Watching
Zeltik's trailer analysis he made an interesting point of needing to follow a certain path through the lost woods in order to find the Great Deku Tree/Master Sword and using the Koroks as our guide to do so, it's an interesting observation. And one I'm curious how they would handle that in an open world game. I guess they could just warp you to the starting area if you deviate too much from the set path despite not having loading zones like past games.
BUT the big thing I thought of was the fact that he pointed out that the Koroks we see are ones we've seen before. IE ones we've seen discovered in past demos hidden around the world for us to find. If that's the case what if finding the Great Deku Tree and the Master Sword is something dependent on us first discovering a certain number of Koroks in order to help lead us on the right path. Or requiring a certain number of Korok Seeds to access the woods. And not simply something we can head straight for despite this being a completely open world.
It makes a sort of sense to me as it would feel weird to just be able to run up to the Great Deku Tree and Master Sword right after leaving the Great Plateau. But then again they did say we could head straight for Hyrule Castle. Though I've been skeptical of how that statement has been interpreted from the start. And the fact that finding hidden Koroks to unlock the Master Sword could be a bit too obscure for many players. But I would personally love it if finding and acquiring the Master Sword was an optional and more uncommon task.
So I just went back to check out the Treehouse Live cause I remember Miyamoto reiterating that straight to Hyrule Castle statement in some way, which is all the say, and I noticed on the title screen the game says
Ver. 1.0.0 which is different from the showfloor demo which had a different title screen and the version said Ver. 12S. So it seems like BotW is done going by that, wonder if people can do a framerate analysis of the treehouse stream or if it is too unreliable. Then again it's not uncommon for final retail games to be like 1.0.1 or something like that.
Also noticed on the
loading screen it shows collectibles of which there are three. Korok Seeds, Spirit Orbs and something in between which I'm not sure what to make of, possibly Shrines completed. Wonder if that is it or if it expands as your discover more things. I'm sure there will be a bug collecting thing again, maybe something to do with all the other wild life in the world. But I guess maybe not any other official collectibles ala Korok Seeds, Skulltula and such.