I love the open world exploration on the last two, but at some point it does trivialize the combat. You can climb up and fly over basically everything.
I do think it needs more traditional combat focused dungeons with spacial puzzles. For Zelda Echoes of Wisdom it had some of that, and I enjoyed the forest dungeon in that game the most. I wish all of them were more like that one in terms of complexity.
The weapon / equipment wear mechanic annoyed me at first. Then I realized I was using ALL my equipment. Using up all the crappy stuff on mobs and acquiring better weapons, saving the good stuff until I needed it. Hording the great stuff and REALLY thinking about it before I pulled it out.
it might have been slightly over tuned, but I found I enjoyed it. I enjoyed BOTW more than TOTK. Too much of the content of both seemed sameish though.
I would love a more classic LTTP type story and dungeons built on a world like BOTW or TOTK, where the main story can be diverted from ala oblivion. I think they tried TO hard to let you go 'any direction' and it made the games feel aimless.
Gannon just sits and waits forever for you to come to him. The other games at least impressed a sense of urgency onto somethings and made you feel the epic hero. BOTW made me feel like a construction contractor. TOTK like a hobo wandering around town filling my shopping cart with junk.
I think I remember somewhere they did that to reset the world due to memory leaks and all the dungeons. anytime you are underground they can purge above ground memory and blame it on blood moon. it's also an excuse to purge and clean memory reinitializing things and preventing memory issues. the blood moon let them put it on a timer and tie it to the lore.
I'm hoping with switch 2 onwards they don't have to resort to such tricks.
It's a cop out, because it does clear things but there's no reason that it has to respawn all the enemies. All they need is a check for each camp that if you clear it, then they do not get respawned.
It sounds easy enough to say, but then the data structures that usually hold that data are being purged and recreated, because there is nowhere to store anything (out of memory) in the first place. you're talking about a massive table of all the enemies in the entire game where there is already a lack of memory to store that much information. Like I said, hopefully they have more freedom in the switch 2 and future games. They had to do MAGIC to cram in everything they did and fit it into the switch and get the performance they did & release on the timetables they did with Nintendo quality. blood moon is one of the magic tricks.
Another OoT Water Temple to make normies cry. Not that I can remember why it was so hated but then maybe I was just autistic enough to figure it out at the time ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Its that one key in the central pillar room. You dont think to check there at first, so many people waste time going in circles and get annoyed by the iron boots switching while they are already frustrated not finding the key.
Lol, I remember everyone in school getting stuck in the fucking place. A friend of mine finally got the Nintendo Power guide and I realized there was a key under that stupid fucking block at the bottom of the tower.
Fun fact, you don't actually need every key in the dungeon and can skip one if you don't immediately open the central pillar door and wait to use a different already opened door when you change the water level.
Most people are so used to just opening the first door they see the moment they have a key (which is fair because that's how all the other dungeons work) they don't realize that and end up having to do the long version of the temple.
The one that really got me stuck as a kid was the Forest Temple. I would get the bow, but then I'd be stuck because I'd be missing one key. So I'd go clear all of the overworld, all of the Fire Temple, all of the Water Temple, then eventually go back to the Forest Temple, which would still be blocking me from becoming a child again.
Eventually, after a few weeks of that, I noticed that I needed to drop down one of those seemingly endless pits that you'd get access to, after hitting those eye targets with the bow. I had instinctually avoided those holes, thinking I'd just void out if I fell in them. Over a month stuck in that game, just to find out that it was that simple. Everything else went smoothly after that.
It's been quite a while, but I think you really just had to recall multiple different triggers/effects to make your way through it effectively. Like, you kept changing to water level to access different areas, so you have to remember what is on each level and how to access it. Then to make things even more confusing you get the heavy boots part way through, which changes how you navigate the temple. I can understand how that would be frustrating for people who haven't "trained" for solving such problems through years of gaming prior.
It's been quite a while, but I think you really just had to recall multiple different triggers/effects to make your way through it effectively
Ah, so the real treasure was autism all along!
I can understand how that would be frustrating for people who haven't "trained" for solving such problems through years of gaming prior.
No kidding, I almost broke up with someone when she tried playing Portal.
The only thing worse than replaying a puzzle game is watching someone else playing it, and then worse so when they have next to zero gaming experience and spatial awareness of the game they are playing.
She would also sway when jumping in certain directions...
Most people also just overcomplicate it. If my memory serves you only really need to change the water to each level once (maybe twice for one of them) and if you fully explore it at each point you will progress enough to not have to return to that level.
The problem is that unlike most dungeons, where you are going outward into new areas constantly before returning back to never reuse those spaces, you are instead constantly working around a central hub constantly with very short detours which makes people think its more complex than it is and they rapidly change water levels before fully completing what they could and having to often times redo multiple steps to eventually return to the necessary state to progress later on.
OoT is very smartly designed and built, to a point where a lot of the problems people have with it come down to them not fully engaging with all the tools it gives them for a challenge. Like using the Scarecrow's Song next to the Water Level change in the Water Temple to keep a shortcut there back to save you going through like 5 rooms to return to it.
Well, yea, those are the kinds of things that ought to be common sense to a gamer, but if you've never really played anything other than Fortnite you might very well struggle to understand.
I suppose a mix of my natural instincts and some prior experience makes me consider what is difficult to others as common sense and obvious.
But at least back in the 90s if you were playing games at all you had to be at a certain skill level, because NES/SNES/N64 games didn't fuck around in terms of difficulty. So I really feel something about this temple in particular was people screwing themselves up without knowing.
Now kids today going back would absolutely be flabbergasted. They wouldn't even get that far. The quests don't track or give you a map marker, you need to talk to random npcs to get hints about where to go. Its madness!!
Its big, you spend a long time walking slow, and you have to backtrack allot. Aren't all the water temples in all the zelda games notoriously bad like that, is it the same guy making the water level every time?
Same here maybe it's a meme at this point to be the elitist retro snob, but I haven't enjoyed Zelda much since Majora's Mask. I would enjoy a 2D remake of an old classic like they did with Samus Returns - but they'll screw it up like they did Samus Returns.
I didn't mind the sticks breaking because they were... sticks. The non best 2h sword breaking was annoying but it got to the point I just rushed getting the non breakable version in OoT.
Edit: Plus if you knew how to actually use them they worked wonderfully for boss killing weapons. I think if you used a stick and did the overhead strike vs the first spider boss in the very first dungeon you either killed it in 1 or 2 hits because the stick counted as double a normal attack, or near abouts, and the overhead strike also counted as a double attack. So while you would probably break the stick you had vs the spider you also 1HKO'd it immediately.
I'm sure that's super reasonable and makes a lot of sense, but... when I lose unrecoverable durability on items it bothers my perfectionism. Yeah, I know I know...
Yeah Deku Sticks in OoT were super busted if you knew the math behind them, which few did because they were just shelved the moment you stopped needing them for puzzles. One of those "path of least resistance is already harder" situations.
And if you made sure to avoid the situations that would auto replace/unequip your sticks, you could continue to use the broken one and it did the same increased damage. So you weren't even technically losing a bunch to exploit them.
I think Breath of the Wild pretty much finished the game. I want small things added, but not major changes. I'd like more castles to storm, and a new world to explore.
I would also like more games in this style. Castlevania, Goemon, Mega Man, Halo and others would be great this way.
That new Metroid Prime has me really wondering if it will be good or not. A giant open world Metroid would be awesome, but could they do it? Would they do it? The guy in charge of it seems to be more worried about story stuff than actual Metroid gameplay.
I dont think Metroid can be open world as a core gameplay mechanic is gating off progression behind upgrades, which is the antithesis to an open world ( at least how Nintendo likes to make them). They would have to revamp the formula significantly and at that point I am not sure it would feel like Metroid anymore.
Yeah I get what you mean. For decades Miyamoto has wanted to make Zelda games into a "box garden" -- a sort of small, living world and I think BOTW/TOTK have gotten closer to that ideal than any previous Zelda games. Not sure where they plan to take the franchise from here.
Yeah, it's incremental improvements and a new place to explore now. I think it's reached the zenith of open world games and it will take a lot to overcome it.
To not be fifty percent gimmick. To not have five hundred cruddy little puzzle dungeons scattered across the game because the developers were so impressed with their own physics engine.
To be what the series really is at heart, a heroic dungeon crawler.
An actual sequel. Canonically (or loosely canonically. The time line is pretty fucked) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is one of the last games in the established chain.
So how about something that follow that.
On the flip side, I do not want a zelda game that a games journalist would call a masterpiece or a return to form. Every time I hear that now, it just reminds me of what we lost.
A high fantasy style in the art of the first Hyrule Warriors. Maybe make it like the most recent Dragon Quest where there is the exploration elements and battle elements, and one can switch between classic pixel style and modern 3d style.
I want them to take everything Breath of the Wild did and throw it into the garbage. Just pretend the last decade of their games didn't happen and start back from there. I hate every part of that experience and I hate everyone who hypes it up so much that they made a literal direct and worse sequel to it.
I enjoyed a lot of the ideas and directions the 3DS spinoffs were getting up to, and I'd like to see them get proper big budget treatments to maybe fully flesh them out instead of being stuck as half gimmick games that nobody plays.
A design philosophy along the lines of OoT, ALttP, Minish Cap, and the second quarter of Wind Waker. Not nearly as linear as TP or SS, But more structured than BotW.
I want them to bring back character progression. BOTOTK giving you pretty much all of the tools needed to break the game over your knee right at the start was a novel idea, but I want the game to use the classic "Here's a new tool. You can use this to do new things in the world and reach new places!"
I want to see something with the same flavor as Link to the Past again. I don't think I've seen anything that gives me quite the same vibe since that game. Instead of changing up the formula so much, I'd rather seem them polish and perfect it. Honestly though, I don't know that I'm really the audience that franchise is after anymore. They moved on and I think I may have too.
The main thing I'd like to see is a release on non-Nintendo hardware. Yes, I know that the odds of it happening are basically non-existent, but it's been years since I could could care about system-exclusive games, and today there's zero technical reason for it. Even if the game comes out as a 10/10 absolute classic best game in history, I don't feel like giving Nintendo $4-500 or whatever the Switch 2 costs just so I can buy a game from them.
myself, i would love a return of the transformations the series along with some other things.
i mean you got spell casters often working for ganon and you notice link mowing down your goons slaying your elite guards/minions with the help of the master sword and some crap you left laying loose in the freakin dungeon why not turn him into something that cant fight properly/as efficently?
as a bonus to turning him into a rabbit again or something similar it would make using the master sword awkward at best if not make it impossible outright. heck if the magic is strong enough it might even make sacred power unuseable, buying ganon or whoevers in charge extra time.
would also give them an excuse to bring farore into the picture as the main support. (yes im kinda salty they wasted that plot) but with a foe dealing in magic that is cryptic she makes sense. could even make sense to spin it back on the caster by making the intial bad forms more useful with upgrades after dispeling them. mostly because i find backfires of this nature hilarious.
annother thing i would like back is the ring system, with more memory avalible they could really go nuts.
lastly would like the older areas in the series to be vistable even if not plot relevent. i mean if your going to go open world why not go the whole hog? could even make time travel and season manipulation a thing again this time combining them.
last thing as this is long enough, a new antag. gannons nice and all but surely he cant be the only threat to hyrule? heck could make his death/defeat the plot instigator
Just give me a classic Zelda. I don't want crafting (particularly farming) or a Lego set.
The last two were interesting and had impressive bits about them, but they were not Zelda games.
I love the open world exploration on the last two, but at some point it does trivialize the combat. You can climb up and fly over basically everything.
I do think it needs more traditional combat focused dungeons with spacial puzzles. For Zelda Echoes of Wisdom it had some of that, and I enjoyed the forest dungeon in that game the most. I wish all of them were more like that one in terms of complexity.
The weapon / equipment wear mechanic annoyed me at first. Then I realized I was using ALL my equipment. Using up all the crappy stuff on mobs and acquiring better weapons, saving the good stuff until I needed it. Hording the great stuff and REALLY thinking about it before I pulled it out.
it might have been slightly over tuned, but I found I enjoyed it. I enjoyed BOTW more than TOTK. Too much of the content of both seemed sameish though.
I would love a more classic LTTP type story and dungeons built on a world like BOTW or TOTK, where the main story can be diverted from ala oblivion. I think they tried TO hard to let you go 'any direction' and it made the games feel aimless.
Gannon just sits and waits forever for you to come to him. The other games at least impressed a sense of urgency onto somethings and made you feel the epic hero. BOTW made me feel like a construction contractor. TOTK like a hobo wandering around town filling my shopping cart with junk.
Yeah being forced to use all your weapons does work since they always have more available. I do wish it took a bit longer for them to break though.
The blood moon always annoyed me though. It felt like there was no point clearing enemy camps if they just keep coming back.
I think I remember somewhere they did that to reset the world due to memory leaks and all the dungeons. anytime you are underground they can purge above ground memory and blame it on blood moon. it's also an excuse to purge and clean memory reinitializing things and preventing memory issues. the blood moon let them put it on a timer and tie it to the lore.
I'm hoping with switch 2 onwards they don't have to resort to such tricks.
It's a cop out, because it does clear things but there's no reason that it has to respawn all the enemies. All they need is a check for each camp that if you clear it, then they do not get respawned.
It sounds easy enough to say, but then the data structures that usually hold that data are being purged and recreated, because there is nowhere to store anything (out of memory) in the first place. you're talking about a massive table of all the enemies in the entire game where there is already a lack of memory to store that much information. Like I said, hopefully they have more freedom in the switch 2 and future games. They had to do MAGIC to cram in everything they did and fit it into the switch and get the performance they did & release on the timetables they did with Nintendo quality. blood moon is one of the magic tricks.
Another OoT Water Temple to make normies cry. Not that I can remember why it was so hated but then maybe I was just autistic enough to figure it out at the time ¯_(ツ)_/¯
It just took so freaking long.
Menu -> flip -> flip -> boots -> WAIT -> move -> menu -> flip -> flip -> boots -> WAIT -> move -> menu -> flip -> flip -> boots -> WAIT -> move -> hit water level gem -> WAIT
The challenge was actually sitting through playing it instead of figuring something difficult out
Its that one key in the central pillar room. You dont think to check there at first, so many people waste time going in circles and get annoyed by the iron boots switching while they are already frustrated not finding the key.
Lol, I remember everyone in school getting stuck in the fucking place. A friend of mine finally got the Nintendo Power guide and I realized there was a key under that stupid fucking block at the bottom of the tower.
I'm pretty sure I had that Nintendo Power guide and still got stuck there.
Fun fact, you don't actually need every key in the dungeon and can skip one if you don't immediately open the central pillar door and wait to use a different already opened door when you change the water level.
Most people are so used to just opening the first door they see the moment they have a key (which is fair because that's how all the other dungeons work) they don't realize that and end up having to do the long version of the temple.
The one that really got me stuck as a kid was the Forest Temple. I would get the bow, but then I'd be stuck because I'd be missing one key. So I'd go clear all of the overworld, all of the Fire Temple, all of the Water Temple, then eventually go back to the Forest Temple, which would still be blocking me from becoming a child again.
Eventually, after a few weeks of that, I noticed that I needed to drop down one of those seemingly endless pits that you'd get access to, after hitting those eye targets with the bow. I had instinctually avoided those holes, thinking I'd just void out if I fell in them. Over a month stuck in that game, just to find out that it was that simple. Everything else went smoothly after that.
Whenever I replay OOT I always get stuck on the Forest Temple for an embarrassing amount of time.
Same though it did take longer than other dungeons I eventually got it.
It's been quite a while, but I think you really just had to recall multiple different triggers/effects to make your way through it effectively. Like, you kept changing to water level to access different areas, so you have to remember what is on each level and how to access it. Then to make things even more confusing you get the heavy boots part way through, which changes how you navigate the temple. I can understand how that would be frustrating for people who haven't "trained" for solving such problems through years of gaming prior.
Ah, so the real treasure was autism all along!
No kidding, I almost broke up with someone when she tried playing Portal.
The only thing worse than replaying a puzzle game is watching someone else playing it, and then worse so when they have next to zero gaming experience and spatial awareness of the game they are playing.
She would also sway when jumping in certain directions...
Hey...
We've all done it and anyone who says otherwise is just lying.
Most people also just overcomplicate it. If my memory serves you only really need to change the water to each level once (maybe twice for one of them) and if you fully explore it at each point you will progress enough to not have to return to that level.
The problem is that unlike most dungeons, where you are going outward into new areas constantly before returning back to never reuse those spaces, you are instead constantly working around a central hub constantly with very short detours which makes people think its more complex than it is and they rapidly change water levels before fully completing what they could and having to often times redo multiple steps to eventually return to the necessary state to progress later on.
OoT is very smartly designed and built, to a point where a lot of the problems people have with it come down to them not fully engaging with all the tools it gives them for a challenge. Like using the Scarecrow's Song next to the Water Level change in the Water Temple to keep a shortcut there back to save you going through like 5 rooms to return to it.
Well, yea, those are the kinds of things that ought to be common sense to a gamer, but if you've never really played anything other than Fortnite you might very well struggle to understand.
I suppose a mix of my natural instincts and some prior experience makes me consider what is difficult to others as common sense and obvious.
But at least back in the 90s if you were playing games at all you had to be at a certain skill level, because NES/SNES/N64 games didn't fuck around in terms of difficulty. So I really feel something about this temple in particular was people screwing themselves up without knowing.
Now kids today going back would absolutely be flabbergasted. They wouldn't even get that far. The quests don't track or give you a map marker, you need to talk to random npcs to get hints about where to go. Its madness!!
Its big, you spend a long time walking slow, and you have to backtrack allot. Aren't all the water temples in all the zelda games notoriously bad like that, is it the same guy making the water level every time?
Same here maybe it's a meme at this point to be the elitist retro snob, but I haven't enjoyed Zelda much since Majora's Mask. I would enjoy a 2D remake of an old classic like they did with Samus Returns - but they'll screw it up like they did Samus Returns.
Interesting, ALBW was my favorite Zelda game in years.
It's high time for a female Zelda!
Man, I definitely love crafting weapons that break after like 10 uses. Super fun core Zelda gameplay.
2D Zelda or bust, IMO.
I didn't mind the sticks breaking because they were... sticks. The non best 2h sword breaking was annoying but it got to the point I just rushed getting the non breakable version in OoT.
Edit: Plus if you knew how to actually use them they worked wonderfully for boss killing weapons. I think if you used a stick and did the overhead strike vs the first spider boss in the very first dungeon you either killed it in 1 or 2 hits because the stick counted as double a normal attack, or near abouts, and the overhead strike also counted as a double attack. So while you would probably break the stick you had vs the spider you also 1HKO'd it immediately.
I'm sure that's super reasonable and makes a lot of sense, but... when I lose unrecoverable durability on items it bothers my perfectionism. Yeah, I know I know...
Yeah Deku Sticks in OoT were super busted if you knew the math behind them, which few did because they were just shelved the moment you stopped needing them for puzzles. One of those "path of least resistance is already harder" situations.
And if you made sure to avoid the situations that would auto replace/unequip your sticks, you could continue to use the broken one and it did the same increased damage. So you weren't even technically losing a bunch to exploit them.
I think Breath of the Wild pretty much finished the game. I want small things added, but not major changes. I'd like more castles to storm, and a new world to explore.
I would also like more games in this style. Castlevania, Goemon, Mega Man, Halo and others would be great this way.
Metroid.
That new Metroid Prime has me really wondering if it will be good or not. A giant open world Metroid would be awesome, but could they do it? Would they do it? The guy in charge of it seems to be more worried about story stuff than actual Metroid gameplay.
I dont think Metroid can be open world as a core gameplay mechanic is gating off progression behind upgrades, which is the antithesis to an open world ( at least how Nintendo likes to make them). They would have to revamp the formula significantly and at that point I am not sure it would feel like Metroid anymore.
Very true. It's BotW style if you can find and kill Mother Brain from the beginning. The upgrades and stuff would need to add to everything.
True story, metroidvania should be called Zeldavania because the director of Symphony of the Night based it on Zelda.
Yeah I get what you mean. For decades Miyamoto has wanted to make Zelda games into a "box garden" -- a sort of small, living world and I think BOTW/TOTK have gotten closer to that ideal than any previous Zelda games. Not sure where they plan to take the franchise from here.
Yeah, it's incremental improvements and a new place to explore now. I think it's reached the zenith of open world games and it will take a lot to overcome it.
Not another Souls clone. Maybe bring back the Wind Fish.
To not be fifty percent gimmick. To not have five hundred cruddy little puzzle dungeons scattered across the game because the developers were so impressed with their own physics engine.
To be what the series really is at heart, a heroic dungeon crawler.
An actual sequel. Canonically (or loosely canonically. The time line is pretty fucked) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is one of the last games in the established chain.
So how about something that follow that.
On the flip side, I do not want a zelda game that a games journalist would call a masterpiece or a return to form. Every time I hear that now, it just reminds me of what we lost.
Link's Awakening is meant to be a sequel to A Link to the Past.
A high fantasy style in the art of the first Hyrule Warriors. Maybe make it like the most recent Dragon Quest where there is the exploration elements and battle elements, and one can switch between classic pixel style and modern 3d style.
I want the game to have more darkness like Ocarina of Time.
I want them to take everything Breath of the Wild did and throw it into the garbage. Just pretend the last decade of their games didn't happen and start back from there. I hate every part of that experience and I hate everyone who hypes it up so much that they made a literal direct and worse sequel to it.
I enjoyed a lot of the ideas and directions the 3DS spinoffs were getting up to, and I'd like to see them get proper big budget treatments to maybe fully flesh them out instead of being stuck as half gimmick games that nobody plays.
I want Zelda to be modeled after Zendaya and Link after Pedro Pascal
Not a sandbox.
It should be a minecraft clone! People love minecraft, and play it, so Zelda should be a fake pale imitation of it!
A design philosophy along the lines of OoT, ALttP, Minish Cap, and the second quarter of Wind Waker. Not nearly as linear as TP or SS, But more structured than BotW.
I want them to bring back character progression. BOTOTK giving you pretty much all of the tools needed to break the game over your knee right at the start was a novel idea, but I want the game to use the classic "Here's a new tool. You can use this to do new things in the world and reach new places!"
I want to see something with the same flavor as Link to the Past again. I don't think I've seen anything that gives me quite the same vibe since that game. Instead of changing up the formula so much, I'd rather seem them polish and perfect it. Honestly though, I don't know that I'm really the audience that franchise is after anymore. They moved on and I think I may have too.
The main thing I'd like to see is a release on non-Nintendo hardware. Yes, I know that the odds of it happening are basically non-existent, but it's been years since I could could care about system-exclusive games, and today there's zero technical reason for it. Even if the game comes out as a 10/10 absolute classic best game in history, I don't feel like giving Nintendo $4-500 or whatever the Switch 2 costs just so I can buy a game from them.
No sandbox bullshit. Give me 8 dungeons where each dungeon focuses on a newly acquired item. And bring back the fucking hookshot.
Majora’s Mask 2.
heads up this will be long.
myself, i would love a return of the transformations the series along with some other things.
i mean you got spell casters often working for ganon and you notice link mowing down your goons slaying your elite guards/minions with the help of the master sword and some crap you left laying loose in the freakin dungeon why not turn him into something that cant fight properly/as efficently?
as a bonus to turning him into a rabbit again or something similar it would make using the master sword awkward at best if not make it impossible outright. heck if the magic is strong enough it might even make sacred power unuseable, buying ganon or whoevers in charge extra time.
would also give them an excuse to bring farore into the picture as the main support. (yes im kinda salty they wasted that plot) but with a foe dealing in magic that is cryptic she makes sense. could even make sense to spin it back on the caster by making the intial bad forms more useful with upgrades after dispeling them. mostly because i find backfires of this nature hilarious.
annother thing i would like back is the ring system, with more memory avalible they could really go nuts.
lastly would like the older areas in the series to be vistable even if not plot relevent. i mean if your going to go open world why not go the whole hog? could even make time travel and season manipulation a thing again this time combining them.
last thing as this is long enough, a new antag. gannons nice and all but surely he cant be the only threat to hyrule? heck could make his death/defeat the plot instigator
A 2d game that combined and expanded on the gameplay of both Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. IMO those were peak.
Alternatively just re-do BotW again but with more epic setpiece scenes like from Twilight Princess and missions to break up the open world pacing.