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Comment by libertine | Hacker News Reader

I hate to be that guy, but it's not fair to dismiss one of the best open world games released in the last 20 years, and which I believe inspired many things on Elden Ring - I'm talking about Breath of the Wild.

Just like how you're introduced to the world is literally how BoTW introduces you to it's own world (could it be a homage?), or something as simple as picking up consumables with a simple press of a button with no animations, little things that aren't in the way of you experiencing the world.

What I haven't put my finger on was how both of these games propel you to discover the world, and to find out what's above the hill or if there might be a cave in a cliff. I don't know if it's the terrain design that's actually thought through and not left to some algorithm, or if it's simply the perk of having a great brand behind these games that have rewarded us properly for exploring their previous worlds.

A better tittle would be : Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Bad Open-World Design

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Zelda BOTW is just the first NES Zelda for the modern era.

Nintendo's open-world is the only open-world I liked.

I can't get immersed in GTA's open world because I'm just a random going on a killing spree for 15 minutes then shut the game down.

I hated Skyrim, the world is big but empty. There is nothing particular about the landscape that makes me want to "go there". Most of the time, I discovered areas because I was going in straight lines.

Zelda on the other hand, I was like "oh wow, a mountain split in two, I wanna see it". The landscape view makes you want to see what's going on and act as a map ("oh so the gemini mountain is on my right, I must be at XXX"). You're on top of a tower, look at the volcano, and you're like "what is that thing moving on the horizon". Same thing for pretty much all divine beasts.

The other nice thing about BOTW's open world is the map. You don't need it. In The Witcher 3 you have a GPS that tells you where to go. When people tells you to go somewhere in this Zelda, you ask people, you look at the road signs, and you go there. This makes the world much more realistic and less empty because you need to interact with it.

To go to the Goron village, you have many ways of doing it, stockpile a huge amount of food to heal while you burn, or go around and talk to people to find the potion. If you choose to stockpile food, you need to hunt, to cook, and to interact with the world once again.

The world is part of the game play, unlike many other open world games where the world is just the scenery where the game play take place.

One part of BOTW that really stuck out to me is how close, yet far away things felt. You know how when you look at something through a telephoto lens, things get compressed? They did that really well in BOTW. Things could look close and you could see they were there, but when you start moving towards something, there was actually a lot of ground to cover. It helped make the world seem within reach, yet distant at the same time. This made me want to explore cause I was almost there, just gotta get through this valley or around this lake. If the devs and designers are out there reading this, great job and thank you.

This is what I call the "World of Warcraft" scale - because WoW was the first game where I really experienced it. The game is compressed and not actually to scale (because nobody wants to spend literally days crossing the map) but it still feels like it is large, and regions are distinct.

Both BotW and WoW also made exploring the "empty" areas rewarding (they're not actually empty, and there are things to find).

> because nobody wants to spend literally days crossing the map

Weirdly, that's what every FFXI player did almost every day and for years, until they finally added fast(er) travel options in later expansions. Even using the Chocobo to increase run speed, it took 30+ minutes of travel to get to any end game content. And it was very easy to accidentally die along the way in places where nobody could resurrect you without also dying themselves, and then you would need to make the entire trip again. It was absolutely stupid and a complete waste of time, and yet I have nothing but fond memories of it.

Yeah 30 minutes to even an hour is about the limit - makes it feel epic but doesn’t make it boring (crossing the barrens on foot was a similar time).

But literally days of walking would be too much without something (either plot along the way or fast travel).

Yes the "oh i'm on this quest, but what's a little detour?" is quite fun in this game.

> I hated Skyrim, the world is big but empty. There is nothing particular about the landscape that makes me want to "go there". Most of the time, I discovered areas because I was going in straight lines.

I discovered the Elders Scrolls via Morrowind, then because I enjoyed it so much I was overjoyed about Oblivion coming out, and a little bit less about Skyrim.

... But these last two left me with that feeling of emptiness about the world. Oblivion had some redeeming qualities on specific quests (going into that painting was absolutely fantastic, although way too short), but felt like a drag overall. Skyrim felt like you never stop stumbling on something, encounters and quests felt evenly spaced and incredibly generic, succumbing to a Horror Vacui of sorts[0]. Also since everything dynamically adjusts in difficulty to your progress, everything is always as easy as it ever was. As a result there's no risk, no surprise, no tension.

Comparatively, Morrowind had many many flaws but I just kept on wanting to explore the world more, go past this ridge, reach to that spiky thing on the horizon, enter this weird tomb, walk down that windy road...

[0]: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2014/11/11/horror_vacui/

Botw is so much more than just NES Zelda. That the two are non linear is just one similarity.

Both games are centered on exploration more than the main quest. You're thrown into a world without instructions, you don't know who you are or what you're doing here. There is just a world to explore and have a fun adventure in.

While quite different of course, they have basically the same goal: you first have to get lost in order to find your way.

The fun begins when you explore and stumble across things by mistake.

Also many landmarks in BOTW are straight up taken from the NES game, like the twin mountains in the gerudo desert.

After Ocarina of Time, the Zelda games went to a linear story with a dungeon formula almost copy pasted for 20 years. BOTW breaks this pattern to get back to its roots: exploration.

Just watch the interviews of Aonuma explaining this.

Eh. The original Zelda is vaguely non linear. But there are several sequential dependencies for dungeons. Once you’re done with the first 3 it’s pretty darn linear for things like the ladder and the bow and what not. And that game has a progression curve that makes it fairly punishing to do things out of order for normal players. I would say that game forces you to be lost whereas botw really allows you to enjoy exploring. The original isn’t that big and you’ll probably find yourself scouring the same few areas annoyedly over and over.

Zelda 2 was pretty linear too.

The twin mountains are spectacle rock. They have appeared in many games. Most notably, imo, they’re in the crater of death mountain in ocarina of time. If you squint at the way the fire temple is built (two towers) it’s sort of implied to be built inside of it. Very cool

https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Spectacle_Rock

I don't remember that at all, but I do definitely remember the Dueling Peaks, which were visible as soon as you finished the tutorial (and were in the direction you had to go to continue the main quest): https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Dueling_Peaks

First thing I switched off in Witcher 3 was the "GPS". It's a much better game without.

> What I haven't put my finger on was how both of these games propel you to discover the world, and to find out what's above the hill or if there might be a cave in a cliff. I don't know if it's the terrain design that's actually thought through and not left to some algorithm, or if it's simply the perk of having a great brand behind these games that have rewarded us properly for exploring their previous worlds.

Breath of the wild is a game full of secrets. Things are there and they need to be found.

Many other open world games are not. They’re full of missions. Because the ui is so informative, you actually get rapid confirmation that there is nothing.

A lot of missions start at a hub and make you go to a place and then come back. That’s how that portion of the world gets used. Botw doesn’t do this much. Most content that you find is immediately relevant there because that place is interesting in itself.

Lastly, you don’t have a dearth of dialogue to get through things. Dialogue is fine and all but side quests are conceptually very stupid and the writing is inevitably tiresome. It breaks immersion when someone needs you to collect maguffins again.

Yah, it seems very strange the article completely fails to mention Zelda Breath of the Wild.

It is amazing to see how many games today have taken inspiration from Zelda BOTW.

The first time I played the game, I decided it was more fun just exploring the open world and visiting all the Sheikah Towers.

I didn't have good armor/equipment/food/etc, and I had a complete blast doing it. That was one of my fondest memories of gaming.

Because Elden Ring is about as far from BOTW as you can possibly be. It's not inspired by it at all.

From the Wikipedia for Elden Ring:

Miyazaki cited Fumito Ueda's work such as Shadow of the Colossus (2005) as an influence that "inspired him to create" Elden Ring, while also drawing influence from "the design and the freedom of play" in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).

Even before reading this I definitely got SoC vibes - riding through a vast and empty world + that tense combo of loneliness and beauty

It's literally their highly refined tried and true formula with BOTW. Hard to believe that you don't see the parallel in open world design if you've played both games.

I would not compare these two games. Death Stranding was a refined BotW. Elden Ring is a totally different game and I think comparing it to BotW is an insult to FromSoft as they actually put effort into making the open world feel full of content. BotW is 15min of riding your horse through nothing and dodging the same 2-3 enemy mobs to get to a shrine where maybe you get a fun puzzle but most likely you fight a robot for the 100th time.

Enemy, dungeon, weapon, skill, play style, and boss variety is massive in Elden Ring. BotW does not hold a candle to it.

I find it so disheartening when people reduce the influence of a game because they didn’t like it.

The main artistic voice of the game says he was inspired by BoW, yet because you don’t like it, you say it’s not an influence.

Take a step back from your own preferences when discussing art, it helps.

All I said was I wouldn't compare the two. I made no comment about the "artistic voice" and find me a Japanese developer who hasn't said they were inspired by BotW.

Just because somebody is calling out the massive shortcomings in a piece of art you enjoyed doesn't mean whatever value it held to you is reduced. Not everyone has to like what you do. No need to cry over it.

He wasn't the main artistic voice of the game, and I don't care about what people say or what they intend. Just because someone--who didn't write a line of code, create a pixel of art, or make a wave form of sound that was used in the game--says something, doesn't mean it's true.

I care about judging the actual work. It doesn't matter what he thinks. The reality is that there's nothing of BOTW in Elden Ring.

> Out of all the previous soulslikes, Elden Ring is the fairest in terms of providing options and routes. If you want to rush through the castle and beat Godrick right at the start, you can do that.

Doesn’t BOTW have a similar option to rush to the end boss?

Also, this video shows BOTW doesn’t have to be like what you say

https://youtu.be/9EvbqxBUG_c

Rather uncharitable to compare a four year old game to one that just came out.

Also worth watching Dunkey's Elden Ring review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1H4o4FW-wA

Interesting, I'm enjoying Elden Ring a lot but still feel that Breath of the Wild is much better. I think people just have preferences for different things. Elden Ring is absolutely beautiful and the world is very detailed and creative with its art style (I am at the mountaintop of the giants level 105). I would say the combat feels worse to me. It's unnecessarily punishing and dodge rolling every enemy in some dance is very repetitive. I can't think of a boss I've fought that hasn't been the same strategy. Personally, I found there were more interesting ways to fight in Breath of the Wild using the environment and enjoyed combat more. The time it takes to move in Elden Ring just feels so slow.

The world in Elden Ring is beautiful but the controls and interactivity of the world is just lacking. I've died so many times that I never would have in botw (as the controls are precise and predictable).

Switching flasks is a pain and using them after getting hit once so you don't get killed is just so repetitive. It would be much better to have enemies hit a third of the damage and give you a third of the flasks.

Music in both is 10/10. Breath of the Wild story/characters I prefer. ER horse I prefer. ER world I prefer visually. Gameplay wise, I prefer breath of the wild's world.

Wish there was climbing, ability to destroy non furniture (of which you can't jump on to platform in this even if you wanted to). I don't like that I can't climb a two foot castle wall. If there is a chair next to the wall I just jump through it and break it.

Both are incredible games but I find the creativity, freedom, and puzzles what I look for in a game more than rolling through an absolutely stunning and detailed world.

>I found there were more interesting ways to fight in Breath of the Wild using the environment and enjoyed combat more.

Then you're missing out on half of the fun. If one playstyle is repetitive then switch your build out. Learn dragon rot, pick a colossal weapon and apply ridiculous skills to it. Choose a faith build and spam buffs until bosses can hardly scratch you while you fat roll away. It sounds like you're just bad tbh. Stick to Zelda.

I'm not dying often, so thanks for that pointless insult. I think you're missing the larger point that the variety is still largely the same. You might be casting a different spell or swing a different weapon but it's still the same overall result. Just walk, fight, walk, fight, walk, fight just with different visual effects (which are awesome don't get me wrong). But you can't fit example, set the ground on fire, catch a gust of wind into the air, land on the cliff above, cut down a tree, roll it down into the enemy that you've frozen in place.

Reskilling takes so much time to do as well so it's not like you can just swap and try out something else quickly. You have to go to Raya Lucaria, re skill, then level your items with stones, then go back to where you wanted to try something else out for a fight. You might find you actually don't like that and you have to do the whole thing over again.

> I think you're missing the larger point that the variety is still largely the same

Counterpoint, there is one form of attack in BotW, you have coupled it with a few prescripted interactions which give you the illusion of emergent behaviour, you will not actually be able to perform this action in 99.9% of your fights. In addition, your fire/attack/tree fall all just do "damage", ruling out a small number of specific exceptions your enemy will not respond differently to any so whichever achieves the higher numbers is best.

ER has different moves for light/heavy, one hand/two hand, running, rolling then the hundred plus the ashes of war skills which can be customised on each weapon. You can indeed set fire to the ground (it's a torch skill), you can catch a gust of wind (ash of war), you can freeze opponents etc. Enemies have meaningful resistances, choosing your armaments carefully makes a difference.

> Reskilling takes so much time to do as well so it's not like you can just swap and try out something else quickly

I tried this out to guage how onerous it actually is, this takes less than 15 minutes. Are you sure you're making these points in good faith?

I think you've totally missed the point. Nobody buys these games for anything but the challenge of the boss fights. If you find that repetitive the game just isn't for you.

What makes tetris or animal crossing any less repetitive? Nothing, and yet they're fun games people can sink hundreds of hours into.

Weird that you're fighting a robot for the 100th time when there are only 6 "test of strength" shrines.

I think they’re talking about the robots in the overworld. I think it’s a poorly made critique of the small amount of enemy types.

Yeah nice try dude, there at 20 test of strength shrines (of varying difficulty). Sounds like you didn't actually complete the game.

I sure love when someone reviews a game they hardly even played.

Haha no I finished it at launch and couldn't remember the number, I knew it wasn't hundreds and looked it up. Clearly the site I checked was wrong and you're correct, it is 20. However, would you say "more often than not" a shrine is a test of strength? It's a nonsense claim.

I just want to point out that although BOTW is perhaps the most recent example of a widely lauded (though rightly criticized as well) expansive open world, it is in no way the only or even the primary inspiration that Elden Ring draws on. Yes, it has crafting, dungeons and long vistas. But in that sense, Skyrim is equally valid. Heck, even GTA games fill most of those criteria. And if you're going for sheer quality of exploration over quantity, RDR2 for instance was a far more technically and aesthetically impressive game than BOTW.

So I guess all-in-all I agree with your thesis though. Elden Ring does seem to have managed to leave the worst aspects of previous games while inviting the best ideas along for the ride. Add to that the most beautifully crafted world FROM has ever made and you have something that simply exudes GOAT.

It's not about the open world dimension, it's dropping the player into a world with little to no training.

Skyrim, GTA, and RDR2 all share the same "Main Mission" mechanic that helps keep players centered on overall story progression while leaving room for side quests and exploration. This "go there, do this, go there" cycle doesn't exist in BOTW or Elden Ring.

A game that doesn’t fit this mold yet is highly entertaining is Valheim. I haven’t dome a full review of why it’s so entertaining, but I guess it combines Open world with minecraft-esque elements in a rich mythological environment.

And its easy... It not a "dark souls" or even minecraft hardness.. Its way easier.

A friend of mine installed minecraft after like 5 years or even more, he was playing it like crazy back then. He died like ten times before giving up...

I feel like new players have a hard time now in Minecraft because its full of "new mechanics" and monsters and traps and god knows what..

Not sure about Elden Ring, but BOTW has also a main-mission with story progression and location-targets you are supposed to go to. It's just not forced into your face, as there is not much of a quest-tracker and flags telling you what you are supposed to do. The main-mission is just there, but you can basically forget it without any reminder.

> It's just not forced into your face

You can think about it as how the games fall on the hand-holding spectrum. Elden Ring and BOTW are clustered closer together on the left side of "No Guidance", and the further right you go towards "Linear" you'll see the other games. Sure there's a big gap between ER and BOTW, but it's less than between BOTW and its next peer.

There's also the added dimension that Elden Ring and BOTW both share this unique quality that even random encounters can turn life-or-death, especially when running into new classes of mobs, and you have to be very patient and get absorbed into the moment or you're rewarded with death even when you're convinced you did the right thing. There's no room for quick drags of a cigarette in the middle of a fight, and instead you're rewarded with the outcome possible with incredible focus and game play experience that leaves you feeling like a superhero.

Good observation and if I may I think a great term for this is just 'sandbox' gameplay.

> this is just 'sandbox' gameplay

That sums it up. Enjoyment comes from core game play mechanics, not quest content. I'd be just as happy with core Street Fighter mechanics in an open world, with no-explanation filler content between boss encounters.

A lot of games genres could make for good open worlds other than FPSes/action games/action RPG's. Would love to see a Mario open world (Bowser's Fury being a sort of proto example).

I suppose Odyssey got us partway there too.

Agreed - with very little googling you can find the exact same arguments as this article being made in others discussing Breath of the Wild. Lots of people have been rightly celebrating this aspect of BoTW since its release, I found it odd not to mention it as well. It was arguably an even bigger risk for Nintendo to make these radical changes back in 2017, given the sales volume a Zelda game is expected by the business and investors to shift.

The industry influence I would credit FromSoftware with is that its ok to make really difficult games again, a trend born through their work such as the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring etc. It's been a long time IMO since games this difficult were this mainstream.

I don't feel BotW was as big a risk as people take it to be - it was basically single-player WoW and was done with the standard Nintendo polish.

I do have to admit it was perfectly aimed at someone like me, who remembers the glory days of video games but no longer has the time or skill to play at a top level.

You’re viewing the risk from the point of view of hindsight. Of course it wasn’t a risk, what we got was successful.

Put it in context back before the game existed. The Zelda games are selling well, but they’re never Nintendo’s most successful games. What they are is Nintendo’s most revered. They have a great formula, designed by Miyamoto and polished to perfection by his successors. The critiques are getting deafening though. It’s getting too linear, the dungeons are turning slowly into content tubes, and the time spent on story is too long. What do you do? You don’t do Breath of the Wild to break the mould, you do Link Between Worlds.

Link Between Worlds is less linear, and harkens back to the SNES for its story and interaction. You take a step back from your mould, you redefine it.

But then BAM! They completely redesigned everything with Breath of The Wild. Link Between Worlds is but a mere footnote. That’s gutsy, and risky.

I agree it's gutsy, but I don't really see the risk - if BotW had "flopped" it would be a footnote like Link Between Worlds; it wouldn't have sunk the company. Arguably it could have damaged the Switch's reputation.

Interestingly it seems Nintendo understood that it could possibly not succeed, by where they placed the story in the timeline.

Nintendo, at least ever since the success of the Wii, hasn't been unwilling to make gutsy moves - but even then they do them in ways that they have fall-back positions if they're not as successful as they'd like.

While I agree with your comment, and while this is probably a bit pedantic, I'd argue that gutsy implies there being a risk. Sure, with Nintendo the risk is not something like bankruptcy, but then again the word 'risk' doesn't just mean "a game that risks the company's future".

I'm surprised many sing high praises for BoTW. When compared to the rest of the Zelda franchise, BoTW looks unloved to me. Shrines and Korok leaves are chores and treasures are just variations of stats.

In prior Zeldas, dungeons were architecturally complicated and treasures would bring a new kind of ability.

The BOTW map is insane, every nook and cranny feels unique and memorable, and the features are spaced out perfectly. There were so many times I felt like I was being clever by eating stamina items to climb a cliff or parasail further… …to find a Korok at the exact spot I “cheated” to get to.

> Shrines and Korok leaves are chores

They’re designed to be fun if you discover them naturally instead of actively trying to get them all.

Getting 13 hearts and two stamina wheels only takes about half the shrines, and I felt like I had plenty of inventory space after 200 or so Koroks, not to mention the “reward” for going to the trouble of getting all of the Koroks

I think you’re correctly criticizing the weakest aspect of the game: the dungeons.

They are not as inventive or unique as in previous games. They all use the same textures, which is so tiring after a while.

As Nintendo and Monolith Soft (the secret MVPs of that game) develop sequels based on the formula, they’ll close the dungeon gap and give us even better games.

Looking at the trailers for the sequel, I’m pretty convinced this will be the big difference; unique dungeons based on their previous work.

I liked the puzzles in the BOTW dungeons, and nothing in them made me rage as much as Snowhead Temple, especially the very last puzzle in it

It's just a different formula. The elements are mostly still there.

>best open world games released in the last 20 years, [...] I'm talking about Breath of the Wild.

BotW, if it wasn't for the Zelda tag in it's name, would have been judged for what it truely is: a very mediocre game. It does almost eveything wrong: the reward loop isn't satisfactory because getting a weapon that will break after a few hit feel useless, the cooking system has no tutorial and is hard to understand wihtout looking up on the internet and once understood is very tedious to use more a few time in a row, there is a lack a variety in enemies that are just copy-pasta of each other, the rain is basically stopping exploration as soon as it starts, thunder is even more infuriating: it's just a punishing mechanic that does the finger to the player, the world is big but empty, the shrines are mini-games designed by interns and feel often very out of place just as the UI (the red magnet for instance) are breaking immersion, the controls... oh the controls there are 16 different buttons + 2 joysticks (that are also clickable) on the Switch and every. single. of. them. is. used. for some action. That's 20 input to remember (I don't), bring me back the GameCube controller with its 7 buttons please! Aweful monetization too: a basic feature in an adventure game (path roamed by the player) is locked behing a DLC, and a lot of equipments are locked behind physical and expensive DLC (Amiibo). Very few memorable NPCs, forgettable music, almost no story, the list goes one.

In conclusion: this is likely the most overrated game in existence. But a Zelda (or Mario or Pokemon) in the name and people will buy it and like it whatever the quality. I regretted almost instantly spending money on it.

Your criticism is far from unique. A ton of people criticized the game for exactly what you say.

However, those weaknesses turn into strengths for the vast majority of people. Take raining for example. I hate the rain, but I’m glad it’s there. It forces you to change your plan when it starts. Some of my most memorable moments where after the rain forced me to rethink traversal.

Weapon durability was a common critique, but once again it’s to force you to change your weapons. Not to get married to any weapon style, and to savagely throw your weapons at your enemies. I love it.

Everybody steals from everybody.

https://twitter.com/DarkSoulsGame/status/768525788844961792

I definitively agree with you. In favor of the article one could say: The initial statement was basically that something got successful by ignoring "conventional trends of the genre" and the article is about Elden Ring. So the overall statement stays correct, but some context could (should?) have been provided, because things have been done before or originated somewhere else.

I got bored quickly of BoTW, not so Elden Ring. I think because there was so little to do in BoTW.

I had the opposite experience.

When I got a Switch BotW was the only game worth playing on the platform. I played it for over a year exclusively and had fun all the way.

I tried to play Elden Ring but I made the mistake of provoking an NPC and dying about 10 times until I figured out how to shake him off. Then I proceeded to die another 10-15 times on the next NPC and a dragon until I figured out how to run away from those. I gave up after dying again on the encounter that followed those.

Eventually I'll try to play it again but at the moment I'm sunk into Ghost of Tsushima which is awesome.

Elden Ring has far less variety than breath of the wild. Unless you count killing things in different locations variety. https://youtu.be/9EvbqxBUG_c This video gives a fraction of some of the interesting world interactions and enemy ai that I found more enjoyable as a game. You can interact with chests, doors, and levers and talk to people. I think that's it outside combat.

I think it's more about the variety that one cares about. I love both BotW and Elden Ring, but I could see either one 'lacking' somewhat in variety depending on what I choose to care about more.

>or something as simple as picking up consumables with a simple press of a button with no animations

That's something they probably picked up from Monster Hunter.

I didn't like botw.. At all! Maybe I'm too old for "giant world survival crafting exploration" time of games. I don't know.

It felt all wrong and... Hacked together? Like they planned a different game and then put the zelda theme on top of it. Something like that..

Elden Ring has absolutely nothing in common with BOTW.

The whole "exiting the cave to reveal the world" is Socrates cave shit. Old as the hills.

Plato

My recommended game where you exit a cave to reveal the outside world is Exile/Avernum III.

I don’t think video game starting caves have “shadows on the wall” though?

Exile 3 is probably still my favorite CRPG ever...

Oof, BotW was absolute trash. It was the epitome of bad open-world design. You have an absolutely massive map with nothing to do. The story is fragmented into just four dungeon/town areas and some memories scattered around the map. There are like two villages otherwise with still basically nothing to do in them. Exploration is not rewarded, weapons break for no reason (doesn't add difficulty or fun, it's just frustrating), shrines are repetitive, the list goes on.

Nintendo rested on their laurels and released a literal 3/10 game but people still ate it up for some reason. I don't think I have ever been so disappointed with a game in my life, and I've been playing Zelda since I was four years old. I wasn't asking for much, perhaps if the map was 1/10th the size they could have spent more effort filling it with content.

Elden Ring is in total juxtaposition. Exploration is rewarded with secret weapons, armor and skills that don't break and are actually useful. Your build is totally up to you and the wide variety means options for how you play the game, fight the bosses, and navigate enemy corridors is huge. FromSoft added respec this go around which lets you change it up if you're getting decimated over a bad build or just want to try something else. The bosses are unforgiving but manageable if you're resiliant. The map is still large enough to get lost in, but small enough that it doesn't feel empty. You're forced to ditch your horse in many areas out of respect for navigating on foot. And of course the story/lore which FromSoft is known for being bad at delivering (usually told through items and notes collected through the game) is leagues better than previous titles, having GRRM consult and help build out the lore was a brilliant idea as well. This game is 10/10, they did not compromise on their core values of delivering a legit challenge to players and improved upon every conceivable part of the game.

If it's not clear, I really love this game. I'm 75hrs into my first playthrough and only 50% of the trophies achieved. This has been great value in my opinion.

I’m over 100 hours in, and it’s probably the most sticky gaming experience I’ve had in years. I’ve played most of the recent AAA open world games (Horizon Forbidden West, Far Cry 6, AC Valhalla etc), and Elden Ring is the only one that didn’t quickly descend into feeling like a chore.

It’s got a lot of rough edges, but it’s an absolute breath of fresh air; and even my gf says it’s the one she’s enjoyed watching me play the most.

I struggled to finish most of the older 3D Zelda titles, but with BotW, I had so much fun just exploring and finding my own things to do that finishing the game was basically an afterthought. IMO it's a model for open world design.

I felt BotW had some great ideas, but it didn’t feel as monumental as Ocarina of Time was back in the day. My main criticisms would be that the 4/5 main dungeons were pretty underwhelming, and the puzzle chambers got tedious.

For all its flaws, Elden Ring is packed with “oh wow” moments as you unlock new areas. And the design of the “dungeons” is inspired, they’re so intricate and rich, yet never so lengthy that they outstay their welcome. The main gripe I have with the game is that a number of the enemies and bosses stray from being fun challenges into just being frustrating. I’d have preferred if they’d made the game just a bit smaller and focused on making each boss encounter as memorable as those on the critical questlines.

It's a terrible and lazy model. You can't neglect making content, and just tell the player "use your imagination".

I would say BotW was more akin to Animal Crossing. That Japanese genre of relaxation game where you sort of mindlessly wander around doing menial tasks to decompress. That said, I did get like 150hrs out of Animal Crossing with my girlfriend so I do see the appeal, I just did not want that for Zelda.

I don't know about you, but I played Zelda games for a story told through a world not a world with no story. The fact that what makes Zelda games Zelda games is an afterthought was series ruining for me. I have no desire to go back to Skyward Sword after playing BOTW, it sucked all wind from my sails

I remember a lot of people disliking Skyward Sword because the traditional handholding and plot-centric Zelda design had grown to the point that you couldn’t escape the tutorial for hours and the Navi-like annoying reminder mascot had returned.

They were inspired to reinvent it by watching the reviews for Shadow of the Colossus which was “modeless” (low-UI) and refused to explain anything, like Fromsoft does now.

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