The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild

BurnyBurns · Jan 23, 2017

The newest entry in one of the other game series around with a 30 year legacy:

[video=youtube;zw47_q9wbBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw47_q9wbBE[/video]

I've always been a bit of a Nintendo fan with a soft spot for the Zelda games ever since playing Ocarina of Time on christmas 1998. No other game in the series has since managed to turn me into a young teen again and I personally never got quiet warm with the 2D entries, having started playing games in the N64 era, but this entry personally excites me for a couple of reasons. It's the first time Nintendo seems to break out of the abstract game template cemented by the SNES and N64 Zelda entries for good, going from a trigger based puzzle game to a far more game-physics determined model for its mechanics. It's the first time they go from a "room" and setpiece based game world interconnected by hub areas and corridors to an actual open world. It's the first time they have voice overs (quality remains to be seen). It's the first time they have more elaborate character health and equipment based mechanics, than mowing down grass for hearts, magic potions and rupees, introducing basic survival and hunting mechanics and a slew of different clothing and weaponry.

It feels like the series is making a 20 year leap from sometime in the early ninties to today.

The usual caveats apply for Nintendo. Technically, they're about 10 years behind the curve, seeing as that's about what the Wii U and Switch can do, the Switch being a pretty beefy handheld (but still a handheld) and the Wii U a pretty weak console. Image quality and raw texture resolution suffer, but the general style alleviates the issues a bit. While playing the Switch demo, I noticed inconsistent framreate however, which is a bit of a pity with 30fps as baseline. I'll be playing on the Wii U, as I'm not shelling out the 330€ launch price for the Switch for one game. At least there's the cemu Wii U emulator, which might be a good way to relive Nintendo classics years down the line with clean image quality, if it continues to develop as impressively as the dolphin Wii/GC emulator.

Anybody else going to play BotW?

Monk · Jan 23, 2017

Really tired of games being tied to hardware. I've missed the last few Zelda games because I refuse to buy a console for just Zelda and Mario...At least things eventually come to emulation.

This looks like a great entrant into the series (though nothing, I suspect, will dislodge Links Awakening from my top spot)...hopefully more of a return to the game's roots as I feel it has been wandering and lost in the Kokori forest for some time. (Note: I've only caught up to Twilight Princess as I can't be bothered to get the motion bar working for PC).

xondk · Jan 23, 2017

Monk said:
Really tired of games being tied to hardware. I've missed the last few Zelda games because I refuse to buy a console for just Zelda and Mario...At least things eventually come to emulation.

While I understand and in part agree, it really doesn't work out that way in practice, but yeah, if all consoles could share a similar code base so that 'everything' just worked like on pc, that'd be lovely, but code wise that is very, very difficult.

Monk · Jan 23, 2017

xondk said:
While I understand and in part agree, it really doesn't work out that way in practice, but yeah, if all consoles could share a similar code base so that 'everything' just worked like on pc, that'd be lovely, but code wise that is very, very difficult.

Absolutely. Just seeing how N64 emulators have evolved so much but still don't quite hit an exact replication is example enough of how tough it can be.

I'm sure I'll be able to pick up a switch in a couple years for dirt cheap. In the meantime, there are still plenty of Zelda games to keep me occupied

BurnyBurns · Jan 24, 2017

Monk said:
Absolutely. Just seeing how N64 emulators have evolved so much but still don't quite hit an exact replication is example enough of how tough it can be.

I'm sure I'll be able to pick up a switch in a couple years for dirt cheap. In the meantime, there are still plenty of Zelda games to keep me occupied

It's all the more impressive what dolphin and cemu are doing. The mario Galaxies, as well as Skyward Sword look gorgeos rendered with buffed internal resolution. There are small hitches, although the games seem very much playable so far as I've tried them. Occasionally, upon entering an area, I notice the games stuttering, but it picks up after a moment. Not all games are supported that well, but dolphin has come a long way. The Mayflash dolphin bar turns connecting Wiimotes to the PC pretty much into a "plug & play" affair. I'm personally also pretty happy with Wind Waker HD on the Wii U. Dolphin may render the GC game in higher resolution, but the HUD is stretched and the Wii U's HD-make adds quiet a bit of subtle graphical nods, like self shadowing on foliage etc.. Not sure if I'd ever go for Twilight princess HD, seeing as I have the Wii game here and it's been one of my least favorite Zeldas. I loved the story's representation, but the overworld simply felt barren and lifeless. Size just for sizes sake does not make a good game, if the only prevalent means of interaction is crossing hte space to move on to the next area (heh, cue to Elite mistaking loading screens, wait times and RNG shenanigans for content or game design

). Hyrule field was like an oversized hub area with hardly anything worth exploring. They went on to overcompensate in Skyward Sword, turning the "overworld" into an extended dungeon consisting of a sequence of non-optional trigger based puzzles. Those already consistently overstay their welcome in dungeons where I'm concerned.

Therefore, Im all the more eager to find out if they've finally alleviated all those squabbles in BotW. And to find out what they've broken this time.

3rd March it is. Despite all the complaining, Zelda has consistently been one of my favorite game series, despite having been stuck in the nineties in so many respects for so long.

The BotW trailer music without the whaffling is also pretty great, even when remade digitally:

[video=youtube;kZsbtOZWG4o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZsbtOZWG4o[/video]

Monk · Jan 24, 2017

BurnyBurns said:
It's all the more impressive what dolphin and cemu are doing. The mario Galaxies, as well as Skyward Sword look gorgeos rendered with buffed internal resolution. There are small hitches, although the games seem very much playable so far as I've tried them. Occasionally, upon entering an area, I notice the games stuttering, but it picks up after a moment. Not all games are supported that well, but dolphin has come a long way. The Mayflash dolphin bar turns connecting Wiimotes to the PC pretty much into a "plug & play" affair. I'm personally also pretty happy with Wind Waker HD on the Wii U. Dolphin may render the GC game in higher resolution, but the HUD is stretched and the Wii U's HD-make adds quiet a bit of subtle graphical nods, like self shadowing on foliage etc.. Not sure if I'd ever go for Twilight princess HD, seeing as I have the Wii game here and it's been one of my least favorite Zeldas. I loved the story's representation, but the overworld simply felt barren and lifeless. Size just for sizes sake does not make a good game, if the only prevalent means of interaction is crossing hte space to move on to the next area (heh, cue to Elite mistaking loading screens, wait times and RNG shenanigans for content or game design ). Hyrule field was like an oversized hub area with hardly anything worth exploring. They went on to overcompensate in Skyward Sword, turning the "overworld" into an extended dungeon consisting of a sequence of non-optional trigger based puzzles. Those already consistently overstay their welcome in dungeons where I'm concerned.

Therefore, Im all the more eager to find out if they've finally alleviated all those squabbles in BotW. And to find out what they've broken this time. 3rd March it is. Despite all the complaining, Zelda has consistently been one of my favorite game series, despite having been stuck in the nineties in so many respects for so long.

The BotW trailer music without the whaffling is also pretty great, even when remade digitally:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZsbtOZWG4o

+1 Virtual rep

How does the WiiMote fair on PC playing Skyward Sword? I did a not so in depth look at it and it seemed like I would need to hook up the motion bar to get it to fully function for that game. I probably should just fix whatever is keeping my Wii from updating and just play it on there, lol.

BurnyBurns · Jan 24, 2017

Monk said:
How does the WiiMote fair on PC playing Skyward Sword? I did a not so in depth look at it and it seemed like I would need to hook up the motion bar to get it to fully function for that game. I probably should just fix whatever is keeping my Wii from updating and just play it on there, lol.

Your options are to use some Bluetooth stack and connect the WiiMote (not sure if it works natively under Windows 10) or to just shell out a bit for this China adapter and put the bar on the monitor. In dolphin's configuration, select "real Wiimote"/push the Wiimote's synchronize button and once the game has started, playing with the Wiimote on the PC is like playing on the Wii. Only thing to keep in mind is that a Motion+ Wiimote is required for SS, so you either need the unwieldy bottom attachments or one of the newer Wiimotes with "motion+" included.

I personally have a living room PC for the purpose, but it'd work all the same on a desk.

Cotic · Jan 24, 2017

Looking forward to playing this although I might get it on the WiiU just because of how many other Zelda titles I've got on there through VC support etc.

Insomnia · Jan 24, 2017

Game map is absolutely HUGE! 360 km2, although it's not certain if Nintendo includes dungeons in that equation.
For reference, GTA5 map size is about 81 km2.

BurnyBurns · Feb 28, 2017

Previews sound pretty stellar. Hyped for Friday, although I don't even know yet whether I'll get any game time at all and half the rest of the weekend is planned out already... [knocked out]

Will be the first Zelda I get to play the first time on a big TV and 5.1 system. Not that the WiiU's 720p makes good use of the former, but I'm very much looking forward to the experience.

These types of videos don't help! There are no story spoilers in there, only a couple of Link - Beast interactions that haven't been shown in the usual trailer footage.

[video=youtube;mYO47HUW8L8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYO47HUW8L8[/video]

If and whenever Elite comes to the point that it has actually visit-able ELW, I would absolutely loooooove to have these types of interactions with the native Beasts. :3 Think NMS like procgen species, but with a lot more interactions. Riding, feeding, befriending, hunting for trophies...

It'll probably be not even close to as clamorous, but it's fun hallucinating about what types of games would all fit into the Elite universe. Just like I would love to "space leg" into a derelict generation ship (Space Hulk/Event Horizon) to find the remains of the late inhabitants and whatever valuable items they may have stored, being chased by space zombies and the likes Left4Dead style.

Steve50 · Mar 1, 2017

I love Zelda ...yes, enough to buy a Switch. but I have to admit that the reports of Zelda having framerate stutters when in docked mode, does seriously concern me.

Monk · Mar 1, 2017

Steve50 said:
I love Zelda ...yes, enough to buy a Switch. but I have to admit that the reports of Zelda having framerate stutters when in docked mode, does seriously concern me.

Really? That is literally the way I was going to play for 99% of it.

If true, will be yet another Nintendo product I pass on.

Bomba Luigi · Mar 2, 2017

I'm looking very forward to tomorrow, old Zelda Fan here. Its one of the rare games where I knew from the beginning I'm gonna buy it no matter what so aside from a few pics and videos that have been showed early on I haven't seen anything from this Game. Looking forward to discovering everything myself

Just really need to get Yakuza 0 done today, but should be doable. Then I just have to somehow managed to paly Horizon and Zelda at the same time. And maybe a bit of elite beta here and there

BurnyBurns · Mar 2, 2017

Yeah, there's stuttering occasionally, even in the starting area, from the demo I played. Not happy about it, but it's not like there are other options than playing on either WiiU and Switch. Review scores are a pretty phenomenal and for me a good indication that the stuttering doesn't mar the overall experience.

Here's hoping that the game will be actually delivered on Friday. :O

Bomba Luigi · Mar 3, 2017

Okay, have now palyed around with the Game and Holy Crap! This is me while palying:

[video=youtube_share;pFlcqWQVVuU]https://youtu.be/pFlcqWQVVuU[/video]

What a great expierence so far, what an amazing world to play in and what you all can do is just awesome. And one thing really got me, there was a guy telling me I should go see him again at place X. Sounds normal enough but I realized I had no clue where it is so I go speak to him again and I can ask him and he gives me propper directions! Like... proper directions, not just a marker on a map, proper directions! Nobody gave me proper directions in a open world game since ages, I yelled "Thank you!" at my TV when he did

Only downside for sure is that the Framrate can get wonky sometimes. But It didn't happen much so far and it couldn't really hurt my enjoment yet, all in all I'm more impressed that the WiiU can even run it ^^

Slopey · Mar 3, 2017

Just got my Switch, and although I was a bit sceptical, Zelda is really really good. The open world is awesome - none of the usual railroaded progression. I generally hate Nintendo's IP (can't stand Mario/Splat etc), but I'm pleasantly surprised by Zelda. I only really got the Switch for Skyrim, and was worried that wouldn't be a good plan, but after playing Zelda, Skyrim is going to be really really nice on the console.

The only things I don't like about the Switch so far - TOTALLY STUPID place to put the USB C socket - you can't charge it while using the desk stand, so at home/with power you either use it handheld or docked, or you're running the battery down - ludicrous design decision. Also no (generally accessible) web browser or media player. If they add those, it becomes 100x more functional and would be a daily carry for me.

BurnyBurns · Mar 4, 2017

It feels oh so good to play a Zelda that's both still unmistakably a Zelda game, but does away so thoroughly with the antiquated aspects of the series' formula.

There's no more chopping grass for rupees, hearts or magic potions, trivialized combat with enemies that require one specific item to defeat them and hour long trigger based puzzle marathons to get the next mandatory magic trigger item. No more walled off areas with rocks you can't climb and pathways that are blocked until you've acquired the green magic thingy of opening green pathways.

All of your main abilities
are granted in the tutorial area, which nearly doesn't do any handholding whatsoever. They're limited to a handful of magic abilities (bombs, moving magnetic things, freezing time on certain objects, or conjuring ice blocks on water surfaces) and a glider that allows you to travel far by jumping down of high places. The magic abilities allow you to manipulate certain objects in the world according to a somewhat 'realistic' physics engine. You can outright carry and use every weapon, shield or piece of clothing you can get your hands on. Anything that you can collect or find in the world has a purpose. It can be eaten or cooked for health or certain other effects, e.g. allowing you to sneak more effectively, protecting you from heat or increasing your stamina or resilience. It could be sold for rupees, which can in turn be used to buy better clothing or other equipment. Sometimes the collecting in itself is a mini game of sorts. Wild beasts can be hunted and will grant meat, trees can be climbed which may lead to finding a nest full of eggs, or you chop trees for wood that can be burned or to use the fallen trunks as bridge across an abyss.

From there it's free exploration and the world does reward exploration, either through incidental discoveries of cool locations, or by providing you with useful items for the game's interconnected systems. Sometimes you just find another apple tree to restock your food supplies. I just stumbled on the charred remains of a wooden hut on a mountainside, surrounded by a bunch of derelict guardians. Nothing to get from there, except for the little story snippet that the site conveyed. Some hundred meters away, a shrine was visible on the hilltop. Getting there however wasn't straightforward, as beneath another ridge, a couple of active guardians where roaming, which would've forced me to look for a more sneaky way to get there, as they're absolutely lethal with my current equipment. In the end I chose to avoid going there for the time being. This is also the only thing that really limits you from going to a place. You may find creatures there that could can't deal with, yet. It's in this regard similar to the Gothic games, but is a lot more playful and flows a lot better.

Combat has been turned into something engaging that rewards skill, presents a challenge but doesn't get in the way of exploration by putting overly much emphasis on each encounter. Enemies block, circle you, drop their weapons, scramble to pick up new ones, dodge your attacks, alert the others in their camp, cook their meals, sleep or hunt beasts for sport. You can chose to charge headlong into the frey, often avoid combat entirely, sneak up on them, try to detonate strategically placed explosive barrels to dispatch a group quickly (no idea why those barrels are so abundant, but they're very fun to blow up) or set the field on fire and watch how the wind spreads the fire through their camp and burns them. Generally, you can have a good time with combat, because timing, skill and a bit of planning are rewarded, yet opponents don't take forever to dispatch. The same goes for Link, but abundant autosafe points keep it from becoming overly punishing, so you hardly can get frustrated by trying to tackle an enemy that's yet to strong for you. Dodging in the right moment allows you to get in a flurry of hits during a short slow motion period, well timed parrying with a shield makes the opponent stumble and some attacks knock their weapons right of their hands. Weapons generally have a very short lifespan based on their durability and aren't repairable as far as I'm aware. Supply is plenty though and you can steal each enemies weapons, which results in quiet different combat abilities and sometimes rather funny improvised setups (I particularly like the wiggling arms you can steal from animate skeletons and use as clubs, event though they're not particularly effective). One handed weapons allow for shields, while the two handed ones only let you dodge for protection, but generally hit harder and tend to throw opponents back. A nearly broken weapon may be thrown into an opponents face, which deals more damage than using the weapon normally, but usually breaks the weapon completely. Depending on the enemy, some types of weapons are ill advised. Enemies on fire will not go well with your wooden weapons, while the electrical cyclopse bat things are better not touched with metallic weapons. The same goes for being outside during a thunder storm, where wearing metallic equipment may lead to being struck by lightning.

It feels a bit like you're in the OoT world. But instead of being limited to the walled off areas of OoT and other Zelda games, you actually travel through the world that the OoT world map has always shown you. You can go anywhere from anywhere and you're likely to find something everywhere. I don't think there's any going back for the Zelda series from this game anymore.

Edit: And yeah, I agree about the directions thing. You only get 'quest markers' on the map for main quest locations. But for side quests, NPCs actually seem to give you proper textual descriptions. Akin to "Follow a path through the next valley, then turn right... ". It speaks volumes to how well the world is layed out and how much thought has gone even into the minor NPC interactions.

Steve50 · Mar 4, 2017

I was in the local game shop trading in some games I'd done with and buying Horizon for my PS4 when I saw they had 2 Switch boxes on the back of the counter, asked them if they were pre-orders and they said no. So... my weak will crumbled and I got out the old bank card and bought a Switch, Zelda, Bomberman, extra set of joycons (local 4 player bomberman!) and a screen protector. Now I'm skint. lol

First impressions are overall good but could be better:

I dislike the dock, feels like a cheap piece of plastic and I'm VERY glad I bought the screen protector and fitted it right away, looks to me like the dock itself could scratch the screen which is crazy, but the two 'bars' that guide the switch into place are hard plastic, surely they could have been felt covered or something?

The switch itself seems to be fine, I like the UI, simple and speedy (unlike the ghastly Wii U one) and it feels fine in even my big hands. okay the joycon grip feels a little small for me but I guess I'll get used to it. One thing I noticed which is a shame, you can't have one set of joycons on the switch when its docked charging them and play a game with another set.

I've not played a huge amount of Zelda yet, my gaming time is torn between that and Horizon, but what I've seen has really impressed me, I totally ignored the "go to this point" at the start and went my own way exploring and had some interesting results, in about 20-23mins of play I did this:-

1: Climbed up/over the mountain where you come out of the cave at the very beginning ..and died of the cold

2: Walked in a random direction for a few mins, collecting apples and stuff on the ground, then jumped in a lake and about halfway across I drowned
3: Walked in another direction and came across an enemy who killed me with one hit

4: Went mountain climbing again and fell to my death.

This I like! it doesn't seem to hand-hold you and you are left to figure things out which is great!

Like someone said above, I'm no 'Mario' fan either but I am an rpg fan and this along with Skyrim will be excellent I think!
(even though I already own 2 copies of Skyrim ..but man, playing on a bus, car, in bed etc.. oh yeah!)

BurnyBurns · Mar 6, 2017

Bloody love this game. The only thing that's marred the experience so far has been the framerate drops specifically in villages (WiiU), which bugged out even my better half when watching me playing. The framerate can get rather nasty. In other places the framerate can occasionally chuck along as well, but with one exception of the game temporarily freezing, I've encountered nothing as intrusive as the framerate drops when riding through a village.

The compensation is an open world game like I've hardly ever played before. It's not that the individual mechanics are groundbreaking. Free climbing has been done by Assassin's Creed games, equipment durability has been done by about every other RPG under the sun, open world in itself is an old hat and other games have left the Zelda series in the dust in terms of NPC interaction for more than a decade. Everything coming together in a Zelda game however is an absolute joy to play, because of how polished everything is.

The game manages to find an addictive compromise between RPG mechanics like the weapon and equipment stats and the more arcadey Zelda mechanics. The constant cycling through weapons is unexpectedly great, because even though the best weapon tends to break eventually, the reward for beating an opponent most of the times is being able to steal their gear. And beating a tough opponent usually also results in looting good gear. If you run short on weapons, the approach has to change, from sneaking around enemies, or trying to defeat them using whatever you can find in the environment. Finding a chest with a good weapon beats opening chests just for another 100 rupees or bombs/seeds/whatever in previous Zelda's anytime, because you need that weapon eventually. In that sense, it's also much more immediately rewarding than other RPG chests, where you aren't forced to constantly change weapons once you have the one and only weapon of uber-p0wnage for your char. Here you're glad for the weapon. In other games it's mostly useless baggage for selling, if it's not as strong as your primary equipment. Even finding a chest filled with rupees has now much more value, as you can buy useful equipment in the settlements that you will neither come across in the wild, nor are you just given it through the story progression. A number of very useful characters are also rather needy in terms of rupees.

On top of it all, the movement through the world is extremely rewarding. Scaling a mountain may take long and is difficult, but usually, the peak offers something nice to find. An additional reward for the trouble is the ability to use any height you gained to cover a lot of ground quickly, by gliding down with the glider you receive early on. You've taken the touble of getting up and the game has the grace to not put more trouble in your way of getting down again. Usually, at the end of the glide there'll be another spot where you can find something neat.

The one thing I really can't remember seeing in any other game I've played is the variety and depth of interaction with creatures and characters in the world. From absolutely small things like feeding your horse apples, to enemies kicking back your own bombs at you, picking a weapon you dropped, hunting a wild boar on horseback only to start attacking you once they see you, cineastically flying of the horse back when you hit them with a bomb arrow, to a pack of wolves starting to circle you just out of weapon range to finally charge you from different sides quicker than you can attack when carrying a two handed weapon only to flee once you've killed one, there is tons of things that can happen. It's just feels more fluent and interconnected than nearly anything I've seen from other games. (If Elite ever gets NMS-like procgen ELW, I would love to see similar fauna interactions between alien beasts :3)

Even though in terms of story progression, I have only passed the first "temple", I'd say it's the best Zelda so far. Not that the story would've let me to the temple (yet?), but I stumbled across it by just sidetracking and exploring the world. Rather than blocking me from doing it because I lacked a mandatory previous story puzzle item, it was entirely self contained, doable and also very rewarding. I wouldn't be surprised if the game won't require you to beat the temple at all in the end. In short, even factoring in my teen nostalgia for Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, so far Breath of the Wild is easily the best Zelda that I've played. For the first time since the N64 Zeldas, this feels like a generally great game that can stand head and shoulders with other contemporary great games and does not feel like a highly polished re-incarnation of a decade old game formula long superseeded by other games, but now with a new gimmick added.

Short note on interface and controls: The pro HUD is highly welcome! Removes all HUD clutter from the image, except for the iconic hearts in the top left corner. There's also gyro aiming. I love gyro aiming. While I can get by without, I want it for all console games with aiming in fact. Aim fine adjustment just feels so much more intuitive to me when just slighty tilting the controller, rather than desperately concentrating to not overshoot on analogue stick inputs.

Bomba Luigi · Mar 6, 2017

Oh man, this game! I'm obsessed with it, pretty much dissapeard from the face of the Earth this weekend and have playd about 20 Hours on 2 Days, its nuts

The main thing that really sticks out after that is that this game constantly stimulates my Imagination, I all the time come up with plans and Ideas in regards to exploring, travelling, combat or puzzle solving. And the most amazing thing about that is that I actually can do all that, not once was I in a situation where I couldn't do something I wanted to do no matter how crazy the plans sometimes are.
I mean, they sometimes fail miserably but thats because I'm not always thinking things through properly

And god damn half of that map is still black, and on the parts of the map I have been I still haven't seen everything ^^