Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Launch trailer, JP boxart, March 3, 2017

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You mind expanding on the bold a bit? I haven't watched any of the recent videos, but is this how most sidequests are handled? Because, if so, I couldn't be happier.

The recent treehouse footage showed off Link taking a Sidequest to find and capture a specific horse in a particular area, nothing particularly complex. Upon taking the sidequest, it updates the adventure log with the description of the task and does not put a marker on the map leading you to the location, it assumes that getting to the location is part of the sidequest.

It also seems to apply to main quests as well. The first one is an exception which I think is very intentional because the marker on the map is recorded in the Adventure log quest description and thus actually contextualized in universe. But the second quest given by the Old Man does not lead you to the Shrines, you have to find those yourself.
 
The recent treehouse footage showed off Link taking a Sidequest to find and capture a specific horse in a particular area, nothing particularly complex. Upon taking the sidequest, it updates the adventure log with the description of the task and does not put a marker on the map leading you to the location, it assumes that getting to the location is part of the sidequest.

It also seems to apply to main quests as well. The first one is an exception which I think is very intentional because the marker on the map is recorded in the Adventure log quest description and thus actually contextualized in universe. But the second quest given by the Old Man does not lead you to the Shrines, you have to find those yourself.

Thank you. This is the type of open world game I've been waiting for. Don't think I ever imagined it'd be a 3D Zelda entry giving it to me. It's like the original game, reborn.
 
It's like the original game, reborn.

I was literally just muttering that to myself lol...how this game is the artwork from the original 1986 NES/Famicom "The Legend of Zelda" instruction manual brought to life - but with an adult Link.

It's just absolutely incredible what Nintendo EAD can do.

Zelda-comparison.jpg
 
The recent treehouse footage showed off Link taking a Sidequest to find and capture a specific horse in a particular area, nothing particularly complex. Upon taking the sidequest, it updates the adventure log with the description of the task and does not put a marker on the map leading you to the location, it assumes that getting to the location is part of the sidequest.

It also seems to apply to main quests as well. The first one is an exception which I think is very intentional because the marker on the map is recorded in the Adventure log quest description and thus actually contextualized in universe. But the second quest given by the Old Man does not lead you to the Shrines, you have to find those yourself.

On one hand, I've always hated the idea of getting lost and struggling to find out where to go. But I suppose that if any game can make getting lost be a good thing, or more accurately, not a terrible thing, it'd be this game.
 
Any idea how well the game will do sales wise? l feel like it's been a very long time since the series had this sort of exposure and hype. l certainly can't remember anything similar for Skyward Sword or A Link Between Worlds. Do you think it can do Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess numbers?
 
Any idea how well the game will do sales wise? l feel like it's been a very long time since the series has had this sort of exposure and hype. l certainly can't remember anything similar for Skyward Sword or A Link Between Worlds. Do you think it can do Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess numbers?

If Switch is a success early on, I think it could hit 8 to 10 million.

I think 5 million is the floor for this game.
 
Any idea how well the game will do sales wise? l feel like it's been a very long time since the series had this sort of exposure and hype. l certainly can't remember anything similar for Skyward Sword or A Link Between Worlds. Do you think it can do Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess numbers?

It carries the burden of selling a new generation of hardware. I dunno.

Should have legs though.
 
Any idea how well the game will do sales wise? l feel like it's been a very long time since the series had this sort of exposure and hype. l certainly can't remember anything similar for Skyward Sword or A Link Between Worlds. Do you think it can do Ocarina of Time/Twilight Princess numbers?

If Switch is a success early on, I think it could hit 8 to 10 million.

I think 5 million is the floor for this game.

"The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" generated $7.60 million in sales and "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" generated $8.58 million in sales; so "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" has an interesting and exciting road ahead of it.
 
Does anybody else have the feeling that this is the first Zelda not stuck in the game design patterns cemented in the 80s/early 90s?


For a start, it's an open world game. Or at least semi-open world like Xenoblde, with freely traversable large areas. In contrast, Zeldas up to Skyward Sword always kind of followed the pattern of, sometimes literally, walled off smaller areas connected through pathways serving to load the next area. Windwaker was no exception with the sea being like an oversized hub area. CRPGs have done this "open world" for the last ten years and longer, but now we get it in Zelda.

Character voices. Finally. Even though they seem to be limited to cutscenes, characters speak. Much of the ingame dialoge still runs through text boxes, but there they don't personally bother me. It was the cutscenes that got more and more ridiculous the more elaborate they modeled the characters. It was like watching a theatre dony by grunting but otherwise mute characters.

Foilage. It's "minor", but there's now foilage everywhere and not just in patches in limited places for the purpose of restocking on hearts, rubies or potions. It simply makes the whole world more organic from a visual PoV.

The actual mechanics now also seem to move away from the strictly formulaic "use item X to trigger all spots marked with X", having more weapon variety, a more organic and involved health system (cooking/eating) and more clothing variety than 3 tunics, each with their own special magical ability.


For me, that's like Nintendo suddenly doing a 20 years jump from the nineties into todays gaming area. Or from the late 80s into the 2000's at least. It's the reason I'm actually excited to play BotW. I liked all Zeldas I played, but compared to other games today, the design started to feel felt pretty stale quiet a while ago.
 
Does anybody else have the feeling that this is the first Zelda not stuck in the game design patterns cemented in the 80s/early 90s?


For a start, it's an open world game. Or at least semi-open world like Xenoblde, with freely traversable large areas. In contrast, Zeldas up to Skyward Sword always kind of followed the pattern of, sometimes literally, walled off smaller areas connected through pathways serving to load the next area. Windwaker was no exception with the sea being like an oversized hub area. CRPGs have done this "open world" for the last ten years and longer, but now we get it in Zelda.

Character voices. Finally. Even though they seem to be limited to cutscenes, characters speak. Much of the ingame dialoge still runs through text boxes, but there they don't personally bother me. It was the cutscenes that got more and more ridiculous the more elaborate they modeled the characters. It was like watching a theatre dony by grunting but otherwise mute characters.

Foilage. It's "minor", but there's now foilage everywhere and not just in patches in limited places for the purpose of restocking on hearts, rubies or potions. It simply makes the whole world more organic from a visual PoV.

The actual mechanics now also seem to move away from the strictly formulaic "use item X to trigger all spots marked with X", having more weapon variety, a more organic and involved health system (cooking/eating) and more clothing variety than 3 tunics, each with their own special magical ability.


For me, that's like Nintendo suddenly doing a 20 years jump from the nineties into todays gaming area. Or from the late 80s into the 2000's at least. It's the reason I'm actually excited to play BotW. I liked all Zeldas I played, but compared to other games today, the design started to feel felt pretty stale quiet a while ago.
j7BRG9J.jpg


I'm not sure how much of the trend BotW really bucks. You have to complete the 4 shrines on the plateau before you're allowed to leave the plateau. The Master Sword has 3 rocks around it that disappear after it starts glowing meaning you probably have to do the "do 3 things to get master sword" stuff. Then you gotta do 4 things to defeat Ganon.
 
For me, that's like Nintendo suddenly doing a 20 years jump from the nineties into todays gaming area. Or from the late 80s into the 2000's at least. It's the reason I'm actually excited to play BotW. I liked all Zeldas I played, but compared to other games today, the design started to feel felt pretty stale quiet a while ago.

I don't think the important thing is that it is 'modern' in design or that it's removed from the 90s ideas because I feel a lot of modern action adventure or open world games are still very formulaic, only with a different formula.

What excites me is that the developers are free from a formula. There's lots of great stuff in all the Zelda games but the last 3D ones felt bound by a certain expectation. This one doesn't. It will still have much of the content we associate with Zelda games. But we'll access it in unpredictable ways. We'll interact with the environment in new ways. We're free to fool around more.
 
All I want from this game is more than 4 dungeons. Everything else sounds good but if they can surprise me and have more than the rumoured 4 this would make me really happy.

It's been over 5 years since Skyward Sword and one of the disappointing aspects to that game was the lack of unique dungeons. Most were retreads. So if after 5 years they actually regress back on the dungeons count compared to Skyward Sword this will make me really disappointed.

It's why I feel TP was such a well balanced game and had the right amount of dungeons each with a different unique location.

I know the 100+ shrines gets brought up a lot but honestly, how many of those do you expect to be fairly complex? At the most I reckon the majority of them will probably take 5-10 minutes if less to complete and from what we've seen so far, nothing suggests it will be different in design as they've all had the same boring look to them.
 
I know the 100+ shrines gets brought up a lot but honestly, how many of those do you expect to be fairly complex? At the most I reckon the majority of them will probably take 5-10 minutes if less to complete and from what we've seen so far, nothing suggests it will be different in design as they've all had the same boring look to them.

Comments about 'boring' looks aside the shrines look like pure dungeon puzzle goodness in mini format, and the focus on physics makes them look like maybe the most intensely satisfying parts of the game.

In addition to that the physics and your unique abilities to manipulate the invorenment makes the world itself much more of a playground than previous 3D Zeldas. Considering that four big traditional dungeons would be more than enough for me.
 

I'm not sure how much of the trend BotW really bucks. You have to complete the 4 shrines on the plateau before you're allowed to leave the plateau. The Master Sword has 3 rocks around it that disappear after it starts glowing meaning you probably have to do the "do 3 things to get master sword" stuff. Then you gotta do 4 things to defeat Ganon.

He, yes, the foilage makes a ton of difference for me. ^^

It's fine to retain some elements from the old formula or to introduce a new formula. It's that the foundations on which the formula is build, at least from the info and footage, don't feel like they're two decades old anymore. The world does not seem to be filled with two categories of objects anymore: ones you're either supossed to interact with using a certain item or ones you can't interact with, because you're not supposed to.

I don't think the important thing is that it is 'modern' in design or that it's removed from the 90s ideas because I feel a lot of modern action adventure or open world games are still very formulaic, only with a different formula.

What excites me is that the developers are free from a formula. There's lots of great stuff in all the Zelda games but the last 3D ones felt bound by a certain expectation. This one doesn't. It will still have much of the content we associate with Zelda games. But we'll access it in unpredictable ways. We'll interact with the environment in new ways. We're free to fool around more.

I hardly think they've completely done away with the formula in BotW either. Some formula is good to give the game structure and a sense of progression. It just shouldn't be limited largely to a colletctaton formula we see overused in some open world Ubisoft games. But as you say, it's great to be free to fool aroud more. And to be actually able to do it for some purpose.
 
He, yes, the foilage makes a ton of difference for me. ^^

It's fine to retain some elements from the old formula or to introduce a new formula. It's that the foundations on which the formula is build, at least from the info and footage, don't feel like they're two decades old anymore. The world does not seem to be filled with two categories of objects anymore: ones you're either supossed to interact with using a certain item or ones you can't interact with, because you're not supposed to.
Foliage, man, foliage :P
 
So watching zeltik trailer thing, and a few things I thought of

The korak definitely play a role in the lost woods/master sword, I'm thinking that you can probably get there and technically get to the master sword early on, but the more korak you manage to find the more guidance through the woods as they act as breadcrumbs in a sense

Also maybe they play a part in restoring the master sword itself. The more you find in the world the more they help restore/reduce the time needed for the sword to be fixed

Also Zeltik mentioned an area on the new map being called Faron but where is that info from? Was there a new map with labels released that I missed or something.
 
So watching zeltik trailer thing, and a few things I thought of

The korak definitely play a role in the lost woods/master sword, I'm thinking that you can probably get there and technically get to the master sword early on, but the more korak you manage to find the more guidance through the woods as they act as breadcrumbs in a sense

Also maybe they play a part in restoring the master sword itself. The more you find in the world the more they help restore/reduce the time needed for the sword to be fixed

Also Zeltik mentioned an area on the new map being called Faron but where is that info from? Was there a new map with labels released that I missed or something.
The other side of the tapestry is a weather worn map. Central Hyrule, Faron, and Hebra are very clearly written. People have been trying to make out the other regions but it's a very worn map:

ldPVMuN.png
 
What do you guys think this game will score on Metacritic? My prediction is atleast 95.

The way the game is looking I have no doubt in my mind that a few reviewers will get lost, don't know what to do and as a result will criticise it for wasting their time walking around aimlessly. I think something just under or over 90 is a solid prediction.
 
The other side of the tapestry is a weather worn map. Central Hyrule, Faron, and Hebra are very clearly written. People have been trying to make out the other regions but it's a very worn map:

ldPVMuN.png
Ty, I saw everyone decoding the back, thanks for that as well, but never really saw the front
 
Does anybody else have the feeling that this is the first Zelda not stuck in the game design patterns cemented in the 80s/ea
rly 90s?

::raises hand::

Ocarina was my first Zelda, I finished it multiple times. Since then I've finished pretty much all the proceeding Zelda games except Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, and I couldn't get to the credits on those because the formula just became too stale for me, corridors and fetch quests in a rigid order... The dungeons are the best parts and BOTW feels like it's going to be one massive, fun dungeon and I'm really excited for a Zelda game for the first time in a while.
 
93 is my prediction :-)

i agree around 92-93. critics are (fortunately) harsher on games than they were a decade ago. it'll get a plethora of 10/10, 100/100, best game (BEST GAME!) and a handful of 'this game is great' reviews (which will ignite the fanbase in uncharted 3 fashion) and then that one outlier low score because it adheres too closely to the zelda formula.

the next game to land above 93 is going to be beyond good & evil 2 because that's actually going to be the pinnacle of human achievement.
 
The other side of the tapestry is a weather worn map. Central Hyrule, Faron, and Hebra are very clearly written. People have been trying to make out the other regions but it's a very worn map:

ldPVMuN.png

The next area you're mostly likely to go to after the Great Plateau, Central Hyrule, is already 4 times the size of the Great Plateau.

God damn.
 
I really hope the game will feature 'intimate' moments.
With that I mean, places in the game where you don't have lot's of space, and where you don't really experience the open world aspect. Like the area around the Great Deku tree, where the surrounding feel sort of cramped because you're in a dense forest.

Either way, this is going my GOTF, can't wait. Hyped like never before (35 years old)
 
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