I'm looking forward to Skyrim because of Zelda, and not in spite of it
Skyrim and Zelda on the same console? Could they coexist? Would they cannibalize each other's sales? There's a reason that Skyrim is not at launch, and it's that Bethesda did not want to compete with BotW. The more I play BotW, however, the more I long for a game like Skyrim, with more traditional RPG-elements.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is more of a survival-game, like Minecraft, Don't Starve, or The Forest, and so there are certain things that I wanted from it that it lacks.
BotW lacks a meaningful sense of gear-progression. Because every weapon breaks, it doesn't matter if you find a weapon that has better stats than your last because it, too, will break. The only permanent upgrades are your clothing, heart-containers, and stamina-gauge. Although clothing doesn't break, you need different clothing for different environments, so it doesn't feel like an upgrade, more of a sidegrade. The way you get more heart-containers and increase your stamina-gauge - doing shrines, is not RPG-like.
I'm not saying that RPG-like progression is superior to the way Zelda handles character-progression; it's a matter of taste. My point is that in some instances, I would have liked more traditional RPG-like progression in BotW. This is where Skyrim comes in.
The Elder Scroll series's claim to fame is that doing something enough times level-ups that activity. Every action matters, and doing that action makes you better at it. Weapons won't break, and you will find better armor and it will not be merely a sidegrade.
Skyrim also features a more realistic art-direction, which might be refreshing after the animation-like look of BotW. The main game I wanted on Wii U was a game that looked like the tech-demo of Zelda at E3 in 2011. We never got that. Twilight Princess HD was the closest we got. Skyrim Switch won't look as good as that demo, but it will be an important game because five years ago, it was the darling of the industry. Critics loved it, and most gamers did as well. I got it on a Steam-sale later on, and didn't like it too much, but I will give it a second chance on NS.
Skyrim's main viewpoint of first-person will also be refreshing because of the simple paucity of games utilizing this viewpoint on Nintendo-systems. Sometimes when I'm playing BotW, I get unimmersed because I can see Link on the screen; it takes away from the immersion when I realize that I'm not playing as myself. Of course, immersion is not always the number-one priority of developers, especially in Japan, but sometimes I want that in a videogame. Enter Skyrim. There's a reason the first-person viewpoint is done to death among western developers, and that is because it's an immersive viewpoint. Maybe we in the west do not like the real world, with all its problems, and so we desire to escape.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is more of a survival-game, like Minecraft, Don't Starve, or The Forest, and so there are certain things that I wanted from it that it lacks.
BotW lacks a meaningful sense of gear-progression. Because every weapon breaks, it doesn't matter if you find a weapon that has better stats than your last because it, too, will break. The only permanent upgrades are your clothing, heart-containers, and stamina-gauge. Although clothing doesn't break, you need different clothing for different environments, so it doesn't feel like an upgrade, more of a sidegrade. The way you get more heart-containers and increase your stamina-gauge - doing shrines, is not RPG-like.
I'm not saying that RPG-like progression is superior to the way Zelda handles character-progression; it's a matter of taste. My point is that in some instances, I would have liked more traditional RPG-like progression in BotW. This is where Skyrim comes in.
The Elder Scroll series's claim to fame is that doing something enough times level-ups that activity. Every action matters, and doing that action makes you better at it. Weapons won't break, and you will find better armor and it will not be merely a sidegrade.
Skyrim also features a more realistic art-direction, which might be refreshing after the animation-like look of BotW. The main game I wanted on Wii U was a game that looked like the tech-demo of Zelda at E3 in 2011. We never got that. Twilight Princess HD was the closest we got. Skyrim Switch won't look as good as that demo, but it will be an important game because five years ago, it was the darling of the industry. Critics loved it, and most gamers did as well. I got it on a Steam-sale later on, and didn't like it too much, but I will give it a second chance on NS.
Skyrim's main viewpoint of first-person will also be refreshing because of the simple paucity of games utilizing this viewpoint on Nintendo-systems. Sometimes when I'm playing BotW, I get unimmersed because I can see Link on the screen; it takes away from the immersion when I realize that I'm not playing as myself. Of course, immersion is not always the number-one priority of developers, especially in Japan, but sometimes I want that in a videogame. Enter Skyrim. There's a reason the first-person viewpoint is done to death among western developers, and that is because it's an immersive viewpoint. Maybe we in the west do not like the real world, with all its problems, and so we desire to escape.
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