Video Games

All of these and many more discoveries I remember to this day - pure joy interacting and discovering these features.

However seeing the same stuff completely unchanged in TOTK leaves me completely emotionless and maybe even a bit angry.

With BotW and TotK, the Zelda games have become the latest instalments of the Assassin's Creed franchise (old school, Ezio era). I'm not even kidding.

I was skulking around an ancient structure in the Depths and I thought "Hmm, this reminds me a lot of the kind of buildings Desmond and Ezio would skulk around." Then "Hang on, I'm skulking so I can sneak around a corner and take down that guard with a sneaky backstab."

So...

BoTW:

1. You used to be a kick-ass elite warrior, but you wake up in a weakened state.
   
2. The tools and skills that made you so kick-ass are missing.
   
3. So are some of your key memories.
   
4. Relearning those skills and recovering those tools/memories is central to the story.
   
5. Among your enemies is a clan with similar skills that has been serving the dark side for many centuries. They send assassins after you. You have a dramatic fight with their boss.
   
6. You can gain new tools and skills by exploring hidden structures created by an ancient race.
   
   

I could go on. Anyway...

TotK:

1. You start off the deadly warrior you were at the end of the last story, but you are injured, losing your health.
   
2. Your tools and skills are also lost.
   
3. Relearning those skills and recovering tools/memories are central to the story
   
4. Much of the world and gameplay is the same as before, but there are also new areas and skills.
   
5. Now you have bombs you can throw at enemies to blow them up, set them on fire, make them attack their comrades or blind them so you can escape or backstab them.
   
6. The enemy clan is back. This time they are also seeking the same ancient technologies you are, to place them at the service of the evil you want to defeat.
   
   

Linkio Auditore doesn't sleep around so much, but otherwise it's pretty much the same pattern. If we end up with "The Legend of Zelda: Black Flag", I'm not complaining.