[Poll] Did we overestimate the influence The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild would have in the design of open-world videogames?
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Can you beat the game right from the start like BOTW? I've only played a little myself.
Also this game didn't feel anything like BOTW. It's first person for one. And the type of exploration seems a lot different
You can but you'd need to know exactly what to do and where to go, information you can only find by playing the game as intended (or using a guide)
Without meaningful rewards, BOTW needed to feel intrinsically interesting to be worthwhile, which it did not to me.
Perhaps if the combat was any good, random enemy outposts and combat shrines would have felt worthwhile. They do not.
Perhaps I would have found climbing worthwhile if it didn't rain 70% of the time in the damn game with rain providing no worthwhile trade-off to the player.
Maybe I would have liked the temperature system if it was anything but a tax on the player that necessitated cumbersome armor changing. Or lightning making me change equipment.
Basically I found BOTW to be a long list of how not to do some interesting ideas. Hopefully it's a cautionary tale for developers.
Disclaimer: Yes I understand the the game is insanely popular so it worked for many many people. Happy for them.
Perhaps if the combat was any good, random enemy outposts and combat shrines would have felt worthwhile. They do not.
Perhaps I would have found climbing worthwhile if it didn't rain 70% of the time in the damn game with rain providing no worthwhile trade-off to the player.
Maybe I would have liked the temperature system if it was anything but a tax on the player that necessitated cumbersome armor changing. Or lightning making me change equipment.
Basically I found BOTW to be a long list of how not to do some interesting ideas. Hopefully it's a cautionary tale for developers.
Disclaimer: Yes I understand the the game is insanely popular so it worked for many many people. Happy for them.
Lol while I liked BOTW, I genuinely hope more open worlds for my personal taste follow Witcher 3 instead of BOTW. More impressive, immersive worlds with well written quests. I like BOTW, SOTC etc.. to just be one offs than the norm.
It's only been 3 years. It will definitely have an impact on games imo, it's just too early to see it yet. It's one of the best - if not the best open world RPG ever, why wouldn't other companies be trying to emulate that?
The traversal systems might see some other open-world games inspired by Breath of the Wild, sure. The open-world gameplay framework in a broader sense? No. It just doesn't fit well for games that have a strong narrative drive. The Witcher 3 was far more influential this generation for open-world design, ultimately, because it did show how you could fill a world with meaningful characters and stories that plays pretty seamlessly.
It will have an impact for sure, but it will be hard to match it beat for beat. I mean look at traditional Zelda games. There were imitators but very few games came close. BotW inserts itself into a crowded genre, but the focus is completely different from most open world titles. It is so hand crafted, so minutely designed that something of this caliber takes a lot of time that most developers probably don't have.
Absolutely, but the devs mentioned BotW as an inspiration, and not SotC, you know. Much like how most of the mechanics you think of when you think "soulslike" weren't really invented by Souls. If Tibia came out today someone would describe it as MMO Souls just because it's hard and has corpse runs.
Being influential is often more related to execution and broad recognition than brand new concepts. Just look at how prevalent the idea that huge bosses are either gimmicky fights or QTEs still is, so many years after Shadow of the Colossus showed the way with using base mechanics for climbing huge enemies. Only Dragon's Dogma took notes, and nothing else since.
You can beat it from the start, but not in the same way as BotW at all.
Outer Wilds is about information gathering - you need to know how things work, find out where they are and what to do. The only way you'll be able to beat the game immediately is pure dumb luck or by looking up what to do.
BotW is skill-based - you're given a tutorial on your abilities, told where to go and exactly what to do. It'll be hard to do it immediately but it's completely possible to do so on your first go without any prior knowledge.
I was being a little cheeky, but you're being facetious. It's essentially impossible for someone entirely new to the game to beat Ganon's castle with just three hearts and their starting gear.
Yup, BotW is a fine game (with several issues though), but people tend to talk it up way too much and honestly, I'd much rather have an open world like RDR2 instead of whatever BotW tried to do. It's a huge part of the reason I'm not too thrilled about the next Zelda being a direct sequel to BotW.
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Both would be very tough but I stand by the idea that it's still way more possible to beat Ganon straight off than accidentally beating Outer Wilds immediately, nothing facetious about it.
I still do not see the logic here. Surely there has been a number of Open World titles in the work since after Zelda came out? Why should Horizon, out of all of them, serve as some metric to evaluate the impact of Breath of the Wild? And why would one assume that the sequel to Horizon would benefit the most from it? I am genuinely confused...
Whether or not something is influential or not is something that you really can't call on the short term and doing so is incredibly silly, especially in something like gaming which has incredibly long production cycles. In ten, maybe even fifteen years you can ask this question again.
Even in other media with shorter production cycles it's usually not really possible to point out influence within the first decade. Look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which for a short period was very influential as all big studios were suddenly creating their own 'cinematic universes', but by now all but two of those studios (Godzilla and Conjuring) have pretty much dropped the concept, and the new Godzilla franchise will probably be dead after the next one. Like, can you really say the MCU was influential when they are the only one who have executed their gimmick successfully?
Even in other media with shorter production cycles it's usually not really possible to point out influence within the first decade. Look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which for a short period was very influential as all big studios were suddenly creating their own 'cinematic universes', but by now all but two of those studios (Godzilla and Conjuring) have pretty much dropped the concept, and the new Godzilla franchise will probably be dead after the next one. Like, can you really say the MCU was influential when they are the only one who have executed their gimmick successfully?
There are a bunch of games like that, just less in recent years. cRPGs have done this forever. Fallout 1 & 2 were famous for how you could, if you wanted, just stroll to the final area as soon as you got access to the overworld map and while this isn't quite possible in modern (c)RPG's, in games like Fallout New Vegas and Divinity: OS 2 you can still skip huge parts of the game if you are familiar with where to go.
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I'd say in some respects yes but I also think people are going to be HUGELY mistaken if they think a ton of games are going to borrow that heavily from it. Folks are bringing up Horizon Forbidden West and I just have to laugh. Its going to be a bigger HZD with better graphics, improved combat, more enemies and so on. At best the world might be a bit more organic to explore and traverse through but this sounds like people who were playing up GoT to be seriously influenced by BotW and it feels far more like your traditional open world game in nearly every aspect, not that that's a bad thing mind you either.
What works for BotW will inherently not work for a game that is not focused on being hugely open ended in how you play it and giving you tons of freedom. Its near anti-antithetical to how a lot of narrative focused games, even open world ones, operate. HZD was a combat and narrative focused game in an open world, not a sprawling opened RPG with a focus on exploration and adventuring how you like. Certain ideas just do not mesh well together.
What works for BotW will inherently not work for a game that is not focused on being hugely open ended in how you play it and giving you tons of freedom. Its near anti-antithetical to how a lot of narrative focused games, even open world ones, operate. HZD was a combat and narrative focused game in an open world, not a sprawling opened RPG with a focus on exploration and adventuring how you like. Certain ideas just do not mesh well together.
It's something I've thought about quite a bit. I am more positive on BotW than you are, but I think there's actually huge potential in the future of the series. I think as it moves forward we will see the BotW style adopt elements (dungeons, unique items) from the "older" style Zelda and ultimately we will end up with something truly unique.
i kinda disagree. so, its weird, i don't think devs of GoT took gameplay from Botw, they more like took "ideas" or "tricks". Like it kinda crazy to think in 2020 1080p screens are pretty much the standard, which means we don't need objective markers, we can see things really clearly without the need for alot of contrast. or make things like grapple points/climbable surfaces look out of place. i felt little things like this Botw did really well. and i think its gonna get even better with 4k screens, itl be less about "more pixels" and more about "how real can we make this world feel" or at least i hope.
Horizon 2 is the only one we know is fully developed after the release of BoTW. Anything that has come out since was likely at the very least in some stage of development before BoTW. We know basically for sure though that Horizon 2 is a fully post-BoTW open-world game to be released soon. Gods and Monsters could potentially fit too. Doesn't mean they will pull anything at all from BoTW but it's likely to be the first released game we know entered development after BoTW. It's all about what we know publicly here.
It being a direct sequel is what makes me think it'll be quite different in many ways, like Marjora's Mask was to Ocarina of Time. There are a lot things they can't repeat and it can't be about the same kind of exploration again.
Witcher 3 was probably the biggest influencer this gen for rpgs and open world games
I do recall a lot of indie devs talking about a botw influence and a lot more gamers in general bringing up how something looks like botw.
I do recall a lot of indie devs talking about a botw influence and a lot more gamers in general bringing up how something looks like botw.
Hopefully you're right, I enjoyed BotW, but I don't want to go through a similar game again, if BotW changes things up and makes interesting dungeons (not 120 of them), then I'll probably be there day 1. Hopefully they'll actually encourage creativity during battle too this time around.
TW3 the biggest influencer? How so? TW3 is very bloated, but that has been a Ubisoft staple for over a decade. TW3 did have some good sidequests, but I haven't seen many good sidequests in other games. I'm curious about what specifically about TW3 you've seen emulated by others.
I went with can't copy but not because its on a separate level. Because developers largely have a template for open world games already, and while it's definitely gotten a bit stale running around checking off boxes on the map they still sell generally. I don't think studios necessarily want to take the risk to break away from a mould that's working for them.
I'm not saying that BotW had zero effect on how GoT was developed but its very much your standard open world template for modern games with a couple of slightly different takes on things like waypoints, not exactly something I'd credit BotW for popularizing or originating.
What influence? Redundant shrines to increase stamina?
Empty worlds devoid of life?
Are towers going be considered a BotW creation?
Empty worlds devoid of life?
Are towers going be considered a BotW creation?
You could actually read some posts to see what people are referring to but that might get in the way of your snark.
I've already seen several upcoming games parroting the big sweeping vistas + paraglider travel thing, so it seems pretty influential.
not originating no. but for i would credit botw for popularizing. like how if someone asks you where did the idea for rewinding time in a car game, its not like your first thought is gonna be Blinx the Cat
It's why every AC game is an rpg now, the bloat of Ubisoft has always been there but since W3 release each AC has been a imo shallow copy. I also believe it's incredible popularity is why most of the gen there are more rpg lights overall, these days every genre has tried to shoehorn rpg elements into their games and looking back it really started after W3. Witcher 3 has led to shows now everyone wants a show. As to side quests you're right they haven't been done well but many others but look at how many have tried. I'd even argue that Botw itself took some influence. It's tough to draw specific parallels to certain gameplay mechanics because of how much influence the Witcher itself has taken from other games but it feels like it's this gens Skyrim. It's the benchmark all are compared to leading to games striving to be like it.
I mean hell look who is known as the big dog of the genre these days, nobody mentions BioWare anymore and even less think of Bethesda. CDProjekt is the standard bearer. It helped serve as a savior of large single player gaming, showed the pc is still a very viable market and piracy doesn't have to be an issue.
the game only came out 3 and a half years ago. large open world games take longer than that to make so i don't think we'll be seeing many games that take influence from it just yet. give it another year or so.
i hope the people at CDPR took some lessons from BOTW. they went into full production on Cyberpunk in late 2016 so hopefully they were playing BOTW and put that inspiration into the game. i loved Witcher 3 but at times it was tedious travelling and I did use fast travel a bit. In BOTW i never used fast travel once.
so my BOTW benchmark for other games is how often i use fast travel. if your game is boring/tedious to explore then i'm gonna fast travel. in BOTW i always felt the urge to explore even 100 or so hours into the game and in areas i'd already been through many times because i always had the feeling i had missed something.
i hope the people at CDPR took some lessons from BOTW. they went into full production on Cyberpunk in late 2016 so hopefully they were playing BOTW and put that inspiration into the game. i loved Witcher 3 but at times it was tedious travelling and I did use fast travel a bit. In BOTW i never used fast travel once.
so my BOTW benchmark for other games is how often i use fast travel. if your game is boring/tedious to explore then i'm gonna fast travel. in BOTW i always felt the urge to explore even 100 or so hours into the game and in areas i'd already been through many times because i always had the feeling i had missed something.
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I don't need to see what other people think. I have the game, as well as my own opinion.
BotW brought nothing to the table that I'd care to see borrowed from other games.
it's not about whether you in particular want other games to be influenced by it, it's up to devs. it hasn't been too long since the game came out and already in 2020 there's 4 or 5 games that are clearly inspired by it in different ways, and that's going to increase in the future.
personal taste aside, it's clear that many people (including devs, critics and gamers) consider the game to be one the best ever made so it's only natural that it's going to influence them in their work.
of course you have your own opinion but you can share it in a way that doesn't come off as snarky.
As others have said, it's too early to say. AAA games take 3-5 years to make at this point so we're not really going to see BOTW's impact until next year. Having said that, Genshin Impact and Immortals (fka Gods and Monsters) are coming out this year, and I imagine they will probably be the start of a trend.
Also wow a bunch of people on this forum really want to make sure everyone else knows that they didn't like BOTW and they're bitter that its so popular, huh
Also wow a bunch of people on this forum really want to make sure everyone else knows that they didn't like BOTW and they're bitter that its so popular, huh
It probably won't because BotW was the only game bold enough to let story take a complete backseat to serve the game design, allowing you to *truly* do everything in the order you want.
No one else will do that. They love their linear stories getting in the way of open world.
that said I saw some of it in Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima
No one else will do that. They love their linear stories getting in the way of open world.
that said I saw some of it in Death Stranding and Ghost of Tsushima
It's not easy making a game like BOTW. Most developers will only be able to draw inspiration from one or two design philosophies and that doesn't guarantee that they will be successful. The beauty of BOTW is in all of its connected systems, working together all of the time. Indie developers would need a massive amount of time to replicate something like that. And big budget games aren't going to pivet to clone BOTW. You hear devs talking about taking inspiration from BOTW all the time but like I said... that's usually just a design philosophy or two and not the entire experience. "We wanted to give our players that same sense of discovery and freedom", I've heard something along those lines a few times now.
Way too soon to tell. The botw world design would have to be planned from early in development of a game. It's not something that can be done 1-2 years before launch of a large game
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