While it may not have explicitly taken inspiration from other games I’d imagine it’s been subconsciously inspired by other games. After so many years of video games being made, any time now when a developer claims that their game is completely original is a red flag for me.
There’s nothing wrong with a game being inspired by (or even a “copy” of) another one. Thinking every game needs to be original is like a car company thinking they need to reinvent the wheel.
I'm curious about what parts they think are original. Don't get me wrong, BOTW is fun (because Far Cry, AC etc and wacky physics are fun) and TOTK is fun (because building stuff with wacky physics is fun) but it's hardly groundbreaking.
"Originality" in games is weird anyway, most thinkable ideas have already been thought of, and many of them will be associated with particular titles/series or entire genres at a time.
To me BotW was a more fleshed out copy of the 2013 game Cube World. Then the building with ToTK could be seen as a copy of GMOD or even kerbal space program if you squint a bit.
This doesn’t make the game any worse though. If anything it makes me more likely to try it because I played similar games and enjoyed them.
Yeah, that attitude can sometimes work, and sometimes it leads to disaster. Famously, the original devs for FFXIV were proudly ignorant of other games in the MMORPG genre, and went off in their own direction. The resulting fiasco nearly killed off Square Enix until YoshiP, who had played Ultima Online, WoW, and other western MMORPGs, came in and whipped things into shape.
Agreed. There needs to be a balance between creativity and exercising winning formulas. After all, they became winning formulas after extensive trail and error.
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