Breath of The Wild Released Four Years Ago. Has any other game had a shot at claiming the title "Best of All Time" since then?
- Thread starter SalvaPot
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I could list the games but like that one guy who keeps posting that same darn trailer for the game exclaiming it the best trailer ever despite many people rightly seeing it doesn't actually represent the game well, they will just ignore it and still say it's apparently the best of all time ever. Probably until the direct sequel comes out.
Only really hope is I actually like the sequel. I just feel like it's gonna double down on everything I hated with the first one though.
Only really hope is I actually like the sequel. I just feel like it's gonna double down on everything I hated with the first one though.
Yeah, while I can respect what they achieved it still fell into the same Open World trappings and shortcomings with iterative content, completely wonky difficulty and progression scaling etc.
They give you basically every ability right from the start, so you would expect the game to gradually get more complex with what you can do with them but instead its all over the place in a bad way and having very limited enemy and weapon types also does not scale into a 100+ hr massive open world game like, at all.
I agree with you that RDR2 did just that. I just found it less so in BOTW. Still a phenomenal game in my opinion, I just hope there's a little more life and random occurrences between villages in BOTW 2.
Last of us 2 was a great game but more cinematic than pushing the envelope gameplay wise. BOTW shook up the formula and won big.
I hope that BoTW2 makes BoTW look like a tech demo in comparison. As much as I got out of BoTW2, it's hard not to see ample room for improvement, even if everyone's idea for what constitutes improvement to BoTW might differ.
This sums up a lot of the issues that I had.
On top of that, I thought the main dungeons were very weak and anti climatic. I'm actually far more interested in Skyward Sword (with button controls) than BOTW2. I just think the traditional Zelda formula is incredibly strong. And it got watered down alot in BOTW.
I can't speak much about TLOU2 gameplay wise as I got bored after the first couple hours and dropped the game but the beginning hours of BOTW on plateau compared to the beginning of RDR2 and hours I played of TLOU2 was a lot better easily. However, I felt that it took a bit of dive after that and as far as overall consistency and quality RDR2 was a lot better.
Disco Elysium, Kentucky Route Zero, Pathologic 2 and Yakuza 0 are up there for me too.
It was surpassed the very next year
Idk GOW was missing from a LOT of game of the decade lists whereas BOTW...
We can go on personal opinion all day but its pretty clear which one has more staying power at the top
It's a phenomenal game that will remain talked about for years to come and for good reasons. There have been quite a few outstanding games, arguably more complete overall experiences than BotW, since then but I think when it comes to long term impact and mindshare it's going to stick around as much or more than those other games.
I think in large part due to how unique the game is, or at least appears to be, from person to person. A lot of these other games are much more linear and more importantly have incredibly well developed cinematic storylines that encompass all aspects of their experiences, but that in part means the major moments almost everyone remembers are moments everyone else experienced already too. There's discussion there but it will eventually burn out since it's the same for everyone. There isn't the same sense of newness there to discover later on. For a game like BotW though due to its structure and extremely robust gameplay and simulation systems spur experimentation which results in a lot of relatively unique circumstances and memories. BotW is a poster child for emergent gameplay. It's that element which makes it possible for people to share stories about something they did or discovered 4 years later that results in numerous multipage threads all the time with people sharing their personal experiences with the game and things they did. That sense of uniqueness also has a tendency to stick around in people's minds longer because of that belief that no one else experienced it or at least the same way.
Really I only see BotW2 supplanting it in this regard since it has the opportunity to not only do more and better of all the stuff BotW did do while also add in and fixing all the stuff it didn't.
I think in large part due to how unique the game is, or at least appears to be, from person to person. A lot of these other games are much more linear and more importantly have incredibly well developed cinematic storylines that encompass all aspects of their experiences, but that in part means the major moments almost everyone remembers are moments everyone else experienced already too. There's discussion there but it will eventually burn out since it's the same for everyone. There isn't the same sense of newness there to discover later on. For a game like BotW though due to its structure and extremely robust gameplay and simulation systems spur experimentation which results in a lot of relatively unique circumstances and memories. BotW is a poster child for emergent gameplay. It's that element which makes it possible for people to share stories about something they did or discovered 4 years later that results in numerous multipage threads all the time with people sharing their personal experiences with the game and things they did. That sense of uniqueness also has a tendency to stick around in people's minds longer because of that belief that no one else experienced it or at least the same way.
Really I only see BotW2 supplanting it in this regard since it has the opportunity to not only do more and better of all the stuff BotW did do while also add in and fixing all the stuff it didn't.
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I'm confident about this prediction because the two games are so highly regarded because of their execution of the thing they are doing, rather than being something fundamentally groundbreaking or new. If that's the case for a game, there will almost inevitably be a better version of it in a few years.
I feel like these games seem to have the same polarizing response as BOTW... near-universal critical acclaim, but internet folks either love them or hate them. There are some peeps in the middle, but most threads are usually a dual echo-chamber of love/hate.On a personal level, BOTW was nowhere close to being the best game of all time. Solid 7/10 for me.
I liked these more:
The Last of Us 2
or
Red Dead Redemption 2
It's maybe worth mentioning that none of these games have sustained any kind of large ongoing community the way BOTW has (even the one game there that's got an ongoing multiplayer component). Their Twitch channels are ghost towns. Twitter hashtags go days without a post. None of the usual fanfiction or fanart hubs see much of any traffic. And they're all newer than BOTW is.
I think all those things are probably better indicators of how a game is gonna be looked at by gamers in the coming years than say, a BAFTA award.
That begs the question if a "GOAT" has to be groundbreaking or just has to be incredibly great.
20 years from now, all these games mentioned are very good but BOTW is probably the one i'd come back to first if reissued/remastered
Wikipedia has a page "List of video games considered the best", which includes games based on the number of times major media outlets calls a game "best of the generation" or included on a "best of the decade" list or whatever. Breath of the Wild is the most recent game included that meets Wikipedia's standards, so I guess the answer is no.
en.wikipedia.org
List of video games considered the best - Wikipedia
Outer Wilds is the most ingenious piece of game design I've seen in like 15 years, so that's my vote. I've played lots of great things since BOTW, some of which have deservedly upper echelon critical and commercial reception, some of which don't, but Outer Wilds is on another level from all of them.
Some games came out in 2020 that are considered the new decade, so that skews things.Wikipedia has a page "List of video games considered the best", which includes games based on the number of times major media outlets calls a game "best of the generation" or included on a "best of the decade" list or whatever. Breath of the Wild is the most recent game included that meets Wikipedia's standards, so I guess the answer is no.
List of video games considered the best - Wikipedia
For me personally, the sense of adventure in Breath of the Wild is unparalleled. You can call it the greatest game of all time, and you could also say TLOU II is the greatest game of all time. It's always down to personal opinion.
But in the end, the feeling that BotW gave me has not been met in the same way. I can honestly say it made me feel like a kid again — especially those first 5-10 hours. It was and will always remain a stunning achievement for Nintendo.
But in the end, the feeling that BotW gave me has not been met in the same way. I can honestly say it made me feel like a kid again — especially those first 5-10 hours. It was and will always remain a stunning achievement for Nintendo.
Wouldn't this make Minecraft the GOAT then if going off twitch streams?
Whoa, don't go crazy and name a game over 10 years old in a greatest games of all time thread.
It's not really my thing, but I think Minecraft is unquestionably more influential than any of those games in the post I was replying to.
Agree with all of this. BOTW is so exciting of a game to think about because on top of just being an incredible game in its own right with an open design ripe for unique permutations, it feels like so many elements about it - even its flaws - speak to would-be designers and players to imagine dozens of different solutions and ways to approach the implications of its mechanics. At least two developers this last year put out games that were so blatantly compared so as to feel like they had their own "solutions" (Genshin and Immortals), and I think the assimilation of the things BOTW did, learning from them, both everything it did well and did less so, is only really gonna continue. That's especially the case for Nintendo, as this massive sea change is only gonna inspire new paths for Zelda, and opportunities to go into truly new, bolder directions.
It's an inspirationally "incomplete" game, but it feels like it wrote a new chapter on game design. I think the fact that we talk about games now having their "BOTW moment" so casually (if not occasionally flippantly) the same way people like to compare games to stuff like Souls, is already a bit of an indication of the game's long term impact.
I don't think anything has come close. Zelda is such a wonderful game that it's hard to be at that level.
I really appreciate the level of detail in games like RDR2, and honestly I think it would be up there had it just aligned it's open world design with its quest design.
TLOU2 is far to negative/miserable for me to put it anywhere near most other titles being mentioned in this thread.
I really appreciate the level of detail in games like RDR2, and honestly I think it would be up there had it just aligned it's open world design with its quest design.
TLOU2 is far to negative/miserable for me to put it anywhere near most other titles being mentioned in this thread.
I dunno, the trailer stuff is more about delivery than anything. It is the best because it combines several sequences of BotW to deliver a sense of awe that most trailer fail to evoke. But, naturally, this is all subjective.
This is how we're judging whether or not a game is considered one of the best of all time now? Fan art and hashtags?
Too bad mostly all of those sequence were just in optional flashbacks. Made my expectations through the roof.
