Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Kidfried @Ralizah @KratosMD Forgive my ignorance of BotW, as I don’t have a Switch but I find the discussion interesting. I think I am of the opinion (not sure which one is unpopular) that I need a balance of objectives/purpose with also freedom in my open world games. The way you all talk about BotW, it sounds pretty much like you’re describing No Man’s Sky, which I would call the purest form of an open world game that I have experienced. And since NMS was not particularly riveting to me, I would surmise that I might dislike BotW. What do you guys who like BotW think of NMS and its openness and lack of objectives or goals? And if you didn’t care for it, how is it different? (I know it’s different because it’s Fantasy world vs outer space, and combat and traversal is different, but what I mean is how is it different from an “open world” stand point of lots of open space between areas of interest with nothing to do, and no barriers to move about at will, and the game is specifically not pushing you in any particular direction?)
I love exploring to find a treasure and solve a puzzle and make a discovery, but there is such a thing as “too open” which results in things being a bit mundane.

@Th3solution Given it has NPCs, side-quests, a main plot line, cutscenes, etc. I don't really see it as comparable to NMS.

Also unlike NMS, content in the game is intentionally designed, so it avoids the limitations of random generation in games like Minecraft and NMS.

It is VERY open, though, and adventurous exploration is the beating heart of the game.

@Th3solution There the side-quests in BOTW, but while I mess to play more, it hasn’t grabbed me yet. You explore sure, but I feel like I don’t find anything. Another shrine? Doku seeds? It feels like kinda empty so far. And I think a game that’s about the journey to objectives needs to have a strong story, like Shadow of the Colossus.

@Jaz007 SotC does not have a strong story. It barely even has a narrative to it. It has the most basic of set-ups and a very ambiguous conclusion.

I honestly was disappointed in BotW even to the fact that I traded my copy in a few weeks ago to get Octopath Traveler.

BotW just felt boring and empty with no direction in the game. Don't get me wrong I love open world games like Skyrim and Fallout for example but at least those had a story and direction BotW didn't. I mean all I got was to deafet Ganon. Um Ok why? I mean I know he's the badguy from playing previous Zeldas but this game had no reason. In the first one you went into the dungeons to get pieces of the Triforce. Zelda III it was to rescuse a maiden or get a pendent to get the Master Sword. In BotW you go into these dungeons just because they are there for no reason and just get a handful of rupees?

Plus, this might be me but I didn't get any sense of accomplishment. Again like Skyrim or Fallout or any other similar Open World RPG you unlock skills at a certain point, learn new attacks, manuvers, gain more hit points, stat points etc. and in a way your character feels like you are getting stronger. BotW not so much.

I feel that the only reason BotW got the praise that it did is because it's Zelda and it's Nintendo. If Bioware or Bethesda released something like that they would be a laughing stock, people would be screaming for a refund, and blowing up forums and such saying how bad it is and they are for releaseing a game like this but again because it's Zelda it gets a pass.

Is it a bad game, not at all if you like big open world's without sustainance or just want something to mess around in. Is it a bad Zelda at least to me it is.

@Ralizah Minimalist = bad. It might not be your cup of key, but some of the best stories are told through very little words. It's a very ambiguous game, but that's the beauty of it. It lets the actions speak for themselves and makes you think about what happened. If Breath of the Wild had gone with a minimalist story, it might have been absolutely amazing and done so much for the open-world design.
The fact that people talk so much about it and theorize so much when there's "barley a narrative" is why it's so good.

@KratosMD @Ralizah @Th3solution No Man's Sky is VERY comparable to the last Zelda. And their similarities are exactlly why I had trouble really enjoying both games.

BotW and NMS have about as much a story as the rocky training montage - but without Eye of the Tiger playing. You have a goal, and to get there you need to improve. And like training, that means just doing variations of the same thing over and over.

I have to give it to BotW here, it is a better game than NMS, for various reason. It has better combat, it has puzzles and there is more variety. With that being said, the basic principle of the game is the same. NMS has some better music, though.

Your stuff depletes all the time. While exploring you will come across small collectibles, which will make your meters go up. There is a barebones story as to why you want those meters to go up. There are settlements and there are NPC's, who will order you to collect some stuff for them or beat up some enemy, who will reward you with stuff. I say stuff and not 'epic loot' or whatever, because mostly it's just more of the same stuff you already have. There is a lot of inventory management in the game too, because you need to have enough supplies and spare resources for whatever you're going to do next. So yes, there are NPC's, but that doesn't mean you will encounter meaningful people all the time. Most of the time it is just you running through an empty field with some random creatures. And many moments will feel exactly like other moments you already had. The first time you encounter a certain giant monsters, you'll be like "WHOA, I wonder what more there is to find", but then you encounter the same creature again and again, just with slightly different loot.

It's all very similar. SotC, though. Man, what a game. <3 (Also, a story is more than a plot.)

@Kidfried Actually couldn't disagree more with the BotW and NMS comparison; even more so with NEXT taken in to account. NMS is far more a traditional resource gathering space sim' than anything else. BotW is just a bit open world RPG 'lite'.

@Tasuki @Jaz007
I think BotW fails a little bit with the slight lack of direction. It's certainly not game-breaking or difficult to overcome at all, but it feels all the less Legend of Zelda for it. My daughter (11 now) got on far better with A Link Between Worlds, which is easily a game that could be called traditionally more difficult. She just finds it laborious, plodding and difficult to engage with. She's plays Pokemon games to death and has put in a good 100 hours or so in to Disgaea V at this point.

Personally I found what I played of BotW rather boring. I enjoyed the systems in place, the cooking and whatnot - but it didn't imbue me with any particular desire to play more of it.

@Jaz007 I never said it was "bad." I said there was barely a narrative... because there's barely a narrative there. Criticizing BotW for being a bit thin on narrative while praising the far thinner SotC for having a "strong story" is simply insane. It just doesn't make any sense.

By pretty much any metric, BotW is far heavier on narrative elements than SotC. Explicitly, in terms of cutscenes, main story quests, diary entries, dialogue with NPCs, etc. And if we're talking atmosphere and suggestion, BotW also uses environment and, hell, sometimes its musical score to engage in forms of storytelling. There's a logic to the ruined architecture that tells a tale of ruin. The music is often remixed and nearly crumbled remixes of music from previous Zelda game, which strongly suggests links to past glories in certain environments. Journal entries help to flesh out some of the people who survived the apocalypse. Heck, the way you structure your own experience with the game becomes a part of the story as well, which is why its design and almost fully open structure is so brilliant.

With that said, while I like the game's story (and it has a really awesome version of Princess Zelda in it), I don't think it can be said to have a strong story. It's a strong experience.

@Kidfried You could take that last post of yours, change a few words, and apply it to literally thousands of video games where "meters go down" and "people ask you to collect things for them."

They're not comparable experiences at all.

@Ralizah I think you're confusing a lot of things.

• Plot is different from story.
• Having less story doesn't equal to a weaker story. I know a lot of short stories that are more engaging than some 1000-page books.

SotC is more like a modern painting or religious parable, than a James Bond plot.

That being said, I have always liked Miyamoto's idea behind Zelda: wanting to revive that feeling of being a kid and playing in your backyard, which you made into your own fantasy world. Always thought that was cool/cute, but after so many games in the series that's hardly refreshing anymore.

@Kidfried And I think you're confusing things as well.

• Sure, but, even then, SotC is light on story. We discover very little about the people involved. The plot is threadbare. Unless you're just going to lump any constituent element of the game under "story" as well, which is self-defeating, I don't see how anyone can deny the game doesn't have a strong story to it.
• What we know of a story can be interesting, but if you barely see it, if it only informs the very beginning and very end of a game, I don't see how we can call it a "strong story." It's just not. It's more a way to structure a series of boss fights surrounded by an atmospheric environment you have to navigate to get to each one.

I've never looked at a modern painting and thought: wow, that has a strong narrative built into it. Same with most religious parables. In the second case, religious parables only really gain a deeper meaning by being part of a larger, more structured religious story. They gain relevance through association, for the most part.

SotC doesn't have a strong story. It doesn't need a strong story. It's not a narrative-driven experience. The amount and type of storytelling it has is fine for what it's going for.

Which is also how I feel about Breath of the Wild, by the way. I don't think it needed to be a more structured, linear Zelda experience. The narrative elements that were there suited the game perfectly. I wouldn't say it has a "strong story," though, in the way something like an Uncharted game has a strong story, because that would imply more of a focus on explicit narrative elements than there is. The experience of the game, if that's what we're going to call a story now, is only as strong or as weak as you make it. I stopped after 75 hours, as I was extremely satisfied with what I had accomplished and experienced. If you crawl the game for 300 hours looking for every last korok seed, maybe it feels like an aimless sandbox. But that is more down to how you play the game, imo, than anything else.

So, if I understand correctly, there is still some progression and leveling to an extent in BotW. I’ve always heard that “you can go anywhere, climb anything” in the game (a la NMS) but that sounds to only be partly true, as there are virtual “obstacles” to going somewhere in the form of lack of stamina that needs to be upgraded before being able to go there. So there is some linearity to the experience. Again, sorry to be ignorant.

OK everyone lets try not to derail the thread please, we wouldn't want it to get closed now would we but i can see this is an important subject for you to discuss so perhaps one of you could create a thread specifically for it OK @Kidfried @Ralizah @Jaz007

back on topic

Unpopular Gaming Opinion: Halo 5: Guardians was great, it still was fun to play and yeah while it's story wasn't the best in the series it was still enjoyable

@FullbringIchigo One last post, and then I'll drop it if other people do.

@Th3solution The entire game is a constant process of progressing, becoming stronger, learning more about the world and backstory, and structuring your own story. You CAN "go anywhere, do anything," but unless you're a high-level player who can manipulate in-game physics effectively, you're going to have a difficult time accessing certain sections of the game before other sections of the game. Through the constant feedback of collecting stamina and health upgrades, gaining stronger weapons, environmental design, and, of course, explicit narrative elements in story sections, the game invisibly guides the player to structure a satisfying adventure for him-or-herself. The game is open, but the hand of the designer is constantly evidenced in the design of the game itself.

Which is nothing like NMS, because there's pretty much no structure to NMS, invisible or otherwise. No meaning to its design. I don't know what the recent update added, but base NMS just used a bunch of algorithms to randomly assemble countless worlds and then forced you to constantly chip away at them to survive.

There are also crafting and survival elements in BotW, but it doesn't dominate your time. It's intelligently integrated into the fabric of the gameplay itself to further immerse you in the experience of exploring Hyrule.

What the game almost never does is establish artificial roadblocks to make you play in a certain way, which is how previous Zelda games were designed. I personally think BotW's design, while certainly not perfect, is a huge improvement all around, one that really channels a sense of adventure.

Thanks for the input everyone. Although I absolutely believe the discussion to be worthy of “unpopular gaming opinions” as we clearly have a few who bear the unpopular opinion that BotW (a game lauded as one of the greatest of all time, if not the greatest of all time) is overrated. But I do think we have explored it quite thoroughly (no pun intended)

@Th3solution true it is worthy of discussion but it was starting to turn into an argument and one of the things i promised to do so we could have this thread was to make sure there was no arguing and that it remains clean and safe which the only reason i chimed in, i hope you understand

Unpopular opinion(s):

• NSMB2 is the best of the NSMB games thanks to the coin rush levels and the gold collection metagame overall, which forces you to play levels in riskier ways than one normally otherwise would.
• I think a wide swath of the SNES' catalog doesn't stand up nearly as well as people think it does. Super Mario World, for example, is a lesser experience than most of the other 2D games in the series. Super Metroid was revolutionary, but was improved on by both of the GBA entries. Chrono Trigger is just plain overrated: it has a decent combat system, some fun characters, but an unengaging plot and rather boring characters. Also, the music isn't great. Earthbound is a mediocre game that I feel is only popular still because it's "quirky;" take away the weirdness, and you're left with a mediocre product. Super Castlevania IV is one of the weaker games in the series, too, with its overpowered whip making secondary items irrelevant and its focus on Mode 7 antics and awkward platforming. Mega Man 7 is one of the worst games in the series. And, frankly, I think the original DKC trilogy didn't age well. The level design isn't great, many of the secrets are just waaaaay too hidden, and I feel like the difficulty is often unfair.
• I'm unsure how unpopular this opinion actually is, but I feel like DKC Returns is a far more difficulty experience than Tropical Freeze was. Especially those barrel blast levels.

@ellis-bas FFXII really is weirdly good monster hunting game in its later half!

@Ralizah SNES is overrated in general. It has a few seminal key gaming experiences for sure - but it got far less play when I was a kid than the MegaDrive did, and I sold the one I bought later in life as I barely bothered with it. I also sold my SNES mini after tinkering with it for a bit.

I'd say the Super Mario World does hold up very well though. It's a lot better than SMB and SMB2. Not many games in general are quite as good as Super Mario Bros. 3, but that's part nostalgia talking.

I didn't like DKC then and still don't.

@Ralizah is NSMB2 New Super Mario Bros?

I will defend Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World until the day I die!

@Ralizah Also, I am playing Symphony of the Night currently, and I'm really enjoying it. And I remember thinking to myself yesterday: "this might be the best Castlevania ever... after SNES Castlevania." So it seems like we have opposing opinions on pretty much everything.