People constantly praise Elden Ring, Zelda Breath of The Wild and Tears of the Kingdom becuase of the “freedom” it allows versus an ‘ubisoft’ game (assassins creed, far cry, horizon, Tsushima, etc.)but the only real difference is the idea that map icons aren’t present on the map
As I remember in most relatively recent Ubisoft or Sony open world games you can disable most or all icons in the UI via the game settings. Even to remove the map during gameplay.It’s honestly as easy as removing map icons to make people think the world design in one game is superior to another.
The main difference between Zelda and the Ubisoft and Sony open world games, other than having a Nintendo logo and worse graphics, it's a bigger focus on differentiate more the biomes and a few more unique situations in specific areas of the map. Something that GoW does very well.
To make open world games (including Zelda) feel less repetitive they should make the maps way smaller to repeat each mission type and collectible type less times. And increase even more their development time to include a bigger diversity of mission types, different biomes and unique situations, because that requires way more work than to repeat more times something you already have.
TotK feels like BotW adding the Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolds crafting mechanics for vehicles/devices.BotW doesn't even feel like TotK
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