It’s funny how that one 8bit prototype brainwashed a bunch of fans into thinking BOTW is an evolution of Zelda 1. They have basically nothing in common besides not being linear, featuring the old man and needing hearts to get a stronger sword. In Zelda 1 you could stumble upon the game’s 7th dungeon by buying the candle and burning random bushes in an early area. In BOTW the game’s dungeons are clearly highlighted right at the beginning, they feature the tribes that were established in past 3D Zeldas. Besides the main quest, most of BOTW’s gameplay and structure is clearly based on modern open world games, you got your towers revealing the map, you got defined sidequests, crafting, collecting equipment that vary in stats.
I’m pretty tired of this weird revisionism, now because one or two youtubers said that “3D Zelda was never good” you have this sentiment that basically invalidates most of the series. “BOTW is good because it’s not linear, other Zeldas are bad, Zelda 1 was the first and it was non linear so BOTW is a return to form”. This is incredibly disingenuous. I remember back then, some Zelda fans in enthusiast spaces were disappointed in Twilight Princess. Too linear, too easy, too edgy, rehash of OOT, you heard everything. However, the conclusion wasn’t that everything post OOT or ALTTP was a mistake, they simply said that the series is better when it’s more original. The original LOZ was never a gold standard, it’s an interesting game to discuss as there is a lot of potential to build upon but when you actually play it it is simply a lot more rough than the other games in the series, there is a reason why you don’t see it as often than another NES game, like, SMB3 in all time top lists. The dungeons have no themes, Link doesn’t swing his sword, a lot of solutions are very arbitrary, the list goes on. If you value non-linearity in Zelda you could always look at the start of the Dark World in ALTTP, or when you become an adult in OOT. Both second halves of these games allowed you to do the first few dungeons out of order, despite the game itself defining the intended one. They did that without compromising other aspects such as the complexity in the dungeon design. The point here is that the idea of a non linear Zelda was mostly rooted in building upon that rather than scrapping everything and looking at other open world games, most of which aren’t even the same genre.
While I’m at it I wanna add another point that is often misunderstood. The Zelda series didn’t “desperately need a shakeup”. TP came out 8 years after OOT, the previous two games before it were more experimental so TP was a return to form in a sense, it was understandable that they made a “normal” Zelda for the Gamecube, that’s what the market wanted. Skyward Sword was a Wii game. Nintendo during the Wii era was all about polishing their games while everyone else were fumbling when doing HD development or chasing trends. Therefore, SS directly adressed every flaw that TP had: no more big empty Hyrule Field, shorter intro, enemies deal full hearts of damage, more involving combat, tears of light sections are a lot more brief, has sidequests that give you a reason to revisit areas rather than simply moving on to the next dungeon. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is another example of Nintendo’s polished Wii iterations: they removed things like the hub and the backstory in favor of simply having better and more complex level design. However, there’s a difference between removing the overworld in a Zelda game versus a Mario game. Mario fans didn’t mind too much because the meat of a platformer is the levels themselves. The reception for SS was a lot more iffy because they removed the overworld for an adventure game. They also settled with the usual “grab a green/red/blue stone for the first three dungeons” in terms of structure. On top of that, at the time Zelda wasn’t even the best selling game featuring a fantasy setting anymore, sure they aren’t in the same genre but you had Skyrim and Dark Souls out there. Therefore, it’s pretty natural that for BOTW, while they were set on making a non linear game, they opted to look at other industry trends, AKA what the games that were selling more than Zelda were doing. While TP and SS had very basic structures, they were very interesting in terms of level and dungeon design. TP had some atypical dungeons like the mansion which had a theme beyond the usual “_______ Temple”. SS had very involving level design across the board, the non-dungeon areas were as good as the dungeons themselves. They are only two games, we never had a new HD Zelda that builds upon that, that offers you the level design Zelda is known for. They don’t need to settle with the familiar structure of “green/red/blue before the second half”, they aren’t working with a Gamecube or two anymore. I really hope that future Zelda games, a series known for overall having a lot of meaning behind every interaction in the game, doesn’t settle with embracing the homogenization of open world games. Zelda always offered more interesting content than vapid sidequests and shallow crafting/rpg mechanics
I’m pretty tired of this weird revisionism, now because one or two youtubers said that “3D Zelda was never good” you have this sentiment that basically invalidates most of the series. “BOTW is good because it’s not linear, other Zeldas are bad, Zelda 1 was the first and it was non linear so BOTW is a return to form”. This is incredibly disingenuous. I remember back then, some Zelda fans in enthusiast spaces were disappointed in Twilight Princess. Too linear, too easy, too edgy, rehash of OOT, you heard everything. However, the conclusion wasn’t that everything post OOT or ALTTP was a mistake, they simply said that the series is better when it’s more original. The original LOZ was never a gold standard, it’s an interesting game to discuss as there is a lot of potential to build upon but when you actually play it it is simply a lot more rough than the other games in the series, there is a reason why you don’t see it as often than another NES game, like, SMB3 in all time top lists. The dungeons have no themes, Link doesn’t swing his sword, a lot of solutions are very arbitrary, the list goes on. If you value non-linearity in Zelda you could always look at the start of the Dark World in ALTTP, or when you become an adult in OOT. Both second halves of these games allowed you to do the first few dungeons out of order, despite the game itself defining the intended one. They did that without compromising other aspects such as the complexity in the dungeon design. The point here is that the idea of a non linear Zelda was mostly rooted in building upon that rather than scrapping everything and looking at other open world games, most of which aren’t even the same genre.
While I’m at it I wanna add another point that is often misunderstood. The Zelda series didn’t “desperately need a shakeup”. TP came out 8 years after OOT, the previous two games before it were more experimental so TP was a return to form in a sense, it was understandable that they made a “normal” Zelda for the Gamecube, that’s what the market wanted. Skyward Sword was a Wii game. Nintendo during the Wii era was all about polishing their games while everyone else were fumbling when doing HD development or chasing trends. Therefore, SS directly adressed every flaw that TP had: no more big empty Hyrule Field, shorter intro, enemies deal full hearts of damage, more involving combat, tears of light sections are a lot more brief, has sidequests that give you a reason to revisit areas rather than simply moving on to the next dungeon. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is another example of Nintendo’s polished Wii iterations: they removed things like the hub and the backstory in favor of simply having better and more complex level design. However, there’s a difference between removing the overworld in a Zelda game versus a Mario game. Mario fans didn’t mind too much because the meat of a platformer is the levels themselves. The reception for SS was a lot more iffy because they removed the overworld for an adventure game. They also settled with the usual “grab a green/red/blue stone for the first three dungeons” in terms of structure. On top of that, at the time Zelda wasn’t even the best selling game featuring a fantasy setting anymore, sure they aren’t in the same genre but you had Skyrim and Dark Souls out there. Therefore, it’s pretty natural that for BOTW, while they were set on making a non linear game, they opted to look at other industry trends, AKA what the games that were selling more than Zelda were doing. While TP and SS had very basic structures, they were very interesting in terms of level and dungeon design. TP had some atypical dungeons like the mansion which had a theme beyond the usual “_______ Temple”. SS had very involving level design across the board, the non-dungeon areas were as good as the dungeons themselves. They are only two games, we never had a new HD Zelda that builds upon that, that offers you the level design Zelda is known for. They don’t need to settle with the familiar structure of “green/red/blue before the second half”, they aren’t working with a Gamecube or two anymore. I really hope that future Zelda games, a series known for overall having a lot of meaning behind every interaction in the game, doesn’t settle with embracing the homogenization of open world games. Zelda always offered more interesting content than vapid sidequests and shallow crafting/rpg mechanics
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