Playtime so far, I played on Saturday, for hours. My wife got pissed off at me. But not before my son insisted on playing it first. He got an hour or so into the sky island before rapidly losing interest. And I have to say, the opening few hours are weak. I enjoyed the story heavy feel of the underworld and the novelty of the sky island, but there's a handholdy slow paced feeling to the early part of the game that feels overall too slow. I am the kind of player who is slow anyway, being basically mid skilled at computer games I rely on the mastery of game systems to eke out an advantage, if there's an upgrade possible before a progression gate like a boss, I will pursue that upgrade.
So I wanted to explore everywhere. But after exiting the sky island, after having scoured every last nook and cranny, I was ready to get off the leash. So I attempted to, not even heading to the castle like the game clearly wants you to do, but headed of into the world, and promptly got clattered. You are immensely underpowered, and the gaps in my radial ability power menu showed me that I was not quite out of tutorial woods as of yet. So, in the next few days, like a dutiful son, I followed the dots and found myself quickly romping along, meeting new characters and being sent to the underworld. The lower levels immediately reminded me of Blackreach in Skyrim, although even more massive, in fact I still have no idea as to their dimensions but so far it seems like they may be as massive as the entire overworld map itself, which can't be true as it would make the game unfathomably gargantuan. However what I started to feel was the gradual layering of the game's new items and abilities, slow it might be, was winning me over. I really enjoyed the heightened sense of danger from the 'permanent' health loss from gloom infested enemies underground, and the souls-like bonfire mechanic of the underground tower flowers that restore your health.
After exploring the underground I wanted to unlock another tower, and this sent me into my most serendipitous session yet. I got flung up into the sky, and then went picking through the sky islands up there, figuring out how to get from one to another, finding all sorts of little surprises. I'd got more used to Ultrahand by now, which started off feeling fiddly and annoying, and the incredibly clever way you come across piles of stuff that you sling together and find yourself in new places is so elegantly done that even though you know it's designed it still feels like you're discovering it for yourself, because it gives you room to make mistakes trying to puzzle it out, and those mistakes can lead you into new places which start of chaotically but then resolve themselves elegantly into yet more puzzling things out. With BOTW I felt like it was the greatest realisation of an open world game I'd yet experienced, the sense of 'what's that over there' being overwhelmingly present and revelatory. All the new toys of TotK give me this sense even more so, because the bag of tricks the game gifts you with is enormously unpredictable, but you end up getting rewarded anyway. Faced with any situation you can look at what you have around you and in hand and cobble together something that will drive you on to the next thing on the horizon, which you may entirely fail at getting to, and in failing find yourself in a new unplanned situation in which there is also a very curious collection of things to explore. And at any time you can just teleport somewhere else, but if you do you'll lose that particular experience, that particular challenge of figuring out how to get to where you are to where your curiosity is leading you with only what you have on you and what you can find around you.
So far I love it. I love how it's crept up on me and how its genius has so weathered my early cynicism and won me over. I can't believe I have another massive BOTW to unpack and explore for the first time.
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