@Wagomu:
If anything, why are you trying to compare it to the older ones?
I don't know, probably the fact it's supposed to be a Zelda game? If anything Nintendo has encouraged the comparison to the original Zelda game for the NES, a game where exploration was at the core, not item management.
-The size of the inventory does make a statement to the player about the worth of picking up items, and forces them to engage with that more often.
so the statement is essentially confronting the value of the things you pick up constantly and evaluating whether you should pick something up at the expense of something else, or spend your game time harvesting/farming seeds instead, correct?
That in itself is part of the issue. If seeds are optional, forcing players to constantly have to deal with choices that impede liberty of gameplay is an inconvenience. It kills the adventure if you find something cool and are forced to go out of your way to get inventory space for it or to halt the adventure to do seed shenanigans to THEN be able to get it.
It's artificial pumping of gameplay time.
-Increasing the size of the inventory increases the amount of things you'll be expected to sort through.
That's not a problem solved by limiting that inventory space, but by
- designing user-friendly menus with sorting
- reducing quantity of items that the player is likely to encounter in gameplay
-If you interpreted the larger inventory as a reason to pick up everything (which is the logical response), then you are going to be sorting through a lot of worthless items every time you want to use one.
Or he can just have the CHOICE of dropping worthless items. You know, instead of being forced to.
-Limiting the inventory can also prevent cheesing parts with items (now that I think of it, you can make a comparison to other Zelda games on this one, if you imagine what they'd be like with infinite bottles).
But, isn't this game about letting players choose how to approach the experience? From what I recall they are perfectly fine with people cheesing the game and ending it immediately, no?
Let's say that they do want to prevent the cheesing. Limiting inventory doesn't do that, since then players just find a way to farm/harvest seeds and then proceed to cheese the game anyway. So no, the mechanics in play here aren't designed to keep people from cheesing things. They're designed to "encourage"/force people to partake in "optional" collectible quests.
Which is cool if people are into that. Really annoying for people who aren't into it. I had the option to NOT do Skulltulas in OoT, and it remains to be seen how balanced it is, but my point is I would appreciate not being passively directed towards the point where I'm forced to collect bullshit in order to enjoy the game as I want.
@Demon:
Ok.
The only things affected according to what I read are Weapons including Bows, and Shields. Literally everything else is unaffected by this.
Ocarina of Time only has 3 Sword Slots, 3 Shield Slots, and 1 Bow slot
Twilight Princess has 2 Sword Slots, and 2 Shield slots.
Skyward Sword only has one sword slot, and 8 "Pouch" slots that are supposed to hold not only your Shields, which are breakable here too, but other kinds of items like Bottles and Medals. MUCH like this game, you have to go out of your way to get an upgrade to hold more.
My point is, almost every Zelda game doesn't let you pick up more swords or shields than the story dictates are given to you. This concept of being able to pick up weapons that enemies drop and actually keep them in your inventory is a brand new thing to this game, so there's no real "Precident" for how something like this is supposed to go… except for Skyward sword.... which is about as close to this game as possible considering the different styles of the games (Linear vs. Open World)
Let's talk about what the implications of design are here.
The implications they make about this game is that equipment tremendously affects gameplay, whether it is the sort of weapons you have equipped or the type of clothing you wear, etc.
This means that, logically speaking, they will want to make enough of these variables for the mechanic to merit hyping, for it to merit existing. The fact they emphasize it so much should tell us that there are (hopefully) plenty of diverse weapons, shields, bows, clothes, and other such things all over the place.
Now, the fact that there's seeds that you use to buy equipment, and that these become more costly over time, implies that as designers they are aware that there are enough items in the world for equipment slots to matter, otherwise they'd be adding a worthless feature.
So, what do you think is more likely?
A - That they are lying about how much variance there is in equipment and it will be possible to enjoy going through the game without doing the seeds thing at all and without having to worry about getting equipment
or
B - that equipment is expected to be valuable and serve as prizes/rewards/DLC and that the seed mechanic will be necessary for people who want to go through the game with optimal equipment choice, thus forcing players to spend more time participating in a sidequest someone somewhere spent time designing, costing and developing
Yes, this situation is unprecedented, but that doesn't we are unable to look at the design choices we know about and, in context, think about how they affect the sort of experience that I, as a consumer expecting a Zelda experience focused on freedom and exploration, am expecting.
If the argument is "This isn't what we expect from Zelda" then I say…. good.... I WANT to see them expand and mix things up.
See, but that's not the case for the market as a whole. If they are marketing a game as part of the Zelda brand they need to be conscious that while it's ok to innovate and change mechanics, you have to be careful not to stray from what makes people want to play Zelda in the first place.
From my perspective, implanting RPG systems of management and planning and weapon gathering and customization are such deviations, particularly when they might, by design, exist to force me to partake in collecting that I don't care for. If I wanted that I would play Skyrim, or an actual RPG.
When I think Link's Awakening, WW, and other great Zelda games I remember the joy of seeing new places, solving puzzles and exploring the world. This game is promising that with more freedom… I don't want them to fuck that up by instead of having dungeons and soft gates, for them to instead force constant time-wasting nonsense like collecting mcguffins for a sidequest as a way to control difficulty.