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Back in June, I flew to North America to see my partner (who lives on the other side of the world), and when I was there I had the opportunity to try out some Nintendo games on his Switch. My opinion was fairly lukewarm, and I came away with the impression that the high esteem in which many of their games are held seems to be driven primarily by legacy clout. Breath of the Wild was hands-down the Nintendo game that I enjoyed the most (I put a good few hours into exploring the world and experiencing the main story), and it's a game that has been hailed as a shining example of open-world done right and has been placed on many peoples' lists of best video games of all time. I thought it was good, but don't believe it's nearly good enough so as to warrant inclusion as one of my favourite video games.
The game is fun, and the fact that you can climb and scale basically everything in game and explore the world in a variety of different ways imparts a feeling of freedom that's quite addicting, an aspect in which the game excels - but in practice that all amounts to getting from A to B in a subtly different way. The game doesn't really justify its (extremely large) open world, and in order to progress the main story you're mostly going from one very clearly spelled-out quest marker to another. Now, these quest markers are necessary because of how sprawling the world is - the player would easily get lost without some form of guidance - but the game explicitly tells you where you are supposed to go, and doesn't really give you incentive to explore out of bounds. If you are making an open world game you need to capitalise on the open world part as a core aspect of the game.
Technically, you don't need to progress through the game using the path set out for you, and you can take it as fast or as slow as you want, you can even skip straight to Ganon after the tutorial. One of the most exhilarating parts in my playthrough was sneaking past a bevy of guardians on the way to Hyrule Castle, a place where I was certainly too underpowered and under-skilled to be at that point. From a game design standpoint, this was certainly meant to dissuade beginner players from trying to go straight for Hyrule Castle immediately and trying to skip past the main game's content, and it felt like I was exploring outside of the manicured, well-trodden path the game had laid for me. This felt great, and I did make it past all of the guardians, but eventually turned back since I was essentially forfeiting main game content by trying to cut straight to Hyrule Castle without much reason to try and do so.
Trying to explore for additional, optional content isn't particularly enticing either, since the world is kind of a content desert with large areas of dead air in between points of interest, and there are only so many shrines and Bokoblin outposts you can explore before the cost/benefit of exploration starts looking very unfavourable. As a result, I never really felt the urge to explore outside of the bounds of the game, and was pretty much always shoehorned into doing everything the game set out for me. It's effectively an open world game that doesn't actually really make use of its (all too large) open world.
To be fair to BoTW, this criticism can also be levelled against most open-world games - the idea of an open world is generally much more enticing than how it actually plays in practice. So far, the only game I've seen do it right is A Short Hike, which succeeds primarily because of the fact that it has a fairly small, condensed "open world" packed full of content relative to its size and an extremely simple objective which you can easily complete and that doesn't require a huge amount of trekking through empty terrain. Once you start trying to expand the game's scope, when you're trying to make a 10-15 hour game with a coherent throughline set in a large, sprawling open world, making your way through the world starts to feel very tiring, and content deserts are all but guaranteed unless you want development time to inflate hugely.
It should be noted that I am someone who does value plot fairly heavily in games, something that's generally not a focus of Nintendo's. BoTW appealed to me more than, say, any mainline Mario game because of its relatively consistent worldbuilding and the fact that it had a story that wasn't an extremely marginal part of the game. The seamless incorporation of compelling narratives into a game format is an important part of the medium for me. But even excluding the general weakness and inoffensiveness of Nintendo's stories and worlds, and just focusing on gameplay, their games have some issues that I find quite difficult to brush past, and I don't agree with how highly their games are generally ranked.
Change my mind.
I have a weird love/apathy relationship with open world games. I generally analogize them to a Golden Corral Buffet vs. a six course gourmet meal that is most AAA scripted games.
The buffet just has cheap, rapidly prepared food available in quantity, you pick and choose what you want, and gorge yourself on desserts if you so desire. Just don't expect high quality, and don't complain if you don't like what you eat, you picked it from the available options! That's open world games. A gourmet meal prepared by a chef will strictly control the presentation and actual preparation of the food you eat, and forces you to consume it in a particular order, but is generally crafted specifically to create the most delicious experience such that the meal itself is memorable to you.
I love a well-crafted story in a single-player game even if it is just a railroad that takes me from set-piece to set-piece (in the Uncharted series, sometimes the railroad IS the set piece) but sometimes I'd rather just watch a movie.
Open world games at least allow me to try things out that the game designer didn't knowingly program in so I feel less like I'm a slave to someone else's whims (shoutout to Bioshock 1). But the game worlds inevitably feel like they're miles and miles wide but barely ankle deep. Oh sure its cool that I CAN climb/fly/grapple hook my way up that mountain in the distance, but there's no compelling reason to GO up there. No, finding some random collectible isn't a strong impetus. "Because its there" really only works for real life summits. I can cheat-code my way to the top of an in-game mountain which takes most meaning from the 'achievement' of climbing it.
Batman: Arkham City was probably my favorite Hybrid of the two. Plenty to do in the 'overworld,' no 'hard' railroading but the story progresses in a direct linear fashion by imposing subtle restraints on your ability to explore. Ample surprises to find if you explore, and seriously well-crafted set-pieces at deliberate intervals. You WANT to explore, and exploring gives you useful rewards, and most of the 'random' encounters were actually fun and challenging, and the story wasn't an afterthought.
I realized the one experience I crave from open-world games is the feeling of being stalked implacably across the landscape by an enemy that is more dangerous than I am but also slightly slower so that if I concentrate on covering distance I can outpace them but every time I rest or get delayed I risk them catching and killing me.
As in, being the 'prey' in The Most Dangerous Game, and genuinely having to survive on wits and scavenged weapons as I try to find a way to bring the pursuer down.
Not many single-player open-world games provide this experience, especially in a mostly dynamic/unscripted way where I can keep on running for hours on end and have close encounters with the pursuer that don't have a predetermined outcome.
Getting in a running gun battle with a squad of trained killers who I have to slowly whittle down with traps, extremely limited ammunition, and improvised weapons in a geographically interesting locale would be an enjoyable challenge to me. Lol, I just realized that a game where you play as a random thug or henchman being hunted through the streets of Gotham by Batman and Co. would be AMAZING.
Far Cry 2 was able to do a pretty good job on this front, since enemies had impressive AI and the game mechanics constantly put you at a disadvantage, so it was possible to be caught off guard by an enemy squad and have to flee into the jungle and have them continue stalking you persistently while you maneuver around trying to score a kill and then run for cover as they return fire. The newer games in that series made the enemies too impotent to inspire the same fear, and also they're generally too dumb to actually chase you far.
It sounds like Breath of the Wild is the equivalent of a child's playground with lots of points of interests to play on and various toys which you can implement interesting strategies with, but no real risk inherent to the game and a very static, unresponsive world that doesn't necessarily invite different approaches. Can't speak to the story, which has historically ALSO been a strength of the series (don't care what anybody says, I enjoyed Twilight princess).
I guess I remain very hopeful that generative AI will allow open worlds to get a lot more dynamic and gain some depth that makes them more fun to play around in for longer, and can create a more complete illusion of a lived-in world where you are a smaller part of the whole.
In my opinion, Far Cry 2 is the best Far Cry game by a long shot. It’s the only one that actually delivered on the premise of being stranded in a hostile remote land and having to fight tooth and nail to survive. You have to be careful and think strategically. Especially when you’re playing on console and don’t have the ability to save anywhere. It also did the morally ambiguous premise a lot better than any of the others.
Strong agree.
"You're stranded, you're sick, almost everyone will try to kill you on sight, except a handful of companions who are reliable but have dubious loyalties. Oh and your weapons will break without warning. Try not to die."
I won't say I hated the following entries' gimmick of "Young American guy visits foreign country and becomes skilled badass" but it didn't have the same feel.
Playing as a morally ambiguous mercenary in a story with no obvious heroes and accepting missions from BOTH sides of a civil war and killing people who aren't framed as soulless henchmen to an evil regime is much better at conveying a sense of isolation and detachment from civilized society. You're not fighting to save your friends or, even, to get back home.
Hell, even the ambient audio from enemies made it feel like they ALSO got trapped in this shithole country because they wanted to earn a quick buck and had to fall in with one side or the other of the war. They have no allegiance to the nation and they're trying to kill the protagonist solely so he doesn't kill them first.
I keep praying for a remaster/remake that changes up the wonky weapon inventory system, fixes the respawning checkpoints, adds in predatory wildlife, and leaves EVERYTHING ELSE the same.
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I think there’s a “hunted” type start in CDDA, if you’re willing to go through that learning curve.
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BotW sucks. Most open world games do imo, for the types of reasons that you outline.
Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask are far superior to BotW as Zelda titles.
Nintendo is far past their prime. Most people would put their glory days somewhere in the 90s/early 00s. But, there is admittedly an irreducible element of childhood nostalgia required for fully enjoying any of these games anyway.
They have no need to innovate, because for some bizarre reason the entire industry has completely ceded the vast territories of "in-person multiplayer" and "games for children" to them for decades. They're sitting on an uncontested monopoly. For a parent who wants to play video games with their young children, Nintendo is pretty much the only option available. If you want to get drunk and have a fun night in with friends, no other company even tries to compete with Nintendo's offerings: Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. remain the gold standard to this day. Even the Halo series mostly gave up on split screen play years ago. I don't know why, but Nintendo is the only company that still makes video games for people who want to play in the same room as each other. They're the exact same six games they've been making over and over again since 1994, granted, but it's not like there are many alternatives out there outside of sports and fighting games, but even those are often only 2-player and increasingly designed for online play at the expense of the in-person experience.
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Not in terms of profits. Or in terms of influence. BotW is probably the most influential game since Arkham Asylum.
I'm assuming you're taking about the combat system that everyone either copied or riffed on. I think around that time Assassin's Creed 2 is a contender for most influential. I feel every was AC2+++ for awhile.
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Agreed (I couldn't get into BOTW either). But MM has aged worse than OOT IMO, much as it pains me to say it.
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I'm not here to change your mind, but to agree with you. BotW was a huge disappointment and I stopped playing it after 10-20h (guessing) and I did the first divine beast (the mammoth). I didn't even bother with TotK because I had no desire to get that disappointment again.
First, I'll say that I play Zelda games for the dungeons. I want to go to cool places, solve fun puzzles, and get neat items that unlock more puzzles. I'm not interested in the world, which is really just connective tissue between the actual good parts of the game (though some games have more interesting overworlds than others). So right off the bat, BotW was off on the wrong foot. Only four dungeons? Not a good sign. But the shrines do exist, so I figured that might make up for it.
Turns out that the shrines don't really do it for me at all. They are so short that right as I'm getting into the groove and having fun, it's all over. Additionally, as you get all the items at the beginning of the game they don't engage you in new ways the way other Zelda games do. On top of that, the one divine beast I did (the actual dungeon!) was super short and simple. It took me maybe 20-30 minutes. So the main draw of Zelda for me was a big fat bust.
On top of that, the game screwed up one of the other things I love about Zelda, which is the music. Most Zelda soundtracks are packed with bangers, so I figured that I'd like the music at least. But no, it's all ambient piano shit. I know opinions vary, but ambient music is fucking boring. It was awful having to listen to that everywhere I went. I know they recorded real music for the game, it was in some of the trailers. But I never heard it when I played. Huge letdown.
On top of all that, I hated traversing the world. Ostensibly the main draw of the game, I found it to be both unreasonably big, and devoid of anything interesting. So not only were the shrines and dungeons not very good, they were connected by a painful slog through the world every time I wanted to get to one. The world, by itself, would have put a serious damper on my opinion of the game. But when it wasn't firing on any other cylinders either, it was unbearable.
Overall, I rate BotW 2/5 stars at best. It's beautiful to look at, and the physics are fun, but there's nothing interesting there in the long run. It's a terrible Zelda.
Edit: oh yeah I forgot to mention the equipment durability system. It fucking sucks (as all such systems do). People hated it in Skyward Sword, so why on earth did Nintendo think it was a good idea to bring it back? And from what I've heard it's even worse because it applies to the Master Sword (albeit just disabling it temporarily rather than destroying it). At least in SS, they had the sense to make the iconic Hylian Shield exempt from the durability system. If they had to keep durability (which they shouldn't have), they at least should've made the Master Sword similarly exempt.
This is much more defensible than calling it a terrible game.
I loved it, 5/5, one of the best games ever, the "Skyrim for kids" I'd been hoping for ever since I had kids ... but it's a very different gameplay genre from most Zelda games and I can't begrudge bigger Zelda fans for resenting seeing it published under the "Legend of Zelda" name.
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Nintendo is overrated in the way Disney is overrated — brand power and nostalgia do a lot to sell and market their games. That said, look at the AAA gaming scene over the last 5 and what developers are left that haven't devolved into slop mills pushing out incomplete, buggy, soulless games? Nintendo, From Soft, maybe CD Projekt depending on how charitable you want to be towards Cyberpunk. Nintendo holding onto their reputation for this long speaks to something beyond nostalgia.
I share a lot of your criticisms of Breath of the Wild though. They spent so much time on the (admittedly amazing) world design and physics engine that dungeons, loot, enemy variety are all undercooked. Something I've noticed about it is that the non-gamers I know absolutely adore the game. They love the freedom and playing around with the cool physics system to see what you can do. More traditional gamers I know get tired of the copy-paste content after trying to play the game like a traditional Zelda and wind up much more negative on the game.
This is certainly true and it is why I unironically Only Play Indie Games. I grew up in a time where Newgrounds games were becoming increasingly popular, and as a result have always had a bent towards the more idiosyncratic styles of small teams and individual creators. And as high-quality tools to create games have slowly become more democratised and readily available over the years, there has been less and less reason for me to turn towards AAA studios for... anything, really. You can now find really well refined games coming out of independent studios now without any of the soulless, manicured, decision-by-committee feel that AAA titles tend to have. Indie games have always been able to pursue more distilled and targeted visions as they are usually geared towards smaller consumer niches, instead of aiming for wide appeal, and in addition the small size of their operations allow for less compromise.
Does Nintendo stack up favourably to many other AAA studios? Yeah, but considering the absolute disappointment that is the AAA gaming scene in general I'd argue that's not saying much.
Can you tell me some of your favorite games from the last few years?
I usually enjoy indie games I have played, but I don't go to the online places where I would hear about them. Really, I've been hosed on discovering new games since Tips and Tricks magazine went out of business.
You didn't ask me but I have some recs too.
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Yeah, sure thing. I don't know which genres you're most partial to, but here are some games I think are particularly well done, along with a short description of what they're about.
1: SOMA (2015)
SOMA is a horror game by Frictional Games, a studio best known for pioneering a game mechanic where you can essentially only run and hide from enemies. They primarily broke out with the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent which blew up on Youtube everywhere in the heyday of Let's Plays. Ever since then, they've mostly tried to recapture the pure horror vibes of Amnesia, but there was a brief moment where they decided to make a horror title with more existential sci-fi leanings.
Frictional's game designer, Thomas Grip, has stated that SOMA was hugely inspired by hard sci-fi authors such as Peter Watts and Greg Egan, and it really shows. It's by far my favourite game of theirs, and if you're playing one game on this list, make it this one. Go in completely blind. You won't find a better game narrative anywhere.
2: Baba Is You (2019)
I feel like Baba Is You is one of these indie titles I don't have to say too much about because of its ubiquity, but Baba Is You is a sokoban puzzle game where you push statements around an endlessly manipulable game world in order to satisfy a win condition. The game allows for constructing statements that allow the player to change the very characteristics of the level, to the point that you can yourself define the win condition of many levels.
It is not easy, and is one of these sadistically difficult puzzle games which you'll find yourself banging your head against for hours. According to Steam I've wasted 47.5 hours of my life on this game's puzzles alone.
3: Growing My Grandpa! (2022)
Now this is a weird one. Growing My Grandpa! is a short game by up-and-coming indie creator Yames that exhibits a strange hybrid of influences coming from Virtual Pet games, 90s adventure/edutainment games and Cronenbergian body horror alike, and the result is an extremely surreal and unique game that has absolutely no parallel elsewhere. The gameplay is fairly sparse, innocuous and repetitive, as is par for the course for a game based around a virtual pet-like mechanic - but it gets contrasted against an increasingly eerie, grotesque and uncanny plot, a dichotomy that's exploited as both a source of humour and horror in the game.
This game is very esoteric. It's not for everyone, and I can imagine people being really put off by any combination of the mechanics, the visual style, or the writing. In my case, I think his work is enticing enough to want to donate to his Patreon, which is fairly unusual for me.
4: INSIDE (2016)
INSIDE is a dark, cryptic platformer from developer Playdead. It draws many elements from their breakout hit Limbo - child protagonist, bleak atmosphere, abstract plot, many ways to die in bloody fashion - except it's executed better in virtually every way. As is usual from this developer, there's not a single line of dialogue and there isn't too much explanation provided to contextualise the events of the game, and much of the story is told through the environment.
A major draw of INSIDE is the art direction and music, which is executed beautifully throughout - it's a very atmospheric and potent game, and despite the lack of a clear through-line for the situations the game throws at you there is always a sense of intentionality behind every design decision that keeps it coherent.
5: Inscryption (2021)
This is a roguelike deck-building card game from Pony Island creator Daniel Mullins, and it's yet another title
where it's best to know as little as possible about the game gong in, because suffice to say, it does not stay in that genre for very long. Despite appearances in the beginning, it is a plot heavy game - while the story is certainly a (I'd say intentionally) campy one, it provides the framework for a lot of very interesting genre-bending that gets executed quite smoothly and cleverly.The element of surprise is crucial in this game, and the only reason I'm giving this much away about it is that I am aware of people who completely didn't anticipate the later shifts in the game, and were fairly disappointed by it since they went in expecting one thing and got another.Forget everything you just read. This is a perfectly normal game.
There are many more quality games that have been released over the past few years, but these are the ones that currently come to mind which I actually think try to do something really interesting and intriguing with their setup, even if sometimes they are a little rough around the edges. Note I have a bit of a bias towards plot-focused, generally bleak games (with the exception of Baba Is You), these are my own genre preferences showing through and they might not align with yours.
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I might just be a fan, but I don't think Nintendo is particularly overrated. To me, they really are the best at what they do.
There's really no other company that consistently makes games that "feel" as good to play. Maneuvering the character in Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, and Splatoon feels responsive, smooth, and intuitive in a way I haven't seen from any other game maker. They're also really great at making games that simultaneously have a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling.
God of War, The Witcher 3, and Horizon Zero Dawn are some of the biggest Sony titles, but to me the character movements feel sluggish, jerky, and unintuitive. They can have beautiful worlds and good stories, but I don't really enjoy existing there nearly as much.
Bungie is similarly good at making games that feel good - say what you will about Destiny or Destiny 2, it is fun to shoot guns in those games. Unfortunately, they are also pretty iffy these days on translating those good fundamentals into games that are overall fun.
Prototype and Warframe are pretty fun on the speedier-combat side, though they do share similar issues with the gameplay loop struggling at times.
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Have you tried From Software games? I can' think of any studio that that makes third person melee feel as good as they do.
I played around with Dark Souls a bit, but I didn't get far enough to really judge. I usually only play video games when I'm mentally drained so I never stuck with it long enough to "git gud". Elden Ring is at the top of my list for the next time I have an extended gap from working.
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Nintendo is the only game company left that I'd consider a preorder from.
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It is telling that Nintendo's worst received titles tend to be games that they either rode into the ground (New New New Super Mario Bros. U & Knuckles Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series) or just didn't finish (Sunshine, the newer sports games, and to a point ToTK).
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I thought Breath of the Wild was amazing when I first played it, but it dropped off hard as I got further into it. Open world in zelda, plus the joy of getting things like the shield to glide around with or experimenting with all the different weapons that broke? Amazing fun. But it all wore off so damn fast. Oh well. Not all games have to be 100+ marathons, you know? Enjoy it for 5 hours, put it away, move on.
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You know, Breath of the Wild IMHO had vibes going for it a lot. A lot of those vibes were downwind of game design decisions, some were nostalgia though. Going from your typical Ubisoft open world slop, with a map full of ADHD/OCD inducing icons yanking you left and right, to Breath of the Wilds more sedate experience of scaling tall mountains and then manually placing markers for places you want to explore, the difference in vibes is enormous. Ubislop makes me downright anxious, Breath of the Wild felt remarkably chill and relaxing. I think people responded to that strongly.
Then again, if you enjoy Ubislop, Breath of the Wild feels empty and boring.
Another aspect of Breath of the Wild that was deeply rewarding was that the world wasn't as empty as it seems at first. Sure there are the Shrines, then there are also some great riddles to solve, puzzles in the landscape, and literally hundreds of Korok puzzles hiding in plain sight. Now I'm not encouraging anyone to try to do all of them. That would be insane. But it's deeply rewarding to be wondering through an "empty" area, and suddenly something catches your eye. Some tree that seems to have a little too much intent. Turns out it actually is a puzzle and you get a little reward. It's nice.
Some of the best quest have very little advertising. I forget how I discovered the Terrytown questline, but it was fantastic, and largely did not involve following quest markers for 2 hours straight.
All that said, I played Breath of the Wild before I had a family. When I could spend upwards of 4 hours a play session enjoying the vibes and being immersed in the world. When I attempted to play Tears of the Kingdom however many years later, it went significantly less well. First I could only play in short burst, which I wanted to be far more goal oriented than is optimal to enjoy the game. I forget how far I got, and I doubt I'll ever return to finish it. All the complaints you have were made far more manifest.
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