But I have played Destiny. And I was the perfect mark for its con.

Ok, I'm kind of bored today, so I'll bite.

What is the con for which you were the mark?

I think I've finally found the love for Breath of the Wild that everyone else had. It's my current obsession.

I always thought it was good, but I never understand why so many people said it's the best game of all time. I played it for like fifteen hours or so a few months after it came out, and I've played probably five since then, in little bursts here and there. It never sucked me in. I enjoyed it, but it felt lacking in substance in a lot of ways.

I still think that. I'd love to play a version of Breath of the Wild that has a world that feels as fully realized as The Witcher 3's. There's a serious lack of truly interesting stories.

I've been playing it a lot over the last few days (I put probably ten hours in over the weekend, starting over from a new save), and, having let go of my desire for more interesting characters and stories, I've started to really find a joy in just wondering around, with no goals beyond "get to the top of that mountain and see what's in the valley on the other side."

The scale of the world in that game still feels like magic to me. You can see for what feels like miles. The next hilltop always seems like it's incredibly close, but once you get in the valley between the two hills, it feels like that valley suddenly and magically expands to be huge. What looks like a small copse of trees from a hilltop becomes a quite large forest once you actually get there. It really does feel magical, and it's absolutely incredible.

I will always love The Witcher 3's world for it's attention to detail and it's sense of being a real place. I've never seen anything like it. The Breath of the Wild's world is on the other end of that spectrum, in that it feels impossible and magic. The use of sightlines in that game is like nothing I've ever seen before. No matter where you are, there's always some landmark visible, so you always know where you are. It must have taken a monumental effort to make that world feel like it does. I still wish there was more stuff to actually do in that world, stuff that felt important, rather than always simply moving rocks around to get another Korok seed, but that world itself is incredible enough that simply exploring it is an amazing experience that is its own reward.

If that writer, I should say. His/her head is planted deep up his/her own ass, IMO. Utterly devoid of self reflection or self-ownership. The kind of person who will spend 20-30 hours playing a game and “hating every minute of it” just so they can turn around and trash the game with extra vitriol (like, how about you just stop playing?). Uses writing about video games as an excuse to dump on everything that commits the sin of being both “male” and “white”, as is all too fashionable, all without saying anything of actual depth or substance or worth.

Basically just a self-entitled downer, IMO.

Saving Zelda

I had a pretty emotional response to playing Breath Of The Wild because of it.

If that article were written as a post here on DBO, it would get raked over the coals for the grandiose hyberboli combined with opinions presented as facts. It is very clear to me that the writer’s opinions are shaped as much by nostalgia as by the actual games being discussed. The way he describes The Legend of Zelda is utterly detached from reality. It was one of the better games of its time, when the medium was so limited that hardly anything was possible. And for those of us who were 4-7 years old when it came out, it was captivating. But it is not the holy grail of video games that this writer makes it out to be. Nor is it vastly superior to the subsequent Zelda titles that the writer trashes. He was just older when he played Ocarina of Time, and therefore the game’s mechanistic underpinnings were more detectable for him.

To be frank, most games from that era are vastly inferior to the average game today. There is a niche, nostalgia-driven market based around vintage video games, but if those games really were as good as writers like this make them put to be, then kids today would be playing them instead of Mario Maker, Pokémon, Fortnight, or Minecraft. They were great in their day, but they are far less great TODAY

This isn’t to say that none of his points are valid. There are significant differences between those older Zeldas and the direction that the franchise went over time. It’s the axiomatic position that “original Zelda = good, all other Zelda = bad” that I take issue with. His argument is an emotional one, but he refuses to recognize it as such. Other Zelda games don’t don’t make him feel the way that the original did. And that’s perfectly valid. For me, Ocarina of Time was that game. The level of detail and atmosphere that they achieved in the world was unlike anything I’d experienced at that point. The artistry with which it was all realized was gorgeous. I was absolutely captivated and enthralled. But I’m not going to sit here and ramble on about how every Zelda since then is garbage, because none of them made me feel the same way. It was a wonderful game for its time, and I was just the right age when I played it. For other people, that game might be Super Mario 3, or The Witcher, or Horizon Zero Dawn.

I think there are a lot of great points in this piece about the spirit of the original Zelda, and how Breath of the Wild is in many ways a return to that spirit. Personally, I think it would be a far better piece if he’d left out all the aggrandizement, rose-tinted glasses, and opinions presented as facts.