#especially considering totk came out last year

[yagatoclan]

there’s a rumor that there’s a new zelda game coming where you can play as zelda and if this rumor is true at all i’m like 80% certain that it’s another hyrule warriors game. probably taking place during the imprisoning war.

[blueskittlesart]

I've heard that while most people really really love BotW and TotK, some people hate those two for going open-world, and some people hate TotK specifically for something about the story. As the resident Zelda expert I know of, what do you think of those takes?

"something about the story" is a bit too vague for me to answer--if you look at my totk liveblog tag from back when the game was newly released or my general zelda analysis tag you may be able to find some of my in-depth thoughts about the story of totk, but in general i liked it.

the open world thing though is something i can and will talk about for hours. (I am obsessed with loz and game design and this is an essay now <3) breath of the wild is a game that was so well-received that a lot of the criticism from older fans who were expecting something closer to the classic zelda formula was just kind of immediately drowned out and ignored, and while i don't think it's a valid criticism to suggest that botw strayed too far from its origins in going open-world, i am more than willing to look into those criticisms, why they exist, and why i think going open-world was ultimately the best decision botw devs could have made. (totk is a slightly different story, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Loz is a franchise with a ton of history and a ton of really, REALLY dedicated fans. it's probably second only to mario in terms of recognizability and impact in nintendo's catalog. To us younger fans, the older games can sometimes seem, like, prehistoric when compared to what we're used to nowadays, but it's important to remember just how YOUNG the gaming industry is and how rapidly it's changed and grown. the first zelda game was released in 1986, which was 31 years before botw came out in 2017. What this means for nintendo and its developers is that they have to walk a very fine line between catering to older fans in their 30s and 40s now who would have been in nintendo's prime demographic when the first few games in the franchise were coming out AND making a game that's engaging to their MODERN target demographic and that age group's expectations for what a gaming experience should look like.

LOZ is in kind of a tough spot when it comes to modernizing, because a lot of its core gameplay elements are very much staples of early RPGs, and a lot of those gameplay elements have been phased out of modern RPGs for one reason or another. gathering collectibles, fighting one's way through multilevel, mapless dungeons, and especially classic zelda's relative lack of guidance through the story are all things that date games and which modern audiences tend to get frustrated with. for the last few releases before botw, the devs had kind of been playing with this -- skyward sword in particular is what i consider their big experiment and what (i think) became the driving force behind a lot of what happened with botw. Skyward sword attempted to solve the issues I listed by, basically, making the map small and the story much, much more blatantly linear. Skyward sword feels much more like other modern rpgs to me than most zelda games in terms of its playstyle, because the game is constantly pushing you to do specific things. this is a common storytelling style in modern RPGs--obviously, the player usually needs to take specific actions in order to progress the story, and so when there's downtime between story sections the supporting characters push the player towards the next goal. but this actually isn't what loz games usually do. in the standard loz formula, you as the player are generally directly given at most 4 objectives. these objectives will (roughly) be as follows: 1. go through some dungeons and defeat their bosses, 2. claim the master sword, 3. go through another set of dungeons and defeat their bosses, 4. defeat the final boss of the game. (not necessarily in that order, although that order is the standard formula.) the ONLY time the player will be expressly pushed by supporting characters towards a certain action (excluding guide characters) is when the game is first presenting them with those objectives. in-between dungeons and other gameplay segments, there's no sense of urgency, no one pushing you onto the next task. this method of storytelling encourages players to take their time and explore the world they're in, which in turn helps them find the collectibles and puzzles traditionally hidden around the map that will make it easier for them to continue on. Skyward sword, as previously mentioned, experimented with breaking this formula a bit--its overworld was small and unlocked sequentially, so you couldn't explore it fully without progressing the narrative, and it gave players a "home base" to return to in skyloft which housed many of the puzzles and collectibles rather than scattering them throughout the overworld. This method worked... to an extent, but it also meant that skyward sword felt drastically different in its storytelling and how its narrative was presented to the player than its predecessors. this isn't necessarily a BAD thing, but i am of the opinion that one of zelda's strongest elements has always been the level of immersion and relatability its stories have, and the constant push to continue the narrative has the potential to pull players out of your story a bit, making skyward sword slightly less engaging to the viewer than other games in the franchise. (to address the elephant in the room, there were also obviously some other major issues with the design of sksw that messed with player immersion, but imo even if the control scheme had been perfect on the first try, the hyperlinear method would STILL have been less engaging to a player than the standard exploration-based zeldas.)

So when people say that botw was the first open-world zelda, I'm not actually sure how true I personally believe that is. I think a lot of the initial hype surrounding botw's open map were tainted by what came before it--compared to the truly linear, intensely restricted map of skyward sword, botw's map feels INSANE. but strictly speaking, botw actually sticks pretty closely to the standard zelda gameplay experience, at least as far as the overworld map is concerned. from the beginning, one of the draws of loz is that there's a large, populated map that you as the player can explore (relatively) freely. it was UNUSUAL for the player to not have access to almost the entire map either immediately or very quickly after beginning a new zelda game. (the size and population of these maps was restricted by software and storage capabilities in earlier games, but pretty muhc every zelda game has what would have been considered a large & well populated map at the time of its release.) what truly made botw different was two things; the first being the sheer SIZE of the map and the second being the lack of dungeons and collectibles in a traditional sense. Everything that needs to be said about the size of the map already has been said: it's huge and it's crazy and it's executed PERFECTLY and it's never been done before and every game since has been trying to replicate it. nothing much else to say there. but I do want to talk about the percieved difference in gameplay as it relates to the open-world collectibles and dungeons, because, again, i don't think it's actually as big of a difference as people seem to think it is.

Once again, let's look at the classic formula. I'm going to start with the collectibles and lead into the dungeons. The main classic collectible that's a staple of every zelda game pre-botw is the heart piece. This is a quarter of a heart that will usually be sitting out somewhere in the open world or in a dungeon, and will require the player to either solve a puzzle or perform a specific action to get. botw is the first game to not include heart pieces... TECHNICALLY. but in practice, they're still there, just renamed. they're spirit orbs now, and rather than being hidden in puzzles within the overworld (with no explanation as to how or why they ended up there, mind you) they're hidden within shrines, and they're given a clear purpose for existing throughout hyrule and for requiring puzzle-solving skills to access. Functionally, these two items are exactly the same--it's an object that gives you an extra heart container once you collect four of them. no major difference beyond a reskin and renaming to make the object make sense within the greater world instead of just having a little ❤️ floating randomly in the middle of their otherwise hyperrealistic scenery. the heart piece vs spirit orb i think is a good microcosm of the "it's too different" criticisms of botw as a whole--is it ACTUALLY that different, or is it just repackaged in a way that doesn't make it immediately obvious what you're looking at anymore? I think it's worth noting that botw gives a narrative reason for that visual/linguistic disconnect from other games, too--it's set at minimum TEN THOUSAND YEARS after any other given game. while we don't have any concrete information about how much time passes between new-incarnation games, it's safe to assume that botw is significantly further removed from other incarnations of hyrule/link/zelda/etc than any other game on the timeline. It's not at all inconceivable within the context of the game that heart pieces may have changed form or come to be known by a different name. most of the changes between botw and other games can be reasoned away this way, because most of them have SOME obvious origins in a previous game mechanic, it's just been updated for botw's specific setting and narrative.

The dungeons ARE an actual departure from the classic formula, i will grant you. the usual way a zelda dungeon works is that link enters the dungeon, solves a few puzzles, fights a mini boss at about the halfway point, and after defeating the mini boss he gets a dungeon item which makes the second half of the dungeon accessible. He then uses that item in the dungeon's final boss fight, which is specifically engineered with that item in mind as the catalyst to win it. Botw's dungeons are the divine beasts. we've removed the presence of mini-bosses entirely, because the 'dungeon items' aren't something link needs to get within the dungeon itself--he alredy has them. they're the sheikah slate runes: magnesis, cryonis, stasis, and remote bombs. Each of the divine beast blight battles is actually built around using one of these runes to win it--cryonis to break waterblight's ice projectiles, magnesis to strike down thunderblight with its own lightning rods, remote bombs to take out fireblight's shield. (i ASSUME there's some way to use stasis effectively against windblight, mostly because it's obvious to me that that's how all the other fights were designed, but in practice it's the best strategy for that fight is to just slow down time via aerial archery, so i've never tried to win that way lol.) So even though we've removed traditional dungeon items and mini-boss fights, the bones of the franchise remain unchanged underneath. this is what makes botw such an ingenious move for this franchise imo; the fact that it manages to update itself into such a beautiful, engaging, MODERN game while still retaining the underlying structure that defines its franchise and the games that came before it. botw is an effective modern installment to this 30-year-old franchise because it takes what made the old games great and updates it in a way that still stays true to the core of the franchise.

I did mention totk in my opening paragraph and you mention it in your ask so i have to come back to it somehow. Do i think that totk did the gigantic-open-world thing as well as botw did? no. But i also don't really think there was any other direction to go with that game specifically. botw literally changed the landscape of game development when it was released. I KNOW you all remember how for a good year or two after botw's release, EVERY SINGLE GAME that came out HAD to have a massive open-world map, regardless of whether or not that actually made sense for that game. (pokemon is still suffering from the effects of that botw-driven open world craze to this day. rip scarlet/violet your gameplay was SUCH dogshit) I'm not sure to what degree nintendo and the botw devs anticipated that success, (I remember the open world and the versatility in terms of problem-solving being the two main advertising angles pre-release, but it's been 7 years. oh jesus christ it's been SEVEN YEARS. anyways) but in any case, there's basically NO WAY that they anticipated their specific gameplay style taking off to that degree. That's not something you can predict. When creating totk, they were once again walking that line between old and new, but because they were only 3ish years out from botw when totk went into development, they were REALLY under pressure to stay true to what it was that had made botw such an insane success. I think that's probably what led to the expanded map in the sky and depths as well as the fuse/build mechanics--they basically took their two big draws from botw, big map and versatility, and said ok BIGGER MAP and MORE VERSATILITY. Was this effective? yeah. do i think they maybe could have made a more engaging and well-rounded game if they'd been willing to diverge a little more from botw? also yeah. I won't say that I wanted totk to be skyward sword-style linear, because literally no one wanted that, but I do think that because of the insane wave of success that botw's huge open world brought in the developers were under pressure to stay very true to botw in their designing the gameplay of totk, and I think that both the gameplay and story might have been a bit more engaging if they had been allowed to experiment a little more in their delivery of the material.

[shannonsketches]

wilds era complaining under the cut I just finally figured out a thing that's been making my brain itchy

Honestly as much more as I liked TotK than BotW because all I really wanted from BotW was more atmospheric spaces and more story, learning that Fujibayashi was an experience designer for horror attractions makes everything I hated about the last three big zelda titles (the ones he directed) make so much sense.

If you've known me for the past few years, you have definitely heard me complain about not being able to ride my horse in the desert, despite the reason for that limitation being a story beat that you have to resolve, and despite resolving it, you still cannot use that mechanic in that area.

I thought this was just a Me, Personally complaint -- but it's actually a perfect summary of the Entire Issue I have:

Fujibayashi's games don't prioritize story at all. By his own description, everything in his games are about mechanics and getting from point a to point b to make you use those mechanics. The story is just set dressing to get you to move around the map, which is true of all games to an extent. And because that's true of all games to an extent, I thought this was just an issue I had with open world games.

But Hollow Knight doesn't have that problem, nor does Psychonauts 2, nor Journey, nor really any other open world game that I've played. This is because -- per the developers -- those maps expanded organically and were built out as the story expanded.

So the issue is that most of those games use mechanics as a vehicle for you to explore the world and story. Fujibayashi's games use the world and story as a vehicle for you to explore the mechanics.

And Fujibayashi is a solid environmental storyteller, but he's also really not a storyteller. It's clearly not what he enjoys doing and not what he prioritizes. He likes planning routes and making puzzles, which is great! Games rely on that skillset! It's very important!

Except, people who play narrative games usually want a compelling narrative more than a trick to get from here to there. Fans will take the long road to find lore at the end of it. Aunoma was better at that, which is why traveling in OoT and WW sucks for 70% of the game but the stories are more devoted and the hints were more compelling, but now he just (by his own description) mostly nods or shakes his head at whatever Fujibayashi is doing.

For comparison, look at Journey, which is ONLY environmental storytelling. There is No dialogue or really any developed characters, and it is one of the most highly rated, heavily awarded games in recent history.

I genuinely did and do enjoy TotK. But it REALLY concerns me if the director hadn't thought of it as directly referencing prior games, despite considering himself a huge fan of the series. Especially because TotK even mimicked the plot of his OWN game (Zelda is whisked away, goes back in time, seals herself in an unreachable state to make a sword to defeat the evil that came from below and then is an immortal who magically turns human because of love, Impa is the only one who knows about it, the sky people inventing the kingdom of Hyrule, etc).

I do honestly assume that's a mistranslation of him not having heard that some people thought it was recreating Ocarina of Time, specifically, because he later seemed to be on team 'It's All Intentionally The Same Legend Being Retold in Each Game' (which is all well and good).

All this to say, I think Fujibayashi is a skilled engineer but that man needs a co-director who really prioritizes story. If Nintendo gets him one we'll probably get a really good game out of it.

[passiveaggressiveturkeys]

What really annoys me about the whole devs talking down BG3 thing is that a few months ago when TOTK, another massive game with no micro transactions that launched unbroken, came out all the responses to it from other studios I saw was mainly praise and astonishment that they managed to get it to work like that on the hardware it’s on

Now of course most people probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to talk about Nintendo like these devs are talking about Larian but it does somewhat disprove their whole point, BG3 is not an anomaly

Now yes of course TOTK is a very different game to BG3. What they do have in common however is that they both very obviously had a lot of time and effort put into them, especially when compared to many other AAA releases and it shows in the finished product’s quality and the response they’ve received from players

2 games released 3 months apart

I’ve also seen a lot of people comparing the industry response to BG3 to the industry response that Elden Ring received last year, which yeah, again it’s the same story. Also last year GOWR, again quality game that was neither broken nor included micro transactions but it was a Sony game and like Nintendo, game devs aren’t going to try to knock them down to attempt to make themselves look better (well provided they had any brains as doing so probably wouldn’t look so good in their chosen career)

This kinda got away from me but what I’m trying to say is that while yeah BG3 is in a genre that rarely sees new releases these days and even less so on its scale, it is not in any way an anomaly in the level of care that went into creating it, despite what some devs may want us to think because that’s what they’re trying to say with those tweets. They’re not saying nah we’re not gonna make a CRPG like this, they’re saying nah we’re not interested in putting the time and money into creating a similar quality product

And considering for more linear games the amount of time and money required to make it a similar level of quality would be far lower. And considering it seems that the majority of devs that have talked down BG3 and ER have been from very big studios that should have more resources in the first place. Well it’s really not a good look

Anyway it’s late and I’m tired so I’m going to stop rambling now just writing my thoughts out really before I go to sleep because yeah, no game devs we may not see another game like BG3 this gen because it is a more niche genre. There are however still a few studios that will put the same amount of effort that goes into 2 or 3 of your games into 1 game that they release as a complete and playable product. It’s rarer than it should be but certainly still happens

[drsteggy]

Author’s Notes: So this took a little longer than anticipated, but I didn’t have a lot of down time the last ten days or whatever. The original plan was to do like 500-750 words per section, but this one needed more. I also had to “do research” for Link and Zelda’s path to this shrine, because I did not realize it was actually accessible by horse until like 3 days ago.

So if you’re worried about “the same Hyrule” for TOTK, maybe don’t be because I have like a thousand hours in this one and I still learn new things.

The battle sequence here is what I did to clear the path so I could ride my damn horse up to the shrine.

********

“I do,” his voice is soft as drops his gaze back to his dinner. He scrapes the spoon across the bottom of the wooden bowl. “I remember.”

She sets her own spoon down on the table and wipes her hands on a napkin. “Do you remember my apology?”

He had read about that in her diary. He shakes his head.

“I know you felt bad about yelling. We were both different people then.”

She goes silent. When he looks up at her, her eyes are round and soft. Her lip curls slightly as she fights back a tear. “Well, I’m sorry. You did not deserve my anger that day. Or any day.”

“It’s okay, Prin- Zelda. It’s okay. We were different people.”

“I suppose. There are things I wish I did differently, especially with you.”

Link debates licking his bowl clean and decides it’s not appropriate behavior in front of a princess, even if she doesn’t want to be one anymore.

“We could ride out there, maybe?” Hope lifts her voice.

“Sure.”

“Great,” She stands up, pushing the bench away from the table. “We can leave in the morning.”

Link runs the conversation over in his head, trying to figure out where he erred. “What about Impa and Kakariko? That’s across Hyrule?”

Zelda turns her gaze to him, brow now wrinkled as she briefly considers the question. Tension coils in his chest, though he isn’t sure why.

“I think Impa will wait a little longer. I did.” She punctuates her statement with a bright smile before turning and striding out of the stable.

Link sighs and tips his face to the ceiling.

****

He takes a second horse from Riverside Stable so she has her own mount and gives her a refresher riding lesson. She lifts her hands too high to steer, but the horse he picked is forgiving and gentle. She will be safe on Caramel’s back.

They set out across central Hyrule, riding past the very place they battled the Calamity not so long ago. The ground is still burned, though there’s new grass trying to fill things in. Neither says anything about it, but Link clucks Epona into a canter.

A week later they stay at the stable by the Great Bridge in the southern edges of Tabantha. The air has gotten crisp and cold. Link cooks with peppers and Goron spice that night to try and keep warm. Zelda claims his hooded cloak. She has reclaimed the slate as well.

“The first time I came here, I had to scramble past a pair of flying guardians.” Link says as he banks the coals for the night. “I hope they aren’t still there. It didn’t occur to me to try and bring a horse up to that shrine until I found the memory you left me. And then I had to back track.”

Zelda nods absently, with her hands clutching a mug of tea. Her eyes search the sky, picking out constellations.

“I guess you already know about the path up.” Link takes his own mug and sits across from the fire.

“Sorry,” she turns her attention back to him. “It still feels new, having a body again. But, yes, I know the path up. I had such a hard time getting Storm up there a hundred years ago it ruined most of my early start.”

Link doesn’t remember much about the incident a hundred years earlier before sliding Darcy to a stop at the foot of the shrine, dismounting before the horse had come to a halt. Zelda spun on him immediately, and expressed her displeasure loudly. Storm grazed, one foot cocked and ignored the entire scene until Zelda angrily grabbed the horse’s reins and dragged him off to find a suitable mounting block.

“How early did you start?”

Zelda smiles. “Well before the sun. I had to tack the horse away from camp so I didn’t wake you, and then I left. And struggled and cursed for the next two hours to get up that path. It has steps! I don’t know why he wouldn’t just go!”

“Steps are not made for horses.”

“Still, it was easier going than a lot of other places where he just went.”

“He followed Darcy. He didn’t want to go alone.”

Zelda makes a small, non committed sound.

“Well, we will go together in the morning. Together.” He makes sure to meet her eyes as he says this, and is rewarded with a smile.

“Together.” She agrees.

They rise with the sun to cross the bridge, enjoying the quiet and the early light. The bridge is in bad shape after a century of neglect, so the ride out is slow. Link hopes to pick the pace up on the other side.

He spots the first skywatcher almost as soon as the horses are off the bridge. Din’s balls.

Zelda lets out a huff as the unwieldy machine flies into view, its red light searching as it travels some prescribed path around a tall column of stone.

“Stay here,” Link makes sure to get her direct attention. “I’ll take care of them.”

“I fought the Calamity, too.” Her voice is perhaps sharper than she intends.

“Yes, but I’ve fought these particular guardians several times.”

Zelda huffs again but doesn’t dismount. Link hops off Epona and pulls out a bow he took off a dead lynel. The bow magically turns a single arrow into three, maximizing his stash of ancient arrows. He nocks an arrow, half draws the bow and runs forward.

His first shot falls short.

The skywatcher has not noticed him yet, so he drops to a squat, calling on Revali to lift him into the air.

Revali is silent. For the first time since he’s earned it, the Gale does not explode around him. Link’s eyes widen, but the fast beepbeepbeep that fills his ears says the guardian has seen him. He bolts, acutely aware that he is a little too far from the column to hide behind it before that targeting light turns…

Everything around him goes white and he tumbles, the grass burning as the guardian’s white-blue light hits him in the middle of his back. The tunic is reinforced with dragon horn and protects him from most of the damage. He gets up and runs to put the column between him and the skywatcher.

With the sight line broken, the guardian hovers in place, searching the ground for him. He takes the moment to climb the column, using all his stamina as he leaps and pulls himself to the top.

He drags himself to the top, panting, and sticky with sweat as the guardian decides he is no longer a worry and begins circling the column again. It flies low enough that it does not see him until he pulls out the bow and launches a triplet of ancient arrows into it.

The machine lights up pink and rises, planting its target in the center of his forehead. Link calmly raises his bow and takes careful aim at the guardian’s eye. The beeping grows faster and he draws a breath before releasing the bowstring.

The bow explodes into pieces as he does, but the arrows already hit their mark and the guardian drops to the ground, leaving a pile of wreckage. Link can see a small ancient core from his vantage point. That’s mine, you bastard.

He steps off the ledge, unsnapping the paraglider to slow his fall, intent on taking his spoils before dealing with the second guardian.

His hand is on the ancient core when the whine of the targeting light starts again. He drops the core and runs back to the column, making it to safety just as a bolt of white-blue light hits the ground behind him.

The Yiga bow only offers a pair of arrows instead of three, but they fly in a straight line instead of an array. He nocks an ancient arrow, draws and takes aim at the agitated skywatcher swinging its search light at the ground. It takes two shots to bring it down.

He steps forward to retrieve his spoils, suddenly tired. Slicing down the pair of chuchus sensing an opportunity is an after thought.

When he gets back to Zelda she is wide eyed and her fingers are tight on her reins. “So you’ve fought them before? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” He puts his foot in a stirrup and swings a leg over Epona’s back.

Why hadn’t Revali’s blessing worked?

He shakes his head. “Let’s go. It’s pretty straightforward from here, and the ground is easy.”

They follow the road at a canter, turning off to follow a barely marked trail that leads up to the small plateau the shrine sits on. The trip is uneventful, even as it takes them past a camp of lizalfos that seems to ignore them. Link clears a few moblins that roam the top, but by mid morning they stand before Tena Ko’sah shrine.

“There it is.” Zelda slides off Caramel and slowly makes her way to the shrine. It had been dead stone the last time they stood on this spot together. Today it is lit up in blue.

They stand together silently. Link has only a memory of a memory of what happened here a hundred years ago; his memory of this place is one of trial by combat, trying to prove that he is worthy of accolades he earned in another life.

Zelda seems oddly on edge, standing a little taller than usual, almost resting on the balls of her feet. She presses her lips together and whispers, “I’m so sorry about what I said to you here.”

Link shakes his head. “You are forgiven, princess- Zelda, Zelda.”

She looks over at him and he smiles at her. She returns it almost immediately, warming him as much as the sunshine.

“You can still get inside, correct?” She asks.

Results in 24 hours!

Rules - part one