OrangeRKN thanks for the brilliant and forensic reply!
I hope you don't mind me bouncing back again - but this difference in Zelda feel I find really interesting. I hate sounding like a churlish, ungrateful player (BotW
IS good, I know!) but the Zelda series is probably one of my main gaming/pop-cultural influences growing up and the subtle changes to the feel I find interesting to pin down.
OrangeRKN wrote:deathofcows wrote:Because it primes you from the start, without the piecemeal addition of new items and mechanics, most of the mechanical learning and experimentation and novelty is front-loaded. Then you mostly just apply similar gameplay loops and bubbles in different areas with different environmental skins.
Where I think the game really stands out is in it's complexity of systems leading to this /not/ happening - I was still discovering new mechanics and interactions after 100 hours in the game. Of course it becomes more familiar the more you play, but that novelty and experimentation pretty much never disappeared throughout my entire playtime. The game doesn't force this upon you though, once you have found a successful approach you are quite capable of just sticking to it. It's freedom at the expense of player guidance, so it risks people falling into the trap of stopping experimentation.
Agreed! But the new things are quirks and detail, like being able to upturn Guardians or throwing metallic weapons towards enemies in a storm or whatever. They're not quite as continuously transformative as - say - a Hookshot. But I do appreciate the density of detail and even now enjoy messing about with new things. Perhaps the game is just a victim of its own more-ishness and size. I hammered through hours and hours of stuff before hitting its (mechanical/novelty) plateau, but without the item beats and story beats and sense of closure that comes with a typical Zelda perhaps I just exhausted the novelty of the sand from the sandbox. In Zelda there is usually more box, to give edges and form and progression and variety to the journey.
OrangeRKN wrote:deathofcows wrote:previous games had ... other bits remaining, unknowable, unreachable 'otherlands' - here everything is reachable, continuous and similiar.
This is the fundamental difference, down to the core genre the games fit in to. BOTW is an open-world physics sandbox. It's all systems and emergent gameplay. That's completely different to every other Zelda game, and I think direct comparisons are just going to come down to personal preference in what games people like playing. I think the biggest criticism I could have of BOTW is that it doesn't deliver much at all of a classically Zelda experience, so if I want that I am left sorely lacking. That's an unfair criticism though in that if I want that, BOTW simply isn't the right game. It can't be "fixed" in that regard without fundamentally changing the experience.
deathofcows wrote:It actually makes me wonder what the continuous scrolling of Link's Awakening remake might do to the feel of it compared to the original.
OrangeRKN wrote:I've thought about this a bit. Obviously I won't know until I play it, but I reckon Koholint Island is going to feel a lot smaller without it's distinct screens, and everywhere is going to feel closer together. Hopefully the visual style goes someway to mitigating this. The game always felt "pocket sized", but it was equally full of mystery and exploration. You could never know what was just on the next screen unless you got there, in the remake you'll be able to constantly peek ahead.
OrangeRKN wrote:deathofcows wrote:6) The music is often great but I think the new approach emphasises how much a physical part of Zelda games it used to be. Here it adorns and accents the experience. Previously each environment was walled off by a loading screen or whatever, but also its musical theme - as tied to the physicality of the place as anything else (think of OoT's Kakariko Village or - indeed - anywhere). Music was almost like an extra wall of difference between each place and the other. In BotW there is a physical, feel-able absence in the environmental character compared with before. I'm not sure it's worse, mind...
I could probably sit and just
listen to an OoT play-through, and follow it along - primarily from the music, but also from it's sound design in general. If I tried the same with BOTW, I would be nearly instantly lost. I think even if BOTW had prominent musical themes for each area, that would still somewhat be the case, because of it's lack of linearity. OoT is roughly like an album you listen to from start to finish, while BOTW is always played on shuffle.
OrangeRKN wrote:deathofcows wrote:(I think it's why the Deku-tree area is a favorite of mine, as it feels most like a classic Zelda environment permeated by an 'ever-mood' of music and walled off by the Lost Woods)
It stands out to me as an unnatural location in BOTW. I like what they tried with it, but even with the significant area the woods take up on the map, it still feels too small to me and too connected to the outside world. It was a valiant effort at replicating in an open-world the isolated areas of past games, but to me it just can't compete.
OrangeRKN wrote:deathofcows wrote:I'd go so far as to say that a couple of areas of fixed-angles (think: Temple of Time in OoT/Kokiri Forest indoor sections and so on) would actually add a layer of framing and visual-interest which might actually punctuate the constant, third-person player-eyed-view in impactful meaningful ways.
I generally really like fixed-camera environments, they can add a lot with their framing and let the game designer's "direct" a lot more. I can't see how that could work in BOTW though, the complete freedom of approach would be at odds with it in principle I feel.
Now here's the thing, I've grouped these quotes together as I think they all touch upon a related phenomenon.
I have thought way too much a lot about BotW's engagement with movement and environment and space, and how it radically differs to prior games.
I wrote that Eurogamer article about it, about how the cordoned-off enclaves and lack of free-form climbing gave previous games a different, compartmentalized feeling of adventure and possibility and exploration.
And I also once wrote a Eurogamer article about the unique way that magazine screenshots framed a game compared with videos in the streaming era - how singular images had a weight and impact and a type of framing of the player within the environment not always felt in the continuity of actual play.
And most recently I posted in another thread about how control schemes can drastically alter the sensibility of a game - how the ability to control the third-person camera and jump
at the same time could make a game feel like you were rotating the environment around the constantly advancing character - as opposed to maneuvering the character like a marionette through the 'sets' of the environment. I suppose its the spectrum of fixed-angles on one side and a completely free-form camera and how that affects the sense of movement and traversal and place within the environment.
In that thread you mentioned MGS3's choice between the 'classic', fixed, almost isometric-like viewpoint and the the free 3rd-person camera, and how it changed the experience. And that to me sounds
fundamental. I am pretty sure the
huge difference in feel in BotW is so much more (to me, clearly I have my own sensitivities and biases when playing games compared with others!) than just about the fact that the game is open or that there's climbing - I think it's more specific than that. To do with the visual framing and camera control and binaries of navigable environment. So I actually experimented a little yesterday with BotW and Mario Odyssey, and returned to older 3D Zelda games with a few Let's Play Youtube videos.
And here are my updated and important and paradigm-destroying ideas for anyone (/no-one) to read!:1)
Traversing space is the stuff of a lot of video games. How this is framed visually (they're 'video' games after all!) affects everything, and also affects how you play and how you perceive the character's relationship to the environment. It thus is a physical, mechanical component of play and not just a depiction thing.
2)
Case-Study - Ocarina of Time: This had some areas where you could free roam and freely look around, and some areas which were pre-rendered. If I ask you to think of OoT's Temple of Time or Hyrule Market Back Alley or inside a Kokiri House - we would all have a similar image. These moments added visual, dramatic framing to a scene. They also meant that Link on-screen could be both small and distant, or close up to the screen - it varied his position from the screen. Finally they were snapped into-and-out-of when you go into these areas (or even within them, think of the birds-eye compared with side-on camera options within Kokiri houses).
All of these effects were like punctuation in the 'visual-space-story', giving it variety and rhythm and with it - a sense of journey overall.
Even in Link's Awakening there are the side-on sections which (and that boss battle!) which are few in number, but enough to act like a visual 'volta' - a temporary change that enhances the whole.
OoT cannot be solely played or remembered from the same vantage point and we did not just drive Link
through environments, but controlled him
around them too.
3)
Case-Study - Skyward Sword: Like Ocarina of Time this did not have a controllable third-person camera due to lack of a right-stick. This means that the rhythm of play was to constantly reset the camera with the L-Trigger like the Z-trigger/targeting in OoT. This has (at least) two main effects.
The first is that it constantly resets the visual field to a Link-height, immersed view unto everything going on - you have to break into the first-person peer-around to see the extremes of up and down. So you feel immersed in Faron Woods, say - without constantly looking around in a way that explores and highlights its limits and extremities. Compare this with BoTW where you are constantly roving the camera around up and down for potential, for flights up or surfs down, in a way that disrupts your interest and absorption and sense of enclosure in the immediate surroundings.
The second is that you just do it less frequently - you reset the camera to something roughly convenient, then get on with navigating around it. On the spectrum of fixed-camera angles to a fully free-roaming one, this is more towards the former than BotW's in which you can accelerate Link constantly whilst roving around with your gaze, instead of controlling him in a temporarily-positioned shot. It's the difference between a fixed-camera in an old movie and a CG-enhanced one-shot that follows characters through their movement. But I think the latter feels a little less rooted, a little less like you are controlling Link, and a little less involved in the environment.
Zelda is a series that feels weighty, stolid, earthy - compared with the high-flying acrobatics of Mario, say. And I think the more considered rhythms of previous camera control may have suited it better. Think of the slow first-person looking-speed of Metroid Prime and how much gravity and weight it added to the feel of Samus.
The camera isn't just for seeing the character move - it
is the character and their gamefeel.
4)
Case-Study - Super Mario Odyssey: But hang on mate! Wind Waker had a third-person camera, and so did great games like Mario and that feels super tactile and rewarding to play!
Hey that's true! So I loaded up Mario Odyssey yesterday to revisit it. What I noticed is that even though you can control the camera freely, you still end up doing it in intermittent bursts due to the constant busy-ness of moving around. Even just going from A-B is punctuated by endless hyperactive scribbles of jumps and dive-jumps and rolling and hat-bouncing. And you cannot move the camera if you're busy jumping because they both need your thumb!
So I went to the Sand Kingdom, with its big swathe of undulating hills, and ran around BotW style - not jumping but just gazing round and moving round with the camera-stick.
AND MAYBE IT'S JUST ME but there is an immediate difference in feel. Not just because you're not bouncing around like you have jump-tourettes, but because suddenly you are less controlling Mario around his surroundings compared to steering him through it. And I reckon there's an immediate change. It's shifts the focus between Mario and his next, immediate concern, and Mario and the more macro concerns of what's allthewayoverthere. Or something!
5)
Case-Study - Similarly I watched a couple videos of Wind Waker, and the environments are (obviously) much more compact than BotW, but also are denser with the sort of micro-concerns that engage you to it. Every little run of cliffs requires careful navigation without the buffer of climbing/gliding. And even a basic run up to an area (say to the entrance to the Deku Tree place) requires you align the jumps properly and use your rope-swing and so on - all just to traverse about 20-meters.
It's akin to what Simon Parkin said of Mario Kart 8 in his 10/10 EG review:
Start not with the screen - a window into the Mario multiverse that has never before loomed so large and vivid - but with the hands. Here, at the physical level, you begin to understand the connection this game establishes with its player... This pitter-patter of interactions, of jabs and squeezes, connects you intimately to the game. You are needed here, more so than in most other racing games.
In BotW I think a lot of the time is spent in airborne or on-foot treks across the ripples and waves of its landscape, without the meaningful micro-concerns of traversal that root you within it. It feels like a landscape painting of wonderful shapes and form, but with less emphasis on the detailed gameplay and concerns that connect you.
To get around you just glide and climb, no other tools required. So exploration and progress becomes a visual thing - where you go to new areas to see new things, new colour palettes and skins for Hyrule - and not the mechanical one where you have to do different obstacles with different tools just to
get anywhere.
6)
Punctuation - Can you make a game too smooth? Too playable? Too many edges shaved off literally and thus in gamefeel, too?
BotW feels so silken and fluid that I wonder if its a little like a gaming stream-of-consciousness, without the usual gaming grammar that gives it depiction of space and traversal more weight.
Everything leads to everything. Everything is a camber or a slope or an up-ramp to something else. It's amazing and soothing and freeform, but it also diminishes the significance of verticality in general, of height and of drops and of walls. It loses the sense of
enclosure - by its commitment to the freedom of climbing and gliding from anywhere to anywhere. There is no crawling through cubby-holes and into caves.
It disrupts the inside-outside over-and-under world-grammar of previous, more limited 3D Zelda games, as with it their 'gravity' and solidity and variety.
In the new Link's Awakening there is continuous scrolling it seems - but not for the dungeons proper which remain structured in screen-chunks. That is because game grammar necessitates that mysterious dungeons must feel mysterious and enclosed and discreet whilst playing.
In BotW - everything is scrolling and continuous, reducing the felt borders of play that came with entering and exiting new areas, but also reducing their character as areas.
7)
I DO ACTUALLY LIKE BoTW! Honest! And it certainly 'worked' on me (more than 150 hours and counting). I am not trying to sound ungrateful for such a brilliant experience.
But I couldn't place what the felt differences were in play, and thought they might be more than just the changes to the overworld structure or to the weapon durability or whatever. There was far more going on which I became quite interested in unfolding and unpacking.
Anyway I have to finish now (don't even get me started on the musical differentiation of environments being altered etc!) but there we are!
EDIT P.S. I actually tried BotW using only L-Trigger camera and I swear it changed things, and my focus and the feel!