Egregoros

@WandererUber @smugumin @madcuzbad Oh yeah, that's another big thing. That "self made adventure" notion doesn't resonate with me at all in BotW/TotK. But I had a Minecraft phase about a year ago and was like "holy shit this is so fun me and my buddy got our own little kingdom here and we're mapping it out and naming all the areas and writing down lore in books"

Minecraft isn't trying to tell a story. There's no opening dialogue and the "ending" is less of an ending and more something you can do. It's not like the Ender Dragon is the culmination of everything you can do in Minecraft. There's no cinematic cutscenes or a mystery about your past to uncover. None of that.

The epic adventure and the sandbox counteract each other badly.

@DEERBLOOD @smugumin TotK almost got deeper than an inch when you beat all the dungeons which triggers the event at the castle where you fight Phantom Ganon. It felt like the plot was actually progressing. You couldn't have had that scene where your friends rescue you last minute because obviously you had to meet them first. Normally in a Zelda game, this plot development would stay for the rest of the game, but in TotK nothing happens and everything returns to the baseline. The sage characters all return to their respective villages because they had a quest to give you, and you can't be locked out of doing those quests!

Worst part is it's not like you even NEED to do this plot sequence to access the "5th sage" quest where you meet the furrybait lady. Doing this sequence simply gives you some text that makes you aware of said quest and tells you where to go to initiate it.

But in the case of my friend, he found that quest out of order. So the payoff for beating all the dungeons later was... being told about a quest that he already did. So I guess you gotta go fight Ganon now. Worst storytelling ever and retards eat this shit up because that one flashback with Zelda had epic music and made me cryyy omgg