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Skyward Sword, BOTW, and Positivity


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I just went back to play Skyward Sword after 350 hours of BOTW. Now I know why I didn't go back before, and I've got a broader perspective on game design.

 

I was at Scaldera, the second boss. The controls kept crapping out on me. Fi wouldn't shut up about my batteries and that icon never went away. The boss fight was completely repetitive but would've been tolerable if the controls were working. After I took a break the game made me stop to recalibrate my controller three times.

 

Got back to Skyloft and tried to play the game like I played BOTW--slowly walking around and taking in the experience. Yeah, Skyward Sword was not meant to be played as slowly as it runs. The world only looks nice if you stay in motion--it's flat up close and blurry otherwise. Walking around just made me antsy and frustrated. Then I got to Beedle, and when I didn't buy anything he stopped to show me this nice cutscene of him being a douchebag to Link for no reason, which is a great way to make the player enjoy the world, huh.

 

The real kicker here was when I tried to sell bugs to one of Groose's cronies. They make you check your stock of each bug individually, and there's box after box of slowly scrolling text each time--and you can bet your ass that they fill every box all the way even if it means just restating the same phrase four times. Everything about the UI here is so clunky and infuriating--even the way you scroll. Holding down the A button the whole time, watching the text appear, waiting for the moment you can quickly let go and press down again. It's demeaning, and physically it feels awful.

After that I'd fuckin had it. But no, I wasn't allowed to stop there. I was forced to keep playing long after the game had overstayed its welcome, until I could find a save point. This game was the grand finale of Nintendo's hottest system, and it used save points, one of the worst features any video game could ever implement. There is no reason for any modern video game to ever use save points. EVER. There is no excuse for this.

 

Then I snapped the disc in half in my mind as I booted up Breath of the Wild to a functional UI, controls that usually work, a world I can watch and listen to, and a game that respects me. I have a new understanding of everything that makes BOTW playable and enjoyable.

 

I'm acutely aware of what makes BOTW's overworld so satisfying to slowly walk through. There are things to look at. There's wind, there's dust, there are blades of grass and pebbles and inclines. And everything you do is up to you. If I'm taking a long path in Skyward Sword, it's because the game is forcing me to. I'm angry because I'm not in control. If I'm walking to nowhere in Breath, it's because I've chosen to do that, and I'm in control, because I know that if I ever get tired of this I can always travel a different way, so there's no dread or worry.

 

SS's finicky controls for stopping in front of a bomb flower and harvesting it made me physically angry, especially when my controller wasn't cooperating. But in Breath, I was perfectly content mining ore slowly, because that was my choice. I was never trapped. I have never had to view any situation in BOTW with a negative attitude.

 

And I think that's it right there--that's the reason why BOTW has been so well-received. Other games have more exciting set pieces and gripping scenarios. But those games will sometimes make you do things you're not in the mood for, which makes you feel trapped and frustrated. BOTW never forces you to do anything you don't want to, which means you never have to feel the negative emotions of uncertainty and loss of control. You are always doing something you like. Even the few parts of the game which are poorly and unfairly designed (looking at you, Trial of Wood) don't get too infuriating because you can always think of a different way to play through it, and if it does get to the point where you feel very negatively, you can just walk away and play the rest of the entire game.

 

Breath of the Wild is the most positive game Nintendo has ever made, and Skyward Sword the most negative.

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6 hours ago, Eliwoodman12 said:

I actually started playing Skyward Sword for the first time a few months before BOTW came out and never went back to it. I see where you are coming from though. It might be the most linear Zelda game out of all of them. 

I don't mind linear games. What gets to me about Skyward Sword is that I feel like I'm always fighting against my controller and against the game's interface. I swing my sword and suddenly it's reading backwards. I pull out an item and get ready to point at something onscreen, and the game has reset my cursor's position to the middle of the screen again. And, of course, I'm stuck scrolling through two minutes of slow text boxes to sell one item, and I have to stop to slowly recalibrate the controls, and Fi stops everything to tell me about my batteries.

 

The problem isn't that Skyward Sword is always telling me exactly what to do. The problem is that it's telling me exactly what to do, and doesn't let me do it.

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I only played maybe 2 hours of Skyward Sword, and the game seemed like it was designed to limit the player as much as possible. The linearity, forced control, stamina system, info boxes...It's a game that doesn't let me think for myself and has design choices that assumes low player intelligence. I was considering restarting the game prior to getting Breath of the Wild earlier in the year, but I ended up passing on that experience.

 

Breath of the Wild was the first time that a 3D Zelda game really connected with me throughout though, and it might have become my favorite game of all time if not for its breakable item concept. It connected with me so well because it valued my decision making as a player, and for the most part that kind of experience was a rarity from Nintendo in the years leading up to the game's release. The game did well too in showcasing personality which made Hyrule a very interesting and engaging setting to have control in and explore. It's a good thing when I realize that I've seen my last new village and become saddened by that. They did a great job of making the world sensibly unique, and so each village really left an impression on me over the 140+ hours I've invested.

 

I would not call Breath of the Wild Nintendo's most positive game ever made. It's up there, but I feel Super Mario Odyssey is a more positive experience. Its design doesn't offer as much player control; however, I think it is a game with a much stronger personality and much broader scope of gameplay mechanics. Super Mario Odyssey doesn't have a concept that I view as ridiculous within its world, such as the breakable item concept in Breath of the Wild, and I view it as a more enjoyable and replayable game due to that. If in the upcoming DLC for Breath of the Wild a craftsmen shop is added that allows the player to make certain weapons unbreakable using gemstones, then I think the game will become much more enjoyable to play and replay. The current game makes it more of a risk to engage in combat than a reward, so if that were to shift for the next DLC, I think it would be an even better game.

 

 

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2 hours ago, IU said:

I only played maybe 2 hours of Skyward Sword, and the game seemed like it was designed to limit the player as much as possible. The linearity, forced control, stamina system, info boxes...It's a game that doesn't let me think for myself and has design choices that assumes low player intelligence. I was considering restarting the game prior to getting Breath of the Wild earlier in the year, but I ended up passing on that experience.

Were those two hours out of the beginning? The beginning of Skyward Sword is so bizarre. It's basically an hours-long visual novel--even longer if you consider the time it takes to reach the first dungeon. You have to trek all around that forest so many times, especially if you slip and fall down to the lower levels and have to climb you way back around.

 

As for Odyssey, I haven't played very much of it. But I'd assume it's a less positive/free experience because obtaining the power moons requires more specific puzzle solving, without as many different solutions to try, so it can become more frustrating.

 

And for the breakable weapons issue, it's a very Japanese way of designing the game. If you embrace it (by not obsessively hoarding weapons) the game is way more fun, but most people will want to resist it as much as possible. Though I agree that a method of repairing damaged weapons would greatly improve the experience. It's such a fresh experience, but I have a feeling that once its design catches on, BOTW will feel so bare and outdated.

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Skyward Sword is the logical extreme of making a Zelda game as linear as possible and I can understand why people don't enjoy the game for that.  It suffers from a lot of issues that modern single player games have in that it's mostly about setpieces and always moving forward instead of giving the player any time or incentive to explore, and it hurts the game on consecutive playthroughs because nothing about the game really changes.  It's rigid and isn't open to letting the player do what they want, and coming before one of the most critically acclaimed games in the series and the most open-ended we've seen is going to make it age like milk.

 

On the other hand, while I adore BotW and it's solidified itself as one of my favorite games ever, it had to sacrifice or ease up on things I liked about the series in order to accommodate that.  A reason that people dislike open-world games (including myself) is that there's a lack of focus or drive that's always prevalent in these games.  When you avoid linearity, there's a certain depth to the presentation and story that's going to be lost or de-emphasized.  A story is meant as a means of guiding the player through the game.  And while it has its fair share of memorable characters, BotW's overall plot and story quests are very shallow compared to a lot of the games in the series, Skyward Sword included. 

 

While I grew attached to the game as an organic open-world experience where I'm allowed to do what I want, I never felt a compulsion to complete the game until about 90 hours in.  And while you say it's because the game enthralled me enough that I wanted to just explore (and that's a good thing), you can say it's also in equal part due to the fact that the game's story threads, its general plot did not compel me enough to want to do it.  And I know people who like story driven games, who like following a compelling narrative to guide them through a game.  Who can get bored when the world is opened up to them but they feel no desire to explore it because they want a story or memorable characters.  While I think BotW does avoid a handful of the pitfalls open world games suffer from, it doesn't avoid all of them and people with few inclinations towards them might not be entirely swayed by the game.

On a pure gameplay front, BotW succeeded in nearly every regard and I think will go down as one of the greatest games ever made, I earnestly believe that.  But for a story-driven experience in a videogame, I felt it faltered a lot.  The characters were memorable but underutilized in at best a few hours of story content, which to me says I found them memorable because they avoided overstaying their welcome without calling into question the longevity or depth of the plot.  There was a startling lack of urgency in the game as a result, which makes for fun lounging exploring time well enough I guess.

fwiw I actually do enjoy Skyward Sword a lot, but it's on the polar opposite spectrum that BotW and I find them hard to compare because they had opposite mission goals.

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3 hours ago, Anselma said:

While I grew attached to the game as an organic open-world experience where I'm allowed to do what I want, I never felt a compulsion to complete the game until about 90 hours in.  And while you say it's because the game enthralled me enough that I wanted to just explore (and that's a good thing), you can say it's also in equal part due to the fact that the game's story threads, its general plot did not compel me enough to want to do it.  And I know people who like story driven games, who like following a compelling narrative to guide them through a game.  Who can get bored when the world is opened up to them but they feel no desire to explore it because they want a story or memorable characters.  While I think BotW does avoid a handful of the pitfalls open world games suffer from, it doesn't avoid all of them and people with few inclinations towards them might not be entirely swayed by the game.

Yeah, the style won't suit everyone. For me, I was more immersed in BOTW than any game I've ever played, and even hundreds of hours later I still have my own quest to complete. But not everyone is going to immerse themselves in the game world, and immersion is probably the single most crucial element to an open world game's success. If someone doesn't care too much about Hyrule, the characters, or the adventure, I can see why the experience would feel empty.

 

But then again, if someone lacks both the interest and the imagination, they probably wouldn't enjoy any type of story or adventure-based game.

 

 

For your last comment, my main comparison of the two games is positive experience. Skyward Sword too frequently gives the player only one thing to do, but constantly gets in the way of them doing that one thing. It's a unique experience where I had a blast playing through it the first time, but after that, any level reflection or the slightest replaying was excruciating. Linear games can still be great and stay great if they control well.

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I liked Skyward Sword.

 

I liked using the Beetle to drop bombs on enemies from above.

 

I liked parkouring over a Moblin's shield and stabbing him in the ass before he realizes what the fuck just happened.

 

I liked the interactions with the side-characters (the Groose is loose!).

 

I liked the romance between Link and Zelda.

 

It's not a perfect game by any means. When it's bad, it's really, really bad. But when it's good, it's fantastic.

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I think the last time I played SS was like year and half ago or at most two. And to me that game compared to BotW is a distant memory.

 

But looking back at this thread with Anslema and Tyranorge; there are good parts to SS and that to me was the story in comparison to BotW. Because of the open-world is why the story suffered in that game, like if there was structure to exploring then maybe the story would drive those to proceed with the game naturally.

 

Basically, BotW is awesome but is obstructed by its stellar gameplay that the story took a backseat, while SS was so damn linear; what story came through was overlooked by the most point a to point b Zelda ever.

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I don't rember that motion controls being that bad in Skyward Sword. Hell, I found them rather intuitive, except for the occasional recalibration, but those were fairly rare.

Is there maybe something wrong with your Motion Plus?

Edited by Marxforever
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46 minutes ago, Tyranogre said:

There have also been a few times in BotW where I wished I had access to a mechanic from SS to help solve a puzzle.

 

The aiming reticle for throwing bombs would've made those "circle of rocks in the water" Koroks so much less irritating.

Oh, fuck those. A disgusting blemish on an otherwise fantastic game. "Irritating" ain't the half of it. Eventually I got so angry I just said fuck it and figured out how to cheat by using Cryonis.

 

33 minutes ago, Marxforever said:

I don't rember that motion controls being that bad in Skyward Sword. Hell, I found them rather intuitive, except for the occasional recalibration, but those were fairly rare.

Is there maybe something wrong with your Motion Plus?

Maybe it's my controllers aging terribly. I couldn't even swing a few times without the remote (the one that came with the game) crapped out and started reading backwards. Then the nunchuk decided it can't center anymore, which got in the way of picking up the bomb flowers which require you to stand perfectly still directly in front of them. It was a really bad idea for Nintendo to require such precise controls with no correction if the hardware operates anywhere under peak performance.

 

My biggest consistent issue, even when my controllers never hiccuped, was the recentering. When I played Twilight Princess I knew I could press my item button and, in the time it took for Link to draw his bow, I'd be pointing at the target. Skyward Sword is constantly recentering my aim, so if I try to aim in advance I just screw myself over.

 

BOTW does the same with Magnesis once you connect with an object, but it's not nearly as bad because the controllers are easier to move and I can adjust with control sticks. BOTW's issue with motion controls is that they move in a 1:1 ratio (whereas OoT 3D was 2:1 so you could turn around in-game without turning around IRL), and the game will not register horizontal movements at slow speeds. So if you look to your left, then try turning back to face front, it's very unlikely that you'll actually end up in the same place as when you started. This is especially noticeable and jittery when you're scoping out far-away targets.

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Other than the linearity and the "let me tell you about this item every time you load your file" Skyward Sword is a really fantastic game. When I revisited it about a year ago after so long, I had no issues at all with the controls (especially once wrapping your head around the "you don't have to point it at the screen" bit) and Fi has the Navi-effect, in that she's REALLY not that annoying. Like at all. You don't HAVE to press the button to talk to her every time she chimes in... 

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Skyward Sword is a game I have some odd and conflicting opinions on because on one hand I don't necessarily understand the rabid hatred the game seems to have nor the disdain for the motion controls which I found functional and just fine most of the time.  On the other hand, it has A LOT of problems that it rightfully gets a lot of shit for.  The game actually reminds me a lot of Majora's Mask or TWW in the sense that it's a game that does a lot to tamper with Zelda's formula.  When it succeeds or is on point, it's a really great game.  And when it falters, it really, REALLY fucks up.

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7 hours ago, EH_STEVE said:

Other than the linearity and the "let me tell you about this item every time you load your file" Skyward Sword is a really fantastic game. When I revisited it about a year ago after so long, I had no issues at all with the controls (especially once wrapping your head around the "you don't have to point it at the screen" bit) and Fi has the Navi-effect, in that she's REALLY not that annoying. Like at all. You don't HAVE to press the button to talk to her every time she chimes in... 

But if you don't talk to Fi, her flashing icon and sound effect will never go away. It ends up being even more maddening than her low batteries monologue.

 

12 minutes ago, Anselma said:

Skyward Sword is a game I have some odd and conflicting opinions on because on one hand I don't necessarily understand the rabid hatred the game seems to have nor the disdain for the motion controls which I found functional and just fine most of the time.  On the other hand, it has A LOT of problems that it rightfully gets a lot of shit for.  The game actually reminds me a lot of Majora's Mask or TWW in the sense that it's a game that does a lot to tamper with Zelda's formula.  When it succeeds or is on point, it's a really great game.  And when it falters, it really, REALLY fucks up.

The problem with Skyward Sword's biggest tampering is that it's padding. Stuff like its convoluted overworlds and constant fetch quest roadblocks. People invested in the story and scenarios were right to be infuriated by those objectives. They would have made excellent sidequests, but instead they were forced and botched the flow of the game.

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Funny I guess I'm on the opposite line of things. I actually loved the game play in SS. I also enjoyed the plot and the areas you could explore. granted I agree that it is very liner and the save points are annoying. Other then that I greatly enjoyed it. This could also have partly been at the time I had packed my Wii to go to my Nana's in Florida. I was staying a week and without a car, friends or anything else to do, SS was my go to activity. Yet even after that, when I went back to play it again after a year or two, I still enjoyed it.

 

The game is different from other Zelda games, but I'm okay with that. You can't really compare the game to BOTW because they are totally different from each other. BOTW can't even be compared to any of the other Zelda games. The graphics aren't going to be the greatest on a system that processes slower as well.

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25 minutes ago, Shulk said:

Funny I guess I'm on the opposite line of things. I actually loved the game play in SS. I also enjoyed the plot and the areas you could explore. granted I agree that it is very liner and the save points are annoying. Other then that I greatly enjoyed it. This could also have partly been at the time I had packed my Wii to go to my Nana's in Florida. I was staying a week and without a car, friends or anything else to do, SS was my go to activity. Yet even after that, when I went back to play it again after a year or two, I still enjoyed it.

 

The game is different from other Zelda games, but I'm okay with that. You can't really compare the game to BOTW because they are totally different from each other. BOTW can't even be compared to any of the other Zelda games. The graphics aren't going to be the greatest on a system that processes slower as well.

I was comparing SS and BOTW on the basis of positivity, which I'm defining here as, basically, the player having a good time and not being forced into things they don't like or don't feel like doing.

 

As for the graphics, I don't think processing power was the issue. Nintendo's great at producing visuals that age well--look at Wind Waker, for example. Even the more realistic style of Twilight Princess has aged well, since it retains flavorful art direction and coloring. Skyward Sword is so blurry it hurts my eyes to look around. It only works in constant motion. I think it would have worked better if Nintendo ditched the blurriness and tried to show off the watercolor style through textures. At least some sharp lines would've helped.

 

There are times in Skyward Sword where it's started to look like shovelware to me, with the oversized HUD elements and flat terrains.

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You're comparing SS and BotW on the basis of "positivity", but what you're describing is linear vs nonlinear gameplay structure.  It's not a matter of being forced, it's just a matter of you not liking it.  Which is fine, but don't be disingenuous about it.  If the game was "forcing" you to do things that you enjoyed, it wouldn't be an issue.  BotW doesn't "force" you into doing anything, but if there's nothing you want to do in the game then what good time is there to be had?  I know people who don't like open-world games because the tasks or activities they present to you are menial, don't offer any incentive to do them, and if games don't force you into doing things entirely at all regardless of them being things you like or don't like, then the game lacks urgency or direction and that can affect things like pacing or the plot.  Which are some of few criticisms that BotW suffers from.

 

Having control in games is nice, but when the game asserts almost all of that responsibility to the player, you have to leave something unintrusive and skeletal enough in regards to pacing and plot that can't be compromised or exploited by the player.  You cannot make a compelling or well-paced narrative when it can be ignored or even rendered entirely unnecessary, and this was what BotW had to throw under the bus in order to succeed as the game it was.  While taken to the logical extreme with the linear setpiece-oriented AAA gaming industry, a lot of players do like structure and direction.  And the drawback to this is that yeah, you might get to a point in the game where you say "this part sucks, why do i have to do it".  BotW doesn't avoid this problem because bad gameplay elements still exist in the game, it's just more obviously a problem in a game that's linear like SS.  If RNG rain is going to screw me out of exploring or if I have to go through another arbitrary garbage stealth section, just because I can avoid doing them doesn't make them stop existing as problems.  You don't get to handwave bad or poorly designed parts about a game just on the basis that you're given the option to ignore it, because it's going to be a negative experience for somebody who won't.

 

I think it's disingenuous to associate linear gameplay structure with "being forced" to do something.  One of the reasons I give Super Mario Odyssey shit for this is that I honestly prefer the focused, linear design of the Galaxy/3D games.  Both have their inherent advantages and disadvantages, it has nothing to do with them being "positive" experiences.  Super Mario Odyssey did not make the last 3 3D Mario games worse in retrospect because of the freedom it gave players.

Edited by Anselma
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1 hour ago, Anselma said:

I think it's disingenuous to associate linear gameplay structure with "being forced" to do something.  One of the reasons I give Super Mario Odyssey shit for this is that I honestly prefer the focused, linear design of the Galaxy/3D games.  Both have their inherent advantages and disadvantages, it has nothing to do with them being "positive" experiences.  Super Mario Odyssey did not make the last 3 3D Mario games worse in retrospect because of the freedom it gave players.

I tried to emphasize that Skyward Sword's linearity isn't what got to me--it was the linearity plus unplayable mechanics.

 

I didn't mind having to take specific actions, but when those actions are so often motion controls that so often don't work for me, I'm not even playing the game anymore. I'm just fighting the controller. And even when the controls do work, these tasks are still stretched to absurd lengths when dowsing quests leave me aimlessly circling an area for an hour, or when something as simple as selling one item turns into a sprawling and blind dialogue tree with massive, unskippable paragraphs.

 

Every game is going to involve parts where the player is at least briefly doing something they don't really want to do. But those can still be enjoyable if they pass quickly, or have responsive and satisfying controls, or give an enjoyable audiovisual presentation--Skyward Sword does the exact opposite of all three of those things, while BOTW nails them. That's where I make the comparison.

 

 

I do get the story-related gripes. But even there Skyward Sword doesn't win out, because in hindsight the whole story is just Zelda playing tag while Link runs errands for stubborn people. It's been deeply frustrating to replay when so few of the roadblocks are tasks are justified by anything more than video game logic. (Like the tiny trees in Pokemon you have to cut down, or small ledges you can't climb up.)

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