Thread: Will BOTW sequel have dungeons?

Will dungeons be present in BOTW’s sequel


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Franky Family

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This is one of the big questions we're all asking ourselves as Zelda fans. Some doubt BOTW's sequel will have dungeons, but personally I believe they'll be going all the way with this title

So what do you think, will there be traditional mini dungeons and full dungeons, temples and the like? Or will Nintendo EAD double down on exploration instead as we've seen in BOTW?
 
I think it will. The fans were super vocal on their complaints on the lack of them in BOTW. Plus with the core systems already there, they should have had much more time to focus on dungeons. Also wouldnt be too surprised to see breakable weapons go away due to the complaints.

But even if the dungeons are similar to to BOTW and weapons still break, I am down. Just give me some more unique bosses and not that lame blight gannon bullshit.
 
I thought the iterations of Ganon in BOTW were great. The one thing and probably the only one thing I truly dislike about BOTW is the copy and paste that was done with the Stables
 
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There will be dungeons, just like there were dungeons in BotW. The best ones, even.
So you rank the Divine Beasts as top tier dungeons is what you're saying? That and Shrines?

I liked the Divine Beasts a lot. If BOTW had four dungeons like MM has, in addition to the Divine Beasts it probably would have been in the running for the best game of all time
 
So you rank the Divine Beasts as top tier dungeons is what you're saying? That and Shrines?

I liked the Divine Beasts a lot. If BOTW had four dungeons like MM has, in addition to the Divine Beasts it probably would have been in the running for the best game of all time
If Breath of the Wild had the legacy dungeons, enemy and boss variety, weapon and gear variety and abilities, weapon upgrades and skills, spells and abilities of Elden Ring it would be the best game ever made.

Hoping 2 can do pull that off but I remain doubtful until they actually show more than a few seconds teaser.
 
I think they will have dungeons, as they need something to differentiate the game from BOTW 1. If they are using the same engine, if they don't make dungeons it will just basically be a large DLC for BOTW 1.
I think the fans will be extremely surprised. Again. Per usual with this series, because there has never been a main console major Zelda game that doesn't do something completely different from the previous. It's full blown tradition at this point. So to me, when I had read all the fans' comments in the past when the latest trailer for BOTW's sequel was revealed, I was amused. Many were worried that the sequel might be too similar when compared to the original. But when has this ever been the case with any Zelda game concerning the major releases?

I have an idea of what might be in store as to how the sequel will flesh itself out. I do think there will be familiarity, but like Majora's Mask coming after Ocarina of Time, BOTW's sequel is going to bring to us fans something we haven't seen in a very long time if I'm right, or it could be something revolutionary possibly. It's difficult to say how great of a risk they will take with the development of this game and Nintendo is not easy to read concerning the content of their games and what will be next
 
This is my cynical answer based on the footage seen so far.

Yeah, it will have a few larger below-ground dungeons, but most of the dungeons will be floating in the sky. They won't address the core complaint of too many bite-sized dungeons scattered across the map. The game will still mostly take place above ground on the overworld, except maybe a singular "dungeon depth crawler roguelike 100 floor challenge" sort of area. Nintendo / Aonuma will boast to the effect of "We are so creative by putting the puzzle-dungeon in the sky! It is better than below the ground where you can't see it. Putting platforms in the sky has truly revolutionized the way the series handles dungeons" and that will be that. Instead of glowing blue shrine-elevators scattered everywhere it will be glowing green sky-puzzles.
 
This is my cynical answer based on the footage seen so far.

Yeah, it will have a few larger below-ground dungeons, but most of the dungeons will be floating in the sky. They won't address the core complaint of too many bite-sized dungeons scattered across the map. The game will still mostly take place above ground on the overworld, except maybe a singular "dungeon depth crawler roguelike 100 floor challenge" sort of area. Nintendo / Aonuma will boast to the effect of "We are so creative by putting the puzzle-dungeon in the sky! It is better than below the ground where you can't see it. Putting platforms in the sky has truly revolutionized the way the series handles dungeons" and that will be that. Instead of glowing blue shrine-elevators scattered everywhere it will be glowing green sky-puzzles.
I kinda hate to cynically agree with you, but I cynically feel the same way. Once they started showing off floating islands in the sky with sky puzzles, I sort of started to feel bad about the sequel. What I want is not floating islands--I have a feeling that this provides them the creative leeway they felt they needed to alter the landscape of the BotW world. What this ultimately means is that world traversal will be hampered by these huge chunks of land that have been ripped and lifted right out of the world, presumably.

I expect it will make perfect sense because the great plateau, itself, appeared to have just landed smack in the middle of Hyrule. And guess what will probably be floating in the sky in this game? Yep! The Great Plateau will now probably be your first major destination to get to!!

I still want lots of overworld exploration and would love for there to be more variety of points of interest. I want to see less copy/paste and more detail. I would like to see fortresses and monsterous keeps.

I don't want a whole lot of floating island hopping and trying to figure out how to move forward.

Believe it or not, there is a formula here that brought mass appeal to the Zelda series. A lot of non-traditional gamers picked up BotW and loved it. They just need to focus on giving us more to explore. That's really all there is to it. And in addition to weapon degradation, they could give us "modern" versions of weapons that don't explode after a dozen strikes and even allow us to upgrade those weapons to further improve them. It would be great to have a dude who forges and improves weapons. Would be great to just fill up the world more and expand the map to allow us more places to go.
 
I kinda hate to cynically agree with you, but I cynically feel the same way. Once they started showing off floating islands in the sky with sky puzzles, I sort of started to feel bad about the sequel. What I want is not floating islands--I have a feeling that this provides them the creative leeway they felt they needed to alter the landscape of the BotW world. What this ultimately means is that world traversal will be hampered by these huge chunks of land that have been ripped and lifted right out of the world, presumably.

I expect it will make perfect sense because the great plateau, itself, appeared to have just landed smack in the middle of Hyrule. And guess what will probably be floating in the sky in this game? Yep! The Great Plateau will now probably be your first major destination to get to!!

I still want lots of overworld exploration and would love for there to be more variety of points of interest. I want to see less copy/paste and more detail. I would like to see fortresses and monsterous keeps.

I don't want a whole lot of floating island hopping and trying to figure out how to move forward.

Believe it or not, there is a formula here that brought mass appeal to the Zelda series. A lot of non-traditional gamers picked up BotW and loved it. They just need to focus on giving us more to explore. That's really all there is to it. And in addition to weapon degradation, they could give us "modern" versions of weapons that don't explode after a dozen strikes and even allow us to upgrade those weapons to further improve them. It would be great to have a dude who forges and improves weapons. Would be great to just fill up the world more and expand the map to allow us more places to go.

yep I have a hunch they will pull a Metroid and artificially strip away / gatekeep a lot of the cool stuff from the first game in the manner you described.

"Hey let's slice up the same familiar map but with insurmountable walls. Now instead of walking across the desert to reach Gerudo Town, you have to teleport into our ascending Jacob's Ladder of teleport-panels hah hah aren't you mesmerized by our creativity?!"

The not-lazy approach to a sequel would've been to give us more of the same, just in a bigger map and/or with more density, with more item-interactions. They could've wowed everyone by showing off a map 5x larger than Breath of the Wild (explore surrounding kingdoms near Hyrule?) or built some neat terrain-destruction engine to let us dig downward like Minecraft, which was a major inspiration, or given us an ocean to sail around in. heck, even if replicating the 'sky' of Skyward Sword was their aim, why not give us genuine flight powers an let us airship / wing-glider aroudn? What we appear to be getting with BotW2 is more PuzZelda nonsense, the sort of stuff that made me dislike the series since the N64 days.
 
Fujibayashi's team has accomplished a lot in the two Zelda games he's directed on the Wii and Switch consoles. Even if I think Skyward Sword is the weakest of TLoZ games, the dungeons were alright. This will be the game where they bring them back

If BOTW's sequel has dungeons and give more in the way of story this time around in regards to the plot and writing then I believe this will be the Zelda game to beat and will surpass BOTW easily in most areas. I've said it before and I'll continue to say it; this will be the magnum opus of Fujibayashi and Aonuma
 
yep I have a hunch they will pull a Metroid and artificially strip away / gatekeep a lot of the cool stuff from the first game in the manner you described.

"Hey let's slice up the same familiar map but with insurmountable walls. Now instead of walking across the desert to reach Gerudo Town, you have to teleport into our ascending Jacob's Ladder of teleport-panels hah hah aren't you mesmerized by our creativity?!"

The not-lazy approach to a sequel would've been to give us more of the same, just in a bigger map and/or with more density, with more item-interactions. They could've wowed everyone by showing off a map 5x larger than Breath of the Wild (explore surrounding kingdoms near Hyrule?) or built some neat terrain-destruction engine to let us dig downward like Minecraft, which was a major inspiration, or given us an ocean to sail around in. heck, even if replicating the 'sky' of Skyward Sword was their aim, why not give us genuine flight powers an let us airship / wing-glider aroudn? What we appear to be getting with BotW2 is more PuzZelda nonsense, the sort of stuff that made me dislike the series since the N64 days.
Hell yes. To all of this. I do not want PuzZelda. I do not like PuzZelda. I am going to be severely disappointed if Breath of the PuzZelda is what's served after 5 long freaking years. All I've simply wanted was more BotW with "real caves" and "real dungeons" added in. Give me a denser world. Show me what Hyrule has become after 10 or 20 years have passed. The world should be coming back together. Hyrule castle should be rebuilt. Castle town should finally be a thing.

Instead, what I am sensing is we are in the immediate aftermath of the first game and jack shit has been done since defeating calamity gannon except for some Zelda exploring ruins in search of bullshitty things that I don't even care about. Like, git the kingdom back in order before the fuggin' Imperials from Elder Scrolls come across the ocean and invade! lol... I mean, does it concern no one in the land of Hyrule that they are basically an island without a kingdom and in a hundred years they've just gotten lucky no one has rolled in and beat their asses??
 
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yep I have a hunch they will pull a Metroid and artificially strip away / gatekeep a lot of the cool stuff from the first game in the manner you described.

"Hey let's slice up the same familiar map but with insurmountable walls. Now instead of walking across the desert to reach Gerudo Town, you have to teleport into our ascending Jacob's Ladder of teleport-panels hah hah aren't you mesmerized by our creativity?!"

The not-lazy approach to a sequel would've been to give us more of the same, just in a bigger map and/or with more density, with more item-interactions. They could've wowed everyone by showing off a map 5x larger than Breath of the Wild (explore surrounding kingdoms near Hyrule?) or built some neat terrain-destruction engine to let us dig downward like Minecraft, which was a major inspiration, or given us an ocean to sail around in. heck, even if replicating the 'sky' of Skyward Sword was their aim, why not give us genuine flight powers an let us airship / wing-glider aroudn? What we appear to be getting with BotW2 is more PuzZelda nonsense, the sort of stuff that made me dislike the series since the N64 days.
WTF you didn't like the N64 games Dun? I recall your distaste for Aonuma and his developing style in the Zelda games in a post way way back but overall he's been fairly great. What would you rate his efforts in the games since he became a part of the team?
 
We still don't know what the big "surprise" will be. It isn't just the floating micro-islands. I have a hunch Aonuma will be bringing back other facets of previous Zelda games.

Spirit-Tracks Stranding, where you submit rupees to way-stations and construct pre-mapped choo-choo tracks around Hyrule, increasing your ability to travel quickly, improving the economy as NPCs carry more items between towns. Lowering the glitched landscape back down makes it so that you can lay more tracks on the flattened land, until you ride a nuclear Train up some castles rear entrance with t he power of all four Divine choo-choos.
 
Hell yes. To all of this. I do not want PuzZelda. I do not like PuzZelda. I am going to be severely disappointed if Breath of the PuzZelda is what's served after 5 long freaking years. All I've simply wanted was more BotW with "real caves" and "real dungeons" added in. Give me a denser world. Show me what Hyrule has become after 10 or 20 years have passed. The world should be coming back together. Hyrule castle should be rebuilt. Castle town should finally be a thing.

Instead, what I am sensing is we are in the immediate aftermath of the first game and jack shit has been done since defeating calamity gannon except for some Zelda exploring ruins in search of bullshitty things that I don't even care about. Like, git the kingdom back in order before the fuggin' Imperials from Elder Scrolls come across the ocean and invade! lol... I mean, does it concern no one in the land of Hyrule that they are basically an island without a kingdom and in a hundred years they've just gotten lucky no one has rolled in and beat their asses??

Zelda doesn't know what it wants to be, probably because Aonuma fancies himself some genius auteur when in reality we just want him to make enjoyable arcade-like game systems. He's not really responsible for the action-focused Zelda games anyway, and has said plainly that he disliked difficult combat in the older Zelda titles. He is essentially trying to remake and iterate Marvelous: Treasure Island -- a puzzle adventure game -- in all his stuff. He wasn't responsible for Ocarina of time. Aonuma was only one of five directors. But Nintendo went through a serious loss of talent in the late 90s so Aonuma sort of inherited the godfather title for Zelda. Nintendo was and still is in the habit of making their developers into fake celebs who each handle a franchise: Miyamoto for Mario, Sakurai for Kirby, Aonuma for Zelda, Sakamoto for Metroid.

Aonuma is a hack, in my personal opinion. I wish he never got involved with Zelda but instead had to turn Marvelous into a marketable franchise or else get removed and replaced by someone more interesting. He is riding on the success of others. Harsh but hardly out of line with his history within Nintendo.


WTF you didn't like the N64 games Dun? I recall your distaste for Aonuma and his developing style in the Zelda games in a post way way back but overall he's been fairly great. What would you rate his efforts in the games since he became a part of the team?
I'm an outsider to the Zelda franchise, or maybe just a disenfranchised fan, since I played the 8-bit and 16-bit ones in their heyday as a kid, enjoyed them, but never really liked the 3D entries on N64 and Gamecube. Twilight Princess was actually pretty great because I liked the stronger emphasis on combat using the novel pointer controls. Skyward Sword was more of the same 3D Puzzelda, not my thing. The handheld Zeldas on Gameboy and GBA were fun because they were more like t he original 16-bit entries. Breath of the Wild is easily my favorite Zelda and one of the best open world games ever made. I love it. I wish Nintendo would actually comprehend the "cool" aspects of their own videogames and double-down on what the fans like, instead of retreating into their own creative assholes, knitting some Tingle puppets, and shitting out a "masterpiece". See above for my harsher sentiments toward Aonuma. For what it's worth, my all-time favorite "PuZelda" game is Phantom Hourglass. If a game is gonna focus on puzzles, ya might as well go with the most interesting and creative puzzle game in the franchise. The simple solutions in Phantom Hourglass felt perfectly in line with the simple puzzle solutions in LoZ and LttP, and I genuinely loved the style movement and combat.
 
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I'd like to think it will, but to my knowledge they haven't posted much. I'd personally love to see a mix of 4-8 large scale dungeons with real rewards like dungeon items (stuff like a hookshot or other typical zelda items), and another bunch of small shrine style bite sized dungeons with piecemeal upgrades like BOTW had.
 
Every game should have dungeons. Even ping pong.
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Bro if it didn't, heh. You think I shit on breath of the wild a lot, just wait. I'll be so obnoxious telling people it's shit I'll get banned from every single forum lol.

Course my bitching would be completely justified, but. 🙂

But no, it'll have dungeons. I don't think there's any possibility of it NOT being a better game than the first one.

Call me cautiously optimistic I suppose...
 
I think the real question we should be asking is whether it will run like shit on the Switch or not. BOTW was a scandalous release on WiiU. And supposedly the Super Switch is right around the corner.


Fixed for ya.
I am kind of hoping we get a new switch for 60 fps+ 120 hz variable refresh rate, higher resolution, hdr, Nvidia dlss ect.

The switch version can work at 30 fps obviously. I would make an exception to play Zelda at 30 fps on the switch, but it does feel awful in comparison to most new stuff having higher frame rate options.
 
Zelda doesn't know what it wants to be
Mario and Zelda games have always changed greatly from one title to the next; this has been the case since their inception as franchises on the NES and the pattern never really stopped for major release titles on Nintendo's home consoles. The one exception that comes to mind is Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel, Super Mario Galaxy 2 which are both true to one another in almost all their ways. But you're right, TLoZ is a very unusual and bold franchise when it comes to how the developers handle each game's successor within the series. Innovation is pushed almost to a fault, probably to the detriment of the traditional formula in some instances throughout development in at least a few of these games

He wasn't responsible for Ocarina of time. Aonuma was only one of five directors.
Being listed as one of the directors of any work is substantial. And the undertaking of such a role will never be anything short of wholeheartedly exhausting work. Shigeru Miyamoto is the genius responsible for much of Ocarina of Time but there is not a doubt in my mind that all five directors stepped up to play their part in creating the game. The team was nearly infallible as far as my thoughts towards Ocarina of Time go. As a kid when I had completed it, years after the fact, I wondered how they managed to pull it off. Seemed like demigods created Ocarina of Time, and certainly that is not the work of one or two or even three great minds at work. It was fully the greatness of an entire team and what they all were able to bring to the game. I know you dislike Aonuma's contributions but he's a great director at the end of the day. I don't think he's a genius or even close to it, but he works damn hard and usually delivers. On that note though, I gotta say that I'm glad he's the producer now, and that Fujibayashi took the helm as director starting with Skyward Sword. He rebounded like no other; from Skyward Sword to Breath of the Wild is amazing. Can't wait to see what Hidemaro Fujibayashi has in store for this game
 
Overall, Aonuma is a hack. He should never have been given the job over Koizumi... Although at least Koizumi working on Mario means we got Mario Galaxy :)
I wouldn't say he's a hack, but he's definitely not on the level of Miyamoto, Fujibayashi, or Koizumi imo. His worst work is Twilight Princess for sure. But I know many love that game. I can rip it to pieces with criticism; same with Skyward Sword
 
Fujibayashi's team has accomplished a lot in the two Zelda games he's directed on the Wii and Switch consoles. Even if I think Skyward Sword is the weakest of TLoZ games, the dungeons were alright. This will be the game where they bring them back

If BOTW's sequel has dungeons and give more in the way of story this time around in regards to the plot and writing then I believe this will be the Zelda game to beat and will surpass BOTW easily in most areas. I've said it before and I'll continue to say it; this will be the magnum opus of Fujibayashi and Aonuma
It does have a big game to beat though, BOTW 1 was pretty popular and enjoyed by fans. A direct sequel could either build upon BOTW 1 or it could falter in comparison. I hope it will end up as good as you say it will.
 
Looking at it, Yamada designed the dungeons of TP, and was a director as well, so I'm not surprised TP turned out so good 🤔
I had no idea. Assumed that it was primarily Aonuma who had designed the dungeons. Now I'm curious, what exactly did he do as director with The Wind Waker?

That was the only great aspect of Twilight Princess, everything else was kind of mediocre imo
 
I had no idea. Assumed that it was primarily Aonuma who had designed the dungeons. Now I'm curious, what exactly did he do as director with The Wind Waker?

That was the only great aspect of Twilight Princess, everything else was kind of mediocre imo
You're not going to agree, buuuut

Since Wind Waker was the weakest 3D Zelda prior to botw, he probably had more influence on it. I mean it makes sense, that was his first game after he was handed Zelda completely.

But I'm just talking shit, I don't know for sure lol. I guess I could look at that.

Twilight Princess could have been better, but ultimately the level design / items are still the best in overall consistency. And I dig the theme.

Could've been re written a bit, to be made darker, not have Zant who was built up the whole game be a joke at the end, some aesthetic changes here and there, but yeah. It's just a lot more modern feeling and fleshed out vs. Ocarina, though I respect that game too much to place it lower than 3rd.
 
I think the real question we should be asking is whether it will run like shit on the Switch or not. BOTW was a scandalous release on WiiU. And supposedly the Super Switch is right around the corner.


Fixed for ya.
Of course. In fact, that's probably why it has been delayed. You know, it has to look a little bit better than BotW while not running worse. lol

What are the odds we see a BOTW2 update in the September Nintendo Direct or at the Game Awards in December? The last update we got was the delay back in December 2021.
I would say the odds should be 1 in 1 since the game is supposed to release in Spring 2023. It's feeling kind of absurd that we've gone this long without having any sort of grasp of what this game is. So far, it looks like Link puzzling his way through the sky for the entire game with only a few ground segments involving moving tree forts.

I wouldn't say he's a hack, but he's definitely not on the level of Miyamoto, Fujibayashi, or Koizumi imo. His worst work is Twilight Princess for sure. But I know many love that game. I can rip it to pieces with criticism; same with Skyward Sword
I feel like Anouma has gotten better over time. I only first became aware of him after playing Wind Waker and hating how I never really felt close to death while playing. Any time you're down a fraction of a heart piece, three hearts will just magically appear from any rock, tall grass, or pot. I also hated how every dungeon boss was a puzzle. I also hated that the dungeons themselves were series of f'ing puzzles. It is a tiresome formula.

Okay, so you DO know about Skyward Sword even though you feel that Twilight Princess is the worst. For me, Skyward Sword is the worst for having the most bland, empty, and boring overworld. Literally, it's an empty sky with just a very few islands to visit. The rest of the supposed overworld is down below and is a rather sad place to mill about considering there's no real signs of current civilization down there... It's just one big sleepy lonely game. Although I feel that Skyward Sword has some of the best dungeons ever while Twilight Princess has one of the better overworlds when it's not stuck in darkness. Either way... I feel that both lag behind Wind Waker and don't come anywhere close to approaching Ocarina of Time.

Indeed..

Sadly Aonuma cried/brown nosed enough to get Zelda instead :(

Looking at it, Yamada designed the dungeons of TP, and was a director as well, so I'm not surprised TP turned out so good 🤔
I think it's that he may have taken a particularly strong interest in Zelda among Miyamoto's work offspring. If I recall correctly, his first Zelda experience was LttP and he was just gobsmacked by the puzzles in the game. That would be why he came on board thinking there had to be puzzles of all kinds throughout the dungeons and boss fights. Of course, it doesn't explain why hearts rain down every time you take a hit in his Zelda games... but whatever!
 
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I actually really like Skyward sword, quite a bit. Has some really high points dungeon wise.

Problem with Skyward sword of course is it amplified all of 3D Zelda's most tedious/annoying aspects to the limit. Plus the one boss you have to deal with 3 times, plus item pickup animations resetting lol.

With some tweaks, it could've been a truly great game.
 
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