I think that the main thing that vindicates my negative opinion on TotK has been the cultural longevity (or lack thereof) it has in comparison to Breath of the Wild.
I got into Breath of the Wild a little late to the party in 2019, two years after its release, and there was a THRIVING community online, especially on youtube, of lore speculation and analysis. People would read into little details of the world design picking up on little stories and piecing together details of the great calamity. And these channels had millions of views and subscribers doing this consistently up until 2023 when TotK released!
What do you see nowadays, almost three years after TotK came out?? The occasional mod compilation here and there. Every now and then you see a unique creation but even that, the games main selling point, has grinded to a halt. Most of the Zelda youtubers I followed religiously either shifted back into classic Zelda content, or stopped making Zelda content entirely- because TotK is a boring game with game-y, gimmickey world design and an even worse story that has no thought put into it and nothing to analyze.
I'm just saying, if TotK was a masterpiece, Zeltik wouldn't have transitioned into making runescape videos.
