Which was the better open world game: Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild?

[Jakisthe]

This gets repeated a lot and its not true 90% of the time. It may be easier to just wack the mobs until the health bar is gone, but the world of BotW sets up traps for mobs on its own, and making use of them clears encounters faster a lot of the time.

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It's very true. It takes longer to the same end, it's pretty clunky, and the combat itself, just on its own merits as a starting point, limited, unvaried, and too often worse than pointless. It honestly has some of the worst combat I've ever seen in a modern OW game. There aren't *nearly* enough organic setups in the world to make trying to engage like that anywhere close to worthwhile a meaningful portion of the time. If someone told me that they found it just as practical to do that stuff compared to straightforward wacking, I'd call them a liar. It's so, so, so much less effective as to be utterly absurd.

 

[DDrift]

Elden Ring for sure, however for ER exist as today, BotW had to exist.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

I mean the combat variety is insane yeah, but those posters were arguing that the game is pretty much solely about combat. And all of those things you list are part of the combat system.

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I think its still an exploration heavy game just like Dark Souls, whether that means interpreting the larger map or finding secrets in the more intricate dungeon level designs. Scary new enemy types and combinations at choke points encourage other means of approach and problem solving, but yeah the main cause of death is going to be because you fought something or accidentally rolled off a cliff. The whole "its just combat" reduction has never been fair of their games despite it being integral. Dangerous things in general, circumventing traps, poison swamps, precarious platforming or invisible platforms etc are also not "combat".

 

[Pancracio17]

BotW undermined itself by giving the player too many weapon slots which allowed for hoarding. The weapon durability system would have been less of an issue if players were actually forced to interact with it more, not less, because that would then require them to use other means when engaging with combat. Even just the starting 8 slots was too many after the Plateau as weapon quality jumped big time once you explored just a little bit. Combat in the opening hours of BotW is fantastic because it can be frantic and crazy as your shitty twig or rusty sword or club breaks and you have to scramble to find something to attack enemies with. Figuring out the best ways to use the runes and environment to deal with them instead. But as you progress you not only find better weapons that kill faster, last longer, but you also are able to blow up your inventory so you can carry a shit ton of them. Easily allowing you to hoard those really nice weapons for when you really need them, but then you never actually use them as the game throws good enough weapons at you constantly to keep you going.

I think most people would have less anxiety of weapons breaking if they actually had to deal with it more in an actually pressing manner and not in "ohh no that cool looking weapon I really like is going to break and I'll have to use one of the other dozen bland ones I have in my pack," and were thus less inclined or able to become attached or comfortable in their inventory. Link too comfortably is able to carry around an absolutely massive arsenal of weapons.

It's one of the reason the Master Trials are so fun and challenging because they were designed around extremely limited resources that players have to be very precise with to get the very most out of each weapon to complete the trials. You can't just rely on the weapons each trial gives you, you have to come up with other ways of killing enemies as you'll never have enough hits with the weapons you get to deal with all of them.

There's a lot of ways they can improve it beyond that too. Giving players more agency in obtaining the weapons they like would be useful. Introducing a crafting system of a kind that let players combine excess weapons together, and with other items, to create better ones would certainly help. All the extra weapons that drop at the end of fights would actually be useful and players who really like a certain type of weapon would have some means of obtaining it beyond luck or going to specific spawn points.

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Agreed on all counts. BotWs big flaw is the balance of it all. The game shouldve leaned more into the survival aspect of it. The great plateu is absolutely fantastic, and the game, while still great, does wane when you start getting really powerful.

 

[astro]

Explore for what? More combat? Items that aid me in combat? Exactly.

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Have you ever agreed with the common opinion of BotW fans that "exploration for the fun of it" is a big pull?

It doesn't really matter when the exploration is this good.

Calling this game "one note" is plain silly. Some of you seem to be taking the polll results pretty badly.

 

[Ra]

Elden Ring is not "one note" at all.

As above, it has variety in spades. Builds, weapons, spells, ashes, incantations, spirit summons, PvP, co-op, tonnes of unique areas, lots of different enemies, varied boss encounters, etc...

There is nothing "one note" about it, that's honestly a little ridiculous.

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I'm not sure why you quoted me with the "one note" comment, I didn't make it.

Everything you listed... is tied to killing enemies. What does any of it have to do with the open world? The world is just traveling from kill to kill, from death to death. That's all I'm saying. I have 100 hours in it, obviously I like the game. It's great

But in a "what is the best open world game" discussion, the game where you can't even open a door or chest from a crouched position isn't super high on my list. I think of games like the Deus Ex series and how you approach scenarios... Elden Ring pales in comparison.

Having the freedom to go anywhere, does not make a game a top-tier open world game, not in my small dimension where I get to judge things by myself.

 

[Nameless]

Explore for what? More combat? Items that aid me in combat? Exactly.

Big, jaw dropping underground cavern with stars. "Well, it's time to kill more shit!"

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As I covered earlier part of the joy in exploring Elden ring is unpacking its extensive history, lore, worldbuilding, side quests/character interactions etc.... There's puzzle solving, platforming. As great as the combat is, it's never been the primary draw of FromSoft games for me.

 

[YohraUtopia]

I have actually wanted to make a thread on this (and some other things) for a while since the comparison comes up so often. I really disagree with what I'm reading as the general sentiment of Elden Ring as better than BotW. I'm really enjoying Elden Ring but it's actually making me appreciate some of the more controversial design decisions in BotW. For example, there are a lot of people who complain about replacing long, complex dungeons in Zelda with the piecemeal shrines and just the four limited size divine beast dungeons plus Hyrule Castle (and technically the four are optional as are most shrines.) I never agreed with this argument but playing Elden Ring has helped me see why. Landscape puzzles and then small site specific puzzles/challenges are much more consonant with the 'go anywhere/do anything/all bets are off' open world design that BotW had and I think ER is going for. ER shines in many places when it plays like this and then its like it reverts when you hit one of the big legacy dungeons or whatever. These tear that above spirit completely out and its like your thrown back into a different game. I now see why the BotW team went with the decision to basically excise / minimize dungeons and spread puzzles throughout the open world. I wish ER was much more like that.

Relatedly, especially in dungeons From "puzzles" aren't really puzzles. Like you have six ledges you can hop off and only 1 is really 'the right' one is just dumb trial and error and its very grating. (Again, I'm loving Elden Ring but these are the things that stand out in the comparison.) Whereas in BotW even for some of the hardest puzzles, there is a logic to it; the game doesn't tell you what to do - in this way they are very similar - but it is designed such that if you really examine your tools and the environment and what is being asked of you, you can figure out a genuine puzzle with patience and inquiry as opposed to either brute trial and error or googling. Interestingly, the really tough fights in ER are puzzles in that manner. You might have to do them several times but there's usually some strategies and tricks that you can work out. So I know ER could be more like that and am disappointed it is not.

Finally, while ER is lore heavy to say the least and full of just fantastical ideas and concepts, both games are fairly narratively simple unless you're really digging in. However, for all the freedom that ER provides, whenever you essentially cross one of the storylines in progress or encounter a new NPC, it again feels like you're tripping over a very weird, very invisible, and very inscrutable straight line in what is supposed to be an open-ended game. There is no amount of lore reading that could guide you through those long complex storylines; you basically have to use a guide (even the in-game messages hardly suffice.) And this too breaks the magic or what not of that really no-holds-barred-openness that both games are clearly going for. It further makes it feel (I'm not saying it is like this, but rather it engenders the feeling) that there really is a "right way" or several "right ways." One of the unsung/undersung achievements of BotW is that it never felt that way. You could just completely go off after the intro and genuinely do your adventure and it would only be in discussion with others, videos, etc. that you'd see how wildly different people's playthroughs were. I think this is trade off and no one has yet solved it. (To throw another game in the mix, I recently finished Horizon FW and they did some marvelous work to make the side narratives line up with the main narrative but by the end it really comes off the wheels if you like are going back to knock off some sidequest you ignored earlier; it just doesn't make narrative sense and is a bit jarring despite how much care they clearly put into the storytelling.) The BotW solution to this was simply that the narrative is so suggestive and the side bits so discontinuous that basically that jarring feeling never occurred. I think there's got to be a way to do more but being pretty far into ER I will say the ER method does worse (although with more.)

Basically, long story short (and I could go on, there's a lot of stuff): I wish ER had broken with the Souls past more thoroughly just as BotW did with the Ocarina of Time and all 3d Zeldas after formula. Not to ditch what is amazing but to genuinely go all in on something pretty new. BotW still feels new and as people have said here, that's despite it being quite old (at least in video game terms) at this point.

 

[Musubi]

Breath of the Wild was great because it took Zelda's too restrictive training wheels that seemed to get lodged harder and harder from game to game away. That openness, pardon the pun, was a breath of fresh air. The issue though, is that in that space, there's not a lot of memorable things to do or see. There's landmarks, but most of them are the "climb up here" sort of thing. Shrines are scattershot and all over the place, repeating light concepts over and over again.

Elden Ring, by contrast, offers an open world with a more handcrafted design. Areas that are empty at a distance likely have something interesting there with a unique drop or a boss that will drop from the sky. Dungeons are littered all over the place and while they too repeat concepts, there's far more variety in what they do and what they represent. They even try to justify the repeats with lore context, something Breath of the Wild never even tried. The main dungeons are a flex to dungeon design in other games.

The correct answer is Elden Ring, for it avoids a lot of the pitfalls of open world games where they feel open, yet barren. Lots of room but little to do in a memorable way. Elden Ring really tries to avoid that same problem, and I'm genuinely surprised that it succeeds at it more times than not. A new standard for what open world games need to incorporate in terms of spicing up the game map.

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You just nailed my biggest gripe with BotW. I adored how the world interacted with physics and let you be very clever at problem solving but there was rarely ever anything in the world that was interesting.

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Discovery is not fun when you spend a lot of time trying to get to a specific point only to discover korok seed #75

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I get why some people don't like them, but they're a perfect representation of what BOTW's open world is centered and designed around. It's not about rewarding the player with something material or mechanical, the reward is about the exploration and traversal of nature itself. You feel this inherent connection with people halfway around the globe who understood what makes that connection so compelling and why you would find yourself gravitating towards certain features without any guidance whatsoever.

In some ways I wonder if Death Stranding took some inspiration from BOTW in that respect. Finding a Korok always feels like a little message from the designers saying 'aha, we knew you would find this interesting' or 'teehee, we knew you would try to figure out how to get here' and I would always smile thinking 'aww, you got me'.

Death Stranding takes that to another level in which the players, not the developers, become the ones organically creating and fostering that shared experience in the world. I'm walking around going in a non-efficient direction and get stuck by a ravine only to see a bridge or rope from another player. Someone else in the world took the exact same seemingly random path as me and then decided to help the next person who might come that way. You can't get that kind of experience anywhere else.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

Having the freedom to go anywhere, does not make a game a top-tier open world game, not in my small dimension where I get to judge things by myself.

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A slightly closed or gradually opened up world as opposed to going anywhere has its own benefits. I mentioned earlier that the sense of wonder in Elden Rings open world comes somewhat from not really knowing just how big it is, what you're ultimately going to find, and I don't think any other Open World game has done quite like it.

 

[astro]

I'm not sure why you quoted me with the "one note" comment, I didn't make it.

Everything you listed... is tied to killing enemies. What does any of it have to do with the open world? The world is just traveling from kill to kill, from death to death. That's all I'm saying. I have 100 hours in it, obviously I like the game. It's great

But in a "what is the best open world game" discussion, the game where you can't even open a door or chest from a crouched position isn't super high on my list. I think of games like the Deus Ex series and how you approach scenarios... Elden Ring pales in comparison.

Having the freedom to go anywhere, does not make a game a top-tier open world game, not in my small dimension where I get to judge things by myself.

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You agreed with it.

And no it's not?

Planning how to best invest your stats is not "killing enemies".

Working out routes on the map and solving the puzzle of how to reach a place is not "killing enemies"

Working out your build, theroy crafting and working toward a goal for it is not "killing enemies".

Piecing the lore together by interacting with NPCs and reading the lore tabs is not "killing enemies".

Figuring out uses for items or hunting for crafting materials is not "killing enemies"

Etc...

To be good at killing enemies, you need to understand the various systems, you need to figure them out and plan well. Unless you just look up a build then you need to work all that stuff out too. There is loads here that isn't "just combat", and, again, calling it "one note" is very silly.

 

[srtrestre]

Calling this game "one note" is plain silly. Some of you seem to be taking the polll results pretty badly.

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lol I never once brought up the poll. We're literally making arguments as to which game we think is best (and it's the one with varied, fun gameplay that isn't all about killing)!

 

[Tan]

In Zelda the open world is the game

In Elden ring the open world is a canvas to paint the game on top of.


So Zelda.

 

[Fat4all]

id rather play the great bay temple followed by the water temple than the dungeons in botw

 

[BlueManifest]

I get why some people don't like them, but they're a perfect representation of what BOTW's open world is centered and designed around. It's not about rewarding the player with something material or mechanical, the reward is about the exploration and traversal of nature itself. You feel this inherent connection with people halfway around the globe who understood what makes that connection so compelling and why you would find yourself gravitating towards certain features without any explicit instructions or hints whatsoever.

In some ways I wonder if Death Stranding took some inspiration from BOTW in that respect. Finding a Korok always feels like a little message from the designers saying 'we knew you would find this interesting' or 'we knew you would try to figure out how to get here'. Death Stranding takes that to another level in which the players become the ones organically creating and fostering that shared experience.

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Like I said it can be fun to traverse and have a worthwhile reward for doing it

It's not like you have to have bad rewards in order for traversing to be fun

 

[Phendrift]

I think its still an exploration heavy game just like Dark Souls, whether that means interpreting the larger map or finding secrets in the more intricate dungeon level designs. Scary new enemy types and combinations at choke points encourage other means of approach and problem solving, but yeah the main cause of death is going to be because you fought something or accidentally rolled off a cliff. The whole "its just combat" reduction has never been fair of their games despite it being integral.

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I don't think the point is to downplay the combat, it's not "it's just combat…" it's "it's JUST combat" if that makes sense.

Everything in Elden Ring is about overcoming tough combat. Investing in your build and weapons through leveling up, gaining new spells and weapons from exploring, etc. Literally everything you're doing is to become stronger in combat.

In BotW it's not only combat, you also have the world interactivity and dynamic environment to consider. You aren't traveling through a flat world that serves as the stage for combat, you're engaging with the environment which will also put up a fight with rain, cold, heat, lightning etc. Then you also have environmental and shrine puzzles, many of which completely lack combat and have their own rewards.

Neither approach is right or wrong, I just believe that's what those posters are arguing. Not downplaying ER's combat focus, in fact quite the opposite, saying that if you aren't willing to invest in the combat system, there's not much else to do compared to BotW.

And that makes sense, ER's combat is way better and is totally capable of carrying a whole game. Just not everyone will click with that.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

id rather play the great bay temple followed by the water temple than the dungeons in botw

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But those are good dungeons

I don't think the point is to downplay the combat, it's not "it's just combat…" it's "it's JUST combat" if that makes sense.

Everything in Elden Ring is about overcoming tough combat. Investing in your build and weapons through leveling up, gaining new spells and weapons from exploring, etc. Literally everything you're doing is to become stronger in combat.

In BotW it's not only combat, you also have the world interactivity and dynamic environment to consider. You aren't traveling through a flat world that serves as the stage for combat, you're engaging with the environment which will also put up a fight with rain, cold, heat, lightning etc. Then you also have environmental and shrine puzzles, many of which completely lack combat and have their own rewards.

Neither approach is right or wrong, I just believe that's what those posters are arguing. Not downplaying ER's combat focus, in fact quite the opposite, saying that if you aren't willing to invest in the combat system, there's not much else to do compared to BotW.

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You're right, there is no wrong focus. I just think ER succeeds in its focus more than BOTW does when the encounters in Elden Ring are more a part of their world in terms of mechanics as well as lore than BOTW's problem solving largely being segmented into content types (ie. loading into a shrine does not feel like part of the world and the presentation doesn't change the whole game). Its the majority of its traditional puzzle content isolated away instead of being part of the world itself.

 

[BlueManifest]

id rather play the great bay temple followed by the water temple than the dungeons in botw

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I don't mind shrines, the amount just needs to be cut in half while also including traditional dungeons

 

[Axumar]

Honestly, it's still too early to have this discussion. I know it's been a month, but ER is so massive I'm sure many haven't finished it yet. I know I haven't, after like 60~ hours into it so far. I say we give people time to ruminate before making declarative statements.

I will say that I'm enjoying Elden Ring more than any game since Bloodborne, but it is pretty much Dark Souls with an open world. A good open world, but take away the open world and I would still enjoy it as much. BotW was hard to enjoy at times but that open world is just genius. The world is the game in BotW and exploration was everything. I can't say ER has that same focus, and reviews comparing the 2 were very misleading.

 

[astro]

lol I never once brought up the poll. We're literally making arguments as to which game we think is best (and it's the one with varied, fun gameplay that isn't all about killing)!

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The weird tone of some of the posts ITT, your own included, says it all tbh.

I don't like BotW as much because it didn't click with me, but I'm not going to say nonsense like "it's painfully one note" even if when I played it it might have felt that way to me because - regardless of how I felt about it - it clearly isn't.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Elden Ring.

Breath of the Wild will always feel like a big tech demo to me. They made a lot of huge changes to the Zelda formula, and Breath of the Wild feels like a fantastic sandbox for them to develop a full-fledged Zelda game in. I'm hoping that Breath of the Wild 2 ends up utilizing the sandbox a lot better now that their resources aren't allocated to the creation of that initial sandbox.

Elden Ring just feels like a natural leap from their previous games. They didn't just create a massive open world like Breath of the Wild did. They managed to keep the core of their games intact while doing it.

but it is pretty much Dark Souls with an open world

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I mean, I'd argue that if Breath of the Wild had just been Zelda with an open world, it would've been a better game.

Don't get me wrong, paragliding, climbing, and everything having physics is great and all. But give me some proper dungeons and enemy variety over the new stuff any day of the week.

 

[astro]

I don't think the point is to downplay the combat, it's not "it's just combat…" it's "it's JUST combat" if that makes sense.

Everything in Elden Ring is about overcoming tough combat. Investing in your build and weapons through leveling up, gaining new spells and weapons from exploring, etc. Literally everything you're doing is to become stronger in combat.

In BotW it's not only combat, you also have the world interactivity and dynamic environment to consider. You aren't traveling through a flat world that serves as the stage for combat, you're engaging with the environment which will also put up a fight with rain, cold, heat, lightning etc. Then you also have environmental and shrine puzzles, many of which completely lack combat and have their own rewards.

Neither approach is right or wrong, I just believe that's what those posters are arguing. Not downplaying ER's combat focus, in fact quite the opposite, saying that if you aren't willing to invest in the combat system, there's not much else to do compared to BotW.

And that makes sense, ER's combat is way better and is totally capable of carrying a whole game. Just not everyone will click with that.

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Sorry, but no... you cannot dismiss the variety of the ways you need to problem sovle and engage with creatively in Elden Ring just with "it all ends with combat therefore it isn't actually varied" lol.

 

[Sei]

My only problem with BotW. Why do my weapons break. Come on.

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

both are fine, but I'll go with Elden Ring.

The thing I like about BotW is the whole "if you think it might work, it will work" which is very impressive.

 

[Bradbatross]

Like I said it can be fun to traverse and have a worthwhile reward for doing it

It's not like you have to have bad rewards in order for traversing to be fun

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Elden Ring has neither though.

 

[Pancracio17]

It's very true. It takes longer to the same end, it's pretty clunky, and the combat itself, just on its own merits as a starting point, limited, unvaried, and too often worse than pointless. It honestly has some of the worst combat I've ever seen in a modern OW game. There aren't *nearly* enough organic setups in the world to make trying to engage like that anywhere close to worthwhile a meaningful portion of the time. If someone told me that they found it just as practical to do that stuff compared to straightforward wacking, I'd call them a liar. It's so, so, so much less effective as to be utterly absurd.

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Launching a metal plate in the air to hit the enemy the moment it spawns is not really what im talking about. im talking about how very enemy camp has at least two or three explosive barrels, or how if you sneak up on sleeping enemies you can steal their weapons before they wake up and then sneak attack them. Or how lighting strikes enemies with metal weapons. Or setting fire to grass and using the slow mo bow.

I found all of these helped clear enemies faster tbh.

And if youre in early game and dont have loads of weapons, using strategies like bombing enemies unseen or wacking them with magnesis might be essential.

 

[NotLiquid]

The weird tone of some of the posts ITT, your own included, says it all tbh.

I don't like BotW as much because it didn't click with me, but I'm not going to say nonsense like "it's painfully one note" even if when I played it it might have felt that way to me because - regardless of how I felt about it - it clearly isn't.

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People have been saying scathing things about both games in this thread in pretty equal measure.

 

[JCizzle]

The weird tone of some of the posts ITT, your own included, says it all tbh.

I don't like BotW as much because it didn't click with me, but I'm not going to say nonsense like "it's painfully one note" even if when I played it it might have felt that way to me because - regardless of how I felt about it - it clearly isn't.

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If you click back one page, the top post is literally calling BOTW: "overrated as fuck." Let's not pretend the tone only extends one way in this discussion.

 

[astro]

People have been saying scathing things about both games in this thread in pretty equal measure.

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They have, but I'm talking about one side atm as they're the ones replying to me with such silly posts.

If you click back one page, the top post is literally calling BOTW: "overrated as fuck." Let's not pretend the tone only extends one way in this discussion.

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Never claimed it wasn't? I'm responding to specific posts.

 

[srtrestre]

If you click back one page, the top post is literally calling BOTW: "overrated as fuck." Let's not pretend the tone only extends one way in this discussion.

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Exactly.

Anyway, moving on.

Elden Ring's world is so damn static and in places unimaginative, bodies of water might as well be bottomless pits. They literally couldn't think of something for you to do in the water.

Tarnished meets relatively shallow water: drowns

Hero meets water in Breath of the Wild:

 

[Brawndo Addict]

Like I said it can be fun to traverse and have a worthwhile reward for doing it

It's not like you have to have bad rewards in order for traversing to be fun

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The developers clearly believed that would compromise the design of open world, and I would agree. It is a very intentional decision not to reward you with any meaningful items or upgrades. The whole point of Korok seeds being 'worthless' in game is precisely because they don't want people engaging with systems or numbers in a traditional way.

They want to force you to start looking at and exploring the natural world as it is, purely for its own sake and no other reason. Gamers will 'optimize the fun out' of anything, and BOTW makes the brilliant decision to not only say 'No, that's not how we do things here' but 'You can't do that here'. You either drop that pattern of behavior and engage with the premise or you stop exploring because you're focused on getting back to the 'game'.

It's a radical, controversial approach but it's exactly why I love the game so much.

 

[Phendrift]

But those are good dungeons



You're right, there is no wrong focus. I just think ER succeeds in its focus more than BOTW does when the encounters in Elden Ring are more a part of their world in terms of mechanics as well as lore than BOTW's problem solving largely being segmented into content types (ie. loading into a shrine does not feel like part of the world and the presentation doesn't change the whole game). Its the majority of its traditional puzzle content isolated away instead of being part of the world itself.

Click to shrink...

the shrines have always felt like a stopgap to me, I agree. I feel like they didn't WANT to have them all segmented like they did,

Sorry, but no... you cannot dismiss the variety of the ways you need to problem sovle and engage with creatively in Elden Ring just with "it all ends with combat therefore it isn't actually varied" lol.

Click to shrink...

I'm not dismissing it! I've put dozens of hours into the game doing exactly what you're talking about, I'm just saying it factually IS all combat. And there's nothing wrong with that, it was clearly an intentional decision that worked beautifully

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

Hero meets water in Breath of the Wild:

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Kind of ironic since Link can no longer dive and drowns in a few seconds anyway.

 

[Lilo_D]

The only difference for me is
For Elden Ring: I want to play with a Guide and I want to crawler every inch of this map and will be so mad if i missed some npc quest line
For Botw: I don't want to play with a Guide, I don't want to crawler every inch of the map and I want to interactive with the mechanics

 

[astro]

Exactly.

Anyway, moving on.

Elden Ring's world is so damn static and in places unimaginative, bodies of water might as well be bottomless pits. They literally couldn't think of something for you to do in the water.

Tarnished meets relatively shallow water: drowns

Hero meets water in Breath of the Wild:

Click to shrink...

This post is literally one of the posts we're talking about.

 

[ajoshi]

"It's painfully one note, all there is killing"

"ER wouldnt exist without BotW"

wat

 

[slorelli]

Wow, this thread definitely had not disappointed 🤤

 

[redflamingolingo]

Explore for what? More combat? Items that aid me in combat? Exactly.

Big, jaw dropping underground cavern with stars. "Well, it's time to kill more shit!"

Click to shrink...

How about coming across a weeping woman on the side of the road who asks you for a favor involving a looming castle down the road? Agree to it and you embark on a mission to aid her.

Or finding a dying man who provides you with half a medallion that you have no clue what it does until you, hours later, find a woman who only trusts you because you have this medallion piece, and she offers to help you find a secret area?

Or a tower with a sealed gate and a clue on how to open it using the surrounding environment as a puzzle?

Or a candelabra with a lonely ghost who walks you through a forest to the edge of a cliff and wordlessly points to the valley below to something secretive?

Or the beautiful singing voice of a woman piercing the night that guides you along a rocky slope to a mysterious creature?

Or finding a desecrated village under a cliff overhang that evokes sheer terror with bodies hanging under a bridge and strewn on crosses?

And it's all side content.

And it's fucking brilliant.

Oh, and it's Elden Ring.

 

[Axumar]

I mean, I'd argue that if Breath of the Wild had just been Zelda with an open world, it would've been a better game.

Don't get me wrong, paragliding, climbing, and everything having physics is great and all. But give me some proper dungeons and enemy variety over the new stuff any day of the week.

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That's fair. I agree parts of it were painful. But as you said, it felt like a tech demo, because it felt like brand new tech. It was different. I can't really claim that about ER.

 

[srtrestre]

Kind of ironic since Link can no longer dive and drowns in a few seconds anyway.

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EDIT: you can totally still dive, I just tried it. What are you trying to pull here :P

 

[astro]

the shrines have always felt like a stopgap to me, I agree. I feel like they didn't WANT to have them all segmented like they did,

I'm not dismissing it! I've put dozens of hours into the game doing exactly what you're talking about, I'm just saying it factually IS all combat. And there's nothing wrong with that, it was clearly an intentional decision that worked beautifully

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No it factually is not all combat... Lol.

Creating a build is not combat just because you use it FOR combat. That is a creative/explorative process that engages you in a very different way and needs very different skills to figure out.

Same with figuring out your route and how to reach a place you see on the map or on the horizon. Same with trying to piece together the lore or a quest. Same with hunting for crafting materials. Etc...

None of that is combat. The game is full of things you need to do and ways you need to engage that isn't combat even if the things you are doing are eventually FOR combat.

Surely you can see the difference...

 

[Hibiki]

I think the systems BotW created are super impressive, but the open world aspect I didn't much care for. Elden Ring was the first open world game to give me the experience I've been hoping for from the idea of open world game design, so my vote most definitely goes to Elden Ring.

 

[Conkerkid11]

EDIT: you can totally still dive, I just tried it. What are you trying to pull here :P

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Like, diving underwater and swimming around underwater like in previous Zelda games. Usually also supported with some sort of dungeon that incorporates underwater traversal. Not just jumping off a ledge into the water with a forced dive animation that quite frankly gets me killed every single fucking time.

 

[Bait02]

This is a pretty clearly nonsensical argument that is moving goalposts and avoiding the overall point being made.

What is an incentive? here's the definition: a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something.

Incentivizing the player to engage in one type of behavior over another is a core pillar of game design. Death coming quick and easy to the player is an incentive for the player to "git gud" so they can avoid death and stop losing their runes. Doing more damage is an incentive for you to spend those runes on stats, items and gear are an incentive for you to explore so that you'll do more damage and die less.

It literally has nothing to do with whether or not something has practical use, not to mention the fact that playing games at all has several practical uses, such as honing a number of skills in different departments depending on the game not to mention the mental benefits of engaging with entertainment in your down time.

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What I mean is that you don't necessarily need an extrisic reward to make an activity engaging. As even playing a game, per se, doesn't give you any extrisic rewards outside the scope of the game itself. What motivates you to play the game is the fun you have in the act of playing , so it's an intrisic reward.

Going back to BOTW. The game on purpose doesn't incetiveze you to favour a specific system or a specific weapon, a specific route etc.etc. The fun of playing BOTW is actually being able to always choose how to proceed and to be creative in the approach, as the game always allows it and doesn't punish you for doing so. Playing creatively and improvising is rewarding per se, not because the game gives me a trinket or a pat on the back for it.

As you suggested, Elden Ring incetiveze the player to 'git gud' and to improve the character build in order to beat bosses. Cleary a different goal.

Since fun is subjective some people will prefer the former, some the latter, some will like both.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

None of that is combat. The game is full of things you need to do and ways you need to engage that isn't combat even if the things you are doing are eventually FOR combat.

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If we're going that far BOTW is ultimately/eventually for combat. Divine Beasts? boss fights for the purpose of making the last boss easier. Rewards for doing almost anything? weapons, ammo, gear, health items to assist in combat scenarios. Majority of cooking recipes? health points, damage buffs, damage resists for the purpose of fighting.

Its obviously a completely unfair reduction that ignores everything else that's impressive about it, but that seems to be what's happening.

As you suggested, Elden Ring incetiveze the player to 'git gud' and to improve the character build in order to beat bosses. Cleary a different goal.

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Most of my playtime was not "how do I get stronk", it was going through a very densely thought up world with some of the best art direction in the industry and finding out what all of it means. The expected lore videos are eagerly anticipated.

 

[srtrestre]

Like, diving underwater and swimming around underwater like in previous Zelda games. Not just jumping off a ledge into the water with a forced dive animation that quite frankly gets me killed every single fucking time.

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Still better than simply drowning. Hell, if you have the Zora armor you can travel up waterfalls.

I'd find a Tarnished drowning gif, but you simply fall to your death.

 

[astro]

If we're going that far BOTW is ultimately/eventually for combat. Divine Beasts? boss fights for the purpose of making the last boss easier. Rewards for doing almost anything? weapons, ammo, gear, health items to assist in combat scenarios. Majority of cooking recipes? health points, damage buffs, damage resists for the purpose of fighting.

Its obviously a completely unfair reduction that ignores everything else that's impressive about it, but that seems to be what's happening.

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Yep, exactly.

Anyway I knew I shouldn't have even looked inside this thread lol. Putting it on ignore for my own sanity.

 

[Haze]

Breath of the Wild for sure. Elden Ring has a great open world and recency bias is probably going to sway people in its favor, but it simply doesn't have the same level of discovery that BOTW offers not just in its design itself, but in the ways that you are able to engage with it.

 

[Cronogear]

I have a hard time understanding this when there's not much variety of items or rewards of things to find, what are you exploring for exactly

Once you think you have enough hearts there's not much reason to do anything else except kill the final boss

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It's funny you should say that, because my main problem with Elden Ring is that the open world lacks interesting things to do beyond its combat. Even when you encounter a situation or area that seems like it may be more, it isn't. And the fourth time I found the same crypt and fought the same skeletons and flipped the same switch to open the same door to fight a boss that gave me a spell I can't even use, it really started to sour me on the idea of exploring Elden Ring's open world.

40 hours in and I've started largely ignoring the open world in favor of getting to the main areas, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit more as a result.