Discussion
The Ocarina of Time remake has folks talking about Aonuma's quote about how people only like the older games because of "nostalgia" and characterizes the difference as being "open" vs "linear."
But I don't think the focus should be on "open" vs "linear," but on story vs. exploration.
And when people talk about this stuff they always ignore Link Between Worlds, which was a really good game and which showed perfectly how you could have an open game that *also* had plot and narrative.
oh yeah Wind Waker was also a good example
I guess I should clarify that like, okay, in BotW there *were* little mini-narratives and subplots for the various side quests (and TotK got some of it too although most of it didn't feel very well-constructed), but the main plot of the game itself was just like, Link! He come to town!
I liked the open world of BotW but I wish there were more story to it, and TotK was even worse about that. Aside from the linear story told in nonlinear flashbacks (with the dragon tears), TotK didn't even try to have any sort of plot in the actual timeline of the game. It was even worse than BotW; at least BotW had separate stories and cut scenes for each Champion. In TotK, the champions didn't even get *names*, and all four of them were literally the same cut scene with different voice acting.