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Discussion Tears of the Kingdom and its marketing (or lack thereof) - how do you feel?

TOTK is basically a glorified DLC pack for BOTW. That's it. There's nothing more to really show. It's BOTW with a couple of new runes (Time Stop and Drill), as well as a modified BOTW map, some new story cutscenes and an expanded array of constructable vehicles. That's the game.

After roughly 6 years of development? That's enormously disappointing.
 
BOTW had staggered teases at events and awards shows years before official release date confirmation on top of it being the spotlight in Directs. It also had E3 all to itself with over 8 hours of live gameplay spanning across multiple days. Plenty of hands-on previews from the press. That was like 8 months before the game came out. The marketing didn’t just stop there. They had multiple trailers including a Super Bowl ad 2 months before release. They also promoted the game on a bunch late night shows like Jimmy Fallon, Conan, etc.

Not to mention the marketing tie ins with the Switch itself for the hands-on preview events all across the globe and paid sponsorships with big names YouTubers.

Tears Of The Kingdom marketing has been genuinely awful so far. Small trailers in Directs and that’s it.

Side Note: BOTW trailers were so good. The E3 2016 trailer. The Superbowl ad with the ”Believer” song helped launch that song to become a massive hit for Imagine Dragons (the power that that has). The switch presentation trailer is one of the best of all time. TOTK trailers haven’t reached that level AT ALL.
 
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It’s disappointing to not have seen more of the game and how anything they’re showing fits together, but they could easily do this in March/April without consequence.
 
ragolliangatan said:
I honestly feel that when it comes to trailers be it in movies/games that there is a subset of people that want it all spelt out for them. ToTK is not the first game to fall victim to this GoW Ragnarok had the same last year until they finally had a blowout a month or so before release.
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I do think the marketing's been a bit poor; I've had to really think about what I'm looking at sometimes to realize what it is, and I guess that's something you shouldn't really have to do with a trailer. What appears to be great about this game looks hard to get across in video form, though. The gameplay loop to me looks like it'll feel more interesting than BotW, but in a way that comes across as the same if you're just getting a glimpse of it.

I dunno. I'm curious to see what people think of the trailers after they've played the game.
 
Jersh said:
I do think the marketing's been a bit poor; I've had to really think about what I'm looking at sometimes to realize what it is, and I guess that's something you shouldn't really have to do with a trailer. What appears to be great about this game looks hard to get across in video form, though. The gameplay loop to me looks like it'll feel more interesting than BotW, but in a way that comes across as the same if you're just getting a glimpse of it.

I dunno. I'm curious to see what people think of the trailers after they've played the game.
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yeah, I agree with you that it's not been great on the marketing front - but it kinda feels to me that it's following recent trends with Nintendo marketing (Fire Emblem had a weird marketing cycle, so did the most recent Pokemon games) I do think you're right that the gameplay loop is likely going to be more involved this time- I don't think there will be a simple "Destroy Ganon" type objective from the offset that you can do straight away. We just don't know what the core gameplay loop is this time- just sprinklings of new mechanics and the sky islands.
 
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It's kinda almost like they don't want it to overshadow the games they're releasing before it too much, which I would understand except those games are mostly ports that are know quantities so that doesn't really add up. I hope/assume we'll be seeing more of it in the coming months as I'm still adamant that there is much more to see, contrary to a lot of the posts here and on Era from probably the same people who were hoping it would see a major delay since the final release date was announced in September, which I think we are now well past the point of anyone seriously believing will happen which is at least positive.

As far as Nintendo are concerned I don't suppose it really matters, it will be shown off again and again over the next few months of course but even if it wasn't hypothetically it'll still break lots of sales records.

On a personal level I also think it doesn't matter. I will be buying it regardless so the fewer things I see the better really, even if I would like to see the pessimism diminish sooner rather than later. Which will happen before launch when reviews go up anyway at the very latest...
 
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Onilink said:
Waiting for the villages reveal. Why nobody thinks about villages??
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They showed Hateno and it looked...exactly the same.

I just don't see enough different from the first game in any of the trailers. Or any sort of cohesion. This latest trailer was really weird in that it framed the game in this almost Mario-esque way where there's just a bunch of random mechanics you can do but they still haven't said why you're doing them or what the main goal of the game is.
 
the mistake everyone who’s saying “it’s BotW plus sky islands” is making is that that statement assumes there’s no changes to botw‘s world
 
I mean, everyone was saying Super Mario Galaxy looked terrible, and then it was one of the best games ever made.

That said, the recent trailers for this game have been a little off. They're pretty cryptic, and I wonder why they're not willing to show more. All you can do is have faith in Nintendo and, as always, believe that they know what they're doing.
 
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Phendrift said:
the mistake everyone who’s saying “it’s BotW plus sky islands” is making is that that statement assumes there’s no changes to botw‘s world
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To me it also shows a lack of imagination with how even the sky islands recontextualize the existing Hyrule. There's a lot of potential for interesting gameplay in how you traverse between the two that we've gotten some hints of, as well as potential for interesting interactions between the sky islands and Hyrule.

The sky islands are an ever present new horizon of interesting things that seem as if they demand more thought in getting where you want to go. I'm guessing going in a legitimate straight line to your destination won't be possible nearly as much this time, but in a way that still fits within BotW's open air ethos.
 
Jersh said:
To me it also shows a lack of imagination with how even the sky islands recontextualize the existing Hyrule. There's a lot of potential for interesting gameplay in how you traverse between the two that we've gotten some hints of, as well as potential for interesting interactions between the sky islands and Hyrule.

The sky islands are an ever present new horizon of interesting things that seem as if they demand more thought in getting where you want to go. I'm guessing going in a legitimate straight line to your destination won't be possible nearly as much this time, but in a way that still fits within BotW's open air ethos.
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You know, it's a bit sad that people need everything to be shown to them by trailers or "Lets plays" (which is what i would call Treehouse Live).

Normally, the thought of BotW's sublime world and discovery being expanded by Sky Islands who appear to be a bit different due to their segmentation, and the in the trailer possible teased underground/underworld, should be hype.

The gameworld and gameplay loop gets expanded by possibly two, but definitely one whole new dimensional layer(s) expanding the vertical gameplay by a lot.

Plus, as seen by the trailer last year, there's definitely cross-over situations between at least the sky islands and Hyrule overworld happening.
 
Bonejack said:
You know, it's a bit sad that people need everything to be shown to them by trailers or "Lets plays" (which is what i would call Treehouse Live).
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Eh, I'm willing to give people a pass. BotW's departures from prior Zelda games were obvious no matter how they showed the game. TotK's aren't; there's no real way to condense them into "wow" moments like Link climbing the mountain in the 2016 trailer. They're more subtle than that.

Thing is, that doesn't mean they aren't meaningful and great. They just don't look impressive from the outside unless you really think them through.
 
I have no doubt the final game will be amazing, but this newest trailer just made it look like they took BotW and added more crap to the map. This was not a good trailer when you realize a) it's been in development for 6 years and b) they're now charging $70 for it.
 
Jersh said:
Eh, I'm willing to give people a pass. BotW's departures from prior Zelda games were obvious no matter how they showed the game. TotK's aren't; there's no real way to condense them into "wow" moments like Link climbing the mountain in the 2016 trailer. They're more subtle than that.

Thing is, that doesn't mean they aren't meaningful and great. They just don't look impressive from the outside unless you really think them through.
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Dunno, i might be willing to give this a pass if there were good arguments supporting the opinion.

"Looks like DLC, not going to be great, and so on..." aren't. Those are just really unreasonable statements.

I'd like to know what people who think this imagine what the Zelda team (and the Monolith team supporting Zelda's dev) were doing for 6 years if TotK was just BotW with a few flying islands and nothing more.
Discussing what haircut Aonuma should get or got?
 
Pretty good surprisingly, I have been thinking about this for awhile and I think watching the 2016 BotW treehouse focus on the game ruined the gameplay for me because I saw most of Link’s toolset and how he would control more less. Now of course that doesn’t mean I would say no to them showing a little bit more this time around and I know a lot more people are a bit anxious to learn more, but I am the most excited I have been since the initial reveal of BotW when it was Link on top of his horse in Hyrule field.

Edit: I forgot to mention of course no one forced me to watch the 2016 treehouse, but this time around I am debating if I would watch a dedicated TotK direct or just go in blind with the info I currently have.
 
It's like Super Mario 3D World and we're still waiting for this trailer:




I think there will be some sort of overview trailer closer to launch. With everything I'm buying soon, if there isn't I may skip it to start and wait for impressions.
 
The marketing is not good, but I am still surprised at the reception the recent trailer has received. People are acting like the game is confirmed to be glorified BOTW DLC with no dungeons and barely any new content. Lots of people are even saying that Nintendo should be embarrassed for asking people to spend $70 on it. I just think it's ridiculous to make such definitive statements about a game we still really don't know much about. Maybe the trailers have been bad because TotK doesn't have any interesting content to make a trailer out of, but maybe Nintendo simply doesn't want to reveal too much information about the game.
 
Raccoon said:
It's like Super Mario 3D World and we're still waiting for this trailer:




I think there will be some sort of overview trailer closer to launch. With everything I'm buying soon, if there isn't I may skip it to start and wait for impressions.
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They will definitely have a Xenoblade 3 like big overview Direct, question is just with or without Treehouse (i think with), and when (March or April).
 
Bonejack said:
Dunno, i might be willing to give this a pass if there were good arguments supporting the opinion.

"Looks like DLC, not going to be great, and so on..." aren't. Those are just really unreasonable statements.
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Oh, yeah. I was more commenting on the people that admit they just don't get it yet. The people who think they do properly understand it and that the game is just a relatively uninspired sequel are different.

Of course, there'll probably be people who play the game and still think that; opinions and all. But I expect that number to be far smaller than the number that feels that way now.

Bonejack said:
I'd like to know what people who think this imagine what the Zelda team (and the Monolith team supporting Zelda's dev) were doing for 6 years if TotK was just BotW with a few flying islands and nothing more.
Discussing what haircut Aonuma should get or got?
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I mean, wouldn't you? :p
 
Jersh said:
I do think the marketing's been a bit poor; I've had to really think about what I'm looking at sometimes to realize what it is, and I guess that's something you shouldn't really have to do with a trailer. What appears to be great about this game looks hard to get across in video form, though. The gameplay loop to me looks like it'll feel more interesting than BotW, but in a way that comes across as the same if you're just getting a glimpse of it.

I dunno. I'm curious to see what people think of the trailers after they've played the game.
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What is the gameplay loop though other than we’ll go to sky islands for some reason (which I want to do, they look interesting) and seemingly blood moons are back?

Do shrines exist? What are the dungeons like? What’s new about combat if anything? Are breakable weapons back?

I’m ok buying this game blind, I trust it will be at worst very good, but what do we actually know about this game?
 
Just to add to the doom & gloom, I'm usually not a fan of when Nintendo makes direct sequels to its Marios & zeldas, and am perhaps the sole Super Mario Galaxy 2 hater in the world. My hopes aren't super high.


Bonejack said:
Dunno, i might be willing to give this a pass if there were good arguments supporting the opinion.

"Looks like DLC, not going to be great, and so on..." aren't. Those are just really unreasonable statements.

I'd like to know what people who think this imagine what the Zelda team (and the Monolith team supporting Zelda's dev) were doing for 6 years if TotK was just BotW with a few flying islands and nothing more.
Discussing what haircut Aonuma should get or got?
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A game can be in development for a long time, with an incredibly talented team behind it -and also monolith- and still be disappointing.
 
Dcubed said:
TOTK is basically a glorified DLC pack for BOTW. That's it. There's nothing more to really show. It's BOTW with a couple of new runes (Time Stop and Drill), as well as a modified BOTW map, some new story cutscenes and an expanded array of constructable vehicles. That's the game.

After roughly 6 years of development? That's enormously disappointing.
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what a premature hot take. smh...

We will get a dedicated Direct. People should be aware by now how information tend to trickle out for Nintendo games. This was just another very cagey trailer. I am not worried one bit about the TotK marketing efforts and people should reign in the extreme black and white / doom and gloom thinking finally.
 
i don’t think it really matter in the end. We’ll find out everything about the game weeks before releases. People want a Switch presentation trailer and they ain’t getting that. Which is funny cause I’m seeing the same folks who hate that trailer for being misleading are now saying the game needs that type of trailer.

If I cared about the sales of the game and whatnot. Maybe I’ll be more critical of the marketing but it’s Zelda. The trailers have all been generally very positively received if we being honest. Popular Triple A titles can be subdue like this cause we tend to buy out of trust/don’t need to see much.
 
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Ozeiyo said:
A game can be in development for a long time, with an incredibly talented team behind it -and also monolith- and still be disappointing.
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Sure, it can. But the chances for this to happen diminish when you reconsider which talent we're talking about here (ignoring Monolith as it's just tech/asset support), what game it is and what it follows on, what series it is and that the publisher in this case does understand what importance the game has.

Recalling other games with a long dev / stuck in dev hell, most of them fail at least one of those things.
 
Bonejack said:
What irks me a bit is this total lack of confidence in the Zelda team that some people have.

Could marketing so far have been better? Yes, absolutely.
Could or should they have had a bit more meat in yesterday's trailer? Yes, again, i'm with you.

But somehow writing/thinking that this game will suck based on ... dunno ... a total of 5 minutes of footage we've seen is flat out unreasonable.
That is big "Mario Odyssey is an auto-runner"-energy.

I definitely expect them to have a dedicated TotK Direct with a Treehouse Live afterwards sometime in March or April.

BotW got it's big story blowout and the meatiest trailer two months before release. If they want to keep this timeframe, March would be the month for this.
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I think all of the "wait, be patient, there's still more to show" arguments are perfectly fair... until preorders go up (and they're $10 more than any other Switch game).

That's Nintendo saying "We're in the final stretch and we've shown you more than enough to put your hard earned money down" and the consensus seems to be... they kinda haven't?
 
Heron said:
I think all of the "wait, be patient, there's still more to show" arguments are perfectly fair... until preorders go up (and they're $10 more than any other Switch game).

That's Nintendo saying "We're in the final stretch and we've shown you more than enough to put your hard earned money down" and the consensus seems to be... they kinda haven't?
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No, they haven't. And since it's now even more likely that leaked TotK OLED is legit, that's another hint that you're going to see the game again before launch.
 
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Nickle said:
The marketing is not good, but I am still surprised at the reception the recent trailer has received. People are acting like the game is confirmed to be glorified BOTW DLC with no dungeons and barely any new content. Lots of people are even saying that Nintendo should be embarrassed for asking people to spend $70 on it. I just think it's ridiculous to make such definitive statements about a game we still really don't know much about. Maybe the trailers have been bad because TotK doesn't have any interesting content to make a trailer out of, but maybe Nintendo simply doesn't want to reveal too much information about the game.
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Remember, though, it's marketing's job to get the reaction they want out off their audience - it's not the audience's job to give marketing the reaction they want.

So the largely underwhelmed reaction on twitter, here and elsewhere is entirely on Nintendo, not on the fans.
 
Really happy with the lack of info. I won't be picking it up for a long time after its release as I've got a massive backlog to work through, so the less spoilers the better. It's good to maintain a sense of wonder and intrigue.
 
Trailer certainly felt like a mixed bag to me, and it sort of leaves us where we where before the Direct: we know it's coming and we know it's coming soon, but we don't really know how it works as a holistic experience. We saw more hints at vehicles, new enemies, and underground spaces. We know Ganondorf is back and bad. We know basics, but we don't know how it fits together.

And I think, after reflection, I'm ok with that. It's new Zelda. It's wacky, wild, and presumably more ambitious in scope. Part of any adventure is a sense of mystery, and it seems Nintendo are working very hard to preserve that.

edit - actually I'd been wondering if this might be marketed a little like Dread from here on out. A couple more trailer drops, some developer tidbits, and then previews, reviews, launch trailer.
 
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Pineapple Pizza said:
Really happy with the lack of info. I won't be picking it up for a long time after its release as I've got a massive backlog to work through, so the less spoilers the better. It's good to maintain a sense of wonder and intrigue.
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Uhh, you should stay out of social media / Youtube then after the game launches. There's going to be a lot of that then.
 
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Heron said:
I think all of the "wait, be patient, there's still more to show" arguments are perfectly fair... until preorders go up (and they're $10 more than any other Switch game).

That's Nintendo saying "We're in the final stretch and we've shown you more than enough to put your hard earned money down" and the consensus seems to be... they kinda haven't?
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Nobody is forcing anyone to preorder though, and I generally would advise against preorders until we get Previews at least. I get that people may feel compelled to be quick and preorder the CE, but otherwise I don't get this point at all.
 
Phendrift said:
the mistake everyone who’s saying “it’s BotW plus sky islands” is making is that that statement assumes there’s no changes to botw‘s world
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Where are they though? Most of the shots in the trailer showing the overworld made it look exactly the same.
 
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2016 onward, BotW's marketing was on point, and I think it came across much more confident than TotK's scattershot approach. That being said, BotW had a little bit of a similar type of confusion around it - for example with the towns - where they don't give a clear picture on purpose, which can lead to uncertainty about the scope of the game.

For a sequel to a game based around exploration, I still don't feel entirely sure about what will be new on that front. Underground biomes seem to be in, but the scope is unknown. Sky Islands are Mario Galaxy levels of abstract, and the latest trailer kinda showed how little explorable terrain those seem to have. For me, that's the single point they should've communicated more clearly, because right now this still looks like BotW DLC.

This all being said, and looking at the way Splatoon 3 was marketed, for the big picture this probably doesn't make any difference. But for me as a green muppet who thought BotW's marketing was perfect, they could've taken away a lot of that "eeehhhh?" feeling.
 
Except for the intriguing story the trailer didn't answered my gameplay concerns.
  • Still don't know if weapons will be breakable
  • Still don't know about dungeons
  • Still don't know if items will be present

Instead they showed elements that diminish my expectation like:
  • Doubling down on sandbox aspects
  • Seeing cars on a Zelda game felt even worst than the Master Cycle
  • For now it seems that instead of items the hand power will be the new Sheikah Slate
  • One shot of the sky islands looked as strange as Sonic Frontiers

It's crazy that we know more about Pikmin 4 gameplay that launch on July than Zelda.
 
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Dcubed said:
TOTK is basically a glorified DLC pack for BOTW. That's it. There's nothing more to really show. It's BOTW with a couple of new runes (Time Stop and Drill), as well as a modified BOTW map, some new story cutscenes and an expanded array of constructable vehicles. That's the game.

After roughly 6 years of development? That's enormously disappointing.
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This is my impression, but I'm not disappointed by it. It's exactly what I I hoped for pre-2019 reveal, and exactly what I expected when that reveal happened. Felt like they could/should revisit the same world but build on the experience and eke more out of it, and they're doing exactly that.

The only problem is, I thought it would be a 3-4 year turnaround, and then we get a hard reset Zelda-next sometime in the mid-2020s. Instead this took even longer than BOTW (I'm sure COVID played a part there) and now who knows how far away the next one is.
 
Ramparts said:
Marketing costs money. like, millions.
I'm sure they will ramp up in the month before the game, but remember, this game is basically selling itself. They dont need to spend money to sell units here.

What we are really talking about is "im in fan, i want to see more content now!". and i am also in that boat.
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No company will actually operate under this maxim. This game has to sell not just to nerds on the internet who post on internet forums, but to all kinds of people in the Switch's millions and millions of users. And it's not gonna sell big numbers just on "it's Zelda, buy it."

There isn't a single video game company who will look at the biggest title they're releasing in the fiscal year and think "well, do we really have to advertise it?"
 
Marketing hasn't been good, the game really just needs one well put together trailer to hook me. All the ones they've shown so far have been too short, weirdly and badly edited and put together or too unfocused. I'm confident the game will be fantastic but they're doing a pretty poor job showing that.
 
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I'm going to copy paste my response to the TOTK discussion thread.

If anyone knows for sure that this game is just the same botw with a couple of new mechanics then please answer these:

Tell me if you know about the towns. Are the same as before? Do we get new ones? Did they change anything about the towns?
What about dungeons? Tell me about them. Are they going to be similar to botw or like classic zelda dungeons?
Tell me about shrines. Do they return? Are we going to have new ones? Or something else?
Tell me about caves. Are they in the game for sure? Is a complete underground system?
Tell me about npcs. Are they same as before? Do we get new ones? Does the yiga clan returns?

Now if you can't answer these with receipts then it's literally tales from your ass. Sorry.
 
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Lozjam said:
Now, I am not worried about this game one bit. But the marketing has kind of sucked honestly, and I have felt that way about Nintendo games for 2 years now.
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It does seem like something's changed in the marketing department since COVID hit. Splatoon 3's marketing didn't do it for me at all for instance, despite the game itself being great.
 
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boris_feinbrand said:
Being brutaly honest, I am extremely lukewarm about the game. Ever since it became clear that they were reusing the map.
Sure, they'll switch a few things around and add those floating bricks in the sky, but I doubt they'll be able to emulate that feeling of discovery and wonder that made me sink over 700 hours in the original.

The marketing so far has made the game look like a more involved DLC to BotW. The few hints about the new mechanics were a bit too sparse for my liking.

Happy to be proven wrong, and I even if the game turns out as I fear, I'll absolutely get my moneys worth out of it.
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This sums up my feelings right now.

Also, this took them over 6 years to develop. I have yet to see something that makes me go "yeah, i can see this took them so long to make". And they did say the reason TotK is made because they still had many ideas for BotW, but it became too big to be DLC (or something along those lines). So it looking more like an expansion does make sense. And many of us expected things to be BotW but more fleshed out.

Of course we're all assuming they are still keeping things close to their chest, so I'm waiting until the game is out before drawing conclusions.

But if a direct sequel with heavily reused assets takes over 6 years, then I'm afraid to know how long a new developed game from the ground up will take lol. I can't wait this long for Zelda games!
 
Some people really hate iterative Nintendo sequels it seems. Between Galaxy 2 and Splatoon 2/3, the phrase “glorified DLC” gets thrown around constantly.

Regarding the 6 year dev time people keep throwing around, I think it’s unfair to just forget that 1-2 years of that were probably severely impacted by the pandemic and the lack of preexisting WFH infrastructure at Nintendo. If this game were coming out in 2021, I doubt the reactions would be quite as negative.
 
Bonejack said:
What irks me a bit is this total lack of confidence in the Zelda team that some people have.

Could marketing so far have been better? Yes, absolutely.
Could or should they have had a bit more meat in yesterday's trailer? Yes, again, i'm with you.

But somehow writing/thinking that this game will suck based on ... dunno ... a total of 5 minutes of footage we've seen is flat out unreasonable.
That is big "Mario Odyssey is an auto-runner"-energy.

I definitely expect them to have a dedicated TotK Direct with a Treehouse Live afterwards sometime in March or April.
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I completely agree with this. Wind Waker never really clicked for me, but ever since Twilight Princess they haven't made a dud IMO. Skyward Sword (HD) does what it's doing very well, A Link Between Worlds is amazing, and Breath of the Wild speaks for itself. They know what they're doing.

Someone on Twitter mentioned this game looks like BotW with a dozen clashing mods installed. While I can see where that's coming from, as long as we don't know how it gels together in-game we can't really judge. I've got the feeling this game is going to be humungous in terms of content, so certain stuff having it's own style could be fine if it's tied together thematically and narratively. The trailers don't put these thematics across very well, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

So far, where BotW was a minimalistic game - going for elegance and cohesion - TotK looks like a maximalist one - going for variety and invention. While that could work, Twilight Princess was a similarly "everything and the kitchen sink" kind of game, and that one didn't fall in place as much as I would've liked. But this Zelda team has an incredible pedigree, so yeah: let's keep the faith, and just assume Nintendo's marketing department is having a difficult time right now for some reason and the game itself is fine.
 
Ahmed said:
But if a direct sequel with heavily reused assets takes over 6 years, then I'm afraid to know how long a new developed game from the ground up will take lol. I can't wait this long for Zelda games!
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I mean that's the thing. 6 years is longer than it took for the first BOTW to be finished. I understand COVID disrupted Nintendo's development, but we're still talking 3 years or so of dev time before the word "COVID" was even in people's vocabulary. What exactly happened there?

It's hard to not feel like something went wrong during dev and they reset/rebooted a lot of stuff. I dunno. It's crazy how little footage we've gotten since the 2019 reveal. No gameplay demos, no "here's what you can look forward to in the game" narration, just some weirdly cut and unsatisfying trailers.

If I had never played BOTW, I'd have no idea what to make of this game. Which really makes me wonder how many people it can rope in that didn't play it.
 
Worst marketing ever for a 3D Zelda game.
No one has played the game so far, 3 months before release. No demos, no first hand experience, no raw gameplay videos.

It’s like, with every teaser except the first one, they don’t know how to put together some gameplay and cutscenes to make a good a trailer. Some of them feel more like they are forced to show something, and not because they want to show us anything.

That secrecy around the game is absurd. Just show a good 2-3 minute trailer with some sense and it will be good. There’s no need for an entire E3 2016 level of footage, just something that it is good and tell us more about this game.

I really hope this approach never comes back. And anyone who wants to go blind can just avoid watching any footage and everyone will be happy.
 
You know a possible explanation for the difference between BotW's and TotK's marketing could be the context surrounding them.

Think of it, Nintendo told people BotW was going to be a different kind of Zelda game, breaking the usual 3D Zelda norms. They invested heavily in this, as it's a massive task to simply create such an engine.
And, they were betting the upcoming new system's initial success on it. Dunno if Odyssey simply wasn't fully done at Switch launch or not, but reality is, this was their big game for launch, no Mario for some time.

They needed customers to understand BotW.

TotK though, that has the luxury of calling itself the sequel to the best and most successful (iirc) Zelda. It has the luxury to say "I was built on the base of BotW".
For how good it was, BotW always had a slight "prototype" feel to it. You can see they experimented in this game until close to completion/launch.
My fav example are the labyrinths, they're (imo) kinda random and don't fit too much into this Hyrule and the story. For me, those are experiments of them trying to add more traditional dungeons to the BotW formular.
So given that the base (BotW) was already done, Nintendo gave the Zelda team the time it wanted and needed to go all in, even ignoring Covid delaying everyting under the sun. But at the same time they're basically saying "You played BotW, you know we're up to it, so just give us some confidence." and keep marketing weird, somewhat lackluster and sparse.

Don't get me wrong, you can totally criticize them for this approach. Fair and square, i'm with you. But drawing hot take "fantasies" about the scope and/or the quality of the final game out of this is really unreasonable.

Now ... all Nintendo needs to do is having that Xenoblade 3 like Direct and Blowout within the next two months.
 
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