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I made a big mistake replaying XB1 and XB2 in prep for XB3. I thought I had the gamer fortitude to accomplish such a task, and I very nearly almost did... but by chapter 4 of XB3 I was completely burnt out. I ended up just shelving the entire thing for when I'm in the mood my plan is to play BotW soon and then swear off of it until TotK. I'll probably play other Zeldas because they're all so different they all rule
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Feb 18, 2023 08:04
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I say if you're itching to play you should do it now and just screw around a bit, maybe learn some of the weird stuff/glitches that was discovered but definitely don't do all shrines or korok seeds imo. Don't start it up in March or April, either. If it's anything like botw I would personally not want to get burnt out beforehand because I know I'll be spending at least 80 hours within the first two weeks.
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Feb 18, 2023 08:15
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it's going to be like MGS2 and we're only going to spend the opening act in the old map playing as link
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Feb 18, 2023 08:29
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Ytlaya posted:I mean, it's mostly just shrines, koroks, and bokoblin/lizalfos camps. It's just that "collectathon in open world game" feels much better when the world looks/sounds good. I don't know that I agree with this, and while the constant drip feed of new gear, shrines, Korok seeds and battle fill the moment to moment gameplay loop effectively to keep you constantly engaged with the game, I do think the world itself is filled with enough content to make it interesting beyond those things on a longer hour to hour basis. I also think part of it is that Breath of the Wild engages the player in exploration differently than most open world games. In most games of that type you open a map, find what you want or need at any given time (stat increase, plot mission, weapon upgrade etc) and head towards that, often via fast travel to bypass most of the map and maybe, maybe you'll find an interesting diversion along the way, but you mostly know what you're doing, where you're doing it and how it'll reward you from the moment you open the map. On the other hand, in Breath of the WIld, you see something and go "Ooooh, what's that" and then head towards it to find out what it is, and on the way you find shrines, seeds, weapons, fights etc. to fill the journey, but you have no idea what you're heading towards or what getting there will mean, so you're doing it purely for the sake of exploration. And a lot of the time, you might take hours to reach that original destination, not because it's a long way away, but because you found such interesting diversions or saw some other, completely different interesting destination while traveling and headed towards that instead. Which makes exploration it's own reward within the game. More than that, I do think there's enough things beyond that moment to moment gameplay to fill the world. There's the horse encampments with weird characters and side quests and a handful of villages of course, but there's also a lot more that the game never blares about and leaves you to find on your own with the proviso that this means you might just miss these things entirely. One of my favorite memories of the game, and of gaming full stop really, is wandering across that huge bridge towards the south of the map after what must have been 30+ hours of gameplay (because I'd headed north once I left the Great Plateau to find out what the huge floating platform was) and then spotting something weird out of the corner of the camera, turning and going "wait...is that a loving DRAGON!?!" because at no point in any trailers, Treehouse Lives, reviews etc. had I seen anyone mention anything about dragons (note: I played it immediately upon release and without much interaction online once I started playing). Nor did I have any context for what it was, and wouldn't for a good while after that because it's just not something the game rams in your face. It was left up to me to realize it had a regular and specific route, then find a high point that I could glide off and wait for it to pass and it still meant nothing beyond "OOohhhhh, pretty!" and it'd be a while more before I found out there were upgrades involving their scales. Until that point they were just an oddity that I was left to interact with completely on my own terms and with no greater context. I had much the same experience with the Lord of the Mountain stag god thing, and recall regularly seeing a glow on one part of the world while scanning the horizon before finally setting to find out what it was after dozens of hours in the game. The game wasn't pushing me to do so, there was no explicit reward for doing so beyond "I wonder what that is" and no obvoius way to find out because I didn't know what the timing was. I just had to watch out for it, then try and get there asap when it was glowing. At which point I found out there was a weird glowing horse, and it went from "what's causing that glow?" to "what is that?" and, perhaps more imporantly "can I tame it?". And again, no obvious path forward laid out by the game, you just have to explore trial and error to find out what makes it skittish and how you can tame it. The world map is filled with oddities like that, things you can spot from a decent vantage point and go "wait...what IS that?" and then head towards. You'll find plenty of things along the way to divert you, but you always have a destination in mind, you usually physically travel a lot of it rather than mostly bypassing the map entirely via fast travel and there's never usually any actual context for that destination beyond "wait...what IS that?". What is that huge cube out on an island? Why is that spit of land forming a weird little swirl? Wait...what's that music? Run away, run away! What are those overgrown ruins? Why is there one huge pillar of rock standing out on it's own? What's inside that persistent cloud of darkness? Hey cool, a centaur...Oh jesus gently caress, run away, run away! Why is this village so completely different looking to every other settlement? And so on. Beyond the world having a lot of mysterious objects to draw the eye, the world also is left ambiguous enough that it leaves the player to form their own story to a large degree. So there's huge skeletons, ancient ruins of different styles, those dragons etc. And little context for any of it, leaving the player to wonder about all of it as they wander around, forming their own story as they formulate plans for how to tackle those things they've found but can't properly interact with yet. Which includes higher level areas enemies have chased them out of of course (with no actual explicit "this is a level XX area" marker), but also things like the dragons and the Lord of the Mountain too. Breath of the Wild has one of the best constructed game worlds in my experience, and it's packed with major and minor things to engage the player so that you're never more than maybe 30 seconds from something diverting, be it something that'll only fill a few seconds like a battle or one that'll fill hours as you try to figure out how to interact with it. tsob fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 16:36
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tsob posted:One of my favorite memories of the game, and of gaming full stop really, is wandering across that huge bridge towards the south of the map after what must have been 30+ hours of gameplay (because I'd headed north once I left the Great Plateau to find out what the huge floating platform was) and then spotting something weird out of the corner of the camera, turning and going "wait...is that a loving DRAGON!?!" because at no point in any trailers, Treehouse Lives, reviews etc. had I seen anyone mention anything about dragons (note: I played it immediately upon release and without much interaction online once I started playing). Nor did I have any context for what it was, and wouldn't for a good while after that because it's just not something the game rams in your face. It was left up to me to realize it had a regular and specific route, then find a high point that I could glide off and wait for it to pass and it still meant nothing beyond "OOohhhhh, pretty!" and it'd be a while more before I found out there were upgrades involving their scales. Until that point they were just an oddity that I was left to interact with completely on my own terms and with no greater context. Yep, exact same experience. Just sat there with a poo poo-eating grin in awe of how there is a 500 foot-long dragon flying in the sky. I didn't know if it was a roaming boss enemy (a la the Weapons from Final Fantasy) or what. Then it got closer and started spitting electric balls everywhere and, of course, I watched it go under the bridge and I tried to jump on it. It was literally a case of "there be dragons here" and I was 10 years old again. BotW captured a sense of wonder that I can't recall any other game really getting close to. Getting off the Plateau and just standing there going "I can go...anywhere..." and having a million different locations screaming at you to check them out was/is one of the coolest moments in my very long video game career. I don't know how the sequel will be able to re-capture that but I hope it tries.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:18
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botw and elden ring also encourage you to seek new areas by studying the map layout, which is so much better than icon-hunting. whenever you spy an odd geological formation or body of water on the map and travel there you're almost guaranteed to find something of interest
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Feb 18, 2023 18:31
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FooF posted:Yep, exact same experience. Just sat there with a poo poo-eating grin in awe of how there is a 500 foot-long dragon flying in the sky. I didn't know if it was a roaming boss enemy (a la the Weapons from Final Fantasy) or what. Then it got closer and started spitting electric balls everywhere and, of course, I watched it go under the bridge and I tried to jump on it. It was literally a case of "there be dragons here" and I was 10 years old again. I'm so glad that the dragons in Breath of the Wild aren't roaming bosses or anything, and don't even acknowledge you even when you shoot them because it made the setting feel so much bigger and Link feel so much smaller that there are some things that are just beyond your ability to affect and the world cycles on regardless of the current story.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:34
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You do sort of have a boss fight with one, but you're just helping him lance his malice boils so it's fine
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Feb 18, 2023 18:36
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Lord Cyrahzax posted:You do sort of have a boss fight with one, but you're just helping him lance his malice boils so it's fine But even then it's more like a cleansing ritual with the dragon explicitly waiting for the "final blow" to give you a blessing. Even corrupted the dragon isn't actually hostile.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:50
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FooF posted:Yep, exact same experience. Just sat there with a poo poo-eating grin in awe of how there is a 500 foot-long dragon flying in the sky. I didn't know if it was a roaming boss enemy (a la the Weapons from Final Fantasy) or what. Then it got closer and started spitting electric balls everywhere and, of course, I watched it go under the bridge and I tried to jump on it. It was literally a case of "there be dragons here" and I was 10 years old again. My first encounter with a dragon was Dinraal low overhead while I was wandering down Tanagar Canyon. OH GOD BIG RED THING GANON COME TO GET ME WTF WTF ... hmm, the music sounds weirdly calm and meditative ... wow cool a dragon ...
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Feb 18, 2023 19:14
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tsob posted:I don't know that I agree with this, and while the constant drip feed of new gear, shrines, Korok seeds and battle fill the moment to moment gameplay loop effectively to keep you constantly engaged with the game, I do think the world itself is filled with enough content to make it interesting beyond those things on a longer hour to hour basis. I also think part of it is that Breath of the Wild engages the player in exploration differently than most open world games. In most games of that type you open a map, find what you want or need at any given time (stat increase, plot mission, weapon upgrade etc) and head towards that, often via fast travel to bypass most of the map and maybe, maybe you'll find an interesting diversion along the way, but you mostly know what you're doing, where you're doing it and how it'll reward you from the moment you open the map. Yes, but ultimately the answer to every "what's up with ________ cool landmark?" is either "shrine" or "korok." Ultimately it's a game that doesn't have much gameplay variety. Still an all-time fave, but I think it might play differently to someone not intrinsically motivated by the game's sense of zen.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:46
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Albatrossy_Rodent posted:Yes, but ultimately the answer to every "what's up with ________ cool landmark?" is either "shrine" or "korok." That's provably false though? Like multiple examples that disprove your shrine/korok claim are on this very page.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:48
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Shrines are varied and fun, they’re a good reward imo
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Feb 18, 2023 19:55
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I like the shrines, but I'd be happy if half of them in TotK aren't the same combat challenges that are either too easy or a slog, depending on how far you are through the game.
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Feb 18, 2023 19:58
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i'm pretty sure there are no shrines. none have been seen or even glimpsed in the trailers. i've gotten the impression that shrine-like puzzle challenges will mostly be found on the floating islands instead
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Feb 18, 2023 20:07
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I hope they ditched the shrines to give us a nice chunk of proper mini dungeons that have their own varied themes. The Sheikah Tech look got really stale. Give me awesome locales to explore underground that live up to all of the stuff I saw in the overworld.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:11
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Captain Hygiene posted:I like the shrines, but I'd be happy if half of them in TotK aren't the same combat challenges that are either too easy or a slog, depending on how far you are through the game. You're obviously exaggerating, but only one sixth of the shrines in BOTW (20 out of 120) were Tests of Strength. I didn't really mind them anyway.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:19
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The beauty of BotW is that Hyrule has basically every kind of natural landscape that you can find in the real world. It may not be terribly accurate that a tropic jungle, a desert wasteland, and harsh wintry mountaintops are all in a 5 mile radius, but it’s dang cool. But with the floating islands and whatnot in TotK I hope we get some more fantastical locations this time around. One thing I love in Elden Ring is that the world gets really loving weird as you explore, and I’d love to see Zelda play around with that more. Typically that’s where the dungeon design comes in. It’s wild how little we know about this game so far, and I’m hoping there isn’t too much revealed before release because I can’t stop myself from getting spoiled.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:20
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I am pretty sure we will have a direct focusing on totk and revealing a totk oled bundle so we will have at least one more pre-launch trailer and some gameplay footage before may.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:22
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On the one hand I understand why people want to know as little as possible beforehand, on the other hand picking apart the trailers and theorycrafting is so fun
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Feb 18, 2023 20:49
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tsob posted:The world map is filled with oddities like that, things you can spot from a decent vantage point and go "wait...what IS that?" and then head towards. What exactly do you have in mind here? I'll see interesting looking environments, but I more or less know what's going to be there. Towers, shrines, and one of the few towns/stables are the only things that really stand out when looking at a particular vista. I think that one island (where you lose your gear) might be the only time I've been rewarded with something truly unexpected upon traveling somewhere. I feel it'd be better if they had more NPCs or "events" that you could come across. Like how there's already a bunch of travelers on roads, but give some of them quests, or place people in other locations. Either way, this isn't really meant as a criticism. Doing simple things in BotW is still fun just because the game has extremely good vibes (and coming across stuff like weapons or rare animals is always rewarding due to the durability/cooking systems). Edit: I think the #1 thing I'd like in a BotW sequel is to have more excuses to visit different parts of the world. I have a feeling that I'll have a hard time motivating myself to keep exploring once I've done all the divine beasts and visited each large area. Currently I'll set one as an objective and use it as an excuse to explore the surrounding area. Plus I really like the characters/dungeons in the game and it's a bummer knowing that I'm limited to just a handful. It's fine (and even better) to keep the objectives open-ended and non-linear. But I liked having some broader objective to accomplish in a particular zone. So stuff like "Accomplish X in this broad area." I know some people don't need that and still enjoy scouring the world for Koroks even without any narrative content, but it's tough for me to stay engaged that easily. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 20:51
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Zat posted:You're obviously exaggerating, but only one sixth of the shrines in BOTW (20 out of 120) were Tests of Strength. I didn't really mind them anyway. I think what made them feel more numerous is that they were literally the only repeated shrine type, so they stuck out like a sore thumb. That epic moment of descending on the elevator as the shrine name reveals itself was completely undercut the 8th or 9th time you saw the text "Test of Strength" that and they weren't super interesting WarpDogs fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 21:13
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I'm glad that they made 120 shrines, even though it meant that some of them were padding.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:16
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I just hated the 240 loading screens to do them
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Feb 18, 2023 21:18
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MokBa posted:The beauty of BotW is that Hyrule has basically every kind of natural landscape that you can find in the real world. It may not be terribly accurate that a tropic jungle, a desert wasteland, and harsh wintry mountaintops are all in a 5 mile radius, but it’s dang cool. Back during BotW's release the Idle Thumbs guys talked a lot about this aspect. They compared it to how high quality theme parks or zoos are designed with realistic and perfectly scaled props, carefully considered sight lines, etc., so that even a 100 acre plot can feel like exploring an enormous world full of distinct areas A couple of hills at *just* the right size, with the layered mountains off in the distance and the forest spaced just so, makes it feel like you're galloping across an endless plain
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Feb 18, 2023 21:26
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You might be interested to see the talk they gave about it at the Game Developers Conference in 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMsF31NdNc
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Feb 18, 2023 21:30
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Zat posted:You're obviously exaggerating, but only one sixth of the shrines in BOTW (20 out of 120) were Tests of Strength. I didn't really mind them anyway. Oh wow. Yeah, obviously there weren't 60 of them, but I definitely would've guessed more than 20. The other poster was right, being the only major repeated type definitely makes them stick out way more.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:31
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WarpDogs posted:Back during BotW's release the Idle Thumbs guys talked a lot about this aspect. They compared it to how high quality theme parks or zoos are designed with realistic and perfectly scaled props, carefully considered sight lines, etc., so that even a 100 acre plot can feel like exploring an enormous world full of distinct areas THIS is what BotW does better than literally any other game ever made, creating an open world where it feels carefully considered what it and isn't visibile from literally every vantage point. It's where its magic comes from, why I can keep playing even though I've encountered 80% of the enemy types by the time I've left the tutorial Speaking of the tutorial, every open world game should have copied it. Make the tutorial a space to learn how to explore. Elden Ring needed a Great Plateau, imo. It just kinda drops you into it, and if you're not familiar with Soulslikes there's not really an area to practice and get up to speed. Finish the Elden Plateau with a boss that's what harder than Soldier of Godrick but way easier than Margit.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:38
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DR FRASIER KRANG posted:That's provably false though? Like multiple examples that disprove your shrine/korok claim are on this very page. No. From the post I was quoting: What is that huge cube out on an island? A shrine. Why is that spit of land forming a weird little swirl? A shrine Wait...what's that music? Run away, run away! Not a shrine, but it happens literally a hundred times throughout an average game. What are those overgrown ruins? A shrine. Why is there one huge pillar of rock standing out on it's own? A shrine. What's inside that persistent cloud of darkness? A shrine. Hey cool, a centaur...Oh jesus gently caress, run away, run away! Not a shrine. Why is this village so completely different looking to every other settlement? Don't know what this one is referring to. And so on. More shrines.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:41
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ok, but why are you acting like exploring a weird spiral formation full of enemies and reaching its centre, or stumbling on a whole deserted island, is somehow made not exciting by there being a shrine at the end of it? you might just as well say everything rewards you with heart pieces or money in the old zelda games, which it does, but nobody cares because the things you do to get them and the locations they're in are always different and new and cool. why is it suddenly bad in breath of the wild? i really don't understand this "everything is shrines lol" thing people have
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Feb 18, 2023 21:45
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To be clear, I do like the shrines (for the most part. We all hate fighting the same combat trial a hundred times and a good number of the puzzles are a tad undercooked). The tactility of BotW's puzzles makes you feel like you're a kid playing with toys, or building something (which is on obviously going to be emphasized further in TotK). I don't even mind that the shrines have the same aesthetic, because it's a rad aesthetic! It's like a blend between typical fantasy ancient advanced civilization, a distinct Japaneseness (BotW is certainly the Japanesest Zelda), and an interactive exhibit at the science museum. I'll defend the Divine Beasts for similar reasons. They don't have as distinct aesthetic themes as previous Zelda dungeons, but they make up for it by having more distinct mechanical themes, changing the way you think about solving the puzzles.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:48
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Bongo Bill posted:You might be interested to see the talk they gave about it at the Game Developers Conference in 2017: Hello to my laundry folding video of the day! Thanks friend.
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Feb 18, 2023 21:52
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Amppelix posted:ok, but why are you acting like exploring a weird spiral formation full of enemies and reaching its centre, or stumbling on a whole deserted island, is somehow made not exciting by there being a shrine at the end of it? This is a good point. I'm not complaining that everything in Mario 64 is a star. It's interesting how BotW makes hunting for heart pieces the central task of 90% of the game. In previous games I only collected the ones I happened to come across, I never went looking for them once. It was side content, BotW made it the main course.
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Feb 18, 2023 22:08
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One thing I thought of the other day, based on absolutely nothing - will Impa & Purah return? Or maybe Paya does, stepping up to succeed Impa as the advisor to the royal family? It’d be super interesting to see her in that role, given the way she clearly feels for Link Maybe Purah has found a way to reverse her de-aging mishap and appears in her AOC form?
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Feb 18, 2023 22:09
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The gameplay is often its own reward I think, with botw. Which is good -- it's not like a lootbox gambling game, obviously. The shrines want to be solved. The deku seeds want to be found. This all comes to a head at the divine beasts, and it's how dungeons in the older games felt most of the time. I guess I think of the Zelda games as puzzle games first. For what it's worth, I had bounced off botw my first few attempts - you can see my older posts in this thread if you want to. I think I was treating it too much like an older game and throwing myself at some large groups of enemies that totally kicked my rear end before I was ready. Then I found a major test of strength and tried to beat it a bunch, I think I had only 6 or 7 hearts at the time... Anyway I shelved it. Then last year Elden Ring came out and I played for twenty hours, realized the rhythm of exploration was very similar, and then I shelved THAT for botw and started having a lot more fun.
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Feb 18, 2023 22:15
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One of the other problems with the Test of Strengths is that there are enough of them that you can run into like 3-4 of them in a row easily. 5 are in the central area. 3 in Hebra.
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Feb 18, 2023 22:32
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It’s also great though: eventually I know that if I’m low on weapons I can pop over to some TOS shrines and grab a few ancient weapons. Same reason I turn on the Shieka slate to ping lizalfos near death mountain so I can get some tri-boomerangs
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Feb 18, 2023 22:57
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Amppelix posted:ok, but why are you acting like exploring a weird spiral formation full of enemies and reaching its centre, or stumbling on a whole deserted island, is somehow made not exciting by there being a shrine at the end of it? Because the shrine ends up deflating the experience. When you do a whole lot of exploration and the light at the end of the tunnel is Shrine that you don't enjoy doing, exploration loses its luster.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:53
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I don't like the Tests of Strength because they're the only shrines I usually have to leave until later. I can finish almost any other shrines with like four hearts and whatever I've scavenged on the way but a Major ToS I have to just leave it for a ten hours because it will break all my weapons and still have half health left and kill me.
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Feb 18, 2023 23:54
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I like tests of strength because i get great weapons with which to conquer other tests of strength
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Feb 18, 2023 23:56
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