LogFAQs > #905614099

Epyo posted...

It can't be that both sides are wrong, it must a player personality thing

You're off here

There are lots of player personalities who like and dislike certain aspects of open world games, but BOTW is designed differently than those. The main thing is that it IS designed. Every inch of the world is intentionally designed and hand placed by a designer. Most importantly, every interaction is intentionally designed. There is this concept of emergent gameplay where different systems collide to create unexpected results. BOTW has none of that. The devs know about literally everything that happens in the game because they went through and tweaked it all themselves. And so the designer's opinion is felt constantly in every part of the game.

That's the key thing that makes this game way different than any other game, and that's why lots of people like it. A kid on a supervised playground is gonna have way more fun than a kid thrown in the middle of a forest. People say they want a big world where they can do anything, but what they really want is a small manageable set of designed toys to play with, and an authority figure watching them in case they do something wrong. It's the most childlike form of play, an illusion of freedom.

Other open world games focus on either lots of emergent systems (Just Cause, Minecraft) to have a kind of experimental vibe, or on skinner box style loops (Ubisoft, Elder Scrolls) for a more addictive/completionist vibe.

Personally this is why BOTW feels boring as hell to me. I'm all for deeply opinionated games, but the design of this game is just bad. The mechanics are meh, the world is bland. But unlike other open world games, which often have all those flaws, there's no room for me to make my own fun. They just didn't make this game for me at all. I'm sure if you love collecting apples and killing the same moblin over and over it's great though.
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_foolmo_
2 + 2 = 4