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My first mind-blowing moment in BotW was peeking down from from the top of a hill and seeing a deep valley with a river to the east and a ridge with a forest to
by aerhardt 3y ago
My first mind-blowing moment in BotW was peeking down from from the top of a hill and seeing a deep valley with a river to the east and a ridge with a forest to the west. They blended gorgeously into a single landscape but I understood that each option would be a different adventure. It was like choosing the north or east exit in classical Zelda, except this was totally organic, not instantiated, operating over perfectly continuous space. I was ~30 at the time and had been playing open world games since the early 2000s. It blew my mind regardless.
Having played so many games, and having even worked at Nintendo for a good time, I’ve lost my sense of wonder somewhat and I only expect to have a few more moments like that in the rest of my life. Nintendo is nevertheless possibly one of the few companies still capable of pulling it off.
- extr 3y agoFor sure. When you first play BotW it's somehow like, oh yeah, I get it now, this is what Zelda was supposed to be all along. More than that even, it's like the platonic ideal of a video game.
- Maken 3y agoFor me BotW is what Skyward Sword was trying to be but could not on the Wii.
- mikepurvis 3y agoYouTube critic Nerrel argues quite the opposite, that SS emphasizes a completely different set of the Zelda core values— it's about story/characters, elaborate dungeons and bosses each bursting with unique personality, and classical, linear item-unlock progression paths. Whereas BOTW isn't any of those things and prioritizes freedom, exploration, and emergent gameplay. See: https://youtu.be/P_Q2wREAwRM https://youtu.be/P_Q2wREAwRM