Contrast with The Witcher 3, where you still can have moments of peace as you make your way through the world, but the density of environments to explore, enemies to fight and NPCs to interact with is much higher, and every time I play it feels like I have made some meaningful progress.
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Games that are content-dense at least give you something to do each moment you are playing. I don't want to be handheld, of course, but something more than a kiss on the head and a boot out the door would be nice. Thus, wandering between vast distances where nothing happens, or being expected to look around to find things to do instead of being given easy direction to progress, feels like a waste of time. When my daughter is awake, I am with her, so the amount of disposable time I have to play video games becomes much more valuable to me.
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But the unfortunate reality is that this sort of game - not just BOTW, but open-world games as a whole - simply do not offer enough return for investment when your gametime is limited by things like family, children and work. I think there may have been a time in my life when I agreed with you, when I could revel in exploration and take my time looking in every nook to find the care and detail so obviously lavished on the game, and Breath of the Wild may have been one of my favorite games of all tone. It makes it so even after 60 hours, you'll still have some new area to explore that keeps things fresh, instead of having *seen* most of the game already. I think if you go and just try and unlock all the areas quickly, you're going to lose a lot of the wonder of exploration, or at least, you're gonna basically prematurely blow your 'exploration awe' load too quickly. But I think they should address that part rather than shrinking the game instead.ĮDIT: Oh yea, I also think the experience can differ a lot depending on how you play it. I agree with your complaint about lack of unique rewards, that's something I definitely want to see improved upon(better enemy variety as well). A small and dense map would have made it a very different game entirely. Everything was designed around this, from the mechanics, the world design, even down to the more ambient music score that provided an 'air' to the experience rather than some strong repeating melody. Except it's so big that even when you do get there, there's so much more to the surrounding area you could never see before and it's all this new stuff to discover.īOTW was actually really clever in that, kind of 'hiding' a lot of different areas and locations and whatnot through clever topological design.Īnd the huge size also helps make the game just feel wide open and full of possibility, which is really what the entire intent was. It makes those distant views provide a sense of 'awe' and anticipation for what may lie there when you get there. It makes it feel more like an adventure, like going to a new place means something, rather than just traveling 100m and suddenly being in some completely different area. There's value in things being spread out. It's actually a good example of why this whole notion of open world games needing to be 'content dense' isn't all that valid to me. I get why you feel that way, but I feel it was a really important part of making the game as special as it was.