I read this time and time again, and, not to have a go at you, it’s a notoriously bad take. The towers could exist in any game. Tall buildings, city skyscrapers, and other structures such as trees and mountaintops have existed forever, and have been used as a solution to masking hardware limitations. The towers aren’t taken from other games, and the whole “Ubisoft Towers” meme does Breath a disservice. A key mechanic that was promoted was climbing. The logic therefore follows that, to showcase it, tall structures make the most sense here - We see climbing mountains, walls (which were previously invisible, or required a hookshot), and trees (there’s the famous story about Miyamoto getting lost in the trees, and I suspect that they put Evermeans in Tears to troll/give him a surprise…).
Each tower isn’t climbed in the same way - they’re puzzles, which can be cracked in multiple ways, including unconventionally. Once you unlock them, they show you the topography of the area you’re in, but your map isn’t overloaded with information. You aren’t told what the map locations are until you go there, and they don’t tell you where to go, how many things you need, they don’t give you a checklist, or tell you where the side quests are. The towers also serve as vantage points. So, you identify a place of interest and plan your route in any direction. The reason for all of this is that the premise of LOZ is “Go And Get Lost”. The design philosophy is also linked to the sense of adventure one has from carving their own path and creating their own story, not the story getting in the way of the player’s freedom, and somewhere within that, there is a lesson for the player in how to read a map. Ubisoft Towers don’t do this. There are reasons why Breath is considered revolutionary, and the sum of these so-called “small intricacies” play a huge part in that.
Also, When one speaks about “inspiration” and “influence”, this is as much about what not to do, or how a purpose could be better served. Overloading your map with info can say “Look at all this stuff you can do!!” - AAA development does this a lot, to justify escalating costs. But on the other hand, it can also be overwhelming. Removing that can remove the shackles on the player’s freedom. You can do all the shrines, towers, and Divine Beasts, spend 100-200 hours or even more in the game, and still complete less than 30%… But the player still FEELS that they’ve accomplished so much, and doesn’t have to 100% it. When you’re done, you’re done, you can let it go… and that’s a liberating feeling. One I never had playing other games before it. It’s a further testament to Breath that new and fascinating gameplay discoveries are still made in this game post-release.
Red Dead Redemption is another game which some might cite - Specifically, the horses. In RDR, you catch a horse, tame it and ride it. They function like cars, in that they get you from A to B, AND they respond to the player’s will from the start. They also crash into trees. But BOTW is different - Horses have varying temperaments, and that’s where your “realism” comes in. You catch a horse, tame it, and ride it. BUT at first, it doesn’t respond the way you want it to all of the time. Horses aren’t inanimate objects, they’re majestic creatures with feelings. You have to earn their trust. You couldn’t just mount one and take part in the Dressage, for example. You bond with your horse. You feed them apples, soothe them, take them to a stable. You give them names. You feel something in the unfortunate event that you lose one. So, what we have here is examples of the same things existing in different games, but not copied, as they’re there for different reasons and serve different purposes. In fact, in Nintendo’s case, it was over a decade of studying horses, and building on gameplay ideas, which weren’t possible on their past hardware - For LOZ: Twilight Princess, they went on a horse riding field trip.
I note that some will read into this article as them being “full of themselves” - Far from it, and I strongly suspect that there’s an element of words lost in translation here, too. But it isn’t far removed from how most universities view plagiarism - One cites their sources and doesn’t copy, because at heart lies respect for the work of others. They don’t insult other developers, and they don’t name anybody.
BTW, Tears was complete when Elden Ring released, and a year was spent polishing the finished product for release. It makes sense that they couldn’t have played it. It’s deeply lamentable that gaming publications, which ought to know better, continue to put a vicious poison twist on words in the name of cheap clickbait.
www.gamespot.com
