For years I've been dreaming about a game where the world would be so sparse that travel between points of interest...

For years I've been dreaming about a game where the world would be so sparse that travel between points of interest like inhabited places or haunted mansion and shit would take a considerable amount of time with me just travelling, navigating through the world and maybe fighting something once or twice inbetween. A game that would give me that sense of solitude during travel and a feeling of relief when I reach a safe place and can get some rest and fuck some bitches. That LotR feeling.

Does BotW scratch that itch? How long does travelling on foot (preferably on walk speed, not jog or God forbid sprint, but I don't know if anyone in here is as autistic as I am and actually travels with slow walk speed) between interesting places take on average?
Can I make a fireplace and sleep next to it at night?
Can I fire a torch to see at night?
Can I hunt deer and bake it on fire at my temporary camp?

>Can I make a fireplace and sleep next to it at night?
yes
>Can I fire a torch to see at night?
yes
>Can I hunt deer and bake it on fire at my temporary camp?
only designated pre-placed fireplaces allow you to cook

>only designated pre-placed fireplaces allow you to cook
you can hit things with fire to cook it, like meat.

but OP I don't think BOTW is what you're looking for but it's fun enough to play.

>Can I make a fireplace and sleep next to it at night?
Yes, you "sit" by the fire until morning. But the hours of sleeping are skipped.

>Can I fire a torch to see at night?
Yes

>Can I hunt deer and bake it on fire at my temporary camp?

Baking requires an oven. Link uses a frying pan. Deer, boar, birds, fish, etc.

What about average travel time on foot? How long does it usually take? 20 minutes? More?

If you play Shadow of the Colossus you might die of boredom between boss encounters.

120 hours in and i've yet to visit 2 areas, the desert, and fire mountain, so yeah it takes a long time to traverse the map, but the thing is, you'll always something interesting in plain view that will encourage you to keep exploring

Bumping the question for the last time.

The thing you need to appreciate is that topographical navigation is quite different from other open world games in the sense you can go absolutely anywhere at any time without restriction.

Running from one corner of the map to another will take a long long time. But you don't have to follow the path through the mountains. You can literally climb OVER the mountain. But that in itself requires you think through your route up the mountain, and make choices based on the climate, the weather, clothes to wear, armour to equip and meal boosts you can give yourself if you want.

The game offers a lot of flexibility on how YOU want to play. You can take the high road over mountains of you can risk the low road where you're more likely to encounter enemy camps and assassins.

Personally I like to saddle up my horse - it will follow the roads by itself leaving you free to sightsee as you gently gallop across the over world,

It takes 30 mins to walk from corner to corner. Not much bigger than Skyrim or the witcher 3 desu

Except BotW adds verticality. You're not moving across a flat plane.

Verticality isn't adding anything except time to traverse.

>climbing a mountain and walking on a plane field is literally the same thing

I bet you would argue that piloting a jet in a game can't be fun, because it's just faster walking

The fuck are you talking about. You can literally warp anywhere if you want.

The point of verticality is that it makes topographical navigation fun and engaging and encourages and incentivises exploration.

You can't just push foward on the control stick like other open world games.

Have you played UnReal World? Sounds right up your ally.

Nah. What genre? Setting?

Man, I was in the desert on the second day. After 3 I only had the volcano region and the lost forest area left. But I mostly focused on accessing shrines and towers. I liked the challenge of reaching them on basic stats and whatever gear/food i put together

Bump while I write up an answer in case this falls off.

Or just set it really close to a fire, you can't add other ingredients but you can cook the meat itself.

>Does BotW scratch that itch?
its not lotr at all, its more "I wonder what is there, let's g-oh what is that thing? I want to check it ou-oh shit a new vista what the-FUCK WHERE WAS I GOING AGAIN?"
>Can I make a fireplace and sleep next to it at night?
ya
>Can I fire a torch to see at night?
don't need to but ya, you can also set your own weapons on fire if you don't have torches
>Can I hunt deer and bake it on fire at my temporary camp?
ya but cooking it with real tools (a pot in a house, horse camp, abandoned shacks etc) will make it better

>Can I make a fireplace and sleep next to it at night?
Yes, and in fact any time. You lay down a piece of wood which you yourself gather from trees, and then can light it through various methods (striking flint which you mine near the wood, using an elemental fire weapon or arrow, etc.).
>Can I fire a torch to see at night?
Yes, along with other things (such as holding luminous stones).
>Can I hunt deer and bake it on fire at my temporary camp?
You can indeed hunt deer for meat in this game. There are two methods of cooking in this game: (1) combining ingredients into dishes requires access to a cooking pot at a safe location, which makes these safe locations meaningful to get to, because food you can cook at a cooking pot can be much more powerful than that you can cook by hand; and (2) cooking/freezing fruit, meat, etc., which you can do at any time. You can drop a piece of meat that you've hunted from a deer into your campfire and wait a few seconds for it to cook from the heat. You can also strike it with a fire elemental weapon, etc. (ice elemental weapons prepare chilled meat), and you can do the same for many fruits, nuts, etc. The main differences between the two methods of cooking are: (1) cooking pots allow you to combine ingredients to make meals that can restore many more hearts than simply roasting them; (2) generally speaking, for food to have effects other than health regen, you need to cook it at a cooking pot (the only exception is frozen meat, which provides a minor cooling effect); and (3) the roasted/frozen single-ingredient meals are stackable up to 999x each, while the meals you make on a cooking pot take up one slot each, and you have limited space.
(Continued in next post.)

>How long does travelling on foot?
It takes a while, even with sprinting. Because the game offers plenty of time-saving mechanics, such as speed-up elixirs, access to various mounts such as horses and bears, and fast travel at most interesting locations after discovery, the developers were able to put in vast distances between points of interest. However, the game isn't empty, and each area feels distinctly different and hand-placed. I never used fast travel and enjoyed my time walking and climbing around.
In general, OP, if you want to keep the relief of finding a safe place, I recommend doing the following limitations that I did: keep three hearts (I suggest getting more stamian vessels though, since they let you physically do more), never upgrade your armour beyond the second level, and bar yourself from eating during fights. I personally very much enjoyed taking my time to explore BotW. You may or may not like it.

You can do all of those things and the way BotW handles those elements is incredibly slick and interactive. But the overworld isn't sparse. If a journey is long, it's because you get distracted by all kinds of diversions along the way. You're never really going in a straight line. Traveling feels less monotonous than Wind Waker despite the world being way bigger.

>How long does travelling on foot
depends on the path you pick, your method of transportation etc. It's decent imo when it comes to progressing through the story. You'll easily sidetrack though.

>Can I make a fireplace and sleep next to it at night?
You can make a fireplace if the weather permits. You use this to pass time between morning, noon and night.

>Can I fire a torch to see at night?
The world is lit up by the night sky, so almost everything is visible but has a nightly atmosphere to it. Feels somewhat befitting and natural. You can light a torch to use in dark areas yes.

>Can I hunt deer and bake it on fire at my temporary camp?
yes. you just throw the meat into the fire to cook it. in order to make actual meals you'll need a cooking pot, usually found at stables, towns etc.

>A game that would give me that sense of solitude during travel and a feeling of relief when I reach a safe place and can get some rest and fuck some bitches
it doesn't necessarily feel gloomy, dark and as if the world is the most dangerous place. However, you do get to explore freely and it's very open about you playing the way you want to play.

>Does BotW scratch that itch?
most likely. It sure scratched mine. The feeling you got leaving kokiris forest in OoT for the first time ever. I had a similar sensation when i first played this game.

People might hate on me for this, but I think OP would be disappointed. On paper it may seem like BotW has these qualities, but the world is rather boring and it barely leaves an impression. While the world is large, you probably won't get the sense of scale that you're looking for, because chances are you can see in the distance wherever you're going. There's a lot of open fields but not a lot of caves or big forests so you usually won't get the feeling of being "totally in" a part of the world, but moreso just passing through.

While the game is fun, I don't think someone who is purely looking for a comfy traveling experience will find it here.

It really depends on what OP enjoys. It certainly scratched my itch for exploration, but not the exploration itches of others. My recommendation would be for OP to try it (make sure to get off the Great Plateau/tutorial area, because that's when the world really opens up) and return it if he or she doesn't like it.

Depends on the person. I completely disagree in every way possible. This is my favorite open world ever because it's so crafted. You could take a landscape screenshot from anywhere in the world and I could probably tell you exactly where you took it from.

>While the game is fun, I don't think someone who is purely looking for a comfy traveling experience will find it here.

I think comfy traveling experience is what this game knocked out of the park but whatever.
Placing your eyes on some landmark on the field and get off track 5 or 6 times before you get there. It was an amazing ride for me in that sense.

This was so great. Also the fact that the landmarks just looked like interesting landmarks and weren't marked on your map as points of interest makes it feel like you have the initiative in exploring.