Breath of the Wild will set a new standard for open-world design

And subsequently expose pretenders like GTA V and Skyrim that hide shitty gameplay and boring quests behind a huge world with boring activities and in the case of Skyrim, boring NPC's. It'll be a true Zelda with no gimmicks and game design at the forefront of its priorities. No shit like Wii Motion Plus to make you forget you're playing a subpar game like Skyward Sword. Once you've played it, you'll wonder WTF you were playing and older open-world games will look like a bad joke. It'll be what open-world games were aspiring to be for the past 10 years.

You can all quote me on that.

No it won't.

Yes it will

Yes it will. I liked you better when you were gone.

No it won't.

no.

nintendo games havent been influential in many years.

Not a chance. This is like the first Nitendo's open world game and you're expecting it to revolutionize open world games? That's wishful thinking. Especially true with the current Nintendo.

I'm not seeing anything specifically special about it. Just lots of green.. and more green.

It'll be what Zelda could have been years ago but technical shortcomings prevented that. It'll be like a Link To The Past except far bigger, with more player agency, more things to do and more immersion. It'll be the proper successor of ALTTP.

You'll discover wonders like that boy playing his ocarina in the woods only to disappear every time, you'll play the game 10x over and still discover new things and I'm not talking about bad jokes that self-reference the shortcomings of their own games.

If Nintendo decided to go open-world with Zelda it's because they felt they could add something to the genre.

Then you clearly haven't actually followed anything about the game.

It is one of the largest open worlds of all time, with full interactivity and full permanence, and total seamlessness too. Literally no other open world game yet has done that.

Sony games haven't been influential at all.

Yes it will.

Ehh... still on the fence about it.

Call me faithless, but I just don't buy that Nintendo will swoop in and revolutionize a genre with their first crack at it. I'm more liable to believe that the game will be good-- great, even. But put the competition to shame? Nah.

Is there a list of the revolutionizing parts? I mean, I looked at all the YT videos of the upcoming game and I can't see much of anything new it brings to the table.

We shall see. I hope it does well.

I wrote a feature preview on it which describes some of the sheer level of interactivity found in the game.

They took pages of those countless open-world games that took a shot and failed. Everyone wants to be a GTA clone with those awful mission structures and complete lack of freedom during missions.

I have the feeling it will be a hell of a game...hopefully one of the best i've played in years...and honestly, i'm not expecting anything else than a great game, couldn't care less if it sets something or not.

What are those pages you're referring to?

I do. The Witcher 3 showed you could combine engaging side quests along with a strong narrative in an open-world. Zelda will show you the interactivity and endless possibilities with its gameplay. Hopefully every open-world after that will strive to be more like a combination of Zelda/The Witcher 3 rather than the dreadful combo of TES/GTA.

Hopefully it's as good as Halflife 2.

What's to say that instead of the established mission structure, Zelda just relies on its reported hundred-plus mini dungeons as substantial content between the main quest? Said main quest being larger dungeon spelunking numbering (hopefully) eight or so before tackling the final boss.

I haven't seen enough of the game in pre-release material to be convinced it will blow away the competition. Heck, I haven't seen enough to convince me it will be anything more than yet another open-world sandbox experience, just with a Zelda skin.

Zelda is made for the open world. It seems natural so lets see. TC those games came in era where open world was the rage no matter how shity things were. There was always lot and lots of game-play though that trumped anything. Its amazing how people are tired of them now.

eh... in a way they have. The New Tomb Raider exist simply because of Uncharted's success, Uncharted influence Square Enix to revamp Tomb Raider. Thats a straight up direct correlation of on franchise influencing another. But Uncharted also cinematic style of gameplay influence alot of other games on how to do cinematic stories and fluid cinematic gameplay.

The massive attention and success of GOW3 made whatvere dev it was to literally copy and paste Dante's Inferno.

LBP influenced Mario Maker....

Games like Demon Souls paved the way for Dark Souls, and now Nioh.

I know you are gonna say, "Sony didnt make that game", sure, but it was SONY who took the risk in bring the game out and it was Playstation fans who gave the game a try and bought it.

Does nintendo make great game (when they release them) and have unique games, yeah... do those game then influence other devs to make similar games like it? no, we havent seen that in many years.

I disagree, alot of devs and I mean alot of them tend to talk about Ico alot. Seems very Influential to them.

Switch (LOL) Breath of Wild with Horizon and you are correct. HZD puts any open world game to shame and it still has one week left til release.

The last influential Nintendo game was in 2006. The last influential Sony game was in 2009. It's roughly the same amount of time since either made a hugely influential game. Nintendo took some down time with the Wii U. With the Switch, they look set to try and be ambitious again, if nothing else.

I'm worried the open world will actually hurt the game. Too much open space with not enough to do was Wind Waker's biggest problem. Still, WW was a great game despite this, and I think BotW will be too.

I took a look at that and this is the only thing that I found unique enough:

"so you run towards the face of the cliff and discover you can climb up its surface"

The rest? I've seen before and better-implemented in some games.

The above would be unique if it works on any surface: trees, buildings, etc.

Well, yet again- no other open world yet has had an open world this large and this seamless, interactive, and this degree of permanence.

Hopefully the final reviews do a better job of selling you on the game than my write up did, I guess.

What are you talking about? Gran Turismo has influenced all racing sims and gave birth to Forza. GOW influenced the action genre and spawned a few copy cats. Uncharted influenced TPS as well as did TLoU and games like Assassin's Creed, Dead Space and COD have been influenced by it's set pieces. The new Star Wars game will be influenced by Uncharted as well. Not Battlefront 2. LOL. You are just making up stuff because you have no rebuttal. The last influential game from Nintendo was Ocarina of Time, but that was only influential to other Nintendo games. Syphon Filter gave birth to the now popular headshot kill that all shooting games use. The EyeToy games created the Wii and Kinect games. HotShots gave birth to Nintendo's Mario Sports games and LBP created Mario Maker. Games are pushing for a deeper narrative and more cinematic and immersive game play because of Sony. You don't see any games looking like anything from Nintendo since the 2D generation when Sonic was created due to Mario.

And that should be enough for most people to dismiss what you post.

Doubt it..but willing to be proven wrong. Prove me wrong Nintendo. :P

No question about the game being a must-buy. Nintendo quality control is legendary. This Zelda would certainly be the first game I buy if I do get a Switch. But, we're taking about setting standards. For that, simply having the ability to do things isn't enough. It would have to be done better (than the competition) as well. Otherwise, it would be seen as merely copying features from here and there.

Personally, the game doesn't need to set the standard to be a great game.

Uncharted exists because of Tomb Raider. Not the other way around. The cinematic style was pioneered by RE4. Not Uncharted which literally took a page out of RE4's book.

Demon's Souls isn't a Sony game.

Agreed with Gran Turismo.

Uncharted hasn't influenced any TPS, neither has TLOU lol. Set pieces existed before Uncharted in RE4 and Half-Life 2. As for the rest it's senseless gibberish. Gears of War and KillSwitch have been far more influential to TPS than Uncharted which frankly just took RE4's cinematic style and multiplied it by 10.

LBP didn't invent level editors.

Games with deep narrative have existed in the form of games like Indigoy Prophecy(Farahneit) by Quantic Dream. I know it's surprising but Heavy Rain wasn't their first game.

Nintendo wasn't inspired by the Eye Toy ROFL. Sony actually tried to shamelessly copy the WiiMote. You got this backwards.

Golfing gave birth to Mario Golf. Not Hotshots.

Yeah a whole lot of nonsense overall.

In terms of being a benchmark in how good it is? Sure highly possible given the lameness of the genre. Actually being a revolutionary addition to that space? Not seeing it yet.

@charizard1605:

I havent watched too many gameplay vids out of spoiler fear, is it reasonable to expect Fallout levels of persistence? Thats one of the most novel and engrossing aspects of Bethesdas open world design.

Not actually sure if it's to that degree, to be honest. The vertical slice I played wasn't enough for me to be sure of that, sorry :(

That's what I mean. I expect open-world games going forward to try to blend the narrative/sidequests of The Witcher 3 with the interactivity and adventuring of Breath of the Wild. Hopefully the GTA clones stop. The mission structure is lame. The open-world is lame. The lack of freedom when it matters is lame.

Huh what?

Horizon just bitched slapped BOTW from here to Sunday.

Breath of the Wild isn't even out yet.

Also lol you're a known Nintendo hater.

It feels like Nintendo studied other open world action games, took the best aspects of each and blended it nicely with Zelda features iced that Nintendo polish on top.

It's going to be an amazing game, no doubt but can't tell if it will push the standard yet.

@charizard1605: Interactivity and permanence like Minecraft?

Although... to be fair that is more of a sandbox game than an open world game.

As for this game, it looks to make use of the open world format and add meaningful interactivity with the world. Games like Assassin's creed often fail to have any meaningful interactivity. From what I have seen in the new zelda, there is plenty of room for emergent gameplay. And that is something most of these open world games lack. If Zelda sets a standard for emergent gameplay in these open world games, I will be more than satisfied. I would love Open World games to come even close to the standard set by sandbox games.

A known Nintendo hater that owns more Nintendo consoles/games than you.

Demon's Souls wasn't the first Souls game(and if you're going to quote a game, get the title right)..

If by set a new standard, you mean, simply meet the standard that has been set by dozens of other studios for generations, then, you're right. lol.

There is nothing about the game mechanic or feature-wise that is "changing" the landscape in any way. The game's selling point is that they are finally marking off checkboxes of mechanics/features that have been industry standard in the genre for the last decade and a half.

The game itself is basically a modernized version of Shadow of the Colossus.

@dotWithShoes: what was the first souls game ?

I don't believe that anyone will now start making open world/RPG/action-adventure games in cel shade, that is so two thousand and late.

Were talking about a game made based on being limited by Wii U's capabilities. If you want to know where standards are being set, check Steam's Green Light from the last 5 years. So maybe it will be the new standard for hand held games, cause indies and consoles are better off.

I've seen a ton of BotW, and yes there are interesting aspects added into the open world, like giving Link a way to use physics, the hot/cold gauge, and the horse collecting thing. But all they did was push the boundaries of what Zelda can be by doing standards already set by others, and then they sprinkled a little bit of their magic on top. The map might be huge, but we've seen that the huge blob in the middle is a ton of empty fields where you fight non-critical fights and unless you earn some kind of XP, Hearts, or crafting material from these fights, I don't see the purpose in such a big map.

Honestly, I want BotW, and at that time thought it would be amazing, but it is unclear how great it will actually be. While Horizon only seeing maybe an hours worth, and it is clear that it is something special, and since its a brand new IP, it started from scratch yet climbed so high.

Hmmmmm.

--------

Maybe? I mean it looks great but to set a new standard seems to usually require to do (almost) everything "right" (aka, what GTA games usually do) and/or have a couple of things in there no one else ever did (ie, Witcher 3 and it's quests which to this day are applauded by gamers WW).

It may be the case for the game or not, it certainly looks like a mountain of fun to play at the very least but we'll find out soon enough either way.

And we musn't forget that the current open world kings (R*) are launching RDR2 too (man 2017 is gonna be a crazy good year), which may or may not keep that status quo for R*.