by shredingskin » Mon Mar 20, 2017 3:42 pm
Weapon fragility is a part of what makes this game really open ended one could argue.
It keeps you constantly moving forward trying to find more stuff, giving you powered weapons for killing enemies out of your range, making you choose the correct weapon for the type (or level) of the enemy. It lets you wonder around anywhere, and get rewarded accordingly for your effort without unbalancing the game, giving you the incentive to kill though enemies that you can easily avoid, making you adapt to what you have in hand and trying to make the best of it. And that doesn't stop with weapons, but also makes you think with bombs, magnesis, stasis, stealth, and gives you incentive of trying the emergent gameplay choices the engine allows.
Let's think how other games approach this:
- Insivible leveling up of enemies.
- Level capping certain items.
- Generated loot for your level.
- Needing X level to go after X opponent.
We all have played these games, and know that most of the stuff gets boring after a while, restrict the freedom of what the player can do/tackle, stale rewards for quests, always doing the same against same enemies, no good reason to go back to certain place because you are OP, Zelda manages to fully kill most of those problems.
What do you prefer ? sticking to "the sword" for most of the game, selling pretty much everything else ? (and we know how in most open games you end up swimming in gold, and how most loot is shit), enemies that end up being damage sponges because of the artificial levelling ?, open world game that gives you no incentive to visit any place again ? Being OP most of the game ? Grinding to use a weapon you just got for killing something out of your level ? Having the game with artificial walls that block your progress ?
It does add a level of strategy, you can save an electricity weapon to stun enemies then change to another to kill them, you might keep a weaker sword because it helps you combat cold, you might need to choose between farming minerals with a weapon to destroy rocks or a fucking torch. The need to change realtime also adds certain tension when you stun opponents and want to go for the kill, do you favor heavy weapons or lighter ones, it broads the choice of just "ok this one is great" and keep going.
The same fear of breaking your favorite weapon is the difficulty cap that you impose on yourself, you know you don't need the master sword to kill some goblins, so you tackle them with the shittier weapon you have, or maybe you just try to kill them with arrows, maybe you want to go full OP and kill them destroying the best sword you have, giving incentive to go kill a mightier foe with shittier weapons.
I understand that it feels like an inconvenience, but from a design standpoint it's genius, it's part of what makes the game open world that feels rewarding and that has something to do at every corner.