Super Mario Odyssey vs Breath of the Wild – Make your voice be heard

And long before Mario mastered this approach to game design, it was The Legend of Zelda that firmly established it as a gaming pastime. They have always seemed like open world games, but deep down, they are masterfully structured games defined by an invisible wire that pulls their audience through some of gaming’s most iconic moments.

This is exactly where The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild comes up short for me. Exploration and uncovering a huge map was never the driving force of the series. Nintendo crafted its success based on dungeon crawling, interesting tools, and an intimate, intricate map that allowed players to progress and pace themselves based on their loadout. The games were structured to create the feel of a sweeping adventure, but deep down inside, the true joy came from using that hook shot that you sacrificed blood and tears to uncover and finally reaching a chest that had been nagging you the whole game.

But not anymore. I once read that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece of modern day game design, and I couldn’t agree more. It succeeds on every level of what gamers are looking for nowadays. The problem with that is I’m not altogether into this “modern day” approach to games anymore.

How many times have I been dumped into an open world at this point? How many times have I climbed a tower to further expand my map, and how many times have I opened my mini-map, marked a waypoint, and immediately bolted towards it?  Assassin’s Creed, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Horizon Zero Dawn, Far Cry, The Witcher, Dragon Age, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Borderlands, Just Cause 2, Crackdown, inFamous, The Saboteur, Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Final Fantasy XV, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Each of these games provides unique mechanics to progress through their campaigns, but at their core, all they really do is drop you in a setting and let you progress at your own pace. They give you the tools, but you have to find your own fun. You can race, you can fight, you can experience a story, you can explore, you can dig, you can build, you can both roleplay and roll-play. These games claim to do everything, and yet, most of these “do everything” games ultimately end up doing nothing. They lack structure, they lack focus, they do everything well but never succeed at a single element.

I was into this style of design for a while, but after so many games, it’s kind of hard to get interested at this point. Breath of the Wild falls into this camp, and it simply came a bit late to the party for me.

This is where Super Mario Odyssey gets my vote. Super Mario Odyssey succeeds as a Mario game. Breath of the Wild succeeds as every other tower-climbing, open world adventure you’ve played in recent memory with a hint of that Nintendo perfectionism and a nice Legend of Zelda DLC skin.

When it was released, many praised Breath of the Wild for coming to the tough conclusion that old franchises have to sacrifice a little of their identity to remain relevant in the modern world.

Super Mario Odyssey blasts that line of praise right out of the sky.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below!

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/11/19/super-mario-odyssey-vs-breath-of-the-wild-make-your-voice-be-heard/