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ganondoodle · 4 months

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some ramblings about the overworld and reusing of the map in totk

i was one of the people that didnt mind revisiting the same map bc i loved the world and would gladly rexplore it all again, i was confident theyd change it up so it felt fresh again .. but it really wasnt, but even if it wasnt i was fine with it bc i was sure theyd HAD to use the build up from botw, with the shiekah and yiga alone theres so much you could do, and a captivating story or characters are more important than any map change to me-

and then, most changes on the surface were artificially stuck onto the world, like some small boulders the size of a large boulder stuck onto a wall, weirdly fusing with it (but thats not relevant and doesnt have a reason either) which really doesnt change anything much, some caves and holes in the ground but nothing really substantial at all, the most changed was death mountain and the gerudo city (while the regions themselves didnt really change either .. no in any interesting way at least to the extend i saw in my what 200+ hours)

im no game dev expert but do know a little and changing up a model and breaking stuff off really isnt THAT much to do so i really dont understand why they dotted the world with useless rocks and little caves that are all extremely similar instead, but then change stuff that is WEIRD to change and would have been easier to leave as it was- like the shrine of life being scraped of the walls, or smoothing over the places were shiekah towers were in botw like they never existed in the first place, and then sometimes adding something for no reason (like apparetly theres a new useless tiny ruin on the akkala fortress??? why?? how?? and i heard someone say they changed how the big hole in one of the peaks of the big mountains looked, like the icy blue texture was removed?? i dont know if i went there in my playthrough but i dont doubt it lol) and instead of the holes of the big shiekah tech pillars being left its just .. filled up with dirt, just like the bit of the calamity ganon arena being jsut rock now and the pit being fileld with just dirt as well-

and theres MORE changes that are arguably MORE time consuming to do but are both unnecessary to do and also WEIRD, erase everything shiekah and say it all vanished into thin air while theres clearly guardian parts in the new, shittier, towers and one decayed left at the hateno institue, the ancient furnace isnt just GONE its filled with rocks that had no way to get there naturally

but then the rest of the world is pretty much the same, with very little changes and if its plopped onto it without actualyl meaning anything, even inconvenience you too, like the path to hateno being blocked by a fortress of monsters so you cant get there via horse, and even if you clear them out, with or without the quest, they just come back with the bloodmoon, i thoguht if i do it with the quest theyd be gone for good and clear the path again, but NO you participating in the fight means nothing but another checkmark bc they will redo it over and over and it will be blocked again anyway (but then the "pirates" which are also a monster fortress .... dont come back ... waht) or the blockage of the bridge at the twin mountains too, you cant actually change anything, the one in the gerudo valley is also just another weird blockage, do you want to force me to build stuff? no thanks ill just walk then and be annoyed about it bc thats way easier

(sidenote, satori being reduced to someone pointing at caves that doesnt even tell you if you did them already or not is so disrespectful, i loved satori bc it wasnt some player helper but a strange and beautiful being, it jsut lived there and you had to be careful to even catch a glimps of it, the atmosphere around it being creepy and otherworldly you dont know what its really capable of, like you are staring at a godly being you cannot talk to but it accepts you when you are there and leaves as soon as you let go of it.... and nows its just a cave pointer...)

so, especially if you played botw, it all very much feels like a retread but with little sprinkles and weird changes (or outright annoying ones like the shrine of life being licked of the walls) here and there and othertimes just plain annoying inconveniences, and then the main points of your quest are .... in the same spot as in botw as well, its at rito village, death mountain, gerudo town, zoras village ... its repetition is entirely unnecessary, you had interesting locations all over the map, put a temple into or under akkala fortress my god that things i BUILD for that, anything in akkala really, put another one high into the mountains, in or UNDER hateno?? the krog forest or the deku tree being one?? kakariko??? no ?? it jsut had to affect each species exactly where they are .. again, and even the temples are there so its not even a thing made there affects the town nearest but still far away enough to be different or the terrain literally leveled the ground and they are gonna have to look to settle elsewhere (the closest is gerudo town but like ... is it), its not just repetetive but also makes the regions feel WAY more disconnected and self contained, none of them care about each other or do anything but defend against the thing that conveniently affects them directly at the same place again and the activities are largely the same too, find shrine find krog

ok then we got the sky, .. which is largely empty with just some repeating minibosses or some get crystal to there thing, its empty and barren of life, not a single NPC ever goes up into the sky aside from two dungeons companions, despite them already using the sonau tech ballooons and what not and having literal bird people there AND being literally obsessed with anything sonau, rarely theres a construct there, a robot with little to tell and not really doing anything, the ruins dont tell a story either, its just .. there

then theres the underground and omg its just as big as the overworld map! and then the .. terrain and look of it is almost always the same (only in the gerudo region is it a little more sandy) with the same kind of sonau thingies being the same everywhere that dont even LOOK ancient, it bothers me so much, are you telling me this building has been here for well over 10 THOUSAND YEARS?? and then the lightroots ... are in the same spot as the shrines .. so its not even a discovery really bc you know where shrine or root is now .. and then every more important place is literally beneath surface important places (even under taburasa .. the town you newly built in botw) which again .. isnt really a discovery then, and then the map itself is just the surface map but inverted, which to some may be a neat thing but, to me ... so its the surface AGAIN but more boring bc it doesnt have any regional differences too and then they have the gall to put the old amiibo stuff there (the labyrinths??? you go throguh all that and its just the renamed same armor from botws DLC??? how dare you), or some crystal things for your battery that are just another currency that has to be exchanged twice to specific people to be most useful- and the big weird magician statues ?? man idk if i should help this one, the giant mech like statue is giving me the creeps, and how the hell is it talking through the statues of thE GODDESS??? HUH´? and then it turns out its just a guys that sells you largely useless stuff for yet another currency you can only use at few specific spots

even the enemies are the same aside from mini- and gigamas, it even repeats the enemies from the surface

the best part of the underground/surface are the yiga, and even they are made kinda boring, in the underground its little outposts that give you some crystal currency and blueprints for autobuild i bet you arent ever gonna use, the most valuable thing is their little diaries and on the bigger spots koga (he is surperior to every single other character, sorry gan) but even kogas questline is like .. removed from everything else, its its own contained thing ocne again ... the arenas that are kinda fun to do but ultimately

you have a barely changed map from botw, a largely empty sky with some rather boring shrines or minibosses that get used over and over and no story to tell really, and then the entire map of the surface again with important points and shrine points being repeated as well

and then you get option over option to skip any traversal of all that too, with ultrahand and the towers and the ceiling jump and fast travel its a repetetive map twice and one largely empty with out skipping from point a to point b

i know how difficult game dev is, but in all those years with a giant team and money this is it? and not even the story has anything to go for? how do you take the addictive exploration of botw and turn it boring

anyway, yet another ramble taking me the entire evenign to write, again, this is not meant as blind hatred but an expression of my feelings and thoughts about it and for this one why it felt so weird and boring to explore ... the thing i like so much about botw ..

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rants #idk i suddendly thought about more stuff to rant about #sorry to do this so much and so long #i wanna move one for now and work on my comic again #... how did this take me two hours to write #also please i know i talk alot about it but theres so much to rant about #that i will never understand how they came up with doing it like this #when there were so many options to do it better #to go out of your way to make something less interesting???huh??

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