Which open-world design do you enjoy more: Modern Zelda (BotW/TotK) or Elden Ring

[ScOULaris]

In the last decade or so, there have been two open-world design templates that are often trotted out as repudiations or re-evaluations of the way in which most modern games employ an open-world format. Breath of the Wild undoubtedly led the charge when it launched back in 2017 with its freeform structure, densely and organically explorable world design, and refusal to adhere to the checklist-y design found in most of its open-world peers. Then, years later, many lauded Elden Ring for applying a similar design to its open-world take on Souls gameplay.

While the modern Zelda games and Elden Ring certainly share a lot of common design DNA, I personally feel that they excel in different areas from one another. Elden Ring arguably has more robust and engaging combat than the Zelda games, but it kind of goes all-in on it while exploring the worlds of BotW or TotK yields more of a variety of things to do. Both games offer visually resplendent worlds that invite exploration for its own sake rather than motivating the player primarily through material rewards, but they each have their own distinct flavor in this regard as well. Elden Ring's world is consistently beautiful yet always threatening, whereas Zelda's Hyrule setting ebbs and flows between natural serenity and darker, more dangerous environs.

I know that all of these games are beloved here on ERA, but I'm curious to know if there's generally a preference with regard to these two flavors of highly accomplished open-world design that eschew many of the most commonly criticized aspects of the genre.

I'm placing my vote for the Zelda games because, while I enjoyed Elden Ring and its combat, I couldn't shake the feeling that the whole world existed solely for me to fight in. No matter where I went, the only interaction I had with the world was fighting and killing enemies. So on the whole it felt a little more one-note to me than BotW or especially TotK, which both feel far more varied and endlessly creative to me.

 

[Klyka]

Zelda because there is stuff to do in the open world

 

[DNAbro]

Game is like 4 days old, let me finish it before putting them against each other

 

[UltraInstinct]

Elden Ring is what I wanted BOTW to be like in its open world approach. Elden Ring for sure.

 

[vestan]

BotW/TotK - Pure, unbridled systems-driven sandbox to fuck around in.

Elden Ring - Souls game that features an open-field that connects large, sprawling legacy dungeons to one another, expanding on the tried and true formula by giving players the option to tackle the game how they want.

A few similarities here and there but different strokes for different folks ultimately. BotW/TotK's approach has the entire game world at your whim, every single system is built to coalesce with one another and facilitate a large number of outcomes and possibilities while Elden Ring is fundamentally still a Souls game so the focus is placed squarely on exploration, combat and encounters at a grander scale. There's not much to it beyond that.

I like them both, especially as they're all about giving you the option to go off into whatever direction you want and see what you can get up to which I imagine were why they were so well recieved. Open-world games need to be a bit more comfortable doing that. Tuned into this thread btw.

 

[Raigor]

Morrowind, because it was the first proper well designed open world game and 20+ years later no game did it better.

 

[Pikagreg]

To me Zelda is more about having fun first and the rewards you get are kind of samey throughout the game. I love the feeling of trying to "break the game" and TOTK expanded on that tenfold compared to BOTW. Elden Ring had me on edge the whole time but the rewards were unique and felt satisfying every time and the world is just so dense it puts other open world games to shame.

 

[LumberPanda]

BOTW/TOTK is an open world game at its core, with a focus on interesting traversal and problem solving to justify the open world. If you cut the open world in BOTW/TOTK, you have nothing left. If the primary dungeons were mediocre, you'd still be left with a well-received game (see: BOTW's divine beasts).

Elden Ring is Dark Souls 4 but with open world padding between the stuff that's worth your time. You could cut the open world in Elden Ring, leave just the Legacy Dungeons (which are From's GOAT), and be left with a better game. There's a reason nobody writes anything about the Hero's Graves, Catacombs, or Caves, despite that being "the point" of the open world, and that's because without the trickle of equipment in which you have a 5% chance of actually using there's nothing good to say. If the legacy dungeons were mediocre, you'd have a 6/10 game at most (thankfully those legacy dungeons really are an 11/10).

 

[momerath]

Easily Zelda, because Elden Ring's open world made its difficulty balance too whacked-out.

The legacy dungeons were the best parts of the game.

 

[Truno]

Elden Ring is what I wanted BOTW to be like in its open world approach. Elden Ring for sure.

Click to shrink...

A zombie world with no puzzles focused on bosses and combat encounters? How is that even Zelda?

 

[A.J.]

Elden Ring's world is one you adventure while Zelda's world is one you dominate, if that makes any sense. My preference is towards Elden Ring on that end since generally exploring rewards you with cool weapons, challenging boss fights, and more interesting locations. It probably doesn't help that TotK shares a lot of the same map, but I don't really find myself yearning to explore the world and more just focusing on messing around.

 

[Deleted member 36578]

Both baby!

 

[Transistor]

They're both amazing for different reasons

 

[ragolliangatan]

Both are exceptionally well designed worlds to fit the core fantasy of each game. Zelda's is a primary focus on exploration and the sandbox, and Elden Rings as an expansive space to subtly guide you towards your next legacy dungeon.

One thing I will say is that you could take Elden Ring out of an open world environment and it will still work at it's core- whereas Zelda mechanics and systems are built with an open world fully in mind and you couldn't take the current Zelda design and transplant it directly to a linear game.

 

[Jencks]

This is going to be a white hot thread

I'm saying Zelda simply because there's more variety in things you can do. Elden Ring stretches the Souls combat focus to its breaking limit. I think this is the real reason why people burnout on it so much: you're doing variations on the same thing and you can't really take a break. I think when you make a game of this size you need to let the player have a variety of things they can do

 

[amara]

Elden Ring is more dense with interesting things to see at every corner. TotK's overworld has more going for it than BotW but once you go in the depths, it sucks. Maybe you'll find something unique every 30 minutes otherwise it's empty

 

[Magic Mushroom]

BotW and TotK are not my favorite Zelda games, nor is ER my favorite From game.

But I like both well enough and for different reasons. Zelda has more to do in the world and the world is more interactive, whereas ER has more enemy variety and challenge. I also feel ER has more variety in its locations and exploration.

 

[slothrop]

Well I like both a lot but I would pick Zelda.

In the end, I think Eldin Rings open world lets you too easily avoid combat despite being a game focused on combat finesse via its dark souls roots. The horse is wildly OP and you can too easily ignore everything. Zelda also lets you avoid combat but I think its exploration first lean works better for the open world.

Anyway, both are two of my favorite games and either is better than just about anything else. That is my subtle tie breaker though.

 

[Alric]

Both are the best at what they do with their systems and gameplay.
So don't make me choose.

 

[GameOver]

Just finished Elden Ring before playing Tears of The Kingdom and I must say the Open World in Elden Ring while is awesome to look at, there is not much going on besides clearing places(dungeons, caves, forts etc) of enemies.

 

[Ramsay]

The thing with Zelda's open world is that it feels like the systems of BoTW and ToTK were designed from the ground up to accommodate an open world - shrines and Korok Seeds are moderate and minor rewards that are always useful to incentive exploration, breakable weapons exist to prevent the player from getting an OP weapon early-game and cheesing everything, etc.

Elden Ring has better enemy variety and a better combat system (though to say that the boss fights are not up to scratch is like saying the ocean is slightly wet), but often feels like a Souls game pasted onto an (admittedly superb) open world - and as such, there isn't that much of an incentive to explore on replays when you know where the gear for your build is.

 

[JigglesBunny]

Elden Ring is a big, pretty world filled with interesting enemies and some cool environmental storytelling but zero interesting interactable elements.

TOTK is a big, pretty (artistically, anyway…) world filled with mildly interesting enemies, cool environmental storytelling and endless mechanical possibilities.

TOTK easily wins this one.

 

[scare_crow]

Because it has to be a fight between the two, right?

 

[Deleted member 12859]

I like them both a lot. as a person who plays games largely for their stories/worlds, elden ring does a really good job of stringing everything together narratively via thoughtful environmental design and item descriptions and such. mini-dungeons ending with an item that tells me a little more about the world is more compelling to me than a contextless shrine orb or a korok seed, even if that item doesn't compliment my build at all

 

[captmcblack]

It's modern Zelda for me.

I don't think anything has given me that vibe of "just a few more steps" and "let me see what happens if I try this" and "what if I go into this cave/hole/crevice" thrill of exploring more than modern Zelda has...which makes sense given that it kinda codified that design way back when in 2D.

Elden Ring is no slouch, though. Shouldn't have to be a choice/battle between them.

 

[ced]

They're both fresh takes on the sea of shit open worlds, I can't pick one or the other.

 

[hydro94530]

I think Elden Ring is very average with one of the emptiest open worlds out there. Zelda for sure.

 

[Truno]

For now, I vote don't make me choose. However, I look forward to returning to this conversation once we see the sequel to Elden Ring and we get an open world Zelda game that isn't stuck on a fisher price tablet

 

[balohna]

I think if you were to break down the variety and density into some kind of "objective" comparison, Elden Ring wins it.

However, I have more fun in Zelda's open world and it's more my type of game. I also love how reactive and systemic everything is. Elden Ring is more of canvas for its gameplay to exist in. With Zelda the open world and the gameplay are deeply intertwined - they inform one another in every aspect.

 

[Greywaren]

Zelda still retains the "find interesting stuff everywhere" factor that Elden Ring does so well, and it adds an extra layer of interactibility. There's no competition in that aspect, even if I do think Elden Ring does a great job at making an interesting open world too.

 

[Yam's]

While they're both open worlds, they don't have the same goals for their players, so I cannot really compare them. I just enjoy them both for different reasons.

However it's kinda funny that I'm dying a lot more in Zelda than in Elden Ring. Also while the horse in Elden Ring makes the open world a lot easier, it's the other way around in Zelda for me. I still cannot control these horses properly.

 

[Titanpaul]

I think Elden Ring is very average with one of the emptiest open worlds out there. Zelda for sure.

Click to shrink...

That's an interesting statement for me to read as I'm the opposite.

 

[TheExtra]

Gotta give it to Zelda. I'm having more fun exploring Hyrule (both versions) than The Lands Between.

 

[Neoleo2143]

Zelda plays more with its myriad elements. The number of feasible interactions encouraged is uncountable. It's a game that asks how to make a random hill interesting based on its gradient and angle as well as makes use of physics and many environmental interactions and terrain to complement encounter design and puzzles regularly.

Elden Ring's world has no such interest, it is purely focused on the novelty of its spectacle, visual variety, and scale, and a number of one-off surprises. The focus of the experience is squarely on the simple but solid focus of its combat systems versus a huge number of different enemies in long winding dungeons (though the actual number of interactions you can have with said enemies is fairly limited outside the scope of purely playing a spacing game with them which has been compelling).

 

[Kill3r7]

I like both. They are different flavors that bring great joy to me while playing them. Same with Bethesda, Rockstar (sandbox) or CDPR. There isn't only one winning formula.

 

[Nacho]

I mean, they're both incredibly similar in the grand scheme of things. I guess if I had to chose, Zelda, especially botw, because just exploring for the sake of exploring is such a fun unique adventure that you don't really get in other genres. Elden ring has a lot of that too but it's definitely not geared towards it in game mechanics.

 

[Titantodd]

Elden Ring, although both are just fantastic games and worlds. Elden Ring just does a better job of surprising me and keeping me on edge, which is exactly what I want in an open world, it turns out.

I mean, Caelid, and Crumbling Farum Azula? What even in hell are those?

The moment when you take that elevator down in the woods and start to realise there's an entire world underneath you and just how gigantic this open world must be is one of those gaming all timer moments that's gonna stick with me forever.

Ditto for when I opened one of those trapped chests and ended up stuck at the bottom of a mine full of high level enemies, and wandered out, dazed and scared into Caelid for the first time. More than anything else, Elden Ring really, truly sells the idea that You Are Not Welcome Here, but you still gotta adventure through this incredibly hostile terrain.

 

[TGB86]

I've been traveling and haven't been able to play TotK yet, but I prefer BOTW's approach to ER. I love ER because I love Souls, but I didn't feel the move to open world really benefitted it much. Nintendo was much more ruthless in discarding their existing Zelda formula and reinventing the franchise in their move to open world, and they built something much more singular as a result, both within the franchise and the genre as a whole.

 

[writhingcorpse897]

In terms of enjoyment: ToTK>Elden Ring>>>>>>>>>>BoTW.

 

[Ehoavash]

Elden ring to me is just a bigger souls game.
The world in it is just a zombie ish world but I like their combat and boss battles

Botw/ tears really did get away from the Zelda stuff I liked

In a perfect world we'd have the combat/ boss battles of Souls with Zelda's environmental traversal/ puzzles and interactivity

 

[Xtortion]

Both games have different strengths for me. BotW/TotK is sprawling in scope and have a ton of variety in the ways you interact with it. Elden Ring is much more limited in scope when it comes to what you're actually doing, but its combat and moment to moment level design eclipse Zelda imo. So for me, Zelda is a much better "grab bag" experience where I can play for an hour and experience lots of different and memorable things. Then I can play Elden Ring for an hour and experience much tighter feeling gameplay and level design than Zelda can offer, but that's really all that's going on.

For my personal tastes regarding less downtime between things happening and tighter feeling gameplay, I probably prefer Elden Ring, but I would argue TotK is easily the more ambitious and impressive game.

When it comes to pure world design, I also prefer Elden Ring because Torrent is OP af, doesn't shame you for using him (can pick up items while riding, etc), and as a result there's less time running around. TotK has some fantastic traversal mechanics but much of the time I find I still have to slowly jog around environments with a limited sprint and inconvenient mount system. Elden Ring feels much denser in practice when it comes to the placement of significant content.

 

[Hippopuncher12]

Well considering I loved everything about Elden Ring's world (Except the Mountaintops, that kind of sucked) and the world was one of the reasons I didn't like BoTW at all, I'm gonna say Elden Ring here. I still haven't played ToTK though so maybe I'll like that one more, who knows.

 

[ZeroDotFlow]

Elden Ring by a mile.

The world is built as an actual world. There's a lot of lore in the environment that's just passively acquired, from the entire Caelid region to the legacy dungeons to the hidden nooks and crannies of the world. There's a fair bit of reused content in the catacombs and mini-dungeons but almost all of them have some sort of unique challenge in them. Exploring is rewarded by a wide variety of unique items and gear that each add upon the world that's being built.

BotW/TotK are playgrounds for the player. They're barely realized as actual worlds and the story/lore is paper thin. Most of the side content and towns is severely underbaked. So while you can better interact with the world, the world itself isn't interesting enough to be worth exploring.

 

[SunBroDave]

Both are fun, but Elden Ring is superior by a wide margin.

Exploring Elden Ring's world is constantly thrilling as meaningful content is around every corner. Whereas exploring Zelda's world I wouldn't say is constantly thrilling, but rather much more of a zen, slow-paced experience, where you get the satisfaction of slowly collecting things and building up your resources. Elden Ring had me on the edge of my seat for like 200 hours straight, whereas Zelda is a really satisfying experience to just sink into and slowly and methodically explore, slowly finding neat little places and NPCs and getting more and more powerful.

 

[Niklel]

There are lots of insane ways to interact with the world in modern Zelda games.
Elden Ring doesn't have this.

 

[HiLife]

A majority of the reason why Zelda's open world is more fun is because you have more traversal mechanics.

Other than riding a horse in ER, you can't do much. Unless you consider crappy platforming to be a good thing.

The fact you could climb all the vistas and paraglide in BotW made it a more enjoyable open world to me. And in TOTK you have even more tools at your disposal.

With that being said, I think the Lands Between have a more enjoyable world design going for it. Visually.

 

[Eila]

I loved both BOTW and Elden Ring but if I had to choose then Elden Ring. There is just so much more shit in Elden Ring. BOTW is limited by the hardware, so it is way too empty and the enemies are mostly recolors.

 

[Lightjolly]

Zelda has more interactivity with its world but Elden Ring actually provides good rewards for exploration that incentivizes more exploration, it's an addicting loop.

 

[Exile20]

That's an interesting statement for me to read as I'm the opposite.

Click to shrink...

Have you played TOTK? You spend hours doing things you didnt plan because there is something around every corner. You have to be kidding.

 

[Mezoly]

Before TOTK, I would have said Elden Ring easily.

But TOTK is masterful so far. I would say both. Elden Ring for combat and exploration and TOTK for traversal, puzzles, and exploration. I vastly prefer the combat in Elden Ring over TOTK and that's Elden Ring focus.