Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Oh my god. Someone has to try taking a cucco to the last boss fight

1 Like

Jfc

Yeah not to immediately move past that super gross shit. Iā€™m trying to keep in mind that this game was made by a team of talented individuals, and I can enjoy the good parts separately from the gross shit, but it has definitely made my experience moreā€¦frustrating, I guess.

I donā€™t know why anyone expected better from Nintendo though. I was reluctant to even get all excited about this game because I hate supporting them anymore. I hate that they made me regret even this purchase.

1 Like

I just tried this after remembering your suggestion. I donā€™t want to oversell it, but it was pretty great. Minor spoiler that made me happy: you can climb to the very top without engaging any bosses.

So after I eventually went to the first place I was supposed to after leaving the intro area I started to head in the direction I was told to go next, except that I saw a shooting star in the other direction and couldnā€™t resist seeing what was up. That lead me near a shrine so I figured I might as well check it out. After I did so I wandered a little bit and stumbled upon a NPC who basically directed me to go someplace else entirely that sounded like both a major deal and more interesting than where I was supposed to go, so I went with that. It lead me through a somewhat more linear stretch with enemies a bit stronger than me but not absurdly so and after a few tough battles (lightning weapon enemies suck) and just a wee bit of skipping via strategic floating Iā€™ve made it to someplace major feeling.

While this isnā€™t an unheard of thing to occur in a video game I have no idea how it happened in a Zelda game.

1 Like

This keeps happening even after exhausting the main quests. I get NPCs telling me riddles about shrine locations in every zone now that Iā€™m shrine hunting.

Full GDC presentation is up now.

why isnā€™t link left handed anymore

omg what

Yeah, the first time I killed a thing that dropped a few really nice weapons I was able to open my map and go after everyone who gave me trouble. It made me feel like I was punching above my weight class in a really compelling way.

On the other hand, after I burned through all those weapons, I went back and killed the thing again to stock up. Resources, including stamina, are only as finite as you want them to be, which is part of the freedom of the game I suppose. Iā€™m trying not to default to rote solutions, but theyā€™re really effective!

But yeah, more permanent buffs and items would make everything feel flat and I prefer convincing myself that I got away with something because thereā€™s no way I couldā€™ve killed that guy without these bananas.

@username Where did you sell your diamonds (I only got 500 for mine)?

I think I may have remembered the price wrong as I never actually sold it and everyone else seems to be offering the price you mention. On the off chance I didnā€™t recall incorrectly it was either at the stable closest to the opening area or to one of the wandering merchants near there.

Just got and started the game today. Got out of the plateau and saw the cutscene at kakariko village. What are some things I should hunt down to buff up my stock, these green bokoblins are kinda burning me out and costing me alot of resources should I go toe to toe with them.

Fun fact: they sleep at appropriate times.

In terms of healing resources, the thing I learned is that I meed to stop and cook up a bunch of things from time to time as you get so much more in terms of benefit from your resources. A mushroom or apple may restore a half heart each, one of each cooked together will heal at least two whole hearts. Others are more dramatically improved if less consistent from meal to meal.

The first couple hours of this are breathtaking. Feels like Iā€™m trapped in a Ghibli movie. The best kind of feeling. Running around and jumping about and climbing, and just ā€œphysicingā€ around is a lot of fun. Combat feels good too. Thereā€™s some weight to it. Scavenging ruins for ancient artifacts, fighting the elements, observing wildlife, resting by the fire at night waiting out the monsters that lurk. Itā€™sā€¦ itā€™s wow!

And best of all: thereā€™s a surprising lack of forced exposition and handholding. I mean, this is Zelda? Whyā€™s this so free of bullshit? Then they dropped a surprising amount of exposition on me. And itā€™s the same old. And suddenly the world inevitably lost most of its mystery. The Ueda comparisons donā€™t hold up for me after that.

I can mostly go wherever I want, but the game is very explicitly telling me what to do and where to go next to advance. Thereā€™s lots of handy navigational aids (that do look out of place, even if they tried to explain them). Thereā€™s no getting lost in this world. Fetch quests too. The really banal go get the thing and bring it to me kind. Impossible to fail. And it gets worse once the main quest really gets going. Specific triggers that have to be hit in specific ways to advance sequences. Like, when I approached a character unexpectedly from above instead of below, the ensuing cutscene magically teleported me downwards, in my right place. When I tried to shortcut to my goal, my goal was like: did you hit the checkpoint on your way here? No? Too bad.

The more the game goes on the more it seems like they shoved a ā€œregularā€ Zelda in this open world. And Iā€™m not saying that they shouldnā€™t do quests. Or any kind of narration. But I donā€™t know. Show, donā€™t tell? An open world also makes me hope that I am not only free to go where I want, but that I can also approach things in more than one particular way. To find my own solutions. And Iā€™m allowed to do that. But only sometimes.

Thereā€™s a lot of optional stuff in that big open world. But thatā€™s my problem with it. It doesnā€™t really matter to me. Itā€™s nice to look at and collect doodads, but resources arenā€™t scarce so thereā€™s no pressing reason to go scavenging. Except maybe to tick off boxes, because the game totally gives me a camera and a photo album to ā€œcollect them allā€. Secrets, mystery, lore quantified, gamified.

I start seeing similarities. If you look too closely, the world feels very ā€œgameyā€. Very artificial. Copy-pasted enemy camps, samey towers that I have to painstakingly climb in every area, every dungeon entrance is an identical bunch of glowing rocks with a hole in it. Oh yeah, the dungeons. At first I found them refreshing. Everyone teleports me into what seems like an alternate reality. Usually a couple rooms or one big room that require no navigational skills and can be cleared in about five minutes. Bite-sized Zelda. Those big old caverns of yore whose entrances had to be unveiled? Havenā€™t seen 'em yet. And after the beginning area, rewards have been exchangeable trinkets that slightly boost my stats. Now thereā€™s no real incentive for me to even bother. Because itā€™s not like I really need better stats.

Thereā€™s no challenge in the overworld. Stamina meters or not, I can outrun enemies with ease. I can roleplay and pretend that nights are scary because more monsters come out. They arenā€™t faster though. And they only roam in small areas that can often be circumvented. Collectable foodstuffs that replenish health or boost stats are abundant (Iā€™m playing a vegan and my inventory is full) and can be eaten without penalty at every moment (even when hit and stunlocked by an enemy). And food doesnā€™t perish. Weapons degrade, but that doesnā€™t matter when most enemies drop theirs. Quicksaves. Itā€™s all very convenient. Itā€™s trying to appeal. And I wanted to be appealed at first. I didnā€™t expect to like this game at all. And I liked it so much. Loved it, even. For a while.

I donā€™t want to come off too negatively. I had some genuinely wondrous moments of discovery. I felt some agency. Solved some maybe not ingenious, but certainly clever puzzles that didnā€™t treat me like a child. Puzzles that transcended being mere puzzles and turned out to be interlocking mechanics. And I love that stuff! Working with what feels like ā€œorganicā€ systems. I donā€™t know. I am so very ambivalent about this. This game has the best and the worst Zelda in it. I couldnā€™t stomach Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword at all. I like this a lot more, even if itā€™s devolving as I play. But I also think that the first Zelda did the whole ā€œopen worldā€ thing better than this one. More elegantly.

Iā€™m not that far in I guess. Maybe ten hours? Iā€™m not sure if I want to go on though. I just fought the first real boss in this big open world game. I tried to approach it on my own. Hit an invisible barrier. Game said no. Game said, listen: do it my way. What followed was a rail shooting sequence. Shadow of the Colossus this ainā€™t.

6 Likes

Watched my brother play it a bit over the weekend.

Is there a way to quick-cycle through weapons without pausing the fucking combat to go into a menu? Because that looked horrendous, and those weapons were breaking every minute and a half. If not, can Link play unarmed, is that a thing?

Thereā€™s the horizontal menu you can bring up with the d-pad. You donā€™t have to go into the full menu. Not sure if thatā€™s what youā€™re referring to.

Link canā€™t throw a punch, unfortunately.

Nah, I was referring to the horizontal menu. I mean, anything that stops combat, every other combat, in the Year of Our Lord 2017 is a menu and at best jarring in my opinion. But, then again, Iā€™m considering these things through the lens of having to buy a new console for the game, versus already having a compatible Wii U or already wanting the Switch.

Thirty hours or so in Iā€™m still fumbling with the weapon change menu, so itā€™s safe to say itā€™s kind of bad UI. But, after you increase your number of slots you can have a lot of weapons, so itā€™s definitely better this way than without the pause. Nobody would use it in favor of the pause menu otherwise.

Another thing about Iā€™m fumbling with constantly and only just starting to master is the elaborate stance system. An unstated core principle of this game is that Link can be in one stance at a time, such as weapon stance, climbing stance, bow stance, etc. This has a lot of nonobvious side effects, there are subtle preconditions for when and how you can switch stance, and in general being aware and manipulating what stance youā€™re in is the key to mountaineering and combat. I think thereā€™s a fair amount of depth to this, which is part of the reason the game is holding my interest, but it couldā€™ve stood to be better explained and trained. Here are some of the mechanics Iā€™ve learned:

  • You canā€™t turtle with a two-handed weapon (greatswords and lances). You can tell whether a particular weapon will deny turtling by selecting it from the pause menu and looking at the stance on Linkā€™s 3d model there. (Thereā€™s no way to tell prior to choosing it, nor from the quick switch menu.)
  • Running puts away your weapon, and after youā€™re done running you go back into idle stance instead of automatically going back into weapon stance. (The latter matters because in idle stance, the attack button is actually a stance-change button ā€“ aside from the lowered DPS from that, it means you cannot run then immediately start a charge attack.) This is also why running puts out torches.
  • Climbing stance is ā€œstickierā€ than it strictly needs to be, so by pressing B to release the stance when the angle lessens on a still sharp slope, you can recover stamina.
  • Likewise, entry into climbing stance seems to be based on a threshold of unexpectedly low horizontal velocity rather than slope angle per se. I havenā€™t fully proven this, but I think Iā€™ve noticed that speed potions will let you hold idle/running stance on more acute surfaces than normal, so to a degree they can be used interchangeably with stamina potions. Whether you run or walk and in what direction also affects exactly when you enter climbing or slipping stance.
  • While in bow-idle stance, the right D-pad arrow will bring up the bow quick-switch menu instead. You need to press the attack or run button to make it show the melee menu. Also, bows are two-handed so you cannot turtle in bow stance either.
  • You can exit from throw-aiming or bow-aiming stance without firing by pressing the B button.
  • Switching to bow stance while in the air slows down time. But this mode drains stamina very quickly. You need to press B to exit this stance, firing an arrow alone does not exit it.
  • You need to be at a certain (quite modest) height above the ground to allow a second X press to enter drifting stance. This is likely intended to prevent micro-drifts on flat land. But it means that if youā€™re on mostly a downward slope but are currently over a tiny flat or raised portion, you have to wait to press X again until youā€™re past it. This is particularly important when youā€™re planning to drift from a low height across a dangerous liquid, as by the time you realize your input was ignored youā€™ll be drowning.
6 Likes

soā€¦ how essential is this really? I understand that the physics and environmental interactions are brilliant and that the world design is compelling and that the combat is challenging enough. are we into for-sure-the-best-game-in-a-long-time territory?

I havenā€™t made up my mind. The counterargument is that the game can sometimes feel hollow, repetitive and lacking in mystery. You finally make it over that hill in the distance, and all you find on the other side is a similar landscape of monster camps, collectibles and puzzles. There is never an Anor Londo moment.

2 Likes