#sometimes i would pick a random pre-calamity fanfic and then retrace its steps across the map. i was having my own tours of hyrule!!!!

[eerna]

I found your tags in that one post interesting because, for me, whenever I try to go back to playing BOTW after playing totk, I just don’t find it as engaging as it used to be. It’s not that it devalues BOTW or vice versa, just that I feel that BOTW is empty now. Hope you don’t mind me giving my take.

I don't mind at all, a lot of people feel that way! And I can see why, as TotK has more to do in it than BotW does. Some time after posting that I watched a comparison video that pinpointed the difference so well: BotW had only 3 progression bars (koroks, shrines/containers, equipment upgrades). The rest of the game was entirely vague and left to your choosing, not tracking your progress or instructing you what is worth your time. TotK has a whole bunch of new progression bars (Pony Points, recipes, cave frogs, etc.) that entice you to solve assignments, which actively goes against BotW's "make your own meaning" principle of freedom. Some players will prefer the first option, others the second. I'm in the first - in BotW a lot of the time I wouldn't even be doing quests, or trying to make any significant progress, I would simply boot it up and exist in the world, admiring its nature and architecture and music and worlbuilding, collecting material and roleplaying as an amnesiac wild boy falling in love with his kingdom. No other game has given me that level of immersion or made me want to do nothing but take walks, including TotK, because it's the only game of this kind that I've ever played, and I feel like not many people realized that more to do in a game does not automatically mean an upgrade. And that's the longer version of my tags!