I sequence broke the shit out of this game so by the end when the expected me to go to all this stuff they added a line along the lines of "oh, you did that already? Amazing!" and continued on.
Yes, some dramatic punch is lost when you stumble upon something that is supposed to be a big reveal but thank you Nintendo. Thank you so much for not giving a shit. The decision philosophy of this game accepts that we might spoil their plot and progression but they are willing to accept that in the name of freedom. Every single other open world game would block you or give you a "you're not able to do that right now" finger-wagging. These last two Zelda games have taken gameplay freedom to a militant extreme, and the sheer polish and consistency of that experience has become a humiliation to every other game. It has been very difficult for me to go straight to another game after this and BotW. There are few things in gaming I hate more than that initial 3-5 hours of an open world game where there lock you in to stupid tutorials and limited access to your abilities because they assume you won't figure anything out on your own. Zelda has its tutorial island but even it basically begs you to break it, if you can.
I have to say, the building in this game is just beautiful. I was really worried initially because I had no interest in Minecraft style base building and resource gathering. By making the building oriented around exploration and creating tools to help you navigate the world it encourages expression and innovation rather than just hunkering down and never doing anything. The amazing flexibility of building encourages you to try and solve things again the developers wishes, and that permission is absolutely beautiful. This is a game that puts its full trust in the player.
Yes, some dramatic punch is lost when you stumble upon something that is supposed to be a big reveal but thank you Nintendo. Thank you so much for not giving a shit. The decision philosophy of this game accepts that we might spoil their plot and progression but they are willing to accept that in the name of freedom. Every single other open world game would block you or give you a "you're not able to do that right now" finger-wagging. These last two Zelda games have taken gameplay freedom to a militant extreme, and the sheer polish and consistency of that experience has become a humiliation to every other game. It has been very difficult for me to go straight to another game after this and BotW. There are few things in gaming I hate more than that initial 3-5 hours of an open world game where there lock you in to stupid tutorials and limited access to your abilities because they assume you won't figure anything out on your own. Zelda has its tutorial island but even it basically begs you to break it, if you can.
I have to say, the building in this game is just beautiful. I was really worried initially because I had no interest in Minecraft style base building and resource gathering. By making the building oriented around exploration and creating tools to help you navigate the world it encourages expression and innovation rather than just hunkering down and never doing anything. The amazing flexibility of building encourages you to try and solve things again the developers wishes, and that permission is absolutely beautiful. This is a game that puts its full trust in the player.