I think the story itself was fine but could have been fleshed out more or structured differently since it seems the quests involving the Zoras has more screen time compared to the other races. After being a linear story driven experience for many games in a row now, I applaud N Intendo for at least trying to shake things up, even if it didn\'t grab you.
Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
As it should be. If you're gonna complain about that, you may as well complain about every rpg ever made, 'cuz that's what Breath of the Wild isnote .
None of the prior entries in the series forced you along either. You were free to take your time chatting up npcs, doing sidequests, or completing any mini-games you might've missed. The lone exception was Majora's Mask, due to it's 3-day system and you could still take it at your leisure, thanks to the Song of Time and the Inverted Song of Time, which gave you all the time in the world to go off and explore to your heart's content. I see that as a plus.
I disagree. While you could do whatever you wanted in the other games, you were still stuck to a certain degree until you did the next thing. And some of the games gave you a good reason for why you should proceed. Skyward said you had to go look for Zelda, who was a close friend of yours and stuck in a location that majority of people in the sky didn\'t know anything about. Wind Waker had Link\'s sister being taken away, who was younger and in the hands of a monster and obviously terrified.
Breath of the Wild did not give me that reason. Link wakes up without his memories and the only reason to go to Hyrule Castle, is because King Rhoam asks you to and that Zelda is there. As the player, and Link, I know nothing about this game\'s Zelda or why I should go there, beyond being told. There is no emotional reason given for anything.
Hyrule is in ruins and the force that ravaged it 100 years ago is being confined to Hyrule Castle, just barely, 'cuz Zelda's power is weakening after battling Ganon on her own. Rhoam explains the situation to Link right before giving him the paraglider.
In-game, they're on a deadline: either Link recovers his memories, along with the Master Sword and the Divine Beasts, before Zelda completely exhausts herself - or Ganon will escape and finish what he started.
That's what the "Scattered Memories" sidequest is for. By the time you've completed it, you'll understand why it matters that Link saves her.
MiinU, I know. I have played the game. And completed it. I am saying that I don\'t have an IMMEDIATE reason to give a damn about Zelda because she is a non-person to me. She is nothing but a name. I have no reason to help her. Imagine there were no memories to collect. What\'s my reason to go to Hyrule Castle and safe her? None, that\'s what.
Same with my point of there BEING NO DANGER in the game. The only thing that Ganon\'s presence in Hyrule Castle seems to do is to make a Blood Moon occur. Outside of that, what\'s the danger? You could do nothing but sleep for dozens of days and not a lick of difference occurs to the world. I don\'t like Ocarina of Time, but at least there, the future part showed that the Zoras had been frozen; the Gorons were imprisoned; the Kokiri Forest and village had been infested with monsters... there, they were in ACTUAL danger, until you saved them. Breath of the Wild doesn\'t have that. It has nothing.
In that case, you can say the same about any other game in the series, because Link always has to go on a journey to even meet Zelda; let alone, save her. Whereas in BotW, he already knows her and has simply forgotten.
Then there wouldn't be a game, because recovering Link's memories is essential to the plot.
You may as well ask: 'Imagine if Metal Face hadn't killed Fiora. What's my reason to go to Prison Island?'
If that's your justification, I can easily say the same about the OoT example you used, 'cuz all the events you mentioned took place while Link was sealed in the Sacred Realm. Same as with Link being entombed in the Shrine of Resurrection.
Both sets of events are revealed in retrospect after Link awakes.
Ganondorf will wait patiently at Hyrule Castle, while Link competes in minigames, searches for heart containers and gold skulltulas, or he can fish all day every day and Ganondorf won't move an inch. He won't care if Link's freed the Zoras or the Gorons and Ganondorf will never come any closer to world conquest, 'cuz he'll keep sitting there waiting for Link to show up.
So where's the so-called "danger" you were talking about?
At least BotW has an in-universe justification for Ganon not finishing what he started all those years ago: because Zelda's been keeping him confined to the Castle, until Link's return.
\"Same with my point of there BEING NO DANGER in the game. The only thing that Ganon\'s presence in Hyrule Castle seems to do is to make a Blood Moon occur. Outside of that, what\'s the danger? \"
I agree that at the beginning of the game you as the player see no inmediate danger for Hyrule. That\'s untill you go to recoger the Divine Beasts. The Zora\'s place is going to be flooded soon, Gorons are having a bad time with their economy and the same could be told about everyone, and that\'s not mentioning the enviromental and personal danger the Divine Beast controlled by Ganon represent for the civilians.
I will admit that I feel like the biggest issue with the game is the story and the fact that there\'s absolutely no sense of danger just because the exploration is put in the forefront... though the fact that I\'m still playing it just to find stuff and screw around certainly shows what virtues it does have
It's basically a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Fans weren't happy with Majora's Mask 3 day system, because they said they felt rushed and didn't have time to do everything in a single cycle. Now, with this game, they say there's no urgency, when the same could be said for the rest of the series.
@Tipherath: The problem with saying \'the home of the Zora\'s is about to be flooded\' is... they are fish. They can breathe underwater and swim and junk. Yes, they say that the flood would reach down to the lower locations, but I see no problem with that. Majority of the places are not inhabited, so them being flooded makes no difference. The Gorons and the economy fails? Eh, yeah. Whatever. The closest to feeling like it would cause problems is Naboris because it is right next to Gerudo City. Now, the Gerudo could relocate to a non-desert area and be safe. But that\'s logical, so that would never work out.
Like I said in my review, the game\'s plot is everything that happened 100 Years Ago. That is where interesting things happened. Give me that. Not some cozy catastrophe landscape to observe. Or go back even further and give me the plot of 10 000 Years Ago, when that Hyrule first faced Calamity Ganon, using the guardians to weaken him enough so that that Zelda and that Link can seal him.
@camuto: The regions south of Zora's Domain are populated, so yes, many people likely would've died in the resulting flood if something wasn't done about Vah Ruta.
The Goron's economy wasn't the only thing being affected by Rudania either. They needed to get to the northern mines because that's were they mainly got the mineral ore they fed from. So the Divine Beast was cutting off their primary food source.
And several NPCs around Gerudo Town tell you it's their ancestral home, so of course, they're not just going to pack up and abandon it. Each of your complaints has an in-story explanation.
I think this was meant to be more a return to the NES era, story-wise, than anything else. You\'re told where the endgame is, and it\'s entirely up to you to get there. There\'s barely any relevant plot reason to do it (Zelda will hold out until the end regardless), and that\'s mostly the point; you\'re not on a guided tour, you\'re an explorer. If that\'s not what you were looking for, then of course the game is gonna disappoint you some... though hopefully not too much.
Weirdly, I found this game to be much more entertaining after it had been \"spoiled\" for me. Oh, hey, you can go straight up to Ganon? You literally have everything you actually need to beat him almost as soon as you start? Well hot diggity damn, I\'m just gonna go drop in and... oh, yeah, there\'s a couple dozen Guardians in the way. If I\'m gonna get past them, I\'m probably gonna need better weapons... these boko clubs and tree branches just aren\'t doing the trick. So then you have a first order of business; go out and get some better gear, ya schmuck. And in the process of doing that, I ran into certain enemies that provided a good challenge without being so absurdly hard that I would need to pursue another goal entirely and come back to them. So then I ended up with a secondary goal of just owning those guys every time I saw them, mostly on principle, and it helped me get good at the actual combat, on top of providing some good (but still not guardian-level) weapons. Eventually, I \"stumbled\" onto the main quest, and proceeded to Follow the Plotted Line up to Ganon.
But I don\'t think the plot is really the point. The game is all one gigantic puzzle, for you, the player, to unravel. How do you win? Kill Ganon. How do you do that? Get past the Guardians (and a few bosses). How do you do that? Do these dungeons to get some good abilities and more hearts. Enemies giving you grief? Don\'t get mad, get good. If you view this as a story-based game, you\'re gonna be disappointed. If you\'re in it just for the game, though, you\'re gonna love it (I\'m pretty sure).
Tl;dr: Play the Game, Skip the Story.
(Re: wide open spaces... yeah, that can be a pain on the hundredth go around, but on the first few runs through, it was nice to have a distance to lose pursuers, get my bearings, just sort of appreciate the scenery, etc. Maybe not an ideal solution, but not so bad.)
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The Hype Leads To Disappointment
With the delays of the game being released and Nintendo saying they wanted to really bring this game out polished to a gleam, I was of course looking forward to it.
Unfortunately, this has caused a lot of the game's issues to come across as worse to me. The desire to have the game return to the main aspect of exploration was not a bad one. Sad to say, I find this game's world of Hyrule to be too large to actually be fun to traverse for the sake of exploration. A lot of the interesting locations are far and few between, resulting in most of your time being spent walking around bare environment.
That last part is not too bad, as the graphics and artstyle are lovely to look at. Several of the character designs are quite neat, too, with the Zoras getting redesigns to make them more varied into various fish-types and the Rito are now very much birds and not bird-men things as in Wind Waker.
The game really fails in the plot department. Zelda games were never that big on plot (Go save the world, Link), but they all had their plotline to follow and you got to know the world, the characters you were interacting with and a sense of dread, anxiety or purpose, as you traversed through the game and got closer to the goal of encountering the final boss.
Breath of the Wild's plot is separated into tiny pieces strewn around, with barely a mention of any development in a character, except for Zelda herself. Unfortunately, since Zelda is once again not present for majority of the game, her development does not leave as much of an impact, given that it all occurs in short memory-flashbacks. The game has no actual sense of dread that it will soon be engulfed by Calamity Ganon, because nothing in the game even forces you to head towards Hyrule Castle. It's up to the player when they go there, which means you can spend hours upon hours upon hours scavenging for food or insects; doing sidequests or finding Shrines to increase your hearts or stamina. And not once does anything in the game indicate that Hyrule is in any actual danger. The danger happened 100 years ago. And that's a problem. What happened 100 years ago sounds much more interesting than what the player is given in this game.
Nintendo decided to pretty much sacrifice everything of the game, for the sake of putting exploration to the foreground. Which can, and does, alienate players who may not be interested in the Zelda games for the sake of exploration, but more for the dungeons; the solving of puzzles to proceed or, yes, even the weak plotline the games presented.
I ended up being disappointed by this game. All the hype they gave this game; all the time they spent polishing it and this is what they delivered: a game that seems to be more about its pretty-looking nature, rather than anything one actually expects in an Action Adventure game. A letdown for a much-hyped 30th Anniversary game.