Zareth posted...
I've heard it has the Scribblenauts problem, where you have all these options but all you really need is a jetpack and rocket launcher.
To be fair, that's kind of inevitable in sandbox-ish games. It's virtually impossible to give players effectively limitless options but also balance those options perfectly (especially if you want them to be more than just reskins of each other), and if the options aren't perfectly balanced, players will optimize the fun out of the game. The same happened with TotK, in that aside from some specific building challenges (like the
Spirit Temple
), the only vehicle you ever really need is a hoverbike.
It's really, really hard to make a game that gives players significant freedom while also directly rewarding them for using that freedom. If you do too much to reward unusual solutions, you effectively force players to use them. If you do too little, there's no in-game incentive to use them. As such, the appeal of sandbox games is generally less that you have to exercise that freedom to beat the game and more that you have options to dick around on your own terms while doing so. They're games that are meant to be played *with*, more so than played *through*.