Sometimes, hoovering up every possible collectible in a game can be incredibly satisfying, giving you a real sense of accomplishment for finishing the busywork you didn't technically need to do. Other times, it can be a frustrating, boring nightmare, and developer Joe Morrissey has set out the key points he thinks separates the two, and surprise surprise, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's notorious Korok Seeds aren't a glowing example.
Morrissey served a designer on Ghost of Tsushima and inFAMOUS: Second Son, worked on Diablo 2 and 3 (including on the story for 2's Lord of Destruction expansion), and more, and as reported by PC Gamer, he had some big things to say about collectibles during a talk at this year's Game Developers Conference.
He believes there are eight key traits a collectible must have to make it fun and worthwhile: its discoverability, if it offers appropriate rewards, whether it's tied to a fun, skillful mechanic, what worldbuilding it offers, if it has fictional justification, character attachment, and if there's consistent placement and a reasonable quantity of the things to collect.
The first three criteria, Morrissey reckons, are the most important, with "discoverability" revolving around how players go about finding more.
"If the answer is, 'Well, you just gotta search for them'… that's not gonna be a good time. Nobody is gonna have fun with that. They'll just go online and find wherever the stuff is," Morrisey says, before taking aim directly at the notorious Zelda: Breath of the Wild collectibles: "I'm lookin' at you, Korok Seeds." He argues things like visual cues and systems to scan the environment can help make the hunt for collectibles much more engaging.
"Appropriate rewards" is self explanatory, but Morrissey claims he's spoken to a number of creative directors before who've said, "'Hey, we're not going to give you the rewards for the collectible'. No one really cares about this, it isn't a big deal,'" only to find that "all the play testers are like, 'Why would I waste my time doing this?'"
While Zelda isn't mentioned here, it's fair to say that both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom's rewards are… questionable. Sure, collecting the things is useful to expand your inventory space, but going for all 900 (or 1,000 in the sequel) rewards you with a literal pile of poop with no purpose, which, uh, isn't the most fulfilling prize to receive.
In order, the other points relate to whether collectibles are interesting to pick up (for example with a "fun mechanic that actually gives the players some sort of skill that they can improve on"), whether they "reveal more about the world of the character," and if they actually make sense to exist within the world. Morrissey concludes that the Korok Seeds successfully do all of these things, but that's where their successes end.
"Character attachment" is relevant if the collectibles link to the overall plot, while the consistent locations and "reasonable quantity" criteria speak for themselves. It's not hard to see why the Korok Seeds didn't win on these aspects – they're scattered over the whole, entire world and, again, there's hundreds of the dang things.
If you were curious what Morrissey does consider a good overall collectible, he puts both Marvel's Spider-Man's backpacks and inFAMOUS' Blast Shards into the A-tier category. They both only miss out on one trait each – the "fun, skillful mechanic" and "consistent location" points, respectively.
