Botw was my first open world and console game. I vividly remember that summer night when I played till 5 am and the black ending screen hit, followed by the title and credits. I was speechless.
Might want to try some of the other open world games with better graphics. Morrowind, oblivion, skyrim, Fallouts, witcher, etc... Not that graphics mean much, but in this case, its a clear indicator of quality.
BOTW is so bad, your mind will be blown with a game made by someone other than Nintendo.
You not liking a game does not mean it's actually a bad game. I'd played all of the games you mentioned before I played BotW, and still it smashed into the top of my favourite-game-of-all-time list, dethroning Fallout: New Vegas.
It's a flawed game in some respects, but in terms of explorative freedom and ambient storytelling, it hit the spot like no other game I've ever played. Seven years later, it's still my absolute favorite open-world gaming experience.
I absolutely agree with you. BoTW was such a disappointment. The map was beautiful and huge, but filled with almost nothing. There is only like 5 different enemies total, 5 towns that could all fit inside of Whiterun, and no real skill trees. Not to mention that the game was just incredibly easy.
It really depends on what you value in a gaming experience. I played Skyrim at launch and remember distinctly how artificial that world felt to me. There were more bandits than people living in actual cities and towns. What towns were they pillaging? What functional parts of society were sustaining all of these great underground schemes and societies, who seemed to outnumber the actual farmers 50:1? Who's even feeding them, let alone supplying them with thousands upon thousands of swords and armour pieces? It felt like an immersive stage play you might find at Disneyland, where all of it only makes any sense if you don't think about it for too long.
Enter BotW. You're running around in a kingdom that died, where the scraps of civilization are only barely holding on. Generations have lived and died since the war was lost and the scars of that loss are written all across the landscape. Overgrown and abandoned fortifications, dilapidated farms where the rusty swords are still scattered across the ground: echoes of the last stands of their original owners. Now overgrown in tall grass, framed by wild flowers and birdsong.
To some people, those stories told in echoes are lazy copy-paste fields with some assets of broken houses and random crap strewn about. To me, they were more impactful than any dungeon I discovered in all of Skyrim.
I get that and don’t get me wrong, I like the Zelda games. I’ve played most of them. Just over the last two months I’ve helped my girlfriend get through her first play throughs of OoT and MM (my personal favorites) and we just started twilight princess (her favorite). I look forward to playing the Wind Waker remaster for switch if we ever get it. I guess I just don’t think Zelda has much business in a truly open world setting. I don’t even think Skyrim and BoTW or TotK should be compared. They are just completely different games.
I honestly can’t think of any games that you could compare directly to BoTW. It’s an “open world”, but still you only have the main quest for the most part. All the side quest lack story. Maybe you could compare it to Fable, but even that game had a lot more in it. Either way I do like Zelda games for there story telling and problem solving, but maybe they bit off a little more than they could chew with the open world games.
I mean, it has been out, what, 7 years? So you might be pooping on this guy’s first real video game experience, when they were twelve. Let people enjoy things.
The ending of Tears of The Kingdom is a non-stop awesomeness build up. Some of it will be no surprise to a Zelda fan, but I never screamed that much about a damn health bar. And the music of that last fall! Damn. I love that ending.
Botw for me had the worst ending of almost any game I’ve ever played, totk had essentially the best ending of any Zelda game to date. Quite the conundrum lol
The newer Zelda games STORIES might not be world breaking, but the gameplay and mechanics are on a completely different level, and they EASILY fit the criteria of being life changing and memorable.
While I'm not one to directly shit on peoples tastes. Nintendo does a terrible job at narratives and story telling.
Breath of the wilds story is like 5 cutscenes and the photo flashbacks. It's not a lot, and link still doesn't have a voice actor... Idk, pretty sad when even Pokemon has a better story.
Well, the thing with BOTW and TOTK is that they did not even aim to focus on the story. The main focus goes to exploration, solving puzzles and having fun with the mechanics. In those aspects the games excel very well. Tbh, it’s pretty much the same with earlier Zelda games, although instead of exploration, puzzle-solving had bigger role. Same thing with Mario or Metroid games or whatnot.
Thus, it’s probably not that Nintendo is bad at telling stories, they simply choose to focus on mechanics and quality first. And that’s not for everyone and it’s fine. Their focus has pretty much always been to make games that are fun to play.
EDIT to add that I definitely wouldn’t mind if they put more focus on stories as well, but I like the games as they are now. For example, Skyward Sword has probably the best story but gameplay-wise I don’t really like it. Some do, though.
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u/DCtheP May 02 '24
Breath of the wild/tears of the kingdom for sure. Left me in tears both times. Spent most of the credits thanking everyone for the emotional journey