Board 8 > 10 minutes of Tears of the Kingdom gameplay being shown tomorrow

(+) Yeah! (+)

Jakyl25 posted...

Hopefully the sky islands stopped the rain <_<

They don't in terraria, they shouldn't here.

Kenri posted...

Which games reward your exploration with entirely new guns?

They all give you new guns are you progress. Exploration is entirely secondary, maybe 10% of your time, so getting shotgun shells is fine. It's not fine when exploration is 80% of the game.

Kenri posted...

(The inventory slots thing is also why the guy with 100 hours in the game is gonna be absurdly more powerful than the guy with 2 hrs who did a Hyrule Castle run btw)

You would think so, but it doesn't actually make that much of a difference. You can still stack your inventory with lots of super strong weapons and kill any 1 thing easily. It's just less tedious to have more slots, so you can kill 2-3 big things instead.

And the only way to upgrade those is by far the most tedious thing in the game. So you get to pick your tedium, but you can't escape it.

Leonhart4 posted...

I'm all for breaking the game if the game allows it or even encourages it, and if that's what it takes for you to enjoy the game, go nuts. The flexibility is part of what makes BotW so good.

This is what every defender says and it's just wrong. There's a million valid ways to play the game, but only 1 way to have fun with it. Sucks if you didn't happen to align with that 1 playstyle.

Grand_Kirby posted...

People act like Zelda has never done this before, and somehow forgot about Majora's Mask,

MM is to this day the most productive game development team that ever existed. To make something that original and perfectly executed in 1 year is absurd. No game has ever repurposed assets that well, any many have tried.

Since TotK is another follow-up in the same series, it will naturally get compared to MM in that way. It's not gonna compare well.

Fortunately, they seem to have convinced all new Zelda fans that BotW is the best type of Zelda. So more of the same will probably be received really well. Maybe they'll even go full Ubisoft and do yearly releases in the future.

foolm0r0n posted...

This is what every defender says and it's just wrong. There's a million valid ways to play the game, but only 1 way to have fun with it. Sucks if you didn't happen to align with that 1 playstyle.

There was only one way for you to have fun with it, and I'm glad you found it. Thankfully I found a different way that was fun for me.

Leonhart4 posted...

There was only one way for you to have fun with it, and I'm glad you found it. Thankfully I found a different way that was fun for me.

I didn't though. That's why I stopped playing. You found the 1 way that every other person who likes that game coincidentally also found.

Ah well that's too bad you didn't coincidently choose to play the game the right way

I've played the game a few different ways (different choices re: health vs. stamina, rushing to hyrule castle vs. beating all the divine beasts, low health runs, master mode). They've all been fun.

Again, I think not liking the game is totally fine (combat being boring/slow and the world being empty or boring are takes I disagree with) but I don't agree that the game only has "one fun way to play."

Leonhart4 posted...

Ah well that's too bad you didn't coincidently choose to play the game the right way

I legit think my life would be better if I did tbh

it's not hard to play the game the right way

just do it the way the game leads you to do it, it's like Nintendo knew what they were doing

Near the beginning there's an NPC who tells you to go to the castle, so I did. I should've been smart and ignored him. I also should've known to ignore the shrines despite them being huge and glowing. And I should've known that the divine beasts would have absolutely worthless "level" design even though they are hyped up every other line of dialogue.

On the bright side, Nintendo clearly listened to you and not me. They gave the fans the exact BOTW clone they wanted. If we're lucky, maybe we'll never see another proper 3D Zelda again.

I just want those Oracle remakes

paperwarior posted...

But do you still lose 80% of your climbing efficiency when it's raining?

it's okay, now you can just find a cave at the base of the mountain and use Ascend to get straight to the top

Kenri posted...

It lets you feel more powerful as the game goes on because your weapons break less and less. It changes how you fight certain enemies and bosses because you know you have to ration certain weapons like ammo in an FPS (tbh an identical situation that nobody complains about). It frees you to consider weapons expendable so you can try throwing them at far away enemies, using them as lightning rods, or other combat tricks with the knowledge that if you lose your weapon it doesn't matter. It creates constant risk vs reward in the early and mid game by hiding most of the best weapons behind endgame areas forcing you to constantly push yourself if you want a continual supply of them (vs doing one run into an endgame area immediately and then crushing the rest of the game with a bunch of permanent upgrades). It creates additional risk in certain areas because the area itself is a danger to your equipment.

You mentioned all these (very good) points with only tangentially bringing up the most underappreciated aspect of BotW's weapon breaking to me: it solves the classic "hoard all my best gear and then never use it" RPG problem. Weapon breaking just works so insanely well with the systems in BotW, I'm convinced people who complain about it never played more than 5 hours of the entire game.

Actually, I might singlehandedly credit BotW for changing my approach to other games.

That said, I do think there's some degree of fairness to the critique that the only reward for combat is another weapon.

First, the unfairness:

- Framing it "losing a good weapon for a weak weapon" is ludicrous. Why would you use your strong weapons on weak enemies when you know they're a finite resource? Did you ever actually play enough of the game to realize how much longer later weapons last than early ones? Unless it's rusted, which is specifically made to break after a few hits, you'll be able to kill plenty of powerful enemies with a single strong weapon, netting you a lot more strong weapons than you started with. (Side tangent: not sure if it's been pointed out here, but the real problem is the game's inventory space. The default should have either been much bigger or the upgrades to it come much quicker, in my opinion. Probably the latter so there's still some sense of stakes for discarding weapons.)

- Framing it as "the ONLY point of combat" is equally ludicrous. Combat is a requirement for chests all throughout the game, to access shrines, in shrines themselves, to complete quests, etc. Etc.

The fairness:

- The incentives for combat ABSOLUTELY need work. While the shrine rewards are obviously fantastic, the quest and treasure rewards are often laughable, so I was maybe going hard on the devil's advocate approach with that last point. There were definitely points in the game I'd finish a lengthy encounter and laugh as my reward was way worse than the weapon or weapons I broke during it. But this is mostly only a problem very late game when you're crawling with only ridiculously great weapons, if you play like me.

My one fear with TotK is it's going to be so full of brilliant potential and possibilities, but ultimately, it might be easier to do things without ever bothering to craft much later on. But I mean, that MAY be somewhat of an inevitability regardless how tuned the game is, and it may even feel good to get to that point too. I just want this fusion system to achieve its full potential and feel absolutely necessary.

I think dungeons can go along way in making this a reality though. Enemies in a dungeon constantly dropping a certain resource and you can't figure out how to solve a puzzle? Hmmm, maybe fuse that resource to your arrows! Boom, also an incentive for combat (well if you need that resource anyway).

whew thanks for reading if you made it through that post!

I'm good with fighting for the sake of fighting in a game like BotW if the combat is fun because that fun is its own reward.

Pointless or even detrimental fighting is only really a problem for me if it's an RPG (one of the many reasons Paper Mario: Sticker Star is a terrible game, for example).

Leonhart4 posted...

I'm good with fighting for the sake of fighting in a game like BotW if the combat is fun because that fun is its own reward.

Pointless or even detrimental fighting is only really a problem for me if it's an RPG (one of the many reasons Paper Mario: Sticker Star is a terrible game, for example).

Okay I really reaaaally meant to make that point too when I first went over all my thoughts to myself, but I forgot in the end! Yes, fighting for the sake of fighting is very much how I went about that game and I didn't mind. I really like the combat in BotW so I'd hardly really think about the "incentives" of doing it. Alas, those can and should be better in the sequel regardless.

If they make it so rocks aren't as slippery in the rain it's a 10/10 game for me.

That said I'm likely not getting this at launch because I feel it hasn't been long enough since I beat BotW. But I'm definitelly getting it at some point.

Slippery rocks are actually genius game design. If you don't like them, you probably didn't even get off the plateau.

foolm0r0n posted...

Slippery rocks are actually genius game design. If you don't like them, you probably didn't even get off the plateau.

They are great when you first go to Zora's Domain, because of how they turn the place into a gauntlet.

But terrible when you are just exploring a random place.

Should have been an area specific thing.

Yeah I'd agree that rain is brilliant when accompanied by intentionality but that's only the case in one extremely specific section of the game. It's just pure tedium everywhere else.

The tedium is the whole point, and it's genius. Most games rely so much on actually playing the game to enjoy it, but BOTW designers had the guts to just force you to put down the controller and wait, alone with your thoughts. It really makes you appreciate the times you do have control, and makes you reflect on your hubris as a consumer of digital entertainment.

It works when playing other games too. Set a 15 minute timer and when it rings, drop the controller and stare at the screen for 5 minutes before continuing. It really makes a difference. I've actually downvoted every game on steam that doesn't have rain or weapon durability.

is that sarcasm

foolm0r0n posted...

Slippery rocks are actually genius game design. If you don't like them, you probably didn't even get off the plateau.

No the rain is something that actual game designers complain about too

oh wait

But yeah, there's a reason literally no one has ever copied that mechanic and a million games have gliders now

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Should have been an area specific thing.

Fitting post for someone with Twilight Princess in their username

I mean the real answer is that they should just have gloves that let you climb in the rain fine

Or an ocarina-equivalent that lets you clear the weather. Time of day isn't as bad because you can rest at a fire but it's weird that you have no way of dealing with weather even in the late game.

A really underrated feature is how the fps craters to 15 when using slate powers. It really makes you feel so powerful knowing that the GPU can't keep up with you. It really emphasizes the feeling of mastery when the input latency ratchets up and it becomes all hard to to control. The drop in resolution is a subtle nod to the original Zelda games, which used blocky pixel art. Makes you feel all nostalgic for a simpler time, before weapon breaking was invented. Other games take the easy way out with rock solid 60fps. You don't know where one frame ends and the other begins. It's so smooth it rots your brain, like candy.

And talk about copying features - SO many games copied the shitty frame rate technique after BOTW came out. I've seen it everywhere, it's kinda shameless. Even Facebook and Twitter copied it when scrolling the feed. But hey, I guess that's how technology progresses. What will Miyamoto think of next?

Man, I wish it was possible to preorder this game harder.

foolm0r0n posted...

A really underrated feature is how the fps craters to 15 when using slate powers. It really makes you feel so powerful knowing that the GPU can't keep up with you. It really emphasizes the feeling of mastery when the input latency ratchets up and it becomes all hard to to control. The drop in resolution is a subtle nod to the original Zelda games, which used blocky pixel art. Makes you feel all nostalgic for a simpler time, before weapon breaking was invented. Other games take the easy way out with rock solid 60fps. You don't know where one frame ends and the other begins. It's so smooth it rots your brain, like candy.

And talk about copying features - SO many games copied the shitty frame rate technique after BOTW came out. I've seen it everywhere, it's kinda shameless. Even Facebook and Twitter copied it when scrolling the feed. But hey, I guess that's how technology progresses. What will Miyamoto think of next?

this can't be how a grown adult actually chooses to spend their time

_Blur_ posted...

this can't be how a grown adult actually chooses to spend their time

You're correct

I mean, putting aside the petty sarcasm, I do wonder if they've made any optimizations to the engine. While the framerate drops in BotW (and Age of Calamity, for that matter) weren't abhorrent enough to be a major hindrance, they were extremely noticeable.

Leonhart4 posted...

Fitting post for someone with Twilight Princess in their username

Well I'm defend the Spinner, Ball and Chain and Double Clawshot to death.

(not the Dominion Rod though, that one can burn)

Aw, I liked the Dominion Rod. I enjoyed smacking stuff around through a proxy

colliding posted...

I mean the real answer is that they should just have gloves that let you climb in the rain fine

ultimate troll is that one outfit that iirc says it was made to help climb in the rain in the flavor text. think it's the climbing gear too!

Personally I'm not a fan of weapon durability but only because I think things break a little too quickly. If they just upped durability across the board I'd be more okay with it. Obviously not a dealbreaker though because BOTW is up there with MM for my favorite Zelda.

Building boats and airships looks fun. gonna have link build a fighter jet. the dream will be if we can somehow stick an octorok on it as the primary weapon. otherwise i'll just settle for a bomber that drops boulders on enemy camps. hyrule isn't ready for this.

the building of vehicles was fun to watch with the already existing videos of insane flying assaults people have done in current BotW

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Well I'm defend the Spinner, Ball and Chain and Double Clawshot to death.

(not the Dominion Rod though, that one can burn)

They're all lots of fun. It'd have been more fun if they had more use outside of their designated areas!

Grimlyn posted...

the building of vehicles was fun to watch with the already existing videos of insane flying assaults people have done in current BotW

This whole game feels like an in experiment "oh speedrunners broke our game like that huh? well now it's legalized"

_Blur_ posted...

this can't be how a grown adult actually chooses to spend their time

It's by far the most fun thing about this game