What does Breath of the Wild do that most open-world games do not?

There is still nothing complex or intricate in botw. If we made thief like botw you'd enter a single massive mansion with every room being somewhat unrelated to the next and they'd all share the same mechanics but present a small challenge to get a jewel or some gold, or you'll find something important to the story. So you'd just go from room to room solving a puzzle after puzzle... and the house is beautiful though and has some really nice paintings and one room has a dragon in it.

@waahahah: Yeah if that's all that matters to you, sure. Your experiences are your own.

1. That tow truck mission is the wrong mission we're talking about. This one has Franklin tow a vehicle of supplies so he can smoke weed because that's the lengths Franklin will apparently bend over to smoke a joint. :P

2. Michael being in a spiraling mid-life crisis is one thing. Forking out thousands of dollars and running up and down in a desert certainly seems much when he really doesn't buy into the whole thing and the dialog has more engagement with him teasing their beliefs... yet doing everything they ask him to do and giving them all his money. I mean perhaps this is a mid-life crisis but I'm more inclined to believe that if he actually went AWOL and bought into the cult rather than completely discredit them when he speaks. :P Seems like he's wasting his money just out of curiosity.

Does MGS5 actually have 400 hours of content? Apparently the average length was 188 hours. That's impressive man.

MGS5 has a more involved sandbox with lots of emergent gameplay and dynamic situations... then you can add a lto of different tools to see how things work on top of that.

The difference is in the ammount of radically different approaches you can take in solving the puzzle. There is the difference.

@waahahah: I know I've played the game.

400 hours though?! I mean it's a great sandbox. A less great open world. Much of the sandboxing is confined to the awesome bases but there are, like 6 bases in that game. 400 hours? Really?

I mean I could see how you could do that if you stretched out every single mechanic in that game and did those bases multiple times over for sure. That's mad though.

Yes there is complexity. There is normally an easy, less complex solution. But the more high level stuff found in high level play, there is a level of complexity there. And for the record, Zelda's sandbox is more divided into multiple smaller sandboxes. Kinda like those sandbox puzzle games. If you are going to say that the big picture isnt one big sandbox like something like MGS5 is, then I would probably agree, but the individual instances and scenarios you go through, a lot of them are sandboxes.

no there isn't, the point is its all room sized puzzles which limit the scope therefore limit the options in outcome. If half the puzzles require you to move the ball and there are a handful of ways of actually moving it, picking it up, hitting it, floating then hitting, putting it on something than picking that up... than how many ways are there REALLY to solve all the puzzles before they start overlapping. And this goes for a lot of puzzles, need eletric, drop metalic items, need fire, fire arrows... there is a limitation so the quantity become extremely repetitive.

What i keep pointing out is the exploring the house with a thousand rooms is the important part of botw, its fun and intrigueing but ultimately each room may leave you wanting more or mildly annoyed. Eventide island would likely be the only living room sized room in this analogy where you get to do more within that puzzle.

IDK i just played it alot. Like I thought I was burnt out... then finished the 'final' mission and realized there was a second map.

also I double checked I'm only just shy of 300 hours...

Scope isnt nearly as important as you think it is. Again, the greatest sandbox ever made has maximum map size smaller than some maps in some RTS games, RTS games mind you meant for competitive play.

Some puzzles can be solved in entirely different ways and can be tackled with entirely different approaches? Did oyu not see the videos linked earlier in this thread?

@waahahah: Oh so not 400+ hours. That's less crazy then. :P

What do you mean 'only realized there was a second map?'

There are two maps and you have to do both before you reach the final mission. How could you not realize it was there? :P

I think you got a case of the forgetful noggin dude. ;) salmon would help you with that

Haha.

Edit: sorry I think I know what you mean by the maps. I kind of felt like the size of the maps weren't as great as just the well designed bases in them. The game would have benefited for me in having Thief like level design rather than an open world filled with little of interest.

And those videos those mechanics aren't fundamentally different everytime. And I'm not saying BOTW is bad I'm saying as a large open world game and a sandbox, it has very few 'large rooms' to sink into. Its like going from closet to closet, to small bedroom, to more closets, then you hit something really interesting but the room turns out really small and you move on...

Thats my BIGGEST complaint with botw, its a decent sand box spread really thing over a large area. The sandbox elements aren't that important because its designed around making a particular type of journey work really well.

You have to finish a particular misison where I had basiclly kidnapped everyone and had lots of things upgraded by that point...

I think you missed the joke, I thought mission 25 or w/e unlocked the map was the last mission. I hadn't seen it or even knew there would be a second map until I completely exhausted the first map.

Sandbox gameplay

Emergent gameplay

Physics engine

Chemistry engine

They are pretty different ranging from solving the puzzle conventionally to using stored forces or pulling yourself up using the buoyant force. Or some clever platforming. And that is just 3 out of many more varied approaches. Or just find unconventional ways to fix the problem that bypasses a lot of the conventional method.

@waahahah: I totally missed the joke. :P

I edited afterward. Sorry. That's mad though. I really didn't exhaust the map at all. There wasn't much to exhast for me. The bases are the fun parts but the open world wasn't for Mr.

I would have been happy having lots of those bases and just a level select screen. Retain the size and freedom of entry on approach but the world itself I could have done without and the tank mine quests. Ughhhhhhhhhhhh :(

Comparison videos showing how BOTW does open-world, compared to a standard open-world game like Horizon:

I think i'm not explaining it well. I understand there are varied mechanics in each room. But the real meat of the game comes from wandering the hallways and checking out each room. Where a lot of the smaller sandboxes like theif, can present you with one big room with a lot of things in it that relate to each other and you get 9 other 'rooms' or levels to go to after each one. Each one has one ultimate goal and everything you do generally figuring out the best way to achieve that. So in my analogy botw has tons of small seperate unrelated goals you can complete in quickly to get back to the hallway.

I'm taking this analogy too far?

Like gannon is too 'big' of a goal and there isn't many instances of eventide where there are a series of related smaller goals to achieve one big one. And Trial of thunder doesn't have as much to interact with, the lightning is basically like a way to eliminate a couple of options before moving 3 balls.

I guess I was sort of pulled in by kidnapping people and taking each mission and trying it multiple ways and as things unlocked tyring it more ways, from pure stealth to as chaotic as I could make it.

That notion is outright laughable. Ok, maybe GTA Online, but single player. No way, you are forced to do most missions the way the designer wants them to.

BOTW is a full on immersive sim, GTA is not.

Breath of the Wild could have benefitted from structure.

I didn't think anything special of it. I considered it just an Ok open world game.

It's on a Nintendo console and it was made by Nintendo, it also has Zelda in the title, so naturally, it's the shit.

I haven't played it yet, though, which is probably the only reason I'm talking smack, lol.

As I mentioned in my blog, as good and fun as this Zelda is (the best in a couple generations) it adds nothing new to the open wold formula. Enviornmental survival? Seen it, done it, bought the t shirt. Resource management...yeah done it loads of time. An open world that is not restricted by invisible boundaries (beyond specific reasons)...eh done that too.

Don't let the Ninty fan boys lie to you, it does nothing new BUT it does polish a lot of aspects from other open world games and does it better than most, although it still isn't better than the GTA series from VC onwards or Skyrim (one of the best open worlds of all time) or FO3 or FO4 (Zelda is a better game overall but the open world in FO4 is just as intriguing). Then we come to TW3, which story wise is an absolue slog but open world wise is awesome!

@soul_starter: How about such climbing freedom? Such realistic wildlife, physics, etc? Skyrim did nothing new my friend, it was just Elder Scrolls 4.0. Same with Witcher and GTA. These games just improved the same ol same ol. Hell, Zelda in 1986 was epic openness. And yet even that wasnt nothing much. BotW wasnt tring to improve the GTA, etc formula. It was improving the Zelda openness formula Nintendo has worked on for decades.

And VC was just a copy of Mario 64. After seeing Mario and Zelda OoT, they copied and made VC. Before Nintendo, they couldnt figure out how to make the switch from 2D to 3D like many others who copied Nintendo's awesome implementations.

@iandizion713: You can climb up mountains in Skyrim, how is that new to Zelda? Yes the type of climbing is different of course...but then again Spiderman on the PS1 had climbing too.

Wildlife? RDR had some of the best wildlife and specific to various areas of all time. I still remember the first time I took a random ride through the snowy forest and came across a bear.

I agree, lots of modern open world games haven't done anything new but they don't claim to either, although GTA V had the awesome ability to switch characters on the fly, no loading tiem and see them going about their random duties. That's gimmicky but a lot of fun, especially at the time when no one else was doing it, and certainly not on that scale. Yet we also have t oremember what GTA did to the 3D open world 2 generations ago.

Laugh at Vice City a copy of Mario 64! C'mon let's not get stupid now.

Anyway, let me conclue very simply. Once again, Zelda has done nothing new, as I'm just shown here BUT that doesn ot make it a bad game. It's a very good game actually but much like MGS V, it has a largely barren open world. What Zelda does best is its dungeons and puzzles and you dont need an open world to enjoy that.

@soul_starter: No you cant. You cant climb nothing in Skyrim. Nintendos Wildlife has a life of its own. Its very innovative wildlife that also reacts extremely realistic. Closest i know is Farcry, but theirs is nowhere close. And yes, it was a copy, the copied the controls and camera work. Zeldas progression is innovative too in how open and diverse it is.

But again, your games have done nothing new. Just same ol same ol. Meanwhile Nintendo has changed the gaming landscape once again with the outstandingly lavish Zelda installment. It has forever changed how we view open-world games.

@iandizion713: How can you say you can't climb in Skyrim? You either haven't played the game or are lying which is pathetic considering this is a gaming forum lol

And what do you mean there aren't games where wildlife does not react? I already gave you the example of RDR, you mentioned Far Cry which I forgot, in particular Far Cry 3. Then you also have Fallout 3 and 4 with various types of creatures that react depending on their nature (some more violent than others). How is that new? You're acting as if these games don't exist and if they do, you're just saying "NO! IT NOT HAPPENY!" you sound like a child.

Jeez, some people on here.

@soul_starter: Guess youll just have to try it and find out. Its like magic. Heres how you climb in Skyrim.

Lol...old school right there.

@soul_starter: I disagree. I think it's a more compelling open world game than GTA IV, GTA V and The Witcher 3. I prefer it to Skyrim too. The Skyrim game-loop is very loot based.

I'd actually argue despite your aassertion that BoTW's world is barren, it has a more fulfilling world than the GTA games, which despite being incredibly dense, really have no reason to be explored.

Saying that BoTW is barren and doesn't use its open world, to me, is completely missing the point of the game and the world itself.

That Mark Brown video again...

I think the language pertaining to Breath of the Wild doing things that are new is often mistaken. I don't think BoTW has many mechanics that are new on a global scale but it does have a new perspective on existing ideas that makes the game feel fresh and new. It's those things though that actually make me appreciate the world of BoTW and it's telling that an open world game like this can be so compelling with nearly no narrative in place for the majority of its side quests.

Emptiness is also something I think is misunderstood. The population of objects in a given scene for BoTW is less than something like The Witcher 3 but that is, really decoration. BoTW's world is less dense with objects but I don't feel it makes the activities within or the use of that open world less involving or more empty than The Witcher 3, it's just the visual barrenness of BoTW can turn some people off what is otherwise quite an involving game world that often requires the player to put even a percentage of thought into navigating it, finding your way around it, and seeking out things if importance within it. Something TW3 could actually learn from TW3 despite the density of its cities.

@NathanDrakeSwag: Nah, that either goes to The Witcher 3 (best story in an RPG), or Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (best combat in an RPG)

The side content is way more compelling in BotW than it is in GTA5. The main content is better in GTA5, but that is really just because BotW has almost no main content. BotW is a great game. It's really the only open world game I've played over the last 2 gens that I would say that about. The genre generally sucks.

Better handling, actual surprises in exploration, no way signs to dampen sense of adventure, sheer freedom of experiments, due to amazing physics engine. True openness in exploration (again most open world games are riddled with way signs, which turn the game liniar in the end.) It doesn't turn into a low quality racing sim, a problem which unfortunately affects many open world games *cough gtaiv cough*

I'm reminded of that episode of the simpsons where bart isn't allowed to see the itchy and scratchy movie.

His friends are discussing the film and bart says, I bet you guys are pretty tired of seeing that movie by now.

They respond with, "No one who saw the movie'd say that." And proceed to beat him to a pulp.

I feel this is the same with BOTW. If you played the game you wouldn't be asking what it does that makes it so special.

@Bread_or_Decide: I don't know about that. You can easily play Breath of the Wild and totally not get or appreciate why others like it.

For all intents and purposes, it's quite an unconventional open world game. In an age where titles like The Witcher 3, GTA V and Fallout 4 have huge emphasis on narratives to bolster their side content, Breath of the Wild is almost void of narrative context for its game-play.

It asks that players find their own story rather than entice them with a story itself, so I can get why gamers aren't enthused by it, being so used to a different approach in most other open world games.

I pity the poor soul who plays BOTW and feels none of its majesty and wonder.

It is holistically a touch above every other open world game ever made. It takes a lot of elements and mechanics that other games have used, brings them together in one cohesive package, adds Nintendo's trademark polish to it, creates a frankly staggering open world with the same level of design and attention that one expects from Nintendo's level design prowess, designs it just right to induce wanderlust, and to top this all off, makes this world and its mechanics a joy to traverse, thanks to the climbing->gliding loop.

what he said