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Eiji Aonuma thinks that he can top Breath of the Wild. How?!?

Cerium

Member
So how far in the future are we talking about, Aonuma? And at what cost?

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* Near 400 names credited. Not including entire companies.
* 100+ Nintendo in-house staff
* 100~ SRD, Monolith, Mario Club Nintendo of America, Nintendo of Europe
* 100+ Outsource companies
Hundreds of people toiled for four years to bring us this game. Monolith was called upon to help with the open world design. It's probably the biggest game Nintendo has ever put out.

I've already been playing for what feels like far too long and I've barely scratched the surface; I just installed the Parental Controls app on my phone just so that I can track my play time because I'm pretty sure I've already dropped more than 15 hours into it and I'm only up to the first village. The surface is barely scratched. And yet I feel no pressure to go any faster because every inch of this world is a blast.

Where does Zelda go from here? How do you top this? I'm a little delirious from almost nonstop gaming now but I struggle to imagine what they could possibly do to surpass this. Like Ocarina of Time before it, I think we might be waiting another 20 years before we get an entry that can convincingly turn the page and declare itself the new king.
 

Armigr

Member
Better ≠ bigger. I can totally imagine Aonuma and his crew making a more concise game of a more consistent quality in the future. Breath of the Wild is cool, but it certainly has its weaker moments and elements that a sequel could improve upon.
 

DVCY201

Member
Aonuma will come and personally pick you up and drop you into an unknown location where you'll have to survive, properly mimicking the BotW experience. Doesn't get better and more immersive than that.
 

jdstorm

Banned
Better Hardware is a good start. Breath of the Wild had to run on the WiiU's CPU.

Imagine how many concurrent systems you could combine together with a 2017 or later CPU.
 

NotLiquid

Member
You can always go better.

But in the context of the present, it's hard to imagine a game that will amaze and wow me as much as Breath of the Wild has.
 

Breads

Banned
60+ fps? Better graphics and design? More items? Online play? Come on...

Being a 10/10 doesn't mean it can't be topped. One should always strive to do better.
 

entremet

Member
Of course he can top it.

He's only limited by his vision (And Nintendo's approval lol).

Don't see why this is a crazy sentiment. Many creative folks say this type of stuff all the time.
 
Logically you can produce better for less the next time around. Experience allows you to do what you've done before, while learning from mistakes to optimise the process and enhance the product.

If anything we could expect a better game, with less cost or time in development. It doesn't seem unrealistic to better what they put out.
 

Ghgghggh

Banned
Logically you can produce better for less the next time around. Experience allows you to do what you've done before, while learning from mistakes to optimise the process and enhance the product.

If anything we could expect a better game, with less cost or time in development. It doesn't seem unrealistic to better what they put out.

Agreed. I just hope the sequel to BOTW is more like OOT to Majoras Mask and less like OOT to Twilight Princess .
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure this's gonna be an Ocarina of Time situation. We'll get multiple sequels that will try to replicate the formula with various levels of success, and I'm fine with that. BOTW formula is too good to get only one game out of it.
 

Mawile

Banned
Make Link a girl

I hope they never do this. Tired of female characters getting the spotlight only as a female variant of a male character. Make a playable Princess Zelda or some other female character that stands on her own and not associated with a male design.
 

Hermii

Member
Now that they already made botw they could iterate and improve upon that foundation at much lower cost.
 
Now that they already made botw they could iterate and improve upon that foundation at much lower cost.

I hope so. Ideally they'll do an Ocarina -> Majora's Mask transition, with BotW -> X. Don't think I could stand waiting another 5-6 years.

MMO confirmed.

Can't wait to shoot you all with my bow while you're trying to climb shit.

I'd be down for a co-op Zelda with revised BotW mechanics.
 

Mediking

Member
It's actually great that he thinks he can do even better than Breath of the Wild. This is very promising for the future of Zelda.
 

Zedark

Member
Well, the sky
ward sword
is the limit, so he should do what he can! Honestly, though, surpassing this game will be a hell of a feat to pull off imo.
 

meppi

Member
I hope that they do something weird and a bit darker even.

Or in other words, I want a Majora's Mask 2. :)
 

DaaMaadNess

Neo Member
Not making it open world would be great. I really think we already have an overwhelming amount of games of this genre out there.

If he decides to keep doing that tough, I would like him to keep improving the interactivity with the world. This game does it so good compared with other open worlds.

And 60 fps would be great.

Or at least avoid drops on them when your game is already locked at 30 fps.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Doesn't seem like the dev cycle is really much longer. Weren't previous Zeldas about 4 years in the oven?

I think they just staffed up and focused on the right things this time.
 
How about real dungeons straight in the overworld instead of 120 glorified Riddler trophies with loading screens? Or anything that isn't standard open world fare like the towers, enemy bases, etc. As cool as "you can climb that mountain" is in the first minute, I haven't yet found any truly awesome rewards (nor vistas, since the art direction and graphics in general are particularly.underwhelming on mountains).
 

Zojirushi

Member
We've probably had "They can't possibly top this" topics since GTA San Andreas and before and they were always wrong.
 

Air

Banned
Smart man. The worse thing one could do creatively is say they peaked and I happen to agree with him btw even though I'm in love with the game. It really feels like Aonuma has developed a lot as a game designer and I'm interested in what he pursues next.
 

v1oz

Member
Doesn't seem like the dev cycle is really much longer. Weren't previous Zeldas about 4 years in the oven?

I think they just staffed up and focused on the right things this time.
This game was 5 years in the oven. They started from the 2012 Wii U Zelda tech demo. BOTW was initially supposed to come out in 2015 so they had to do the WW remake in-between to tide people over for what would eventually be a long wait.

TP was 3 years. OOT was 3 years development. MM even less.
 

Spman2099

Member
I haven't played the game yet, and I think it looks amazing, but understand that you are existing in a haze of hype right now.

Breath of the Wild hasn't changed things. It isn't the next step in video games. It is probably just a well realized game. There are most likely hundreds of games that are better than Breath of the Wild, if you have different priorities.

Maybe it would be extremely difficult to make a game as good as Breath of the Wild that does all the same things, but if the development team have a different emphasis they could most certainly make a different game that some people would like considerably better.
 

Jawmuncher

Member
Playing it now and there's plenty of room for improvement. Some of the gameplay ideas could be better refined such as the weaponry and temperatures. Though I am at a loss as to how he could completely top it ten-fold.
 

_Ryo_

Member
The Legend of Zelda: The Voices of Majora.

Basically a darker BOTW, with time travel and longer and harder dungeons.
 
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