Is Tears of the Kingdom Too Open?

[@RealHud]

Thinking about it, I think the Great Plateau is a perfect example of how to balance freedom and good pacing. You can't leave the Great Plateau until you complete all 4 Shrines, which is a form of restriction, but you can do them in any order, and it barely feels unnatural. You can go anywhere you want on the Plateau, but nowhere outside of it. This way the player can't truly sequence break the game, but they also have a whole lot of freedom This is how I wished Tears of the Kingdom, or even Breath of the Wild, continued. Allowing the player to explore certain regions of the map to the fullest extent, but still having a requirement to move on to the next region. For example, What if in order to access the Gerudo Region, you were forced to break a material that's only breakable with Yunobo's Sage Ability (Like Marbled Rock Roast). This would guarentee that the player does the Gerudo questline after the questline in Eldin, which would allow them to properly balance enemy difficulty and story pacing in general. If they did something like this, they could also put the earlier Geoglyphs inside of the regions accessible earlier in the game, allowing the story to be unlocked in a more well-paced way. They could still allow the player to explore any accessible region in its entirety, having access to any Shrines or Quests in the region, while also being able to have a more accurate idea of the players progress, similar to the way you would unlock Pieces of Hearts in older Zelda titles. Just a thought I had recently that I didn't think about while writing the script for the video.

[@kevinh6008]

That's basically the way older games were locked like Link to the Past. It's just an extension of the lock and key formula. There are other ways to lock areas which BotW tried to do like putting more difficult enemies in an area (difficulty locking) or requiring the player to master a certain skill in the game (skill locking). Both TotK and BotW have areas that require a certain amount of hearts or stamina, which I call progress locking.

[@kevinh6008]

Basically, these are genius games. All the different kinds of locking have upsides and downsides and they did a good job of blending them together in a cohesive way. I think BotW did a better job of difficulty locking, like Hyrule Field is inaccessible at first due to the difficulty of the guardians at the beginning of the game.

[@falconblack]

That pretty much what Majora's Mask did

[@ViewtifulBeau]

I just wish there was more density. I get its rebuilding of a post apocalypse but it just feels so barren. The Sky and Depths feel this way as well. Like, I don't get excited when i see a Shrine or a Korok after 117 times. But if I see like, Kilton, I'm like, OOOOOOO! Honestly it kinda feels like the end of the PS1 era where the worlds were big but all the cool stuff was in towns. Hopefully in the future we can get all this stuff hashed out. I think we can.

[@brunoaraujoespin]

it’s basically a sandbox with grinding

[@created3612]

Yeah I’ve been saying this for a while. The game’s biggest flaw is it’s open nature, because puzzle quality, storytelling, enemy variety, and exploration to an extent suffer as a result of it. It’s easy to get anywhere, you can easily cheese puzzles and bosses, you can get spoiled for the story, and enemies are mostly the same at all regions to cater to any player’s direction. There’s definitely a sweet spot in which you can have both openness and linearity. If there was a spectrum, this game and Skyward Sword are both at opposite ends, and they’re both flawed because of that.

[@sagoruzemo9557]

I's d say that the wide ranging enemy dificulty is a great thing, i love when a game creates natural that gate you from late game areas by having strong enemies that block your path unless you are crafty or skilled enough to beat them (which should he rewarded).

[@ShadowWizard224]

I played Breath of the Wild first and when I played Tears of the Kingdom it was interesting to see how the areas changed. I love how open and free the entire over world was from the sky islands to the surface to the depths. For the first 50 hours of gameplay I didn’t do a single dungeon and instead just wandered and explored the islands surface and depths, uncovered over 60 shrines, activated all the towers, upgraded gear equipment and armor, activated over 20 lightroots, and completed many side quests all before even attempting any dungeons at all. The first dungeon I ended up doing was the water temple 😂😂 I ended up at Zoras domain well into the game and I thought it would be a good time to get back to the main objective and story lol but that’s how free and open the world truly is. Breath of the Wild has a more well balanced story but Tears of the Kingdom has superior gameplay, abilities, and fighting mechanics.

[@michaellane5381]

A few things: 1. Scaling does actually happen, the difference from BotW is that "access" is prioritized "better" in a way which made difficulty take a nosedive. 2. I think the real issue is "gatekeeping" rather than "exploration", for example the sandstorm affects nothing outside Gerudo Desert while the blizzard affects nothing outside Hebra, the only real exceptions to this are the red Goron corrupted rocks and the 1 or 2 lightning puzzle doors in outer Gerudo Zones... One way to fix this would have been to have numerous places with creatures like Muck-Like's or Gibdo far afield, or add armories on the final boss path with tribal(champion) sealing mechanisms. 3. You actually have more than 1 off conversation leading to regional phenomena, each stable leads you back to Rito until you finish it unless they are leading you to specific sidequests first... And change to your current champion quest rather reliably noticably... I know because i intentionally delayed both Paraglider and Champion quests much longer than i probably should have. Ideally i think the game just needed more locations like the Zora waterworks/whale ship and more sidequests like monster extermination that change/activate when you finish quests elsewhere, and the tears should have been locked in the forgotten temple unless you find them in order(so sure i find memory 7 but i can't "see" it until i finish 1-6, perhaps by activating a "shrine" entrance in the corresponding image in the temple, which needs completing(heck they could have given us controllable Zelda inside like the AC games).

[@tajlawrence9702]

I feel like that they should remaster all the old games like tp, ww, and what not and if they get good sales change it a little bit or not dont

[@jamiecal11]

Without watching the vid yet - yes, its too open. If this is the content they're gonna offer, then its much better to scale down and focus more.

[@N3207H05]

when it comes to how open the game ist my biggest problem ist ist difficulty lvl. early on everything one shots you, i was happy when i came to a point where i could take a hit from silver enemies so i could at least heal. i always cheesed my way through bigger groups with puffshrooms and muddle buds. but i feel like thats the only way to do it cause often you would otherwise waste your weapons on enemies. i would need to hit some silver bokoblin for like 30 sec straight breaking 2 weapons sometimes. A breaking point for me was once i could concistenly do the lionel arena with my laser drone. with the upgraded babarian armor the silver lionel bow and horns and the master sword suddenly the game becomes super easy. also having enough material to use builds in fights. i feel like there is actually only a rly small window where the gmae feels balanced because now i barely need to heal myself, getting hit like 10 times doesnt rly matter. i dont know why they made armor scale the way it does. it goes from like 5 % dmg negation to like 95%. why not make it from like 20% to 60%. would make it so not everything oneshots you early while being not immortal later.

[@SaumBodhi]

Finding a way to mesh this style with a return to some key aspects of a metroidvania would be the best. They did it with the runes. But we only get 4, and some less significant ones that make things easier or just add little details to the game (photography). We get them all mostly right at the start. After this it's collecting hearts, stamina, and batteries. In the previous game, every suite, every sword, every shield had meaning to it and felt like a huge piece had been attained. Key items like hookshot and the ocarina all the same. Parts of the map were locked. How can you do that now? You cant have a series of great plateau type places

[@adrianbrave6044]

A game can still have a structured path of progress while being open-ended. It is stupid to give over all the transformative abilities at the start of the game.

[@annaczgli2983]

No. It's fine for me. To each their own.

[@Unyx22]

I think it would make TOTK a lot better if each dungeon was set at a different difficulty level to access and complete. Especially if the game leads you in a certain direction first, having each dungeon's sage make the next dungeon exponentially easier would make newcomers much more inclined to follow the intended path, while veterans could do them in any order if they're good enough. It would also be cool if during Gloom's Lair, you had to break into Ganon's chamber while more enemies just keep spawning, making it more of an "avoid them" mission than a "kill them all". You can still fight if you want, but it won't do much good other than materials. After you break through the barrier, having another chamber with the bosses, which you can skip like normal if you have the sages, would make it much more intense. A harder difficulty mode with a timer that starts when you enter the Hyrule Castle Chasm would make the end sequence better too, making it so you can't just wait 10 minutes for your Master Sword to recharge. Especially if it's based on Ganon sensing you and making final preparations, if you go fast enough maybe you can skip the enemies and part or all of the boss section. In BOTW, Sidon hails you from the bridge at the entrance to the domain, and I wish something similar happened in TOTK, where an NPC from the next intended area came to Lookout Landing to find you, rather than Purah guiding you wherever she feels like at the moment. It would make it more immersive than a line of dialogue, in my opinion. This may be controversial to some, but I miss the tests of strength from BOTW. I wish there were still some of the same types of shrines in TOTK, maybe not as many, but 5 tests of strength scattered around the map. Especially if instead of scaling based on the shrine itself, the difficulty scaled from Guardian Scout I to IV, then Stalker or Skywatcher, based on how many bosses you killed and how many hearts you have. Weapons and decent rewards would be necessary, but probably wouldn't be that hard to implement. (If you couldn't tell, I've thought a lot about this.) Then there's the issue with the Master Sword. In BOTW, you could upgrade it with DLC, making it stronger and more durable. In TOTK, there is nothing like that. If there was a way to upgrade it by doing tests of skill like BOTW, or even by finding ultra-rare materials (from bosses?) and upgrading it great-fairy style, it would fix the problem for me. To add to this, if breaking weapons gave you materials to fix or upgrade other weapons, that would also fix the durability system, which is a problem for many people including myself. If the game was trying to be more linear, it could have dropped the Dragon Tears one at a time, like it did with the last one. Also, @DucksAreYellow did several video essays about TOTK, and he said something about the Tears that I felt deeply. After finishing that quest, only Impa mentions that Zelda is a dragon, and not a single NPC does a thing about it. Also, the sages don't know Zelda is fake, despite having fought her side-by-side with Link. Sorry for the mile-long comment, I like talking about this :/

[@sonicsillies]

yessss i think the most frustrating thing is that it's SO open, the story can be revealed to you out of order 😭 yes, there's the spot where you can find the order of the glyphs, but a lot of people didn't get that (i only got it because someone told me LOL). it makes me so sad that some people got the story spoiled for them by seeing zelda as the dragon as one of the first cutscenes. it definitely doesnt have the same impact that way. i love totk but it is just a LOTTT, and i probably wont replay it again for a long time. botw has more replayability than totk, in my opinion. ANYWAYS! its still an amazing game and this is an amazing vid, you definitely deserve more subs! 🫶🏻

[@RealHud]

Yeah I did my first playthrough of TOTK completely blind and had no idea about the order since nobody else told me

[@christophernash8166]

Its a great game, but it's too open. That's why I think playing BOTW first is important. TOTK is not made for a person who has never played BOTW. I have a few gripes that I can look over as a determined player, but I wish they introduced the steering stick and auto build more easily and earlier in the game. They could make Purah say the auto build is in the castle and that would make it a small challenge, but at least you know it exists and where it may be located.

[@Matthew-Martinsson]

I think people are overreacting to everything nowadays.... i enjoy it overall.

[@remixtheidiot5771]

comparatively, the game is less open than BotW, when I think TotK should have been equally or more open. -SPOILERS AHEAD- i hate the game's intro very much. an unskippable 10 minute long walking simulator you'd expect to see from other triple a's but NOT nintendo. Technically a shorter intro sequencd than Twilight Princess, but still incredibly annoying on replays. it sets an expectation that the game would be more linear and story driven and goes out of its way to NEVER follow through with it. This is the only walking simulator section in the game, and frankly, the story is merely a sidegrade from BotW for me. It is cool that there's a 5th dungeon and you can sequence break your way there for your first dungeon, you can even go straight to ganon... But the hoops you have to go to before you can do those cool exploration stuff. The walking simulator. The Great Sky Island which sucks because you're forced to explore it in a fixed order, and then lastly the back and forth you have to go through just to get the paraglider. The game's tutorial and the game's intro only truly ends at your acquisition of the paraglider. The game is relatively open after that. Mineru locks you out without activating a certain main story questline first and you'll die by gravity if you try to go for ganon without the glider. That's what glitches are for I suppose. Okay so technically it's only the intro that's way too handholdy and linear that I'm complaining about... tl;dr BotW's intro was better. The game basically starts as soon as you leave the shrine of ressurection there which is way more fun than whatever the heck TotK's opening sequence was... Long winded and overly narrative when it didn't need to be. It sets the wrong expectations which leads to disappointment to many. Myself included. TotK isn't too open. It simply set a wrong expectation that the game would be more linear and narrative.