A dangerous world is a memorable one
I love playing the original World of Warcraft, or other games with dangerous overworlds. Because of the danger that is posed in traveling across them, a sense of accomplishment comes with fully exploring and bearing witness to what is present. The same feelings are coming back, for once, in the new Zelda game: Breath of the Wild.
The world in the new Zelda is lush, enormous, and more importantly, dangerous to explore. It may not start that way, but coming across monsters is always a trial and there are numerous powerful enemies wandering the map that can make life very difficult for explorers and travelers alike, even one as heroic and amazing as Link. Death is a very real possibility and the distinctness of the world lends itself to being something that will stick in my mind forever.
What is it about danger, though, that makes something memorable? I guess there's always the fact that being there longer means that one gains an appreciation for the world, but the danger forces the player to pay more attention to their surroundings. Whether it is unconscious, then, that the player remembers the world thanks to paying it mind is not something I'm certain of. However, compared to Skyrim's world, I am going to remember Morrowind or WoW's world more than that one, for the reason that it's just not dangerous. The places I remember are the caves where I found real difficulty, or the places I found dragons...as opposed to Morrowind which left an imprint of the cities I visisted, the caves I explored, and the trials all throughout the world that I had to face just because there was far more to it.
This goes back to what I had been saying earlier that "part of the fun of an MMO should be the adventure"...well, this isn't talking about MMORPG's, but the same idea applies. The more difficult a game is, the more memorable the achievement of obtaining victory is. Dark Souls, Majora's Mask, Super Metroid; there are lots of games that this applies to. That being said, the difficulty isn't all that matters when making a world something to remember. The diversity of the world, the details throughout, the joys of finding little secrets carefully hidden away in the midst of a world that is dangerous to be out in, it all adds up to making something worth remembering, and worth wanting to explore again.
This means that I have some issues with games that have vast overworlds that literally have nothing to them. There are a few of the 3D Zelda titles that this is definitely applicable to., All it adds is a sense of space that has nothing interesting going on. There's no sense of a mounting danger of running across terrifying enemies in Ocarina of Time, the overworld is simply there to be a hub between points of actual interest: from Hyrule Castle, to Kakariko Town, to the Gerudo Desert; the entire overworld simply exists to exist. There are 2 heart pieces and barely any gold skulltulas to obtain in it. The Wind Waker has an obscene overworld in terms of scale thanks to it being an ocean...and there's so little to do through at least 60% of it that it feels like a waste of time to produce it. The only reason it gets some slack is because it's portraying how traveling across an ocean might feel...oh, and I love the travel theme for it.
Twilight Princess hits closer to home on a map that actually has more to do. There are golden bugs to collect, heart pieces to find with new items, new and interesting secrets to be explored...but the enemies are still "meh" and there's still too much space. The biggest offender, to me, still has to be Ocarina of Time, but thankfully, Nintendo is remembering how to make Zelda come back to us and be meaningful, apart from "how good are the dungeons".
I'm not quite ready to review Breath of the Wild, but that is coming. So far, I'm excited for the new direction and I want to see more done with this style of gameplay, along with improvements to it. I recently revisited the original Zelda which, ironically, has a similar problem to its predecessors. The overworld isn't as dangerous as the dungeons in the end, even though it starts off rather dangerous to go traveling around in. It's refreshing to see a return to real challenge in exploring an overworld, as opposed to merely keeping it as a means of "getting from place to place".,
The world in the new Zelda is lush, enormous, and more importantly, dangerous to explore. It may not start that way, but coming across monsters is always a trial and there are numerous powerful enemies wandering the map that can make life very difficult for explorers and travelers alike, even one as heroic and amazing as Link. Death is a very real possibility and the distinctness of the world lends itself to being something that will stick in my mind forever.
What is it about danger, though, that makes something memorable? I guess there's always the fact that being there longer means that one gains an appreciation for the world, but the danger forces the player to pay more attention to their surroundings. Whether it is unconscious, then, that the player remembers the world thanks to paying it mind is not something I'm certain of. However, compared to Skyrim's world, I am going to remember Morrowind or WoW's world more than that one, for the reason that it's just not dangerous. The places I remember are the caves where I found real difficulty, or the places I found dragons...as opposed to Morrowind which left an imprint of the cities I visisted, the caves I explored, and the trials all throughout the world that I had to face just because there was far more to it.
This goes back to what I had been saying earlier that "part of the fun of an MMO should be the adventure"...well, this isn't talking about MMORPG's, but the same idea applies. The more difficult a game is, the more memorable the achievement of obtaining victory is. Dark Souls, Majora's Mask, Super Metroid; there are lots of games that this applies to. That being said, the difficulty isn't all that matters when making a world something to remember. The diversity of the world, the details throughout, the joys of finding little secrets carefully hidden away in the midst of a world that is dangerous to be out in, it all adds up to making something worth remembering, and worth wanting to explore again.
This means that I have some issues with games that have vast overworlds that literally have nothing to them. There are a few of the 3D Zelda titles that this is definitely applicable to., All it adds is a sense of space that has nothing interesting going on. There's no sense of a mounting danger of running across terrifying enemies in Ocarina of Time, the overworld is simply there to be a hub between points of actual interest: from Hyrule Castle, to Kakariko Town, to the Gerudo Desert; the entire overworld simply exists to exist. There are 2 heart pieces and barely any gold skulltulas to obtain in it. The Wind Waker has an obscene overworld in terms of scale thanks to it being an ocean...and there's so little to do through at least 60% of it that it feels like a waste of time to produce it. The only reason it gets some slack is because it's portraying how traveling across an ocean might feel...oh, and I love the travel theme for it.
Twilight Princess hits closer to home on a map that actually has more to do. There are golden bugs to collect, heart pieces to find with new items, new and interesting secrets to be explored...but the enemies are still "meh" and there's still too much space. The biggest offender, to me, still has to be Ocarina of Time, but thankfully, Nintendo is remembering how to make Zelda come back to us and be meaningful, apart from "how good are the dungeons".
I'm not quite ready to review Breath of the Wild, but that is coming. So far, I'm excited for the new direction and I want to see more done with this style of gameplay, along with improvements to it. I recently revisited the original Zelda which, ironically, has a similar problem to its predecessors. The overworld isn't as dangerous as the dungeons in the end, even though it starts off rather dangerous to go traveling around in. It's refreshing to see a return to real challenge in exploring an overworld, as opposed to merely keeping it as a means of "getting from place to place".,
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