When they were making it they constantly were evaluating the game and refining it so eye-candy was always calling you forth organically, there was always a nearby mountain you thought might have something, a tower on the horizon, treasure chests and koroks that rewarded you for looking at the environment for clues, the game pushes you to climb, glide, and is always dropping a breadcrumb trail all around you, when they were designing the world of BotW they’d use signposts and placeholder assets making sure that there was always visual cues to lead you on. This isn’t about whether or not this game will be good, but it’s very interesting to me from a game design perspective what different open world games emphasize and how it changes how you experience and interact with the world.įor example with BotW they wanted to emphasize exploration, it was important to them for the player to look at the environment and always see something catching their eye calling them forward, and a lot of gameplay systems are all set up to push the player towards wanting to have the sense of discovery.
![the pathless walkthrough the pathless walkthrough](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PzNmpQ71yAE/maxresdefault.jpg)
I wish them luck, if they can pull it off I think it's got some good ideas! That said this has grabbed my interest whereas before I was completely uncaring about the game. It was a gorgeous game but basically a retread of Journey, and not as fine-tuned or unique (because we already had Journey). Or it could be a bit lame, I wasn't huge on Abzu. I'm not 100% sure, but I hope that's what they're going for, which could maybe be really great flow-wise. It could be that this is an open-world game with a network of targets that let you keep momentum if you "connect" them correctly. Or grappling hook points in many games, set up so that you can make it through a path without landing if you time it correctly (MHW: Iceborne is what I'm currently thinking of, but it's a common trope). For another non-musical example look at something like Flappy Bird (again, flow out the wazoo). It's a pretty blurry line between rhythmic button pressing and QTE. Maybe, but you could also easily make the argument that stuff like or Guitar Hero (or any rhythm game) is based hugely on flow. Those are repetitive, basic QTEs that, while being unchallenging, require your attention instead of letting you appreciate the landscapes as you wish.