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dustward · 9 months

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This is the final part, I swear. Here I’ll talk about my favorite bit of the game and what wound up the most disappointing. Changes or lackthereof is one thing, but squandered potential, which is what all these posts ultimately aim to point out, feels the worst.

I wisely decided to shelf the main quest once Purah told me to check out Hyrule Castle (again, this was after finding Zelda and the Master Sword). I poked at the depths and the most interesting looking parts of the Sky Islands, including the thundercloud section. I was confounded with how to progress through that area, briefly convinced it was meant to be the hardest part of the game but then shortly after realizing I must’ve skipped a step somewhere. Nonetheless I pressed on through the near-zero visibility, basing my progression path on following the storm’s inward curve (I started at the very furthest edge). Extremely glad I did it this way, as I really enjoyed pushing through, that old feeling of being somewhere I knew I shouldn’t be really made reaching Dragonhead Island a satisfying win and my favorite gameplay-related venture. Sucks that it lead to my least favorite “dungeon” filled with fuse mechanic bs. And then I later found out this was a main quest destination that involved a lengthy detour I’m *extremely* glad I skipped over in Kakariko.

The funny thing is, I almost didn’t do Thunderhead. I forced myself to check it out, to give the Sky Isles at least one quick pass. To comb through the depths at all after that initial peak in the first 15 hours that led to finding auto-build. And so, let me end off on my last issue of the game and probably the most damming one of all: Re-using the overworld.

It wasn’t the fact it was still there to venture around in. It was the fact the lion’s share of the content was also still there. Unsure how many share my sentiment, but with a new game I’d very much like to explore new areas, unless the changes to the overworld were drastic enough - and they weren’t. There was a bunch of new rocks to ascend through in the hilltops. Hateno had some weird..mushroom thing going on (enjoyed the swarms of frogs implying Zelda’s choice to live there sidenote). Sometimes, Zonai and Bokoblins would fight each other, and that’s about it. Meanwhile: every cave’s found on the surface. Every well. Every civilian. Every Main Quest starts here. Most Shrines/koroks, too (with only a handful of each found in the Sky Isles)

The most critical rewards were all still on the damn overworld!! The ones most crucial to player progression!!!! Why not put koroks in the depths? Why not Shrines? Couldn’t have a mix of them and lightroots for some “logical” reason? Little of the game is logical when you have lasers and rockets and Yiga riding around on scooters. Making all the major finds of the depths focused on auto-build and zonai materials was a big mistake. How is the giant hollow underground not a place to find caves in? How do none of the chasms themselves lead to a cave? How did they manage double Hyrule’s size and not think to put a settlement or two down there?????

I wanted to check out the depths and sky isles far earlier, but I needed my stamina, I needed some bulk, and I absolutely needed some inventory slot upgrades. By the time I did all that via heavily repeated/low effort content around the overworld - I was ready to put the game down, and I’d only done the Rito quest by that point.

In my ideal game, the one Nintendo never would’ve made, you’d of started in the depths, with a tutorial section and slow progression until you main quest’d enough to be allowed access to the surface, which would’ve had actual, meaningful time to become more ruined from Ganondorf’s influence. It wouldn’t have been a far stretch to imagine the various races flee underground. Then you could more easily slip in more unique, menacing enemies up top while keeping all the old favorites underground. The natural, wall-like barriers of the underground would’ve easily kept players funneled while still giving them a ton of wiggle room for how they approached the different regions and what order to do so.

As for the Sky Isles, they were similarly disappointing when I realized most of what I was seeing was a handful of sky dives i did within 2-3 tries (that is, getting the new record times) and the same layouts of islands that led to good old Nothing Shrines. It probably wasn’t feasible, but I wonder if they could’ve had even larger chunk of Hyrule detach and float up into the sky, as a clearcut way of hiding away more difficult content (shrines, mini-bosses, etc.)

Given Link’s new sky-friendly momentum via Ubisoft Towers and Tulin’s gust (which while not as great as Revali’s I still concede was pretty useful), you’d think they’d be careful with how to design certain challenges. And yet, all too often I’d find myself getting to shrines and other locations via paraglider that I was meant to struggle to reach on the ground via a combat gauntlet, an environmental puzzle, or a maze of sorts.

The scope-creep of the world definitely outpaced anything the devs were capable of, and I’m wondering why they overreached so much when they didn’t have enough enemy variety, suitable rewards, or unique structures/layouts to apply to them.

110 hours spent on Bloat of the Wild 2, Tedious of the Kingdom. If there winds up a third game for this saga, I won’t be getting it.

#dustward played botw2 #dusty text #botw2 spoilers

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