I love the Zelda games. I replay those from time to time.
So what do you think about them turning The Legend of Zelda into an Assassin’s Creed/Shadow of Mordor style sandbox? Ruining the franchise, or going back to its roots?
JEDIT: For the record, my opinion is:
Okay, I’ve played plenty of Breath of the Wild by now and…wait for it… I can’t say it’s my favorite Zelda game.
It’s sooo different from the other games. I know people who complain about previous 3D Zeldas being too formulaic, but because this Zelda game so different in style, scope, and difficulty, et al., that comparing Breath of the Wild to Twilight Princess or Wind Waker is almost completely unfair. It’s almost a completely different genre of game.
I’ve been playing this game for several dozen hours now. I don’t recall how many. So much so that I’m addicted to it.
I love this game. It’s fantastic. But the catch is I’ve played several other open world games before, and so certain aspects feel derivative. Yes, the towers in BOTW are better than those in Assassin’s Creed. Yes, the open world action swordplay is better than in Shadow of Mordor. Yes, this game takes solid gamplay mechanics, improves them, adds fantastic story and dialogue, and rolls them into one amazing experience. But sometimes I’m playing the game and I feel like I’ve done these things in other games, even though this does it better.
This is in contrast to other Zelda games, where no one else does it quite like Zelda. If any other game copies Zelda gameplay, it’s them copying it–not it copying them. It’s as though Zelda basically wrote the book on action adventure games. But Breath of the Wild is largely consolidating and improving on existing mechanics from other properties. There are movies that I love that do this–like Star Wars. I love Star Wars. But I haven’t seen the films and serials from which it was derived, and so I don’t compare it to them.
So that’s why I’m perplexed about where Breath of the Wild sits on my personal list of favorite Zelda games. It’s wonderful, but it’s derivative; while the other 3D games are original but formulaic. And I don’t mind the formula because it just works.