Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are both fantastic games - and Tears of the Kingdom really does feel (to me) like they just took Breath of the Wild, and added a few more years of dev time to it.
Where do you think Nintendo will take Zelda from here though? Can they keep with the same new formula? Should they? Will a more traditional game feel disappointing after this?
I don’t really know what I want myself. I think they should try something different though. At the same time, I can’t help but think I’d be disappointed if the next game was more similar to something like Twilight Princess. Have they boxed themselves in?
OoT, considered one of the greatest games of all time, is literally Link to the Past 3d. Majora’s mask is like a mod of OoT. WW was a huge deviation, but same dungeon structure. Twilight Princess is OoT, but edgier and with a weird platformer mix that was common in the latter stages of N64 and early Wii.
I’m general, Nintendo iterates on Zelda. I’d love for a Wind Waker 2 a la totk.
ahh i don’t know about that, I could probably write a giant nerd rant about how OoT is anything but Link to the Past 3D. From it’s combat to world design, story, vibe, pacing, mechanics and yeah dungeon layout, it’s all wildly different than what is executed in LttP.
It’s one of the things I really loved about the gameboy games and eventually the sequel to LttP, whilst the 3D games happened, there was this direct linage from LttP that kept everything the same, in pocket form.
I mean, clearly it was an evolution on all fronts, but the inheritance is clear across the board. Light world, 3 dungeons, dark world, 7. In each dungeon you find the same compass, boss key, core item (I forget if map was in both).
Undeniably, both games were utter masterclasses. I still maintain OoT holds the GOAT title screen, just scraping by Halo due to the animation.
I would love to read an essay on Zelda games if you write it, I might even change my opinion :)
Also, since you seem to have lived through the times (did you?), what are your thoughts on totk-esque dungeons vs everyone clamouring for an “old school” Zelda game? I’m thinking totk combined with old school items, instead of attaching to weapons and arrows, but keeping totk exploration, would be sublime.
Totk/botw dungeon divide between fans is super interesting isn’t it? I think everyone is right here, they aren’t “zelda” dungeons, and zelda as a series has lost a certain something with that move. But also people really love the new direction, especially the shrines in totk.
For the items, you can see the lineage directly from A Link between worlds through to totk. In albw they were super proud of their “get any item as soon as you want by renting any one item” system instead of having to beat a dungeon to get items, it let you clear the games dungeons in (mostly) any order you wanted. In botw they gave you all the items all the time, that killed progression entirely. But the build your own solution idea in totk seems to have brought something new. It’d be hard to go back to dungeon items without losing that aspect of totk.
I’m not massively confident that Nintendo care to close the gap on dungeons though, they seem happy with the way things are now, there’s a case to be made that the actual dungeons in totk are a lot less interesting than the divine beast dungeons in botw.
Do you think there is anything lacking in botw1/2 that bringing back items fixes?
