games.
Which has become so obvious with TotK. People complained about BotW being "empty" but what Aonuma took from that is that they needed to just add more stuff. Not better, more diverse stuff, just more stuff. More shrines, more koroks, an entire second map that's also filled with more repetitive content.
It's as if he thinks being able to do everything in any order somehow makes up for it being lackluster. I'd much rather have 6 or 7 fully fleshed out dungeons that have to be completed in a specific order than 150 tiny shrines I can tackle at any time.
@@BryanOrion-m5i Thats a stretch, its bad but the worst out of any AAA game is a huge stretch. Lynels and gleokks are still extremely fun to fight, but the other enemies sure. Bokoblins have really good AI but I don't understand why its just those enemies
@@Sephirothkingdom782 Those are literally the only 2 enemies in the game that present some kind of challenge. 2 ENEMIES. Dude for a game this size, that is absolutely atrocious. Look at the enemy variety in FF7 Rebirth that just came out. It has hundreds of completely unique enemies with completely unique movesets. Look at Elden Ring. Look at God of War...those games have HUNDREDS of enemy types. 95% of combat is against 3 enemy types - bokoblins, moblins, and lizalfos...which is exactly the same as BotW...ridiculous.
@@BryanOrion-m5i I agree when you compare it with botw, it’s very unimpressive. I think for botw part of it is made up for the fact that the enemy ai is extremely well done to the point where it somewhat replaced having more enemy types
Also I don’t really agree with elden ring. A lot of enemies do get reused and despite having a lot of variety at tines, the enemies still don’t feel like something I would want to fight since they don’t have anything particularly interesting going for them
I'm nostalgic for the time nostalgia wasn't used to discredit other people's opinions.
Having played the original Zelda from the NES... BotW is nothing like it. I'm tired of that argument. Sure, you can go to areas early, but you still need to find dungeon items to reach new areas, you need to complete all the dungeons to beat the game, dungeons EXIST, weapons don't F-ing BREAK, no stamina, hearts are found in the world, and the most egregious fault that BotW did...
Original Zelda you start with the GREEN TUNIC...
Why can't I play Zelda through from start to finish with that iconic green tunic. It's the only game series that let's me wear it. I like that outfit. It's cool, unique, and is more than just clothes, it's a uniform. I'm fine with being able to change my clothes to something else, but why not give me the option if I desire it? Why make it available only after finishing every shrine!?... ugh.
Also, you can dungeon skip in lttp, ocarina of time, albw, wind waker, and twilight princess
Zelda 1 isn’t the only game with this
Why is this so difficult? This debate has the EASIEST solution. Just reduce the number of shrines from like 150 (INSANE btw) to like 75. Use that dev time to build mid-size, traditional dungeons (complete with unique theme, small keys, puzzles, maps, unique item, and unique boss), and hide those well throughout the world in the caves and underground. That's literally it. Those medium trad dungeons will make every single traditional fan happy. Everything else can stay the same including the open world freedom aspect.
Wow! A balanced and reasonable take without insulting new/old Zelda games?
You are a rare specimen!
I fully agree. I Disliked the dungeons in TotK even more than the divine beasts, but the Shrines were excelent this time. They could have made the dungeons big multi leayered shrines, with the same climbing/ascend limitations.
This is all we want. And good music. Like gimme an instrument and Im happy.
@@KyngD469 BotW and TotK have good music, you aren't listening.
@@BaldorfBreakdownsbotw I agree(although it does have less good songs than other Zelda’s) but totk best songs are remixes or new themes that have tons of bits and pieces of old songs, there’s not a lot of good and original music in totk
As someone who has ACTUALLY played Zelda 1 I can assure you, the people saying BotW is the true sequel to it, are yapping, yapping like little kids regurgitating some shit on the playground. It is completely false, the game is so obviously the foundation for A Link to the Past and what followed that you are ignorant and wrong for suggesting otherwise.
Thank you. Been preaching this for a while now. Glad to see somebody else actually played zelda 1
Yep. The groundwork for alttp was there from the beginning. 8 dungeons with an intended order, item based progression, semi-open design with areas blocked off via difficulty. All of it theree in a very rudimentary form. People who say that as funny as it is to say are regurgitating propaganda given to them by Nintendo. I'm very cynical and think it's just cashing in on modern open world crap because it makes money.
Nah, Zelda 1 > A Link to the hand-honding beginning of the franchise
@@religion15 no one asked the goofy asses to respond
Nostalgia can certainly be a factor, but to pretend like one is inherently better than the other is absurd. They’re just different.
More options is *usually* better, but open worlds aren't just “more options”.
Couldn't agree more. "a feeling of pleasure and sometimes slight sadness at the same time as you think about things that happened in the past" -Cambridge Dictionary.
The feeling of pleasure comes from the game. You couldn't feel pleasure for it unless that memory was happy. Most of the time, happy memories are formed by moments where you are happy recalled. You couldn't have been happy in the first place if the game didn't do that for you. Most people are of the opinion that the vast majority of Zelda games are pretty good, so the happiness is usually made from enjoyment. Nostalgia may play a part in revisiting an old game, but it couldn't be nostalgia if you didn't have some joy when playing the first time.
I can use that reasoning to argue against that. If the gameplay loops are so different from each other ofc fans will rank one better than the other
Is not only Nostalgia. Is also the fact that we traditional Zelda fans are mostly not "young" adults anymore with less time to play VideoGames , so many of us prefer a linear, shorter, tight designed games than an Open World +100 hour game. I just played the gameboy color Zelda Games and it was great, specially because I could finished them in less than 10 hours.
@@rmv9194 You can beat the two new Zelda games in less time then that tho....
I never played Zelda as a child, so there’s no nostalgia factor for me. But, I played Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, BOTW, and Ocarina of Time in my early twenties, and BOTW was the least memorable. BOTW feels open, empty, and confused; it takes way too long to get from one main mission objective to the next due to the ridiculous distances to traverse without reliable transportation like the dragon boat in Wind Waker (horses can’t climb up various cliffs in BOTW).
"Nobody wants to play a game where you play as Zelda" well that statement sure aged like milk, didn't it
It's been relegated to a spin off lmao
Yeah just like games where you play as Peach. Still doesn't discredit what I said. I don't think anyone realistically expected a mainline title to be about Zelda but to say that nobody seriously wanted this is silly
@@SolidLoachEchoes isn’t considered a spin-off
As I've gotten older and revisited my favorite Zelda games over and over again, the idea that Aonuma doesn't understand what made the old ones good gets more and more believable. Like so many forms of art, not _every_ little thing is deliberate or under the author's control, and perfect storms of happy accidents can lead to lightning in a bottle.
George Lucas retroactively editing the original Star Wars films comes to mind.
You don't accidently get lighting in a bottle multiple times in a row for 30 years.
Also more people then just Aunouma make these games and I'm gonna use your Star Wars example, the later edits feel wrong because George didn't edit those movies originally, his ex wife did. He didn't edit them, she did, she literally save A New Hope in the editing room becauee George's cut was awful.
It's not a bunch of happy accidents that doesn't happen for a solid 20 years straight, it's a collaborative effort between a group of people with their own strengths and weaknesses they bring to the project.
The people working on Zelda now are not the same ones who started 30 years ago. The new director came from Capcom, he made the old Oracle games. These are new people, with new ideas, and new thoughts on what Zelda is and can be.
@@aureateseigneur5317 The new director also made Skyward Sword, which is as close to the 3D formula as you get.
@@aureateseigneur5317 You're assuming I believe that all old-form Zeldas are total bangers (I don't). They all had their charms, but by my tastes there was a continual decline after Ocarina, until a nadir with Skyward Sword. That game was so hated that it forced them to make nu-Zelda.
I don't understand your point about George's wife, because it's in line with my point. Lucas wanted to make Star Wars a lot goofier than his editors let him, and we saw that maligned goofiness with the prequel trilogy where no one could stop him. Likewise, Aonuma came up with the Wind Waker art style, which he knew Miyamoto wouldn't like, and had to be forced to make Twilight Princess. Only to bring it back with SS and then BotW. You may like the cartoony style and more childish executions, but sales figures up until BotW support my position.
What I realized is that the N64 and older Zeldas felt more immersive because the technology wasn't good enough to distinguish between "realistic" (for the time) and cartoony. Likewise, the lower quality allowed them to get away with more mature content without raising the "E" rating. (Content they had to edit out of the remakes). That more than anything, is what I mean by "lightning in a bottle." Though it would be more appropriate to say "external circumstances beyond the authors' intentional creative control."
Speaking of remakes, that's another good comparison to George Lucas. The Majora's Mask remake butchered the bosses, zora swimming, and ice arrows. *No one* asked for that, and those were *unique* features of MM. Why on earth would you remove some of the most unique and memorable aspects of a thing when remaking it? You would if you had no understanding of why people liked the original, unable to differentiate between killing the soul of the source and a QoL fix.
If they were keyed-in to the fan base, they'd know, "Navi is annoying and unnecessarily explains things" was a big meme in the community for *years* . Then _why on earth_ would they create Fi, who's easily 10x worse?!
BotW was a breath of fresh air because it fixed everything SS got wrong, but at the cost of creating different problems. That was acceptable given the circumstances, and allowed people the hope that Tears could fix _all_ the problems and come out _the_ superior game. It didn't.
The whole thing reminds me of how Niantic seriously fumbled Pokémon Go, and then instead of improving that game, Gamefreak made the source franchise worse by incorporating its stupid mechanics into Let's Go.
At least George Lucas intended for Star Wars to have good political commentary, it was supposed to be an allegory for U.S. imperialism and things like the Vietnam war.
Honestly, I like playable Zelda simply for the new play style it offers in a familiar setting.
I've been playing Zelda since day one, and i don't know wtf some of these others are on about arguing over the term "Classic Zelda".
Regardless of the term, since LoZ 1, you had to complete all the dungeons before you could go to the final one. The order of dungeons wasn't as defined in some of the earlier games as the later ones, but still you had to complete them!
Not to mention the fact that the dungeons had interesting designs and puzzles you have to think through, and solve. In the Wild games, all too often the path of least resistance to a puzzles solution is to avoid or circumvent the puzzle all together.
Even since LoZ 1, there was the idea of new items opening up secrets or accesing new area of the world. Things like the Candle, Power Bracelet, Step Ladder and others. You find them throughout the game and there is a sence of progression and increasing your capabilities. Unlike the Wild games, where your capabilities are pretty much flat after the tutorial.
The Wild games definitely take inspiration from LoZ 1 by taking away alot of the handholding that had built up over time and culmunating in Skyward Sword. It's that spirit of exploration and just letting you go off into the world from the start. But they have also seem to have forgotten something in the process.
There really is a middle ground here for a stellar Zelda style. But it's some of the recent Zelda team statements that's got me worried.
THANK YOU! I've been screaming this from the rooftops. Botw fans love to say it's like zelda 1 and have never even played zelda 1 let alone any zelda pre botw
@@Goosewitdajuice317 Yeah I WISH modern zelda was structured like Zelda 1, that would actually be the perfect middle ground.
@@solomon9655echoes of wisdom sort of did this
The most frustrating part about modern Zelda is that there already is a game in the series that blended open world exploration and linear progression. It was called Wind Waker and it was awesome. Unlocking the Skull Hammer, Bombs, Boomerang, etc. felt great because as you found stronger items, the more of the map was available. However, because of the sailing mechanic you could get to those places where you needed late game items to unlock more of an island, so you built anticipation as you unlocked more items. It had a great blend of open world and restrictive puzzle solving, which is a formula I think would fit well with a Breath of the Wild style physics based puzzle game if taken enough time and care to craft the world and its puzzles.
Heck, it's not like the Breath of the Wild format is bad in of itself. I like the idea of having open ended solutions to traversing the overworld, something that Breath of the Wild for the most part succeeded with. There were a couple of mechanics that could break the game's traversal system, but they weren't directly obvious and not always easy to pull off. You still felt like you had some sense of progression thanks to the upgraded Stamina bar, armour with environmental resistances, and unlocking fast travel to easier move around the giant map. Still, having new items to unlock later into the game would do a lot to add worthwhile rewards that would be more exciting to find and explore.
The massive problem with the new format did not show its ugly head until Tears of the Kingdom where the game completely breaks down thanks to building mechanics that trumps all other mechanics by being very easy and cheap to pull off. The hover bike alone breaks the gameplay loop that Breath of the Wild established by being so powerful that everything can be accessed at all times for a very small cost of resources. Cheap mechanics like rocket shields break the vast majority of puzzles while other more costly mechanics like throwing pinecones into fires for updraft are removed. It's bizarre.
The game is also trying to restrict you in the most random places while being completely unrestricted in others. The fact that a lot of Zonai devices break much faster than others makes the hover bike completely busted when it is better than using wings despite the latter being specifically designed for traversing the sky. The battery is also too restrictive and time consuming to grind more charges for, so any cool device you would want to build beyond the most basic stuff is never going to come into play until several hours into the game. However, by that point you are basically already done with the game, so for you to actually have fun with the system you must spend much more time grinding the Depths than actually playing the main content. Most people won't do that and instead rely on the cheaper methods that already are powerful enough to get you anywhere you want, thus removing any sense of meaningful character progression.
The new systems are supposed to provide freedom to experiment, but in reality they do the exact opposite unless you deliberately go out of your way to do repetitive grinds just to have a chance to make something cool. They also completely undermine character progression by making you basically a god, especially since there is very little stuff in the end game that provide any substantial boost in power that make you feel properly rewarded for your efforts.
The old Zelda formula worked because the rewards felt rewarding and gave you meaningful character progression while also having excellent puzzle designs with a story that made you feel invested. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom would be much better games if they embraced some of that old formula like Wind Waker did. The best content in the new Zelda games was the stuff that provided restrictions. The Lightning Temple while too short is the closest that the new games have come to recapturing that old Zelda magic.
I want more quality gameplay like that and less quantity. Sadly Tears of the Kingdom decided to fall into the latter category with the Depths and having more Shrines and Koroks than its predecessor. If this is how mainline Zelda games are going to be going forth I will be having a hard time to call myself a Zelda fan. If I wanted to play a grindy, repetitive game I would just go back and play MMOs again.
im not even gonna sugar coat i did not read everything but wind wakers open world was just empty sea. all they gotta do is slap the old zelda formula and progression onto the new games and we have a masterpiece, aint that difficult
Zelda 1 is a metroidvania just like traditional zelda.
It has new items in every dungeon, some required to reach other dungeons.
Full music everywhere you roam.
An upgradable unbreakable sword.
REWARDING sidequests.
A story you couldn’t just skip if you wanted to, and a true order that progressively got harder even if you could do most out of order
@@ellagage1256 sidequest 1: you gather heart pieces to get the white and magic sword.
Sidequest 2: you find the magic rings to upgrade your defense.
Sidequest 3: you find the medicine recipe to unlock potion shops.
Sidequest 4: you save up enough rupees to get the game changing bow.
Nes zelda had sidequests which were revolutionary for the time period.
@@ellagage1256 it’s side content that involves a chain of tasks that end with a reward. They are sidequests, merely primitive ones, but again, revolutionary for their age.
@@ellagage1256 ok, so this isn’t a sidequest but collecting 30 rushrooms for a pointless ingredient is?
Stopping a sign from falling over multiple times is?
@@ellagage1256 a ring and sword that doubles your attack and defense, a permanent long ranged weapon, and easy access to potions is far more rewarding than a food ingredient that you can collect everywhere or another disposable weapon
@@ellagage1256 in zelda 1 you have 2 sword upgrades, an armor upgrade, ulockable infinite supply of potions, discoverable fast travel, heart pieces that you can find in multiple ways, and secret shops with unique items. Keep in mind that this was a 1980’s nes game.
Botw has spirit orbs ( which are all locked behind the same shrines)
And korok seeds( which are all behind the same handful of barely puzzles)
And armor, most of which you buy.
Almost every treasure chest contains expendable weapons that don’t matter, or ingredients that are irrelevant thanks to heart ingredients.
Botw is a modern console game and somehow has less variety, and less rewards than a 1980’s nes game.
The Aonuma quote about nostalgia and restrictions in game design is so bafflingly out of touch that it comes across as insulting.
Having more restrictions / limited choices can sometimes make for a more interesting, creative, engaging, and resourceful experience. If you give too many options, you might either get bored or overwhelmed.
Also has BoTW and ToTK sold becouse they were insanely good or becouse of the proliferation of video games and video games consoles? There are more people into video games and have the accessibility to consoles than there ever was during the N64 days, it was still a niche thing back then. These new games could sell more but it doesn’t mean they are better than the previous ones
The Wii sold 100 million units. Still, Skyward Sword bombed on release, and Twilight Princess got outsold by TOTK in three days.
I've been enjoying these clips recently - always enjoy your takes
Skyrim still beats BOTW and TOTK as open world. The game gives you total freedom, several storylines, you can go to any dungeon, but the main story won't kick in if you do not complete all the requirements you need. It is a free world with a linear story, and once you reach the end of such story, you still have so much to do. Like joining the Imperials against the Stormcloaks.
No. I will not elaborate. But no.
@@vidjamouse6049
Yes, and yes. I am right, you're wrong. Have a cookie.
Skyrims combat sucks
Witcher 3, red dead 2, Elden ring all vastly better open world than botw for me. Never played skyrim
@@joesheridan9451 Oh, yes, I forgot about those games. Those are pretty damn awesome and vastly superior.
The thing about TotK's dungeons iterating on the Divine Beasts is that they kind of left in the least interesting thing about the DBs (the open structure and lack of linearity), and removed what made them actually unique (being able to manipulate the dungeon itself). TotK's dungeons have higher highs but lower lows than BotW's.
I appreciate that you actually take the time to respond to what the video is saying instead of just being xqc
Still blows my mind that he can't understand why majoras mask is good.
Well, why is it?
Developing Majora's Mask basically traumatized him, it's totally understandable why he wouldn't understand the greatness of it considering the conditions in which it was made, and he's totally valid for that, everyone would've felt the same way in his place
@@KevZ7. The idea that "everyone would've felt the same" is ridiculous lol. Sure it's a reasonable reaction, but it's not the only possible one
Aonuma basically said all his prior work is garbage with that nostalgia comment. He surely doesn't really believe that he just wanted to be an insulting $@%#.
The craziest thing to me is that BotW was a response to the other formula stagnating and going too far in one direction, and in that regard TotK has to be the most uninspired game in the entire series. It's simply too open to the point where the new formula has ALREADY stagnated. It treads the exact same ground as BotW, both in design philosophy, and in LITERALLY THE SAME GROUND.
This feels like classic Nintendo designer gaslighting. Like, their mind is made up and they aren’t going back, for whatever reason. But rather than just say that that, and why, they’d rather act with this misdirection so as to make it seem like we’re coming to the same conclusions they are, which is complete insanity.
The first Zelda is a combat focused game with a lot of longform dungeons and it has good enemy variety. It feels nothing like open air Zelda in terms of gameplay. The only similarity is that the map is open from the start and that the games are non linear.
Aunuma has become the George Lucas of Nintendo
100% on that first point with playable zelda, i dont want it
but that point that he made that zelda can't have a hero's journey.. why? he brought up that a hero's journey needs a princess, but that's.. not what Hero's Journey is. you can easily have a playable zelda who goes on her own Hero's Journey.
@@MG-mh8xpoh most definitely, the reasoning is off, i just don't wanna not play as link the whole game
My favorite Zelda is Skyward Sword so Nintendo has been giving me the finger for several years at this point.
Very good Zelda game.
if only the new free and open _Zelda_ games wouldn’t give you every ability at the very beginning of the game… you’d still have the freedom to explore the world, but the game would control when or how we get the tools to exploit that freedom, and with each upgrade it allows the player to dig deeper into the world and get more and more out of that “freedom.”
That's not freedom then.
@@TheRealNintendoKid - freedom doesn’t mean given all the stuff at the beginning… maybe you’re free to climb a mountain, but at the beginning of the game you can only climb on foot, but by the end you have three or options for getting to the top of that same mountain?
It's crazy that Elden Ring solved this problem (by giving the player the freedom to go anywhere but structuring the world in a more linear way so players will most likely go through the game in the intended order), and then TotK learnt nothing from it or BotW.
@@marchmelloow - well by the time _Elden Ring_ came out _TOTK_ was probably almost finished… but that wouldn’t learn anything from the criticisms of _BOTW,_ at least with regards to story and structure, is disappointing.
@@marchmelloow Yes it did, TOTK nudges you in specific directions far far harder then BOTW ever did, they just do it through diologue and quest giving where as Elden Ring structures it's world in specific ways instead, tho you can still very easily wander in Caelid without much effort.
That nostalgia answer is a bad sign for the future 😂
I can remember when people were hailing botw as fresh and new, and one of the greatest games of all time like it was yesterday.
Most overrated game of all time imo. I literally couldn’t finish it I found it so boring
@@joesheridan9451 I mean I don’t know about all that but sure. I think it was a little overrated sometimes
That’s because its a very top heavy game that promises much but delivers little so people like me were overwhelmed by the first impression of the vast ocean of content before we realized it was as shallow as a ubisoft puddle
@@firenze6478 I'm glad a lot more people are starting to see this and be more vocal about it. I stood in line in the cold outside of Best Buy for hours to get my hands on a Switch and Breath of the Wild and after 80 hours was so let down with what I got. The switch was a hardware failure and a piece of junk and any time I tried to voice my opinions on how bad the game was, I was barraged with insults and told I was crazy and had no clue what I was talking about and people tried to invalidate my opinions because of "nostalgia". It made me so sick that I officially sold all of my consoles and vowed to never give another cent to Nintendo and their disgusting business and game design practices as I saw the direction they were taking their mainline games and hardware. I don't care what comes out in the future, they lost a lot of life long fans of the games who were in diapers playing their older games, I was one of them.
I would love a remake of Seasons and Ages - new graphics but I would bite my tongue if I didn't get them. They are two of my favorite 2D Zelda games.
Ages was the first Zelda I played and I've played trough every mainline and spin-off Zelda since. Both Ages and Seasons deserve an HD remake.
if they remade ALttP exactly as it is gameplay wise, but made it in the Octopath engine, i would possibly sh!t myself with glee
@@mkv2718what about an hd-2d remake for pokemon platinum and crystal
I would love to see Arlo on the Yggdrasil podcast
Yeah, but, they also put out Dread not that long ago. Mario is still going strong with a mix of open and side scrolling games. Kirby has been doing Kirby's thing for a decade and only just broke the formula with Forgotten World.
Frankly, I think Aonuma's just kinda talking out of his a** here. Or at least, he's only really talking about projects he is leading in particular. There's basically nothing saying that they can't be working on smaller titles like Link's Awakening or even brand new titles but under a different lead.
"Why would you want restrictions?"
Because it's a game. A game is a series of restrictions called rules. You cannot do X, you can do B. Solve the puzzles with those rules in mind.
Games themselves aren't defined by restrictions, on a game specifically so just saying a sweeping "Games have restrictions" is enherently false as Games have whatever freedoms and restrictions the rules makers and then layer the player wish to impose on the game.
@@aureateseigneur5317 I do not understand this. A game by definition will always have restriction, things you just cannot do. Nothing about the statement "Games have restrictions" is false.
@@aureateseigneur5317 Dude, you have to dribble the basketball. you cannot pick it up, that's the restriction that makes basketball different from football.
@@aureateseigneur5317 Bro what are you talking about? All games have rules and restrictions. Try playing a game of soccer without a closed field, it would not be fun.
I really wanted to love totk. If it had an adventure where the atcual events took place like skyward sword, i would have loved the game even more but i hate the memories. And the barren land that is hyrule
We are living on a post-Elden Ring world, no way that went unnoticed. The next one, i am sure will share some design ideas.
Exactly. I was scared for the botw sequel when I played Elden ring. I really doubted they could top it. And not only did they not top it, they seemed to have regressed. Elden Ring is just so much better. How did they now copy the horse mechanics???
@@Bearlytherely It's crazy how Miyazaki got inspiration from Zelda, and now Elden Ring was a better open world than modern Zelda. It's crazy.
I actually had hope for TotK, since they could take inspiration from Elden Ring to better their open world, but then they just made BotW 1.5
Openworld exploration is way more better in totk. There are way more variety. The focus of elden ring is combat and once you hit Altus, you essentially see everything game offers you. On the other hand Elden Ring dungeons are much better.
@@hododod246 There are a lot of places to "explore" in totk and botw, but they are ultimately empty and void of any reason other than another shrine or a weapon that breaks in seconds. There needs to be tangible rewards for exploration and there are none in these past two open world Zeldas. In Elden Ring there are weapons and abilities, and most importantly LORE to uncover when exploring.
@@SolidLoach Nobody cares item descriptions. People who care Souls lore go and watch souls lore channels because fromsoft is terrible in terms of story telling. People don't read item description. RUclips channels read that stuff to make content. In terms of weapons most people pick one weapon they comfortable and play entire game with it, so most of the weapons are useless. If you are playing without summons spirits are useless. If you are playing with summons, 3-4 spirits are usefull out of dozens of them. If you are not caster spells are useless. So most of the awards are useless in Elden Ring. Crafting mechanic is completely ignored by many players.
For totk, shrines offer real gameplay. They have great puzzles. Even if they are one of those raru's blessing shrine, you get spirit orb. And spirit orbs are useful because they give you stamina and heart, end especially stamina directly impacts gameplay. Weapon reward is not useless because they are breaking. They are useful because they are breaking. Unlike Elden Ring, you cannot get comfortable with 1 weapon and play with it rest of the game. You need to circulate. And this makes weapon reward much more meaningful. On top of that weapon and shield fusions are utility. They are just not attacking. They protect you from weather, they can create wind, you can surf on them on snow they can create light source, they can break stones etc...
Also weapons and shrines are not only rewards. There are Zonai devices, ability upgrades, rare materials, armours, build schemas, side quests etc... Most of the armours have direct gameplay impact. They give you actual abilities. In addition to that this is an open world game. Of course there are some empty areas. And open space is very important for this game because this game allows you to make military grade satellite and you need a space for it.
“What happened to you Aonuma” *Skyward Sword*
Its the same argument that blizzard made about vanilla world of warcraft, then they went on to bring it back and it was more popular than retail was.
"2D Zelda is linear Zelda at its best." I can agree with that. I tend to gravitate more toward linear games in general, but especially 2D Zelda. I played the first one and just got exhausted with scrolling through seemingly random screens of trees and enemies to get to the fun parts of the game. When people talk about how BOTW is a 3D version of Zelda 1, they conveniently ignore how linear the dungeons were.
I'm also not big on A Link Between Worlds for the same reason. The dungeons are intentionally non-linear, so they're very simple and surface level. You don't even have to figure your way around obstacles to find the dungeon item, cause you already have it right from the start. And it's the only item you need, so you just kind of spam it.
so, as one of those “gross” Zelda 1 people, the reason why many of those comments sound parroted, is that they kinda are. And I’m saying that as someone who agrees with it and has that opinion myself, but there IS a rehearsed portion of that for many people. A) cuz we’ve been saying the same thing since the friggin Wind Waker (which is already sorta that marriage of old and new… and it MOSTLY works. i mean, it is one of my top favorite Zelda games for a reason), but B.) Aonuma literally stated that they went “back to the drawing board” and made a program to test out things in BotW that was basically just Zelda 1 . there’s even clips of this program online (probably still on RUclips). this second point is where most of the “it’s like Zelda 1” really started for many younger fans.
Now, i think i was probably one of the first people to mention how Botw felt like a return to Zelda 1 for me, so maybe that’s why it felt rehearsed? because this is the first time you’ve actually brought that position up… (and i must say, if you think Auonuma was dismissive of people’s feelings 🤨… jk… mostly) but seriously, if you’ve essentially been saying this same argument, that you’ve wanted a return to the NES/Snes Zelda feeling since Wind Waker came out, TWENTY TWO YEARS AGO, yeah, it’s gonna start sounding rehearsed. heck, even just 5 years ago with BotW- many us were saying this same thing to the people saying “oh, so they made Zelda a Ubisoft game”. we’ve been saying this the whole time, some of you just haven’t been listening (kinda like being dismissed as being “just nostalgic”)
basically, hi, i’m a middle aged man here to tell you that your generation “wanting Zelda to return to it’s roots” already happened 20 years with Wind Waker. or rather, that game felt like the first “return to form” for many of us, which is part of the reason why at the time when Twilight Princess came out after that, despite being essentially Ocarina “but this time it plays better,” many were really disappointed. i mean shit dude, i was born in the early 80s, i literally been playing these games since i was a kid, this is not the first time fans felt “betrayed” by Nintendo. for instance, WW was Nintendo doing what it wanted, and before it came out, people were PISSED that the art style wasn’t realistic, but by the time TP came out to “please the fans” some years later, it felt dated and people felt like it was a step backwards. i could continue, but i have to go take care if my parents now (the wonders of middle age- first they wipe your butt, then you wipe theirs)
Anyhoo, give it 15 years, and you’ll have young whippersnapers telling you that the arguments you’ve been spitting out for years that the younger kids ignore are “rehearsed” 🫠😉
edit1 (just like no one has been listening to me apparently yell at the clouds about how Elden Rig dlc was probably never planned and how people need to stop looking at how From operated before Miyazaki was president and look to their dlc decisions after that- i.e., no dlc as standard after 6 months. been saying that since the game came out, so i can pull that speech outta my rear at a moment’s notice.)
so go back an play the first 3 Zeldas. one of them were perfectly open world, there was some linearity. but unlike WW, where that open map feeling was mostly a facade (sure you could go to the island, but you couldn’t do anything there until you had the items you needed) there was a lot of sequence breaking you could. Also. play Zelda 1 through twice. it essentially has ng+ where the dungeon layouts are all different and they are located in mixed up order on the over world map. that, or the dark world section of ALttP, where you could sequence break the hell out of everything, is what us old fuddy duddies want back, and have wanted back since Majora’s Mask (a timer in a Zelda game??. the controversy that stirred up!)
edit 2: snarky old man in a cave gripes aside, i do want to reiterate that BotW is NOT a 1:1 recreation of Zelda, more like how many of us look back on the feeling playing Zelda as kids. in reality, you can’t just do everything you want in what ever order, but if you ever play the game without a guide, it gives you that similar feeling of just having your main goal being “Destroy Ganon” and just being thrown to the octoroks to figure it out. it IS actually a bit of nostalgia, and that really shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of. it is ok to be nostalgic, and i get it, the anger comes from Aonuma missing the point, but it does sound like some people treat nostalgia as a sort of “dirty word” nowadays. back on track, the point being, if you do go back and play the old games, there ARE linear elements. the argument was always more about returning that feeling of adventure that seemed to get stripped from the games the more they focused on the plot. (what From does really is quite hard it seems 😅)
Miyamoto said something along the lines of Breath of the Wild was the sort of game he saw in his head as he made Zelda 1, and I think that's where a lot of the parallels are drawn from.
The problem that can happen with nostalgia (and I think the point Aonuma was trying to make), is that it can make you long for something that was never really there. It can get you stuck in a state of inertia, longing for an incomplete feeling you once had that can't ever be replicated, and that's a terrible place to be for a creative mind. Nothing can ever measure up to the idealized thing you've locked in your mind.
Now where I agree is that Aonuma doesn't get what the "old guard" of Zelda fans are asking for, but I wonder if he's not WILLFULLY oblivious to it. They want a game that he has no interest in making. Whether for creative reasons (the quickest way to hate your job is do the same thing long enough), business reasons (let's be honest, the Zelda series in terms of sales WAS stagnating until BotW and TotK launched the franchise back into the stratosphere), or some combination of both... Aonuma and his team have no designs or intentions to go back to the style of Zelda games this "old guard" wants. The best you're going to get is some mild concessions like on the dungeons we got with TotK, and that's simply not good enough for the sake of the "old guard." They're getting left behind, and perhaps reasonably are pissed off about it.
Spirit tracks had playable Zelda, kinda
just show aonuma how much people love the very NEW rom hacks coming out now, those can literally never be nostalgic lmao
Aonuma in my opinion, He shares his mind, he is very opinionated, he puts a lot of polite feeling into what he says but at the end he does think of the fans.
Seven years to make a glorified DLC
rata secretly loves divine beasts! he admitted it almost
4:32 skyward sword happen plus the community licked breath of the wild boots hard, so much really hard. 10 million and counting.
Oracle remakes are ALL I want...
0:40 I agree that playable Zelda isn't really something we need. It would change the character of the story way too much. Among other things that are less easy to put into words, her character was always supposed to be a bit ethereal and transcendent. If you make her just the vehicle for gameplay, that is destroyed. But I still hope we get a female hero (or the option of it) one day. It does not affect the story in the slightest. It would only if some romance between Link and Zelda were an element (which it isn't. Also, of course I mean they'd be straight), or if the game were hyper-realistic or historical. But it's neither. Male Link is strong enough to throw large Gorons to the side without a power bracelet, so that means it's plausible if female Link can also do such feats.
I've never been in the "Zelda should be playable" camp (though she was my favorite character in AOC), but It I wouldn't be against her having a bigger presence in the newer style games going forward. BOTW/TOTK era Zelda games were 2/2 for having the most interesting part of the story happen in the past through cutscenes and having Zelda be offscreen for nearly the whole game outside of said cutscenes. I guess she was in the intro of TOTK as well as being the LD. She does important stuff in both games but I've really grown tired of the memory formula. Guess we'll see in 2030, I highly doubt it'll have changed to be honest.
I have no nostalgia BOTW was my first Zelda ( witch I beat ) and I dropped TOTK after a week, I found it to similar to the first game and switched to playing OOT 3ds for the first time witch I completed. Edit: Now playing LTTP.
I've got to say, the more time passes from TotK's release, the less impressed I am with it. This is a game I would have adored if it had come out one or two years after BotW, but now it feels like they have run a whole formula into the ground in just two games, and I want something different. I'm tired of the same stuff being copypasted over and over without rhyme or reason
Part of BotW being "classic" Zelda is probably partly cus of th promotion and marketing. While I'll always have a soft spot for Wind Waker but I definitely play the very 1st Zelds more often. Certainly held my attention more than TotK.
Other than better dungeons, I think remove the player scaling and have zones with set difficulties. They could create a pseudo linear narrative, and it would enhance the exploration imho. They would probably have to rework the weapon breaking system for this tho. In BotW, if they had zone levels, it could make the guerrilla combat more viable outside the tutorial, and theres that hero/power fantasy of gaining more power over time instead of being the same relative power. Also looking morr closely at the very first game how certain design decisions impact the game. An example is how the 1st game is very open, but ut wasn't afraid to lock content behind other content, like to enter this dungeon you need a key item from another dungeon. And like what I said earlier, every area/screen was a set difficulty that didn't change.
That's clever, dude
I disagree they've been remaking alttp for 20 years. Oot itself was alttp 3D I don't even care for alttp but that's what oot is. It's also a good way to dismiss the dismissive "you just want oot again" argument.
Nintendo needs to hire Vanillaware to handle Oracle remakes. I can't help but imagine some almost water color kind of artstyle and Vanillaware is the master.
The VirgiNouma vs. CHADZUMI!
Vs. THE giGarLo
a good model for what open world Zelda dungeons should be: planets in The Outer Wilds.
I've has some unnecessarily angry comments from people saying how TotK was an improvement on BotW in every way, shape and form, and I'm stupid for liking aspects of one game over the other, or vice versa. One guy ended a comment with "TotK is in every way an upgrade.", and I replied, yes, exactly, it feels more like an upgrade, or expansion, than a proper sequel.
Also, remakes of the Oracles games similar to Link's Awakening? I've been hoping for such a thing for years. The same art style, or each with a slightly unique variation, doesn't matter.
Just because the current producer/man in charge is bored with traditional zelda, doesn't mean fans are. Especially life long fans. We love zelda games like OOT, MM, WW, TW, SS, MC, etc. BOTW was enjoyable, but TOTK was a disappointment. It was overrated in my opinion.
If fans are interested in traditional Zelda, they’ve clearly failed to prove it. SSHD, despite being fantastic, sold only 3 million copies on Switch. Same with Link’s Awakening, which only sold 6 million.
@@orlando5789 games we've played.
A)I wouldn't mind the idea of a playable Zelda, I do like it when the damsels aren't just frozen, dead, asleep or completely helpless, It's a lot more interesting that while she is still in need of rescue she still gets to do something to make it easier for the hero to rescue her when he arrives, that's thematically, gameplay wise she could be using some magical device/ability that's quite different from what Link gets in that game.
B)It's a bit baffling to hear a game designer not understand that there are pros and cons to linear game design, some of the best and most influential games in gaming history were linear experiences, for example .. a well-paced more structured experience where the designer knows what you have at any given moment of the game can allow them to create more fine-tuned encounters and set-pieces that take into account everything you have seen and done up to that point.
I quite like stories where the one in distress is a capable warrior, and she doesn't need you to do all the work, she just needs you to open the door or bring her a sword so you can kick ass and make your escape together.
I don't care for it, but I'm not against it as long as she is not turned into yet another girlboss
I don't care for it, but I'm not against it as long as she is not turned into yet another girlboss
@@mtoffo2275amen
The Zelda series actually does a sufficient job at making Zelda an active dynamic character, she does so many cool things in the background of games and we never get to see it. The "mystery" of Zelda was honestly the only truly effective narrative beats of TOTK. and it requires us NOT seeing her ultimate fate. Letting the player discover it in multiple ways made it more impactful. And this story beat REQUIRES Zelda to be "benched' until the climax. But we learn almost immediately that shes brought to the past, and the devs have no care for what order you find tears in, or when you finally make it to the forest, or if you just go directly to The *REDACTED* and find the *REDACTED* there and put the details together. So from the period shes taken back to the end of that story is fair game to show us a LOT of content... but they... don't..
Getting to that climax required her to team up with a crew of sages who are BARELY characters. Before we knew about Zelda going to the past, a lot of people assumed that the "depths" section might be some survival horror segment with Zelda... Nintendo would never do that but the desire is deeper than "I want damsel to be better character" its "Already badass diplomat woman is doin shit and I want to be doing shit". So rather than just watching a 2 minute flashback where we only get a glimpse of the people and world shes exploring... LET US DO THAT SHIT. Playable Zelda is partially just the same concept as playable Vergil, cool character needs to be playable so I can do that cool shit. But its also just an acknowledgement of leaving potential on the floor, there are story and gameplay opportunities lost by implying Zelda and other side characters are doing shit but not letting us experience it.
Not letting us play as Zelda in the past, not letting anyone outside of Rauru, Sophia, and Mineru be ACTUAL CHARACTERs like the Champions were... its more than a missed opportunity, its a disservice to the fans of BOTW, the same way that the constant "recontextualization" of every aspect of Hyrule's overworld is... L-like am I REALLY going to have to admit that Age of Calamity was a BETTER follow up to BOTW than TOTK? Thats where we're at now. Nintendo made a "direct sequel" that refuses to expand on or follow up on any of the world building set in the previous game, so now I have to praise a NONCANONICAL, FANSERVICE PILLED, ANIME BS, SPINOFF WARRIORS GAME as a more rewarding experience...
Nothing that happens in AoC beats TOTK's EBST moments, but those best moments are few and far between and AoC is just letting us eat with back to back fun callbacks and character beats. There I fuckin said it. Even Ganon, you can say that TOTK Ganon is more impressive design wise than that Majora's Wrath knockoff from AoC... but they are BOTH surface level baddies.
I agree with a lot of what Arlo is saying, and part of me thinks Anouma may have been a bit annoyed by the question. As for Ratatoskr...wasn't he saying it was a "masterpiece" in his mostly negative review? Kind of a drastic change to go from that to saying "it's not that good". Honeymoon phase is a hell of a drug huh lol? That being said, I'd personally give TotK around an 8, good but not a 9-10 quality game. Hopefully they do find a balance between old and new. It can't be THAT hard for a team as talented as them.
There has to be a term for like an anti-honeymoon phase where after a certain point people are more likely to be negative to something that initially received widespread acclaim due to either contrarianism, thoughts of what could have been, or any other reason.
Like, I *wish* tears of the kingdom was set in a different location, but I believe they did the best that could’ve been done to make the same location fresh. I also wish that we had gotten more linear set pieces and classic style dungeons, but the dungeons that we did get *are* better than botw even taking into consideration the criticism here. And they expanded on the idea of freedom with the combination system and new ways to get around the vast map that they expanded.
In almost every way totk *is* a better botw, it succeeded in presumably every goal it sought to achieve so by all rights it should be seen as much of a masterpiece as the original if not more so. But it’s not. And I also haven’t beaten it yet.
@@maninblack3410 There's a degree in which it is VERY obvious that Tears of the Kingdom was a Breath of the Wild DLC that greatly expanded beyond the original scope to the point where it became its own game. That, in and of itself, makes any "objective" improvements less significant to the minds of the audience. Whether that is fair or not can be debated, but that's simply the breaks.
@@thomasknapp6434 but what does that matter? The additions absolutely were significant enough to warrant a sequel, if that’s what you’re arguing. In terms of both effort and pure amount of content they unquestioningly added more in this sequel than they added in majora’s mask from ocarina of time.
In fact, if we lived in an alternate reality where the development of only Zelda was delayed in the games industry and everything else was the exact same, if oot was released on the switch in 2017 and mm was released in 2018 or 2019 the people in that universe would probably feel more strongly about mm being dlc than the people in our universe feel about totk.
Silly as that analogy is, I think my point is that clearly totk took more man hours, used more new environments/art, and integrated more new mechanics (honestly, that’s debatable depending on how you view the mask system. Like they were simple changes compared to the complex fusion system, but they also greatly impacted the gameplay) but still has this stigma of feeling like dlc. It’s interesting.
@@maninblack3410 I'm not saying the criticism is FAIR, merely that's what your average gamer nowadays is going to think, fair or not.
People and their paradigm shifts. They are not generational improvements with little to no dissadvantages, Things are lost in paradigm shifts and things are never they same.
My sister and I love old zelda more but she preferred skyward sword while i loved majora's mask, but even I can say botw is better than its sequel i put hundreds of hours in botw yet i still haven't finished tears...
seeing what the series producer says about nostalgia isn't true .
I fell in love with this series because of majora's mask being my first real 3d zelda and lifted the veil on my eyes to retro games ,
so I went back despite bad graphics and low framerate . I recently played kings field and armored core 1 ,
Games that are older than I also I played age of empires 2 for the first time it was good and so was the sims 1 and 2 .
I didn't grow up on these games especially the sims and animal crossing because as a kid I saw them and thought those games where for girls back when I was a child now I love life sims .
The irony is that we still have wildly successful franchises that are linear like Resident Evil.
Because of this new directions, dungeons are far worse and items have what less diversity. (Dont tell me you don't miss the hookshot or gale boomerang)
Resident Evil is successful, yes. Nowhere near as successful as new Zelda though
Yeah I miss those items.
So having played Zelda 1 a very long time ago before BotW was even revealed I can tell you that the notion that the new open world Zelda games are more classic or traditional Zelda than everything from AlttP to AlbW is only true in a strictly vibes kinda way. I didn't play Zelda 1 when it came out in 1986,. wasn't until they released it as part of Zelda Collector's Edition as part of a Gamecube bundle that I did but even by 2002 standards the game's world did feel huge in a way the 3D ones hadn't yet and you could TECHNICALLY go anywhere and do the dungeons in any order except that you needed the raft from one of the dungeons to access part of the map where 3 of them were and you had to do the last one last but the similarities end there. The basic gameplay loop in the first game was "find dungeon, complete dungeon", that was 90% of the game and there's actually less apart from that to be done in the over world than there is in any Zelda game apart from perhaps Zelda II which I can't say because that I never got very far in. The dungeons themselves were very much a more primitive version of what we know Zelda dungeons to be now and they were literally called Level - 1, Level -2 and so on so even thought you could walk into Level - 4 let's say without having done any of the previous dungeons the difficulty is meant to be harder than the first 3 and would be far more difficult to complete without having done some of the prior ones. Now, the finding the dungeon half of that core gameplay loop was a HUGE part of the game and something that did get phased out a lot as the games went on so the idea that there was something it lost along the way is true but BotW doesn't exactly bring that back. It's no great mystery where in this great wide world the Divine Beasts are, right at the start of the game if you look around on the great plateau you can see where they are clear as day and in TotK they basically tell you where they are. So mechanically it's not even close, Zelda 1's world worked more like and Easter Egg hunt than a Sandbox.
Honestly, before BoTW, mainline console Zelda games were becoming even more and more linear, Skyward Sword was AWFULLY linear. What people want is more distinctive dungeons, and I understand that, but that's not what we are talking here, Aonuma probably understand that people want a linear game.
What I find strange is that TotK feels far more linear than BotW to me.
I feel like there is more of a push to do things in a specific order, more of a definitive path than BotW had.
The placement of the glider alone really makes that seem intentional.
@BaldorfBreakdowns TOYK deffinitly pushes you in specific directions more then the BOTW did but it's still as free as BOTW ever was, I didn't find Auto Byild till after I beat Ganon because I forgot about the quest and went elsewhere. Also did the Spirit Temple completely put of order. Games as open as the previous one, it just nudges you harder then last time. You're fully free to ignore it tho.
Arlo doesn’t mess around lol it would be awesome if you and him could collaborate whether it be podcast or whatever
beep boop, to me classic zelda is zelda 2, which had tightly designed combat filled puzzle light dungeons, and 2d platforming
not a robot but i did want to make the joke
Linear games are good if they aren’t a digital museum. In my opinion games rely too heavily on the open world aspect, which leaves the overall game bland, or it leaves many areas of the map useless. Hogwarts legacy was really bad about this. They made 80% of the map near completely useless, which basically just turns into background for riding the broom. If there isn’t a specific reason for a world to be open then it really just is for the gimmick.
Sad thing is even Fromsoft games are going to become like this if we don't push back.
I'm so sick of every game going open world to the point I can't make myself beat Elden ring.
What I want from Zelda games with a modern perspective is more durable weapons. Not saying they can't break but they should last a bit longer if they're good quality weapons. Sticks should snap easy. An iron sword shouldn't shatter so easy. I do want classic dungeons more similar to how they're mentioned in this video. Shrines should definitely stay because they're fun little puzzle breaks but not full dungeons. also I want items that are staples of the series. The hookshot in an open world game is SUCH A MISSED OPPORTUNITY! What if we had a magic instrument again so we could play sun song or song of storms to force certain NPC behaviors. Lastly I think memories need to go. Many have stated that they're the only real hindrance to botw and totk's stories. It sucks having to find the story of the game instead of living it.
Mb for the paragraph
I have no nostalgia for majoras mask. I played it when I had just become a fully grown man. Game scared me like no other and it very well may be my favourite game of all time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s normal for creative people to focus on one of their works of art and try to forget about the other ones. Or perhaps he thinks he and his team is improving over time so the last thing they created is “the best”. There are trade offs with more intricate designs. That’s not for everyone either. Just like more open design isn’t for everyone. But Zelda is about intricate puzzles. That is Zelda. So you gotta lean into it in the right moments. Not lessen the dopamine hit as Arlo was getting at. There’s a reason why I bet a lot of people like me played the dungeons in TOTK but didn’t feel compelled to get to the end of the story for awhile. It’s because the dungeons don’t hit you in an exciting way and they also don’t make you care about the story being in the past. So they basically dropped the ball on both things. I still love the game, but I’m with Arlo on this.
I felt so disappointed about the fact that Breath of the Wild only had 4 divine bests as the dungeons and a crap ton of shrines. I honestly felt that shrines were just a crutch. I think the game is still fun and worth playing. I just think it stinks no biggoron sword, no bug collecting, no treasure hunting from Wind Waker, or stopping to explore a strange island or house. I just hope stuff like that comes back while keeping what Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom started.
I love watching you react
Me: "Let capcom make another Zelda"
Everyone else agrees, Man i hope they do make another traditional one!
I love your videos but please don't go down the asmongold react hole. What I mean is your title and thumbnails are identical to the videos you are reacting to, and in this case the video isn't even linked in the description
Can you upload when you reacted to Arlo and supermarioT talking about miyamoto hating stories? That was so funny
The playable zelda intro is just kinda weird why cant the heros journey be for her?we had links pov and plot like 20 times,as for the reason i would want this is to have a character that has a personality while i play if she becomes sillent tho i probably wouldnt care about the change
People like this shouldn't be ABLE to lead a dev team for a video game, istg. Assuming it isn't some poor translation / clickbait bullshit, it reads like he doesn't even begin to comprehend that there are fundamental design differences between linear and non-linear game progression systems.
"Why would you want a more limited game?" Because the devs also have a more limited scope. Meaning the devs have an easier time producing higher quality content within that scope. This is a problem that we still cannot solve in 2024. The more "open" the world is, the more dynamic expression you're allowing players to have. And as a natural consequence of this dynamic expression, you have to account for more depth per instance of expression. Well, you don't *have* to, but the more times you don't, the more it feels like the "open" quality of your open world is irrelevant and has no bearing on gameplay. It's a balancing act of playing with player expectations.
Consequently, a pseudo-linear game might have 5 possible states for a 4 part sequence. A, B, C1, C2, and D, where A -> B -> C -> D but you've some variance in which C you get based on some change in prior areas. This is linear done right, where you're implementing variance in how the game unfolds by tracking SOME dynamic parameters, but the over-all flow of the game is still very much linear by design. Inversely, however, a non-linear open world game would ideally allow for (less than but up to) A->B, A->C, A->D, B->A, B->C, B->D, C->A, C->B, C->D, D->A, D->B, and D->C possible paths, where not just the path taken but the order matters as well. This causes a potential exponential increase to the workload a dev team has to take on. Any corners cut here create dissatisfaction because you're no longer living up to the ideal you've set for your players' expectations. But since a dev team has limited resources, they HAVE to cut corners. So what is a natural consequence? Look at BoTW. Copy and pasted shrines. Uncompelling "dungeons". Bullshit collect-a-thon-style side-quests. A world that feels quite empty. Copy and pasted enemy encampments. Over time, each one of these issues create a potential pain point as players inevitably face the divergence between a truly open world, expansive experience, and a game that feels like the embodiment of meaningless ctrl + c, ctrl + v.
Linear games don't have to balance on this tightrope by their very nature. They can deliver a constant stream of unique high quality content that is designed to do a specific thing a specific way. They don't have to account for infinite permutations to retain a dynamic and open "feeling" in their game as the players aren't expecting there to be one. Then, additionally, any dynamic elements introduced feel all the more special as a result.
But nah. It's gotta be nostalgia. If you don't get the fuck out of here with that shit, Aonuma...
You do realize that Aonuma is largely “ to blame” for the Zelda franchise being what it is, right? The titles everyone moans over right now were made by Aonuma.
So this is a creative looking back on his past work amd saying “ I’m not interested in that anymore, this new thing is what I want to make next”.
You're not wrong and it's totally understandable, but I don't think his credentials should matter much in assessing whether or not his sentiment is even sensible. He can do what he wishes with his franchise and that's great. I mostly liked BoTW. I don't have anything against him as a creative. But it's absolute nonsense to presume there isn't a fundamental difference in game design philosophy between the games, and to act as though the fans would have no legitimate reason to expect consideration feels disingenuous. If you don't want to go back to making a more linear game, then just say that. Don't put it on the fans. Don't put it on the world at large as though it's their responsibility to reach some "freedom" enlightenment and look at these products with the same rose-colored glasses. There are very real arguments as for why designing games in this way destroys a lot of the integrity of what players are expecting out of the game, especially when you're factoring in a franchise that players have come to love. IPs have an identity. That identity is harmed in the process of making such a radical shift. Let someone else make a game with the same IP if you don't want to do it. Don't just pretend there's no good reason why it should be done.
TLDR: He speaks as though he doesn't care to remain loyal to the product he's been loved for making in the past, and that makes him sound unfit to lead. At least solely. It's his thing, he can do his thing, that's great. But it's coming at the cost of what a lot of fans used to love about "his thing" and maybe it shouldn't be just "his" if he isn't going to care anymore.
@@orlando5789
@@datboi_gee So many fans loved this product and this identity that Zelda had, that in 2011, Skyward Sword bombed on release and then everyone wanted a shift in the formula to happen.
I think Skyward is a bit of a mixed bag in that you can't easily attribute it's failure to the game itself. Circumstantially it wasn't in the best of conditions to be released in, but that's neither here nor there. Regardless, I still think it's the wrong mentality to have, to *completely* disregard the past because of one misstep.
Clearly there's something to the "old formula" that is missing in BoTW. And I think it can be easily quantified in one statement: I don't think anyone who's played and enjoyed the last two main-line releases has thought to themselves, "Wow I'm sure glad they got rid of old-school temples. Who needs those?"
It's at least half of what it has historically meant to play a Zelda game. You want to solve the puzzle of the dungeon and be tested in new ways as your abilities become broadened. And they so easily could have done it within the new games. But they're antithetical to this new worship of "freedom", whatever the fuck that means. Freedom does not directly translate to quality experience. It just feels like a total misunderstanding of what they're even doing.
Again, I didn't dislike BoTW. But I don't think it's an unfair assessment to consider it kind of empty. 80% of the game feels like a copy / paste job with meaningless exploration, and less of an emphasis -- by design, no less -- on narrative. @@orlando5789
I agree with the playable zelda. I don't really need to play as every character I like. Link is the playable character. Give me a side game where I play as a sheikah or something. Not even necessarily zelda, just a ninja game in the zelda universe. That's all I need. I also agree with the koizumi thing.
Darn it Ratatoskr, why are you uploading at THREE A.M.!
yer killing me
I said it before in TotK reviews, I think Zelda is a dead franchise, this initial Aonuma quote solidifies that. Unless someone else takes the wheel, we will never get another Zelda rich in Celtic/Briton lore where you are surrounded by Brother Grim or Shakespearian fairy tales where you pursue an chivalric Arthurian quest to obtain the legendary sword and save the princess, and the world from evil with light Christian influence (or heavy if you've seen the pic of Link praying before a Crucifix). It's a dead franchise, and what comes after TotK for Aonuma will be an open-ended, inoffensive, game that lacks any of the old Zelda from the gameplay loops, to map design, to lore and aesthetics. You will have Characters named "Link" and "Zelda" which is basically nothing more than nostalgia baiting fan service. IRONICALLY.
The only thing that could save Zelda is the same thing that is saving Dragon Ball. The Fans just start making their own material in the likeness of the old material. Dragon Ball is a great example because DBS is just fan service and holds little to no continuity with DBZ.
it sucks, I hate it but it is the truth. We will not get another Forest Temple or anything like that. I doubt we'll even get a dang hook shot.
threem.
lol, the series isn't "dead" at all. It's been REVIVED from the brink of death.
@@TheRealNintendoKid Seriously, I remember everyone saying SS was too linear and the Zelda series was stagnating...
Yea it's like after 30 years those themes have been pounced into fucking Mud and everyone making the game is tired of it want to explore new themes and ideas.
@@TheRealNintendoKid That's your copium to smoke.
There will continue to be a series of games with Zelda fan service that people will call Zelda, like every good franchise - corporations would rather drag their IPs through the mud to make $$, ruining them in the process than than providing a serious work that is in continuity with its heritage or letting the series finish by having a good death. Which is far preferable than this Weekends at Bernie garbage.
Like Star Wars, like Lord of the Rings, like Dragon Ball, like The Avengers, etc.
You'll have endless corporate slop dressed up as Zelda and you'll delude yourself into thinking they are doing you a service by providing you with great content and keeping your childhood alive just because you can climb vertically with a blond hair pawn and "Zelda" is on the box.
But the franchise is dead and that isn't bringing it back.
Intro did not age well 💀
I like tears of the kingdom and I had a lot of fun. Until I watched that RUclips video about the air bike then the game became so easy especially the depths. In the beginning the depths was hard and difficult but then the bike ruined my mind I wish I could play the game again but delete that knowledge
You don’t want a playable Zelda. That doesn’t mean a lot of the fan base doesn’t want it. Link can save literally all of hyrule, he doesn’t always need to save Zelda. She can have some more agency (without being playable ofc but it would be better if she was playable) and it can still be a hero’s journey. We don’t need this false equivalency. We can have a sick heroes journey without a damsel.
There is a reason Zelda’s ballad (BotW Zelda mod) has been downloaded 140,000+ times.
What about L-ink but CH-inese?
It’s not about nostalgia, it’s about a ‘type of game’ people loved! It doesn’t have to be linear. It was about going on an adventure of discovery and journey.
Keep the new style of open world and exploration, but hide some of the older style immersive dungeons for players to unlock and trawl through for hours on end. The new dungeons were boring! They were not dungeons, so much as a small area to unlock terminals. I want labyrinths and temples to get lost in, have puzzles and bosses. Bring back dungeon keys!! Simply add the old style of 3D Zelda dungeon into the new games and it’s the perfect Zelda game!!!!
I want playable Zelda. Why can't I
I don’t. We have more than enough “strong independent woman” narratives.
@@Level_Eleven Not mutually exclusive. Opinion disregarded
@@Level_Eleven Why does Zelda being a playable character, mean she will be a "strong independent woman". The games from basically Ocarina of Time onwards have had Zelda doing shit in its world with Link. Zelda and Link both together save the day. I wanna play that cool shit. Even in a post game situation. Play the events of the game from Zelda's perspective. Make it 3-5 hours long and it would be amazing. I would love to play as sheik, tetra or skyward Sword Zelda on there journey through the lands of hyrule helping save it along side Link.
@@Level_Eleven holy fucking shit. Do women being independent bother you? Are you genuinely that much of a snowflake?
Make Zelda playable. Make her a lesbian also. Just so they can all of the conservatives
@@glungusgongus your existence is disregarded
I didn't "hear somewhere" about BOTW/TOTK being classic Zelda. I observed it on my own. But so did Nintendo themselves. Tons of promotional artwork for BOTW is directly inspired by the original game. Dueling Peaks, that little opening cinematic view of it, that's all Zelda 1 stuff. The game was released during a big anniversary year for the original. It reused the old japanese text from the original game. Nintendo even said it's a spiritual remake of the original.
We want a playable Zelda!
Spirit Tracks and Hyrule Warriors: are we a joke to you?
Puzzles in TotK rely mostly on creativity with logic sprinkled in (multiple solutions). Older games past BotW relied on logic with creativity sprinkled in (one solution). I don't prefer one over the other, but I do miss the older formula to puzzle solving, seeing as how the last old school blueprints were used in Tri Force Heroes (October 24th, 2015). Like I said, I don't prefer one over the other. I just miss the older one.
Twilight Princess had you using multiple items in dungeons. I remember Snowpeak and City in the Sky requiring 4-5 items from the whole game to solve puzzles.
TotK literally feels like you just ultrahand everything.
@@BreadCatMarcus I meant multiple solutions to *one* puzzle.
Couldn't disagree more about a playable Zelda. If it added a change of pace to Link's gameplay it would be a great addition.
Honestly a game where we play as Zelda saving link would be kind of cool, but in a more way, we know exactly is and can see him whenever kind of like a snow white situation.
If they went that direction, I'd prefer a Link gender swap. There's no fun in playing royalty and trying to save a former nobody.
Unless Zelda was born the nobody hero and Link was a prince. That might be a cool direction.
@BreadCatMarcus honestly was thinking of instead of Gannon kidnapping Zelda he instead decided to take out the hero of time early on, and it's up to Zelda to set everything back to normalcy. And would love for ot to be a more mage like game.
why can't the hero's journey be from Zelda's point of view? Seeing Skyward Sword from Zelda's perspective would've been awesome
Honestly I don't think I'd ever be happy without just scrapping botw influence altogether. The characters are garbage, the over reactive humor is garbage, the designs are garbage. I think what I loved about Zelda is even basic npc had charm maybe outside of crowds. Every character was intentionally designed for the most part where in these open world games they're ugly like what royalty thought commoners looked like. Zelda was always a package deal where no particular part is out of this world but it comes together to form an experience we call Zelda. The limitations and tight design is what made it. I just don't think it lends itself to an open world design.
The only reason people say botw is the sequel to one is that they're both open world...that's it. Everything else about Zelda 1 was like every other Zelda that came after. They fell for the propaganda nintendo fed them cause they didn't know better and a lot of those same people will use the open air term nintendo also fed them. To give a fair argument maybe it's a case of what it was intended to be coming to fruition but even that I feels is wrong. Zelda wasn't about freedom but about adventure of going through a dangerous world, beating the bad guy, and saving the day. That sense you're going through actual dungeons and places like stops on your journey is important which those piece meal same looking shrines can't do.
I think this is a cultural thing because there is just no way that Aonuma actually believes that. I refuse to believe that he is actually that delusional.
I don’t get the hype on Tears of the kingdom the story was MID! What was Ganons goals idk who cares. Want to see 4 identical cutscenes here you go! Want a predictable story here it is like man it just wasn’t enjoyable
Taking thumbnail tips from xQc?
Concerning aonuma , term limits for producers lol?