The sky islands have been built with the same design philosophy as the shrines. Mostly one and done.

You're spot on, I completely agree. I think it would've been better to focus more on either the Depths or the Sky Islands instead of both, because I feel like they are both repetitive and underdeveloped in similar ways. I feel like the depths are unnecessarily massive compared to how much they have to offer and how useful they are, so I honestly wish they cut back on the depths to focus more on the sky islands. Most of the depths are empty and repetitive so I would GLADLY trade better sky islands in exchange for less of the depths.

It was so sad to jump off the great sky island when you finished it, just to rarely go back to it. Then there was basically no other sky islands…

I had the same thoughts. The amount of marketing showing the sky does not equal the amount of content that we got. Similarly, the underground was basically not marketed and yet it's insanely huge.

I… agree. It was pretty disappointing. I ended up enjoying the game anyway, but the actual experience was completely different from the one I had imagined based on the marketing

Repetition is by far the biggest flaw of the open air games so far. I don't think it is an inherent issue that will forever plague the format, but it's fairly obvious Nintendo was a bit inexperienced, and also seemingly over encumbered by the load of developing these gigantic worlds and regions for BotW and TotK. It is very obvious where the games struggle and why, and it always seems like the issues can be sourced back to the fact they made the world too large and spent too much time emphasizing that fact.

I think I mostly agree. Wind Waker's islands were each more interesting. But of course, the ones in TOTK aren't meant to be inhabited, and once you don't have NPCs, it gets a little harder to design increasingly interesting, always new concepts around the islands.

I was hoping they would've given more Zonai based lore or something, also adding more islands cause it just doesn't feel like there's enough. It would've been cool to either find well preserved journals from zonai or ancient hylians.

I wish it would have worked like game levels. Each region would have a Great Sky Island except for Hebra and Zora's Domain I don't know what rehion that's in. But imagine, The Great Gerudo Sky Island, full of puzzles to drain sand or a bunch of tricky traps! The Great Eldin Sky Island, an action-packed minecart extravaganza! There was so much they could do.

I agree, the problem is also they all use the same asssets, there is no frozen skyisland or a hot one, they all are the same tiny rocks with golden grass and trees on them... it feels like the sky in skyward sword, and also after the intro the story never goes realy back into the sky, yeah the wind and watertemple are there but there is no real point for them to be in the sky, so the sky only exist to exist... But the underground isnt much better, since its just the overworld inverted (everything that goes up in the overworld goes down in the underground), even the shrines are nearly identical with the roots... its just not interesting to explore, when i have explored the overworld i know nearly exactly what is in the underground, so what is the point, it doesnt even have some storypoint...

Totally agree about the sky’s missed potential. If they were only going to design a few types of islands, at the very least I wish they’d have peppered in some interesting lore content, having more constructs bopping around with some Zonai fun facts would have helped as a reward. The depths definitely made up for it to me though, so I’m not too mad about it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The Sky Islands boasted a lot during the marketing campaign and definitely left a lot to be desired after playing them. I only pursued them at the end of the game to get all of the shrines. So yeah, apt video!

My big issue with the sky islands is that it feels like the "intended" methods of getting up to them (balloons and the falling rocks) don't really work. Like, balloons run out of time before making it up most of the time, and the falling rocks don't stop far enough in the air to make it to the islands, or are so far away that it's not possible to glide to the island, which means alternatives, and the only real option there is fanbike.

Spoiler warning: mention of one of the sages typically found later game. Dragonhead island had to be my favourite island to stumble upon *pre-removing the thunder storms*. I got up to there when I had 4 hearts aka no heart upgrades and getting to the shrine inside (Joku-u Shrine) felt truly unique while navigating the almost no visibility I had. Combined with the music being great, while I did do energy upgrades elsewhere (Lookout Landing) I only ever did every upgrade for energy and health on that island next to the giant door requiring a certain amount of heart containers to get through. The feeling once I finished the energy wheels and went on to heart containers, checking every time to get through the door.. only to not have enough hearts until finally I did. It was great. I then got that door opened and interacted, leading to what I didn’t realize was anything Sage/Mineru related. A part of the magic to finding and starting Mineru’s quest was getting to that island early, not knowing that I was doing a Sage quest. I had only done Tulin sometime shortly before Mineru was actually my second Sage I found. Yet now being late game just hunting Koroks and so on.. I eventually did the quests leading up to removing the storms on the islands and.. the magic just wasn’t there. What made the island special isn’t there anymore. I know not everyone else used rockets and fans to fly up to those islands and get there/Mineru early but it was what made it more special. I am just glad I only ever cleared the storm there after retrieving the final Main Quest/the one for Final Boss. Also: getting to Dragonhead island before even doing a single Regional Phenomenon goal truly made me think that there would be more Strength-Heart Container test doors to make progress in areas of the game… which was disappointing.

My experience with Sky Islands essentially boiled down to this: - ooooh, Great Sky Island is cool, can't wait to explore more! - wait, these are tiny and barren. Are we doing a Skyward Sword again? We're doing a Skyward Sword again, okay and from that point I proceeded to barely interact with them at all for majority of my playthrough. After finishing the story, I've made a lap, stopping at each I haven't visited yet, purely to pick up Shrines and armour. Felt more like a checklist than proper exploration. You've pointed out that the Sky is more of the same style of exploring as BotW offered but I disagree - much like I've stated in that one discussion we've had before, it is actively worse than what we had in BotW. Sky offers less visual variety, less terrain variety, less rewards variety, less enemy variety, just... less. As a bit of a sidenote, I think one aspect of BotW that went largely undiscussed throughout its lifespan is just how much traversal options bring to the table when exploring. BotW would scatter points of interest around the map and whenever you saw something you liked it would ask "how do you get there?". Addition of climbing, Cryonis and rafts for crossing bodies of water, gliding and shield surfing to usual running, horse riding and swimming movement options expanded your toolbar, resulting in gameplay decisions centered around traversal. Do you climb this mountain to get to the other side or do you look for a way around? Do you want to find a route you can bring your horse through? It doesn't feel like much but when the only movement option is flying, I do feel the lack of these moment to moment routing decisions. Maybe it could be more interesting if there were more large islands you want to get to but with limited battery you need to plan accordingly and stop at smaller ones along the way but there weren't enough sky islands even for that. There are clusters separated by long stretches of nothing. I suppose you are meant to only come up briefly when you get a tower and then come back down soon after? Idk. All in all, the sky was very disappointing to me. Like, even the Crystal Shrine Quests - you've said they've been all unique but that's honestly being too generous. I'd need to check to know for sure but I remember one and a half crystal delivery quests with a unique setup. The rest were one of two options: either the crystal was attached to a Flux Construct on an arena conveniently located below the destination island (once the arena was almost level with the destination island though, as a plot twist!) or the crystal was hidden behind some vines, on an island floating slightly higher than destination island, with a large hollow tree stump at the top. Inside the island, besides the Crystal, there'd usually be a wing with some fans and a steering stick. When I was doing my Shrine lap it got so bad that sometimes I'd cut out the middle man and go straight for the crystal, without triggering the quest first - why would I need to do that if I knew exactly where the Crystal was anyway? All in all, I agree with you on your criticisms. The sky is a missed opportunity and its such a shame.

The sky islands had so much potential. I wish there were more of them, and they were all basically the same thing, and if they were bigger.

The sky islands feel like an extension of Hyrule rather than its own world, which disappointed me. I was also disappointed with the depths after realizing most of it is empty and the mines are boring. The sky and depths have a few interesting locations, but I just wish that we would discover awesome things all the time in both worlds.

One I wished they kept was the high amount of cloud barrier!!! It feels very empty without it. Once the cloud disappears it's gone permanently. They also should of kept more islands. 1st trailer had so much but "Aoyuma" (dont know his name) said it looked like a mess littered everywhere. I rather have so many islands with construct enemies too. :( I love being up in the heavens and calling it Aether tho sky island needs more floating islands

I loved exploring the sky islands and how you had to figure out how to get to some of the higher islands. There was one of the tablets you had to take a picture of and it was the highest island. And getting to the labrinths in the sky was also super cool. The exploration was the best part about it even though the reward wasnt always up to the same caliber.

I like Oasis Islands for restocking Fairies, something quite useful having lost both Mipha's grace and most easy land locations with Fairies(Fairy fountains don't have them often anymore) and with so many 1-shot monsters before you upgrade armor.

At least the islands are pretty lol

I have enjoyed exploring the sky but I do agree that there should've been a lot more too it considering how much it was advertised, like there's whole chunks of sky that ust have nothing in it, I wouldn't want it to be too crowded or anything but more varied/bigger islands would've been great

The repetitive issue is not jsut with sky islands but also with the depths too

For me it kinda feels like they put so much attention on the sky islands in the trailers just to show off something new without spoiling the reveal of the depths. As you said, the sky islands feel kinda tacked on and lazy and are in fact not at all that important to the gameplay and I feel like the devs didn't really prioritize them during development. It's a shame, because they could have been extremely fun to explore.

I am glad that we don't have that many sky islands. The underground and surface are already overwhelming if taken together (by sheer size).

I do agree that sky islands needed some more variations. It would have been cool to see islands off much more different color instead of yellow. They shoulc have easily made a Lake Hylia Sky Island and have multiple islands connect to each other and have a Gleeok guard the sky to stay grounded.

I loved the great sky island. I had high hopes for the rest of the sky. The diving games were fun, the furnace was cool, but ultimately pretty inconsequential. The labyrinths were fun in their own way, but pretty easy also (a lot of the games “puzzles” were pretty easy and/or self-explanatory), but I definitely was hoping for more especially from the marketing. I found the sky to be like a giant puzzle of how to get around with only zonai devices and however much battery/charges you currently have. I liked getting the old maps, but as I realized that the chests would be there anyway in the depths even without getting the map, it just meant I needed to explore the depths thoroughly. A legitimate critique. Don’t get me wrong, I put more than 220 hours into the game and still play it periodically to get more of those ding dang koroks (as far as I know my only obstacle to 100% completion), but retrospect definitely highlights some of the failings, and the sky was mostly empty. When the patents came out I was hoping sky combat would be a little more nuanced than the haphazard aerocuda that can be easily taken out or just ignored if you’re on a device (the ones I’d run into would just bounce off the device itself). My only regretful exploration before the quest was when I flew into the eye of the storm above Faron only to pretty much land directly in front of the spirit temple quest room and little did I know ruin my experience of one of the last quests in the game 😔 Great video! Thanks for sharing your thoughts

It seems there WAS going to be “more” of the sky islands. I noticed in past trailers they showed Link near some big masses of sky islands that are above Hyrule. The thing is, some islands they showed are not even in the game anymore. It seemed they shrunk the sky islands. I felt like lots of the sky was just optional. I didn’t NEED to go to the shrines, I didn’t NEED to go to labyrinths, and so much more optional places. The only places you need to go is Dragon Head Island and the Dungeons. I enjoyed the sky but wished it was bigger and I wish there was more to do other than shines. I was hoping for tons of large masses of sky, they really sponsored the sky in all their teasers but it was just….eh.

Exploring the islands covered in thunder clouds, relying only on lightning to see the way ahead, basically walking in the dark was the *absolute* highlight of TOTK gameplay for me and most fun I had in a while, finding a mysterious mask in the end, having no idea what this is, following that thread, again, blind - still can't forget how exhilarating that all was!! So for me sky islands delivered, just from this experience.

The biggest failure was fucking up the Gibdo/ReDead debate lmao

Whilst I've been playing this game I've had this exact thought at the back of my head, but haven't thought about it much until recently. This was a very good analysis. I almost feel bad because this game is so brilliant, it just falls short a bit here. (still tons of fun though.) In an official Nintendo interview they gave one reason for the sky islands not being too big? "one day, the designers scolded us. They said we'd made the skies messy by adding too many islands. (Laughs)" And honestly I thought the skies could've looked messy after the February 2023 trailer, but yeah if they added some really high-up ones behind another cloud barrier that you can barely see (like GSI) I would've loved that. Because GSI or great sky island is one of my most treasured memories of playing this game. It was truly magical on release day. The cloud barrier looked beautiful. You also have a point with the islands in older games, as much as I hate to say it. The only islands that I think hit almost the same "magical" level of GSI for me was the thunderhead and dragonhead isles for the first time a few days ago. The music, atmosphere and limited exploration made it feel bigger than it was, and the aesthetic in the room where you get the Mineru mask is just breath-taking. But finally, what I agree with by FAR the most is biomes. GSI following the great plateau formula with a snowy region was on obvious choice from a design point of view, but it's just such of a let down to see this brilliant zonai sky aesthetic be so overused. They fixed this a little more in the depths with mines, groves, lava areas and other things, but I can't help but think about this game potentially having a sky village, or a depths village with inhabitants. Surely they'll fix this in DLC, right? xD

I definitely agree with this, I feel like the heavy advertisement of the sky was to throw us off from the depths, but then it definitely left something to be desired in the sky, that it didn't quite meet for me... still a great game tho, great video man!

The Great Plateau was the start of something big, whereas the Great Sky Island was the end of something big. Sure, there's more to discover when you go down to the surface and below, but as far as the sky is concerned it peaks with the Great Sky Island in my eyes. I get that it's called the "Great Sky Island" and that implies it's going to be the biggest, but given the marketing of the game and the general expectation that this tutorial gives you, it gets you excited to continue exploring the other sky areas, to diminishing returns...

I never understand why people say that the sky is completely empty with nothing to do. You have 32 shrines which all can be solved in different ways and some of the islands are difficult to reach which adds to the challenge and experience. You also have two sky dungeons, dragon scale isle which is by far one of the best moments in the game, enemies to fight like the King Gleeoks, koroks to collect, mazes to solve, diving challenges which takes you to the highest points in the sky and you get the diving outfit for completing all three, secrets to discover like chests which include hints to where certain treasure is in the depths and around the surface, and the final phase of ganondorf which also takes place in the skies and has a beautiful cinematic feeling.

Agreed. I was imagining a boundless sky that reaches further and further into the sky where the clouds and weather may slightly obscure something interesting that you see. I was expecting air combat of some sort but the sky Islands are incredibley bland besides the great sky island. From the footage and screenshots we saw before the game came out what we now know is the temple of time in the great sky island which most people thought as a dungeon. I was expecting more unique areas in the sky 😢

I do hope they add more islands for DLC. Big chunk at least. I can say I taken too many screenshots up in the sky because it's just that beautiful 💀 They could of taken Minecraft Aether sky islands approach with different biome

Literally one of the very best content creators ever ! Also it's about Zelda?! You my guy are a true hylian*

A million times YES SAY IT AGAIN FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

I feel like this was specifically targeted at me and the conversation we had. 😂 14:57 But this was a really well explained video! I didn't realize how much I missed the Great Sky Island until you brought up the repetition of the other islands.

Yeah, the sky lands were probably the worst part. The tutorial zone was fine. But it was pretty much the only sky island that they did anything with. So much of it was just...nothing. Minimal reason to check out anything in the sky. Which surprised me. They hyped up the aerial element of this sequel so hard. But outside of that first jump off the tutorial island...you could just ignore the sky almost entirely. It's like they got part way through developing them and just said "nah, just ship it." Despite it taking so many years to make the game.

The next game, maybe: Purah: "Robbie, is that floatation device ready?" Robbie: "It sure is! Just gotta do a few tweaks and....it's done!" Josha: "I wanna push the button!" A massive earthquake happens, and all of Lookout Landing, Kakariko Village, and Hateno Village launch into the air as sky islands. Purah: "Robbie! Did you activate the devices while they were still underground?" Robbie: "Maybe.....It was her idea!" Josha: "Hee hee, floaty villages!"

I agree completely. I think this, and a few other gripes I have with the game, all boils down to the source of most of my problems with BotW: overcommitment to the open design philosophy. I don't mean to imply that open world is bad or, for that matter, a bad fit for a Zelda game (I'm actually loving the openness in TotK, aside from the overly uniform experience in the sky and depths). It's just that it seems very hard to make big, epic, and unique gameplay experiences outside of the main quest when you've imposed the constraint that everything else needs to be essentially freely accessible at any time.

After the tutorial, the sky looses all interests. They're jusy more puzzles, every single time, and the same could be said of the regular world: every secret, every question, every puzzle... can be answered with either a shrine or a Korok seed. It doesn't help that the main story is also bad.

I 1000% agree with you about the aky Islands. They over commercialized but ultimately under delivered on them.

(6:05) the practical use of "Oasis Islands" is they are fairy fountains. As far as I can tell, fairies don't loiter around Great Fairies anymore, they're up here on the pool islands in the sky!

Not counting plot related areas, once you complete the zonai suit, glide suit and labyrinths, what's left? I'm assuming dlc will be a thing. Hopefully the sky can be improved.

I was just talking about this yesterday! Cut and paste islands everywhere. I'd say there is only one time to go to the sky from each tower. Get your Sage's Will, Shrine and Maps then go back to the ground. The only other thing I could see useful in the sky is the hearty radishes and the fairies at the "oasis".

The depths was never marketted because... IT HAS NOTHING TO SHOW.

I feel everything you say bro. Felt the same way

They totally missed a trick with the Sky Islands - they could have done loads more with variation with the islands.

I Agree with everything you've said. The sky islands were a lot of rinse and repeat. Now what I LOVED and still love are the caves. It seems like no one talks about the caves.

I agree with you by so much. I was very angry to finish most of my sky island shrine hunting just to realize that Nintendo overhyped it. It almost makes me feel like they were just trying to hide the depths if you ignore previous islands within the franchise. I was so excited to explore the skies sweating that'll I'll fall off a lot due to the amount of enemies that could've been up here but in the end it's just the same old robots, one shot baby dragons, and random middle to late game bosses that is too easy to get used to. I hope the future dlc gives much more diversity up there compared to the depths and te surface combined. But in the end, this game is still amazing and winning a game of the year

I wish they would have doubled down on the sky islands and scrapped the depths. We didn’t need all that. Twice as many sky islands alongside the caves would have given us plenty to explore.

The sky will be a nice place to plop down new DLC lore candy bites.

Not just the skye islands was repetitive and boring , the whole game was , so much so that for the first time of all the zelda games I have played , this is the first one that I never bother finishing

This is an interesting take. I actual feel this more applies to the depths than the sky islands. The first few hours in the depths felt amazing. I thought there would be a lot of story elements that took place there. But once you start exploring, you find that most of the depths just reuses the same ideas constantly. And tbh, this may just be a problem with the whole game. I loved it and felt the high moments of the game were far better than in Botw, but I admit that once I discovered most of the main story contents and beat the game, I grew bored and stopped playing. The rest of game just reuses a few ideas with disappointing rewards. Those ideas are fun but I lost interest after a few hours of them.

They had different plants in the sky but didn't even have cool and great ones to motivate me to keep gathering up there. Sky mushrooms suck. A dlc could simply add those missing islands back, as a start

Ngl I went into the game thinking there'd be lots of places like the great sky islands scattered across the sky, I was so disappointed as I uncovered the sky map and had to realise that most sky islands are just sky pebbles. They really gave you the best first and I routinely forget to explore the sky islands bc of it

I was a little upset when I got to the absolute highest island, found nothing and couldn't even lay down a Travel Medallion

The problem with the sky islands is that in this type of game you only have enough memory to have a certain amount of assets loaded at a time, and in the sky you can see the entire ground world which is already pretty big. A lot of those things get culled off or replaced by simpler LOD assets, there is still a lot so the amount of memory left for the sky islands is pretty small. This could have been solved with better hardware or by making the overworld simpler.

Rumors say that there WERE more sky islands previously, but that Nintendo thought it looked too cluttered and convoluted, and scaled them back in number.

It's only the second thing for me, the biggest miss is the reused music

I liked totk. I understand that feeling you get once you've explored everything it feels there wasn't enough diversity in the sky or depths but that's still after dropping 60+ hours enjoying everything which is more than most games.

100% Agree and the worst part is, that no one asked for islands in the first place. Nintendo marketing just made them THE thing in TOTK and they absolutely succeeded. I love the idea now of floating island, that you have to build vehicles for to get up there. And the great sky islands are soo well designed, so beautiful, probably the or one of the best parts of the game. Only to then find out, that thats it... The rest is basically just floating shrines. It's cool to have the Depths as a surprise, but it should go like "You expected A? We give you A and B" not "You expected A? We give you B"

As an extension of the land, rather than a sprawling chain of independent ecosystems. I do rather enjoy what the islands accomplished despite very clearly being capable of more. Finding a way to each island in the indended way to do so was always fun to me. Since you can go anywhere to start, I assume they littered each Island with Zonai parts so that regardless of what part of the islands you start out in, there is always an opportunity to explore nearby islands at the beginning of your adventure. This is also helpful later on in the game, since not everyone is Zonai device farming, and travel independent of your inventory was a very big relief more than I could realize. The main enemy in the way being Zonai Soldier constructs was a smart decision. Them being every where just makes sense in regards to the lore. But it is the main way to farm Zonai charges. Charges always being near a device dispeanser means that devices are never to far away from the player. Which speeds up the rate of exploration a considerable amount even with just a few battery upgrades. Incentivicing exploration of the depths with treasure maps was a smart choice for early game progression. Being curious to go down there eventually forces even the most timid of players to discover Zonite is everywhere down there. Since it is the best place to increase not only your battery, but your armor options it inevitably creates a progression loop that would probably make even the most casual of players confident in taking on some of the more challenging areas of the game. The larger Quests and challenges that were up there all were fairly entertaining. Making the Mazes a triple decker journey was rather shocking the first time going about it, and was fun even on the second and third time around. Since all of the sky mazes are extremely isolated, and finding a way there with the limited battery I was working with was a bit of a puzzle in itself. The mystery of the thunder head islands still aludes me, and I'm sure finding the riddle to clearing up that mess will be satisfying, considering what I have already discovered lays within them. Lastly, the skydiving challenges were solid. Since the reward achieved for completing them is worth it imo. The outfit has helped me conserve stamina and be more comfortable in my ability to reach further distances while gliding from place to place. With that being said. The sky islands really do feel copy and paste once you really take a moment to analyze them for a while. Theres too many that have that rotatable launcher, a Zonai device dispenser, a shrine and either a boss fight island or an island with a "hidden" cave that houses the green rock inside it. If I had to guess what percent this particular sky island structure is of the total islands. It has to be near 40% man, stg.

I find them interesting enough, if not, like you said, a bit repetative. Though the gameplay loop that i found myself in was aided by them being one and done. I would have plans for what to explore next, head there, find a tower and shoot up into the sky with it, then land on nearby islands and complete them first. Being able to "complete" a single island fairly quickly meant it didn't hugely interrupt my attention for too long, so i didn't feel like my progress was being halted. Plus, i got every shrine, and doing the sky islands slowly during the course of the entire playthrough was much more fun than it would've been had I waited and done them all in a row, because then it would've felt REALLY repetative

Dude. Forget about the sky fit a while and then go back. Once you get your batteries full and learn to make some drones it's much amazing going back up there. The way the sky has a troposphere and you can literally chase dragons around their paths and meet them off at their pre scheduled time.

The flaws are infinite Materials and being able too cheese a lot of the content. My most hated part is buffs are locked into Gear. At least let us be able too choose the buff we want in gear OR stop putting buffs in gear and add new attachments likes “Rings and Earrings” seperate from your main gear like in Oot. It sucks that their was nothing cool too find in chest when Dupeing was a thing, Infinite M.Sword, and once you have a favorite gear all the gear you find is just clogging your inventory. The korok gps being locked behind the mask really sucks cause it ruins the look of link when i basically needed too wear it to make korok seeds easier to find. I just said f it because i had the infinite M. sword so inventory was pointless.

Felt too similar to the skyward sword islands. Everything in the first place you go and then nothing. Saved the labyrinths for the end and the forge construct island was the only thing I was exited for and it was nothing

Id argue the reason why the sky feels so disappointing is because it took up a lot of the marketing. The depths which are far more intricate took up basically zero marketing. I honestly think that was the best move they could make because it made the depths even existing a much bigger surprise.

Bruh the truth hurts , but you’re totally right. The depths have like 3 quests and the rest feels like copy and paste and randomly generated. I was baffled with the riot quest, the whole climb was a magic moment for me, but the rest feels bland

I actually get it with the sky islands. The Depths were the big secret Nintendo wanted to keep. The Sky Islands were a hint of what was to come & to also build excitement, create theories, etc. I also think the developers had an issue with how much - because to build the world and story, how to handle the 'shade' on the surface & it not totally being there in BOTW, etc. I appreciate that they really had to plan & code the world so it felt 'alive'. But none of that excuses the redundancy of the Islands overall.

I don't have a source, but I have heard that they originally had designed many sky islands that explored several game play concepts. But they thought it made the sky too crowded, so they removed many of them. Maybe Nintendo Forecaset?

the saddest thing is that they cut down on them from what they originally had and i don't find their reasoning convincing at all (in the sense that i don't think it was a good reason 😭)

I wished that they would have less but bigger sky islands, like 7 or so across the map but not being on top of the biggest landmarks so every part of the map has an impactful area. Either on the sky or on the ground. It would also make more sense because why would the sages have raised unimportant sky islands instead of the most important ones? That would also explain the emptiness of some areas on the ground because the important things that have been there before would have been lifted into the sky.

Looking back on it they probably were marketing the sky islands like that because they wanted to make the depths more surprising

I honestly am more disappointed by the Depths. There was so much potential for cool secrets that were kept from us before release but in the end it was just a whole lot of boring nothingness.

$70? Now i understanding the anger

They focused on making the game big, not on handcrafting it. I'd rather the game was a quarter the size, but all handcrafted, rather than the size we got but with copy pasta

The great sky island is the most linear thing in totk and definitely not even close as good as the the great plateau was o.O

the labyrinths by the way can all be cheesed easily. All you need is 1 warp medal and a flying vehicle. Get ontop of the maze and put a warp point. Now the rest is a cake walk

the art directors actually told the game designers to cut down on sky islands btw so i wish we coulve seen that version

I think this was their plan the whole time. Most companies would boast about something like the depths at every opportunity but for some reason Nintendo didn't. My guess is that the developers always intended for the depths to be the real highlight and the sky was just there to keep the depths as a surprise. The sky is quite barren and repetitive, as you have pointed out, but that did help the depths feel like a much more grand discovery in comparison. I have spent so much time exploring the depths that for most of my playthrough I've found more Lightroots than shrines, and I think that's something the developers wanted to happen in the first place.

Just finished BOTW loved it so much I bought the DLC which was immediately so tedious and unforgiving I put the game down and started TOTK. Great Sky Island is absolutely terrible, I completely disagree with your opinion on it. If they wanted you to progress in a specific path they needed to make the path more clear, and making it so terrible to navigate is probably the worst part about it. Forgot a shrine? It’s only a 45 minute climb to the opposite side of the island! What an awful opener/tutorial. The game seems fine, but that level was a terrible introduction to the game. Stupid stupid stupid.

Honestly, I wish there was just more variety in the sky. A problem that also occurs in the depths

13:30 on top of what you mentioned regarding the depths, the game actually encourages you to visit the depths relatively often in order to stock up on zonaite so it feels like they worked the depths into the gameplay loop better than the sky islands.

It would have helped if they condensed all the sky content into one "city" or equivalent per region with maybe 3-4 minor areas. The ground world has Hylia Castle, Gerudo, Zora, Goron, Rito, Hateno, Kakariko, Lumeria(the sea town), and if you want to include Kara Bazaar and the Yiga Clan Hideout as towns, as well as the Deku Tree. That's.... 11 areas with stuff in it (oh wait there is Tarrey town so it's 12). How many regions are there again? I mean I wasn't expecting too much with the depths but they had different areas (most of it felt copy/paste, but it wasn't too bad). There was no excuse not to put a city or two up there, probably and optional dungeon, maybe a flying boss robot you had to climb on top of and stuggle to stay on, or Air to Air combat. The depths when you found something, it was usually meaningful, not just another shield or weapon I don't really need. And you know what? I can fly in there. I can fly in there and zap enemys with my and gets my loots. And fight Yiga clan member and their boss. The sky is cool but it's not content.

It's interesting how in your first 20h of the game, you're blown away by just how many kinds of new content they are, and they all feel fresh at first -- sky islands, depths, caves, even wells -- but by the time you finish the game, whether that's at 50h or 150h, all of that content was so repetitive that it actually invalidates the good first impression. If they had picked just 1-2 of these things to flesh out properly, while it may have made less of a first impression, I think many people would have finished the game more satisfied overall. The optimist in me thinks they really wanted each of these things to be amazing but ran out of time and what was already done was a sunk cost. The cynic thinks they knew that reviews and a big round of purchases would be based on first impressions so optimizing for that was good business sense. Whatever their intentions, that's what ultimately succeeded and we can't be surprised if they lean in to that idea in future work.

Totally i spent half the game thinking the forge island in particular would have some significance due to its size and height over the other islands, but i was disappointed when there was LITERALLY JUST A SHRINE. Absolutely nothing else there, just a little challenge to get to a shrine

Definitely agree. The game loses a lot of its magic once you realize how many islands are copy/paste boss arenas and stone fetch quests. I hope whatever dlc they have planned is more of an expansion than a one time quest like in botw. Like maybe have skybirds and new islands inhabit the sky, and twili down in the depths

The fact that people expect the game to come with three full-sized standalone overworlds is just ridiculous.

I think the non-important islands being bland and same-y is so the important ones stand out. They are stepping stones on your way to great discoveries.

There was a ton of promise with the opening of the game. But it was a bit deflating (spoiler to follow....) when the more you played, the more you realized you didn't really need to explore a lot with them - and that there wasn't a ton to explore. And that was tough because it wasn't necessarily 'fun' to go from island to island. At least not to me. And having the planes vanish - I get why, but it - and early not having a lot of energy - made it that much harder to want to explore the sky.

I've just started a botw playthrough again to compare it to totk and I was just thinking about how the great plateau creates expectations that are met or exceeded during the game, whereas the great sky island creates expectations that will never be even close to met. After exploring every sky island, even the few unique islands, while cool, did not get close to the kind of islands I expected after the great sky island. The closest was the island where you drain the water and do the underground mirror puzzle in the west sky. I want dlc to add master mode and at least two new sky islands on the level of the great sky island, one in central hyrule in the big open area and one in the desert. Or one in eldin instead of central hyrule.

So much missed potential. They spent a lot of time in the depths obviously but its just exploration. You dont really learn much about the depths. I wanted to learn way more about the zonai and see interedting facilities. I feel the sky temple from twighlight princess had more depth and lore to it which is really sad

And in lore the reason for their existance is quite lazy and dumb: for the hero to awaken. Like... what? To develop something so absurd as floating islands just for someone to awaken? Why in the skies exactly? Couldn't it be somewhere easier to accomplish? xD

The biggest problem is the ratio between map size and the number of unique assets. Nintendo is trying to build like a City, with only 3 unique bricks.

The spirit temple should have been in the sky on the thunderhead isles or something

Something that i really missed are caves on sky Islands. I loves the caves on the great sky islnd and also love them on the ground so for me its very weird why they didnt put a single other cave on the sky islands.

Sky Islands are my go to place to farm sundelions and construct materials, that said there is not much else going for them