Zelda: Breath of the Wild

its also neat that link has a love interest that is definitely not zelda, and kind of interesting who it is too!

i wish i got to spend more time with my fish friends, there are some really neat incidental characters in this game

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i kidn of wish lin khad a real voiceactor because its be fun to hear his lines in conversation given a real voicen especially because he comes off as overly blunt and somewhat casual in language

like “Gimme those boots.” being the only dialogue choice multiple times in a row with the dude who has the sand shoes

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my favorite bit of incidental characterization with Link is his dialogue choices with adults are usually kind of brusque, but he’s very gentle and polite to children

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Link is a good person

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Nephews (9 & 12) saved up for a Switch. Parents bought them BotW and Mario for Christmas. That I have Some Knowledge of Videogame Things from Years Before Their Birth is still a novelty to them, because it’s not a subject we’ve really talked about before (the Switch is their first console and prior vidcons were limited time w/ minecraft on their mom’s laptop and carefully doled out measures of mobile game). Went over for belated birthday gift + dinner for their mother this evening and it occurred to the one that maybe he could sneak some more Zelda time in by asking if they could “show it” to their uncle. They each got ten minutes to show me their save files. 12 year old was on Temple No. 4 and I coached him through some obstacle, which was unwise, because his time was almost up, and suddenly the rest of the dungeon was opened before him and he almost certainly has ADHD and snapped into laser-focus. His mother would say “time’s up dude” and he would say “but there’s this chest right here just let me!” and his father would say “listen to your mother” and he would say “well I just figured this out and” then I would say “sounds like it’s time for you to stop, thanks for showing me, etc.” and he was obviously just Maybe If I Ignore Everyone Hard Enough The Seconds Will Add Up and I Will Finish and Get My Glider.

After his mother instigated a countdown he finally stopped.

I said it would go faster next time, because he knew where to go.

9 year old proceeded to show me all the ways he could think of to explode many, many barrels. He killed some gerblins, with a bomb + barrels, and the eyes on a Skull Chest changed color, and 12 year old helpfully said “see that means it’s unlocked” and I said “oh it’s one of those locks that opens when you do enough murders, just like in real life,” which is a joke my sister very much appreciated.

I asked if I could try it.

I started a new game.

I’m used to a ps4 now so the A/B to confirm/cancel as arrayed on the switch kinda fucked me up. In the opening cave, I decided to put on the shirt but not the pants. When I talked to the old dude outside he asked if I wasn’t a little cold? This reactivity was Truly Amazing to the boys.

Also Truly Amazing was when I noticed my stamina draining in combat and thought “can I roll?” and in trying did a back flip. This was new to my audience. Nephews lost their shit. I had to teach them how to backflip. Talking them through this process was complicated by the fact that I instinctively called holding the L2 button 4 aiming/lock on “z-targeting,” a phrase which means absolutely nothing to a 9 and a 12 year old in cyberyear 2020.

I also picked things up and hopped around and threw them down hills to watch them roll while remarking on how spry I was for having just woken from a 100 year nap.

Eventually I found a better pair of pants in a box, so I put those on and took off my shirt.

my sister said “but you take more damage without the shirt on, right?”

and I said “yes, but who cares about that when I can do this?”

and I started backflipping until I ran into a tree

assuming OK Health I will return on Saturday for more half-clothed adventures in the magical land of Hyrule

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how deep into the weeds did I get explicating on the Real World Historical + Cultural Influences of the various Weapons, etc. in their Breath of the Wild art book?

look I’m not proud of this

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i started a new game of this over the holidays since i now have a switch and have done a p big u-turn on it lol

my initial take was this is boring and up its own arse, now i’d say relaxing and still up its own arse

perhaps death stranding primed me

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the one complaint I’d make of most very good switch games is that they’re all a bit longer than I want, almost everything that’s impressed me on there I’ve basically quit 80% of the way in because it’s a bit much

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though Nintendo’s newfound commitment to shipping 60 hour games that you really, really don’t have to come anywhere close to finishing if you don’t want to is still impressive, given how they’re still determined to make very polished, very expensive software; gives the kids something to do indefinitely and leaves me knowing that when I do pick up my switch I can go back to noodling on pretty much anything on there

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Exactly

learning a lot

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they’re like the only developer who had anything healthy to take away from, like, skyrim

very uncynical approach to Too Much Content

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Yeah, it’s miraculous how they were able to leapfrog a genre that dozens of games over a dozen years hadn’t moved nearly as much, by questioning all the cruft that they themselves had participated in building, interrogating the role of designer as adult supervisor on a field trip

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Each day–assuming no other plans interfere–the nephews are given a 45 minute block, each, in which to be their Links. Their dad takes a turn when he’s home, sometimes. He’s 57 and says he’s never played a video game before.

Niece is just shy of three so she just watches and climbs on me and chews on my shirt(s) until I ask her why she’s chewing on my shirt(s) and she insists “that’s not a shirt!” and I asked her “what is it then?” and she says “it’s a sweater!” and I say “a sweater is a kind of shirt” and she remains dubious.

12 year found a stable? Got verbal directions then got on a wild horse and rode it to Waypoint Town where he bought as many dressups as possible from the appropriate store and I helped him discover he could in fact sell some of this older clothes. Learned the Secret Ancient History of This Variation On The Same Story Again Oh No Ten Thousand Years Ago Everyone Was A Tribal Tattoo!

He went around town blasting through dialogue until time was up then I was up.

They wanted me to Actually Play instead of run around setting grassland on fire in boxers so I made a beeline for my waypoint and smashed some gerblins and collected some weapons/items and made the Giant Ubisoft Phallus erupt from the ground then I did my first Temple then I dropped various metal objects on the oofbox of the dude who is demanding too many Orbs in exchange for a Gilder, imho. Discovered I could magnet hanging lamps loose and shortcut Skull Cave of Gerblins to unlock the Murder Chest and then it was nine year old’s turn.

He was frustrated by the temple he had saved in, though it looked like he had figured out how to progress in it. He just needed to space out the Thrilling Puzzle Blocks they gave him a bit more and what he was trying to work would work, geometrically. I tried to encourage him in this direction but he’s nine and impatient so he pulled the ripcord and teleported out. Oh well.

He had the Hot New Threads big brother just bought on his mind, and spent the rest of his time trying to exploit the environment as aggressively as possible to generate fat stacks of rupee against the day he arrived at Waypoint Village, Home of Infodump Grandma. Broke most of his weapons generating cheap stacks of wood before figuring out an arrow----> fish ----> rupees -----> arrow ----> etc. loop?

They told me I figured things out a lot faster than they had, and I told them I just had a lot of practice with the Conventions of the Medium so not a lot of it was that new to me.

Then brother-in-law decided to go for it. He:

-obviously has a lot of trouble moving both Body and Camera at the same time and tended to keep his thumb off the right stick when he was locomoting, lending (from a bystander’s pov) a lot of the temple he did a slower Mario 64 When The Preset Camera Path Glitches Out Or Lags quality

-multiple shoulder buttons extremely up-fucking

-has to look at the controls a lot to visually check for a prompted button

-probably not helped by impatient children with more plastic brains and more time in the game trying to give him unasked for advice every 5 seconds?

I told him he picked a hell of a game to start with.

Anyway sitting there I realized how much of the vocabulary I use to talk about Game is dependent on a context that no one else in the room had. I also didn’t want to exhaust anyone, or myself, so I didn’t try to provide The Elements of AAA Open Blast 101 and just chilled.

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oh yeah before I left me and Niece sat down with the Breath of the Wild Phone Book and talked over the page of possible Link Jewelry

we were mostly on the same page re: our favorites but she would prefer the one circlet be a necklace?

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Dual analog is our curse, the wages of our sins

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this thread has been very fun and touching but mostly it’s made me think of two very stupid things:

  • I think the only reason anyone marked me out as “smart” at a young age was because I was preternaturally patient as a kid due to my OCD; hearing about a 9 year being impatient with this sort of thing actually makes me very uncomfortable, like I wouldn’t want to be around it. I was almost certainly more patient and deliberate with videogames when I was like 6 than I am now as an adult.

  • do they call you uncle jesse

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extremely fucked up that you would invoke the long + inescapable shadow of Full House that has fallen over my life

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this is also probably why whenever I went over anyone’s house as a kid all I wanted to do was like, pet their ancient immobile dog, because most other active play stressed me out, and the adults would always be like “oh yeah he’s really good with animals, so calm!”

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I think a lot of 9 Year Old’s impatience comes from I’ve Seen Older Brother Do This But He’s Ahead of Me And My Memory Is A Little Fuzzy and So Is His + said brother barely being able to contain himself re: advice impulses (he will suddenly stand up and lurch directly in front of the screen blocking his little brother’s view while attempting to point things out). And he’s learning to dualstick a complex 3D game for the first time + he’s aware of being under a time limit + he’s so enthused about this thing that he bought a giant art book he can’t stop showing me and it’s just a perfect storm for his particular kid nerves.

I’m thrust into the role of “hey 12 Year Old chill out and let your brother play his game” which saves me from entering my own “let me just show you how to do this part” space unless I’m asked.

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