• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

Discussion I don't want classic Zelda back, but i want their size back.

AranPrime

AranPrime

Octorok
Pronouns
He
Long story short, after 105 hours and exploring half of the middle and lower maps, I'm done with ToTK. This game is too fucking big. Too many caves, too many wells, too many shrines, too many koroks, too much The Depths, etc. I think this game's mechanics are maybe the best of any game I've ever played but the activities that surround them are too numerous to count. And even if they were all incredibly varied, I just don't think any game needs to be this big. I was mostly fine with BoTW's seize but this is way too much. To the point that I might not play the next open world entry if it isn't like 60% smaller.
 
You don't have to do everything. Honestly, no game of this size is worth 100% completing. Just do the story and what you find along the way.
 
I mean, the way the medium is constantly pushing for game worlds to get bigger and bigger....you may have to keep wishing. Discourse would have to shift RADICALLY to change their methods. Even a linear game like Xenoblade 3 tries to make it's world massive nowadays
 
0
BOTW and TOTK are fine, to me, because you can always just go kill Ganon. The main quests themselves are very short, relatively, and you can beeline your way to the ending even while doing all of the primary quests without wasting a lot of time

I understand feeling that the game's too big, but it doesn't have to be too long. You can end it whenever you want
 
Magic-Man said:
You don't have to do everything. Honestly, no game of this size is worth 100% completing. Just do the story and what you find along the way.
Click to expand...
But at that point, wouldn't you prefer if they shortened the seize of the world and focused on quality over quantity when it came to side quests.
 
AranPrime said:
But at that point, wouldn't you prefer if they shortened the seize of the world and focused on quality over quantity when it came to side quests.
Click to expand...
No, not really. Sometimes I like taking detours and it increases replayability.
 
AranPrime said:
But at that point, wouldn't you prefer if they shortened the seize of the world and focused on quality over quantity when it came to side quests.
Click to expand...
I'd argue that TOTK does have some great quality sidequests. Like the Great Pleatue depths statue eyes, restoring Lurein and the Hateno election quests
 
Yeah in terms of quality of sidequests I think this is the best Zelda's been since Majora's Mask. There's a lot of them, but the quality of writing, characters, and activity variety is very high when compared to the rest of the series
 
Lugia667 said:
I'd argue that TOTK does have some great quality sidequests. Like the Great Pleatue depths statue eyes, restoring Lurein and the Hateno election quests
Click to expand...
I actually agree, there are some great ones in there. But that's also what makes it harder to skip over the lesser ones because maybe they'll turn out to be good. For every DragonHead Island there's like a bunch of caves that just wash over you.
 
I think the expectation is that different folks will stumble on different things. Making the world larger ensures there’s enough variety for that to be possible.
 
I feel this only becomes a problem if someone is obsessive about 100% completion. Everything is a choice in this type of game.

Now the world size? That's subjective really. I think the surface world is a fine for the different landscapes and biomes.

Maybe their next game will have a different approach but it's waaaaaay too early to even begin speculating about that for me.
 
soundchaser said:
I think the expectation is that different folks will stumble on different things
Click to expand...
Exactly. There's a thousand Koroks not because the devs wanted to make 100% completion a nightmare, but because they wanted everyone to have a good chance of finding a Korok wherever they go. Ditto for Addison's signs, the caves, the wells...

AranPrime said:
But that's also what makes it harder to skip over the lesser ones because maybe they'll turn out to be good
Click to expand...
It's okay to miss things. Again, BotW and TotK were not built around 100% completion.
 
I think it's pretty cool that theoretically two people could play for a hundred hours and have incredible complete experiences, but very little overlap in specific activities.

Other such large games, that there's a ton of stuff I've never done before is one of the reasons they're worth replaying. If it was an 80 hour game that would be the same things each time, less interesting.
 
Yeah, I loved TOTK but for the love of god dont make the next one this big, I am begging you

It's too big, TOTK will probably be the only Zelda game I never start a new file on because the thought of that legit gives me anxiety right now

BOTW should be the absolute maximum size of these games
 
I think they probably could've had less Koroks in the game, or even just change that completely, they made more sense in BotW because it was more sparse, but I haven't found a quest, cave/well, or shrine I wished wasn't there. Some are better than others, but they all work well as part of the overall whole. That being said, I think the fixation on making game worlds bigger and bigger is definitely something I wish developers and players would get over, because it's usually not anywhere near the best indication of the quality of the world.
 
The next one is either gonna be smaller or it's going to be releasing next decade.

I love Tears of the Kingdom but it doesn't seem sustainable.
 
0
Definitely don't play Starfield.

Yeah I get what your saying though. I put in 135 hours and called it quits and finished the main quest, and so much was left undone. Maybe I'll come back to it someday but for now I'm satisfied.
 
0
Weirdly enough I felt that way about TotK at the start, but I'm like 40 hours in and somewhere around the 30 hour mark the gameplay loop finally clicked for me.

The thing I mostly want is an actual new game in place of something like the LA Remake. I don't want big Zeldas that follow the same general formula to be the series for the rest of time.
 
LegendHero said:
I think they probably could've had less Koroks in the game, or even just change that completely, they made more sense in BotW because it was more sparse, but I haven't found a quest, cave/well, or shrine I wished wasn't there. Some are better than others, but they all work well as part of the overall whole. That being said, I think the fixation on making game worlds bigger and bigger is definitely something I wish developers and players would get over, because it's usually not anywhere near the best indication of the quality of the world.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree with having a smaller map, but having 1000 Koroks on a map this size makes sure that whatever path you take through it, you'll end up with 100-200 by the late game, enough for most of the inventory upgrades.

Whether people like the Korok system entirely is another thing, though. I personally enjoy them especially the ones you have to escort in ToTK.
 
While I struggle to fathom how they'd top Tears of the Kingdom, replaying this game would not be much of an issue for me as someone who already did three separate playthroughs of Breath of the Wild AND someone who generally prefers linear, shorter games and actually not a big open world game fan. Traversal is much faster so while there's more landmass and overall content, getting from point A to B would be much more efficient and drastically cut down on the wandering.

Also, the genius part of both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is that by not marking content on the map, it's easier for people to not get too hung up by clearing everything in the map before moving on. You only engage with the area as much as you want, of your own volition. In addition, being able to beat the game at any point after the tutorial ensures that you can just end the game if the game is no longer fun to you.

Tears of the Kingdom is definitely the limit in terms of content available, though. An entirely new game that doesn't reuse the world that tries to get the same amount of content as this game feels insanely crazy to me.
 
glossonema said:
I don't disagree with having a smaller map, but having 1000 Koroks on a map this size makes sure that whatever path you take through it, you'll end up with 100-200 by the late game, enough for most of the inventory upgrades.

Whether people like the Korok system entirely is another thing, though. I personally enjoy them especially the ones you have to escort in ToTK.
Click to expand...

I agree that this is the premise, but people still seem to feel pressure to find all of them, so I almost think turning it into a special currency like the poes or crystallized charges would've been better than still having a finite number tied to completion percentage. That would further emphasize the idea that they're not expecting you to find every single one.
 
0
I beat TotK in about 30 hours, enjoyed it enough to say it's one of my favorite Switch games, and still have a lot of content for when I want to check back in the future. You can do everything at once if you want but at that point it's just another choice in how you approach the game.
 
I found it too big as well, but that feeling almost singularely originated from the depths being this big and repetitive.
The quality of the depths is my biggest criticism of the game. For me it made the game feeling bloated after a while.
 
Why do you keep saying “seize” instead of “size?” It took me multiple times to realize what you’re even talking about.

Anyway, as someone who usually finds open world games too big and repetitive, I couldn’t disagree more. Beat the story at 90 hours, over 120 hours in and I still have tons I want to do. These games are designed so you can play as much or as little as you want. You don’t have to do it all at once either, I imagine I will pick at this game for at least the rest of the year. I put it down for a week, came back to it, then put it down again. It’ll still be there when I’m ready.
 
Totally. My problem with this new Zelda structure is not about being open. It’s about the size and the compromisses to make it possible. I would love something as open as ALBW and its great density of content.
 
I'm with you OP. I love the game and all but the copy-paste nature is painful in the depths and even the sky - and then that's all layered on top of the overworld being as dense as ever, a whole BotW plus more. Like, I was just... done with shrines after a certain point and the Depths are just absurdly large for how dense it is in points of interest. It would've gone a long way to have actual people and towns and really interesting stuff in the depths and sky and y'know if making them smaller would've facilitated that... great. If having less shrines would've facilitated that, great.
 
0
I do think that when a world is that big, the appeal is in what you find along the way, not strip-mining every possible thing to tick off a ‘100%’ content enjoyed’ list.

However, I also think they shouldn’t duplicate stuff too much just to fill space. The ‘take me to my friend’ Koroks were something I just ignored after the first few as they were dull and repetitive, literally the same dialogue every time. Same goes for the ‘carry the crystal’ shrine quests. To me those things work against the illusion that there might be something interesting over the next hill, when you keep stumbling into things you’ve done before. However, I thought Addison’s signs were a better example of this stuff, I always did them as they were short and self-contained construction puzzles that weren’t always the same and took way less effort.

As for the sidequests, I found Hateno pretty boring as I couldnt bring myself to care about handing out mushrooms for some shitty local election, but some of the others were more interesting.

I spent around 90 hours in TotK and made for the endgame once I’d done all the stuff I found interesting, which was largely the NPCs and quests focused on exploring the overworld, lore and combat. I didn’t explore much of the depths beyond that as I did enough to find they didn’t interest me enough to unlock the lightroots just for the sake of it. I didn’t go to all the sky islands as the ones I did explore fell into a pattern pretty quickly (although building the vehicles to reach them and finding the skydiving challenges was very cool). I left a ton of sidequests that looked like boring fetch quests not done, and Crystal quests and korok friends not carried.

I doubt it’s a game I’ll replay as I reckon I saw most of what interested me, and that’s ok. The stuff I did play I found to be amazing and engaging. The trick is to be happy to just say ‘nah’ to play activities that seem boring to you, they are all optional, the main quest is short and traversal through the sky or horseback is fun. I’m sure there are plenty of players that loved the stuff I thought was dull and that’s OK.
 
Last edited:
I am a busy lonely guy and I would like to share I've spent 145+ hours in TotK.
First I spent around 100 hours to finish the game, doing exploration & main story quests.
After I finished the main story, I spent another 20+ hours gathering useless materials & upgrades, etc.
One day I told myself, stop doing useless stupid things in this game. IF YOU HAVE TO DO THESE, WAIT FOR THE MASTER MODE.
But last weekend, I can't help myself but boot up TotK, and more than 25 hours of my life gone.

From my experience, finish the main story quest will not KILL the game for me. So no matter how big the game is, you could star finish it right now.

PS I will try my best NOT spending my time on TotK normal mode again.
 
I'm love both TotK and BotW, but after a number of hours traversing the world starts to be a bit of a chore, specially when you have to return to someplace where you've already been so there's nothing new to find along the way. Vehicles alleviate this, but in the end I just teleport to the closest shrine. At moments like these I would like for the games to have some crazy movement mechanics so you can blaze through the world while keeping it engaging, like in Ori or Metroid Dread. But don't get me wrong, I still put both BotW and TotK at the top of the Zelda experience as they provide a sense of wonder I hadn't felt since ALttP or OoT.
I'd love for the next 2D Zelda to take the place of classic 3D Zelda (well, 2D Zeldas have already been 3D since the DS ones, you just need to be able to move the camera freely), with a tighter world and a more intimate story. I'd love for the whole world to be a huge puzzle you have to solve bit by bit, opening new shortcuts and paths as you progress like in the first half of Tunic or a Dark Souls level. They could be more like spin-off stories like LA or MM and use more experimental settings like dream worlds, aliens, ancient technology and such. And focus on a single, strong central mechanic like MM did with masks or ALBW with the paintings. Keep them laser focused, tight, weird and not too big.

And then just go crazy with scale on the 3D ones with the BotW template :)
 
correojon said:
I'm love both TotK and BotW, but after a number of hours traversing the world starts to be a bit of a chore, specially when you have to return to someplace where you've already been so there's nothing new to find along the way. Vehicles alleviate this, but in the end I just teleport to the closest shrine. At moments like these I would like for the games to have some crazy movement mechanics so you can blaze through the world while keeping it engaging, like in Ori or Metroid Dread. But don't get me wrong, I still put both BotW and TotK at the top of the Zelda experience as they provide a sense of wonder I hadn't felt since ALttP or OoT.
I'd love for the next 2D Zelda to take the place of classic 3D Zelda (well, 2D Zeldas have already been 3D since the DS ones, you just need to be able to move the camera freely), with a tighter world and a more intimate story. I'd love for the whole world to be a huge puzzle you have to solve bit by bit, opening new shortcuts and paths as you progress like in the first half of Tunic or a Dark Souls level. They could be more like spin-off stories like LA or MM and use more experimental settings like dream worlds, aliens, ancient technology and such. And focus on a single, strong central mechanic like MM did with masks or ALBW with the paintings. Keep them laser focused, tight, weird and not too big.

And then just go crazy with scale on the 3D ones with the BotW template :)
Click to expand...
The tightness of something like LTTP/LBW or Tunic, with there being something to solve, find or learn in each screen, is what I want to see next as a top-down Zelda. I much prefer them to the 3D games, but it’s easy to see why BOTW/TotK’s whimsical exploration has caught the imagination of so many people, and that’s both really cool and quite the achievement for the dev team. At this point the 2D and 3D entries feel like they are almost pushing towards different genres, the former being a series of tightly designed puzzle boxes with set solutions, and the latter pushing towards being expansive and creative action RPGs that reward player expression.
 
Last edited:
I don't mind big open-worlds, as long as what's inside it is interesting. outside of proper sidequests, TOTK is filled with the same 3 quests (Take korok from a to B, Keep a sign up, bring this crystal from here to there). Most of the sidequests I did in my 70h playthrough were mostly fetchquests or a series of small, easy, dumb missions. Doesn't help that the rewards aren't interesting to me.
 
0
BOTW and TOTK are games fueled by a sense of discovery and exploration more than anything. This also means exploring the mechanics and experimenting with them, especially in TOTK where half of the enjoyment is engaging the systems on a level of "does this work? Holy shit it works!" I don't mind that the rewards for most of the exploration are things like Shrines, Koroks, and items/resources, that's no different than previous Zelda games where most of your rewards were things like Pieces Of Heart or bigger wallets. If you don't enjoy exploring the map for the sake of it, then the game simply isn't going to give you what you want, because the core gameplay loop essentially is traveling to a destination and letting yourself get distracted by things along the way. This is also the case with the Depths, where there is a gameplay loop built around finding Lightroots along the way and chaining them together, sometimes with challenges on how to actually get to the Lightroot. The skies are the one aspect of this I could see being disappointing, but it was never a point of interest for me in pre-release, and they still work well as points of interest you see launching from towers. Hyrule is the core game, the sky and underground complement it.

I'd be genuinely curious what open world games people could cite that are less repetitive than TOTK in that sense. I haven't played Elden Ring, which seems to be the most common comparison to BOTW/TOTK. But where I'm standing, the game itself is its own reward. I know that's a cliche but I can safely say before TOTK I never put in more than 50 hours into an open world game, let alone well over 100. I love it in the same way I loved games like Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, the collection and exploration aspect is what I get out of it. I also genuinely love the Shrines, they're much better than the ones in BOTW and unlike that game I'm actually motivated to get all of them this time.
 
Last edited:
Mekanos said:
BOTW and TOTK are games fueled by a sense of discovery and exploration more than anything. This also means exploring the mechanics and experimenting with them, especially in TOTK where half of the enjoyment is engaging the systems on a level of "does this work? Holy shit it works!" I don't mind that the rewards for most of the exploration are things Shrines, Koroks, and items/resources, that's no different than previous Zelda games where most of your rewards were things like Pieces Of Heart or bigger wallets. If you don't enjoy exploring the map for the sake of it, then the game simply isn't going to give you what you want, because the core gameplay loop essentially is traveling to a destination and letting yourself get distracted by things along the way. This is also the case with the Depths, where there is a gameplay loop built around finding Lightroots along the way and chaining them together, sometimes with challenges on how to actually get to the Lightroot. The skies are the one aspect of this I could see being disappointing, but it was never a point of interest for me in pre-release, and they still work well as points of interest you see launching from towers. Hyrule is the core game, the sky and underground complement it.

I'd be genuinely curious what open world games people could cite that are less repetitive than TOTK in that sense. I haven't played Elden Ring, which seems to be the most common comparison to BOTW/TOTK. But where I'm standing, the game itself is its own reward. I know that's a cliche but I can safely say before TOTK I never put in more than 50 hours into an open world game, let alone well over 100. I love it in the same way I loved games like Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, the collection and exploration aspect is what I get out of it.
Click to expand...
Elden Ring's reward system (not content distribution, Elden Ring trades a bunch of puzzles and traversal with simply having more enemies and bosses) is commonly cited by BotW/TotK critics as being superior due to having vastly more variety in gear and rewards you can get that could potentially change your build. But that is the key thing there: potentially. When I played Elden Ring, maybe only 4% of items at most would further my build in any sense at all. There’s a pretty high chance you could get talismans, armor, or weapons that just aren't great in any circumstance for you, whereas in BotW/TotK you can always use whatever you get no problem. Also, Elden Ring is much more linear (ESPECIALLY at the second half, and is the worst part of the game although also for other reasons beyond its linearity as an open world game) and requires certain order to roll credits, while BotW/TotK allows you to skip almost all the main story content to roll credits.

Still, that reward system is enough for those people to ease the repetition. Because in terms of content distribution, Elden Ring is not so different from BotW/TotK. NG+ allows those extra things to make different builds so they could actually be good, and there’s ways to respec to use them, but overall you likely would not get use out of most items you get in Elden Ring.
 
Evil Lucario said:
Elden Ring's reward system (not content distribution, Elden Ring trades a bunch of puzzles and traversal with simply having more enemies and bosses) is commonly cited by BotW/TotK critics as being superior due to having vastly more variety in gear and rewards you can get that could potentially change your build. But that is the key thing there: potentially. When I played Elden Ring, maybe only 4% of items at most would further my build in any sense at all. There’s a pretty high chance you could get talismans, armor, or weapons that just aren't great in any circumstance for you, whereas in BotW/TotK you can always use whatever you get no problem. Also, Elden Ring is much more linear (ESPECIALLY at the second half, and is the worst part of the game although also for other reasons beyond its linearity as an open world game) and requires certain order to roll credits, while BotW/TotK allows you to skip almost all the main story content to roll credits.

Still, that reward system is enough for those people to ease the repetition. Because in terms of content distribution, Elden Ring is not so different from BotW/TotK.
Click to expand...
Dang you quoted me just as I finished my edit lol

Anyway, I still want to play Elden Ring (assuming it ever goes on sale), because I'd definitely like to compare, but yeah, I felt TOTK did a good job incentivizing you to explore with loot/resources having all sorts of uses. I also should have touched on in my post: TOTK is much more difficult than BOTW, and I would say the most difficult Zelda game that isn't on the NES. Enemies do way more damage and upgrading armor is basically required, so that is another aspect where exploration comes in handy as you'll need money and resources to do so. I'm waiting to fight the Gleeoks for that reason, want more maxed out armor.
 
0
Mekanos said:
Why do you keep saying “seize” instead of “size?” It took me multiple times to realize what you’re even talking about.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting about this specific thing I was too embarrassed to mention myself 🙏
 
0
Want a game with the map size of BotW but density and variety of TotK. Basically just the surface world but different gameplay like you have in the Depths or Sky. Not really sure how they would do that but I want it. Maybe an ocean or something
 
0
For me the size of the map of any game should just be justified by its gameplay.

Games where big map sizes work:
1. Sandbox games where the open world is filled with activities, interesting traversal and many gameplay option, unique sights etc. For example games like BOTW, TOTK, GTA, Just Cause.
2. Games with many towns, npcs, storylines. For example games like Skyrim, Fallout, Witcher 3.

Games where big map sizes don't work:
1. Games where the gameplay loop is extremely limited. For example most Ubisoft games. I played 60 hours of AC Odyssey and although I had fun, I quickly realized that I'm doing the same thing again and again with zero variation.
2. Games where the gameplay is limited to one activity. For example Elden Ring. I dropped ER after 50 hours cause it's a game where all you do is fighting. The map was really big for just fighting enemies. ER should be at least 40% smaller for its gameplay loop. The same problem that I had with Dragon's Dogma as well (although I only played DD for 15 hours or something).

I would say that as long the gameplay is filled with various activities, interesting ideas and great traversal like TOTK then the next Zelda should have an even bigger map.
 
Neither BotW nor TotK were designed with the expectation that all players would (or should) seek out 100% content completion. The size of the map really doesn't bother me and I've just been doing things I've been interested I doing as I came across them.
 
Hailinel said:
Neither BotW nor TotK were designed with the expectation that all players would (or should) seek out 100% content completion. The size of the map really doesn't bother me and I've just been doing things I've been interested I doing as I came across them.
Click to expand...
I'm really moreso concerned about future games. In the moment while playing, both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom feel great. But once I start thinking about future games, when they move on from this specific Hyrule and Link/Zelda, they've got their work cut out to try to one-up Tears of the Kingdom.

And that would also lead to longer and longer gaps between games. It really makes me wonder if this is sustainable. That's not my problem though, I have a bunch of other games to play and it's their job to impress in their own way after Tears of the Kingdom.
 
Evil Lucario said:
I'm really moreso concerned about future games. In the moment while playing, both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom feel great. But once I start thinking about future games, when they move on from this specific Hyrule and Link/Zelda, they've got their work cut out to try to one-up Tears of the Kingdom.

And that would also lead to longer and longer gaps between games. It really makes me wonder if this is sustainable. That's not my problem though, I have a bunch of other games to play and it's their job to impress in their own way after Tears of the Kingdom.
Click to expand...
That's all speculative. People were concerned that TotK would just be a glorified DLC based solely on the fact that it reuses the BotW Hyrule map. Which as it turned out was a ridiculous fear. It's also not true that the next Zelda will feature a map exponentially larger than TotK. All we know is that the next Zelda will follow a similar game design template from a high level.
 
While I do think the size adds a lot to these games I do kinda get where you're coming from

I have somewhat less time to play games lately and as such I'll probably be on ToTK for a while (around 70 hours in and just starting the second Regional Phenomenon quest). Which in some ways is fine since it's one of the best games I've ever played, but also that backlog ain't getting any smaller ya know
 
0
Find it hard to agree with this. I can't really call an open-world too big if it can grab me for close to 100 hours. Everyone else who gets tired of it can just play it the way I play most other open-world games: dabble for 20h and then spend the final 10h beelining to the end of the game.
 
TotK is massive and overwhelming. But that's actually no weakness. You can play the game like you want to.

If all the secrets, caves, islands, shrines, side quests are too much, you can just ignore then and rush through the story.
 
After playing more than 100 hours my self I came to the conclusion that this game isn’t meant to be 100 percented. It’s designed for multiple play throughs and they really did succeed in doing that. You can have a completely different experience for at least 3 play throughs.
 
0
Recently I realized the reason I have so many more hours than most people in games is because I can't not explore everything I'm given. It's not about 100%-ing, it's the compulsion to leave no stone unturned. So Botw and TotK are a dream and a curse. I'm like 50 hours in rn and I haven't done shit, and it's been great, but I'm starting to burn out. I'll probably take a break by playing another game soon.
 
Open worlds are never designed for people to do everything. Devs make these games knowing people won't do everything.
 
I totally get you. It's not about completionism (i'm personally far from being a completionist), the game is so fucking massive that is overwhelming at times, you feel lost, and you'll leave a lot of good stuff unfinished because your attention will temporarily turn to something else. The developers definitely deserve praise, as the world feels so big and alive and reactive to everything you do... but i'm definitely going for a more simple experience when i'm done with it. I thought about doing all the shrines, but as of right now i think i've covered almost all of the base map and the sky, and some big chunks of the Depths, and there are still like forty shrines left lol.
 
0
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom