#i can count the things i actively dislike about botw on one hand

[fallen-knight]

Development problems were absolutely at play. And since Masterworks leaves out most actual developer insights in favor of rehashing fan theories, they'll probably never own up to it, explain any of what actually happened behind the scenes, or acknowledge there was a loss of quality at all. Which stinks, but it's par for the course with huge entertainment companies.

(hope the pain gets better btw, and don't feel bad for complaining about this stuff! serious and thoughtful criticism of tloz, like any media, is good in itself, and the fandom bringing it to notice is an integral part of the series' (hopeful) improvement.)

The depths in particular are so unfinished though, I can't get over it... Very negative analysis of TotK's world structure below:

The surface map of Hyrule, especially in BotW, used every corner for treasures, training the player to pay attention to odd looking spots because 99% of the time there's something there to reward your curiosity, even if it's just a korok seed, hot spring, or other resource cache. And even if it turned out to be just an odd little spot, it would usually be nice to look at and hang out in, and provide a vantage point to get to other locations.

In the depths though, only a handful of major locations (towns, zonai ruins, leviathans, great plateau, satori mountain) seem to have received any attention. After the gibdo cemetery directly beneath the Arbiter's Grounds, I was hoping for something interesting under other locations that reference past games like the Breach of Demise and Ash Swamp/Blatchery Plain.

But nope, the cemetery was a one-off thing apparently - nothing to reference the SkSw myth or BotW Link's defeat at all, except for a copy pasted coliseum that isn't even in the right place. Beneath those locations there were just oddly formed rocks and a few scattered poes, like any random part of the Depths. After hours upon hours of getting this "why bother?" feeling from exploration, my expectations - that had been formed by the areas the devs actually put effort into - naturally became as low and gloomy as the depths themselves. Maybe that was all part of the game's artistic intent though, who am I to say.

Besides the major surface-relevant locations, the valleys each got a functionally identical mine, the same few resource dumps were copy pasted at random around them, along with oddly intentional ascend points that I'm still convinced were part of scrapped DLC, and most of the dead ends and odd bits of terrain created by nature of the inverted map ended up with nothing to acknowledge their existence, not even a treasure chest or a single poe.

I remember finding one really cool cave over a lake, like a hollow tree with a stone shelf inside, mirroring a surface structure, that was - surprise - completely empty. The lake didn't even have fish. It was bizarre and felt like walking into a half-built house. If someone had actually put a single thought into polishing the map's construction, they would have put something, anything inside that cave. And I can't even say the exploration was a reward in itself - the depths are really kind of ugly and severely lacking in enjoyable views beyond the "ooh, spooky" of something moving in the darkness, that gets old fast and disappears as soon as it's lit up.

The sky islands have similar problems, though they're helped by having slightly more original content to discover like the forge, lightcast, and thunderhead isles, as well as being beautiful to traverse. But a pretty paint job can only cover so much of the same shit, over and over, and that's just what most of them turned out to be.

And as for the surface itself... The remixed landmarks like shrines, towers, and fairy fountains were placed with far less intent than in BotW, and the old terrain that was created for them has barely anything to fill the void, making the map overall feel less coherent. Plus the repetitive nature of smaller points of interest is far more apparent, thanks to the new mechanics making the map so fast to traverse, as well as the sheer volume of copy pasted content (Addison my beloathed) and the fact that a good chunk are in the exact same locations as BotW. (Looking at you koroks.)

There isn't really a problem with reusing locations as easter eggs/nods to old players if the content is new and unique, but 99% of the time in TotK, it just seems lazy. The caves are actually refreshing, but also ultimately repetitive in content, and only a handful have any kind of environmental storytelling or implied lore.

I'll just say it as I see it: The amount of effort and intention that went into building BotW's world was exponentially greater than TotK's, and the quality saw an incredible backslide once you look past the veneer of novelty. It's quantity over quality all the way, and it really stings for those of us who genuinely tried to explore and enjoy the game's secrets as we were encouraged to do by BotW.

Anyway yeah, my inner explorer was just fucking frustrated by all three levels of the map, but the depths in particular lmao. Rant over

(while i am crumbling into pieces from cramp pain)

back when they announced the totk masterworks book i said i wasnt happy about it bc it would either

prove they thought all this was good from the start and everything went as planned

show us that they had unbelievable better ideas and plans but for some unknow reason scrapped it all

as it stands now with the concepts i have seen ... they somehow did both, some things seemed to have been planned fro mthe start (the whole focus on sonau/zonai stuff for example, which i personally just dont like bc i liked them better as an unkown mystery you never get to meet) and other stuff (like ganondorfs concepts, or the infinitely cooler castle in the sky esque concepts for the sky islands, instead of some nonsensical, meaningless little stone crumbs) was much, much more interesting initially (together with the interviews that said they initially planned to have the battery be a magic meter and make the sonau more magic than tech- but then decided to build their stuff around modern electrical devices just so players would immediately know what it was an what it would do -why????? thats so boring?? and unecessary ?? and they still give you tutorials for it anyway, multiple times??!!- for some ungodly reason)

it makes me more and more sure that this game, that took 6 years to make with most assets already being there (the same time that botw took to make?????????), went through a similar development hell as that one final fantasy game did where the director decided to make it an entirely different game every few weeks bc he saw something cool in another game-

its the only thing that makes sense to me, why else would it be so weirdly ... unfinished, its full of grand ideas badly executed, or like i said in a previous post, like an alpha build (weird! did someone in charge also see cool stuff every few months and decide they wanted it in there too no matter what so everyone had to scramble to try and put it in making the whole jenga tower fall over and over??), just to test how far you can push things, with placeholders everywhere, the same cutscene pasted in where another should be and a placeholder reason to get players to go soemwhere (fake zelda) and rough ideas for puzzles etc, that was never finished, jsut highly polished (in looks, sounds and presentation) in hopes of it being 'good enough' or players not noticing (like, take the underground for example, the idea itself is fantastic and cool as fuck, but its feels like an idea that was never finished and just barely fileld with some things to try and cover up the fact that it was never done, like a statue that wasnt done being carved but ran out of time so they painted it anyway- take the base map and invert it, put some easily accessible points of jumping down into it in random spots to test if the game can handle it- no time left to actually get that idea anywhere more specific and well thought out/put together, so its left like that, put the same texture everywhere, barely modified copies of the same enemies, and some little reward spots that make no sense, modelling three types of trees and an enemy camp is way quicker to do than actually making an entire new map (they didnt have to make it the same size btw, just make it big but unique caves, put the gravity effect down there in enclosed spaces! makes it less weird to have randomly happen in the sky! etc) but its there!! its in the game and if they are lucky most players wont go down there enough to notice how meaningless and unfinished it all is)

knowing they would most likely never admit to it though, probably bc of their reputation, is just addign to the frustrations i have with it :I

(i just hate to not know the reason for things, if the devs, who are usually the ones being worked to the bone for things they know arent good, where put through that bc some executive big shot threw their tables around every so often or neglected their project bc they wanted to focus on something else first ... id like to know, i dont enjoy making up these conspiracy (?) theories .......... but i cant shake this feeling, its jsut makes no sense)