The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild **SPOILER FREE** Impression Thread

Yeah the starting area has been pretty much talked to death at this point. I would give impressions outside of that, but obviously that's spoiler territory. But I'll say this, as large as the area is and feels right when you start out, it'll feel like a kid's playpen next to a football field area of play when you return.

Fair enough. Im just saying, at this point if you dont know about the Great Plateu,

Do you even Zelda lol?

Like yes the great plateu is empty without npcs, you get the important runes, and it doesnt feel like a real place cause the topology is clearly not real, It's a cleverly crafted tutorial area created by Nintendo as people always complain about their long more story driven ones ala Twilight princess, Skyward Sword. Which I prefer in games, but whatever.
 
I've already seen enough videos to decide on my own that I'm more then fine with the way the world feels/looks anyway.
 
Many a hand has scaled the grand old face of the plateau. Some belong to strangers and some to folks you know.

Holy ghosts and talk show hosts are planted in the sand to beautify the foothills and shake the many hands.
 
I've heard the Voice acting, it's not nearly as bad as people make it out. The only character so far that is bad is Zelda, which is...the most important speaker. So there is that. Granted she has the most lines that need emotion.

I'm convinced people complaining about the other characters were going to complain no matter who was chosen.
 
Shit. That bad?
I'm hoping for a day one patch.

There's already a 2,5 gb Patch so I won't count on that.

And yes, it can get pretty bad even when nothing is happening but it is playable.
Still a shame to deliver something like this for a huge flagship title, but to be fair it was developed with the Switch in mind.
 
I'll mention there is some talk beyond the plateu but not specifically.

It's just a bit hard to go into details about some things since that would go into deeper spoilers to explain more. The thing is the game is fantastic, I expect it to score well and most will probably love it, but it's definitely not flawless. Its three biggest issues as far as I can tell are the following:

-Technical problems (this is definitely worse on WiiU than Switch, but Switch does seem to have some noticeable frame rate drops too). Frame rate on the WiiU drops fairly regularly, sometimes as low as to 5-15 frames. This isn't just something tech geeks will notice, it's incredibly noticeable. Also there's some TERRIBLE pop-in on the WiiU, sometimes as bad as a character not popping up until they're literally two meters in front of you in some of the most extreme cases. I hope that's better on the Switch.

-Voice Acting. This is in terms of the English dub, I don't know about the other dubs. It's really hard to talk about this one without going into specifics but I am lead to believe going more into this a big part of the problem was the voice directors. Some characters are fine or good, but some are really just awful. There's some scenes that are meant to be emotional, but it would've been more emotional if it didn't have voice acting because the delivery being done is just terrible. I can't go deeper into that or which characters or what because of spoilers, even the clip I posted earlier was just the next voiced bit that popped up on stream I managed to record briefly and hardly the worst example of the voice acting or anything. In some parts the voicing is good, don't get me wrong. But the voicing has some parts where it has bad delivery, forced put on voices that don't even sound cartoony they just sound bad, but the biggest issue is that it's not just bad voicing by itself, it's bad voicing which actively takes away from moments in the story. Many not hearing the voicing will probably want to believe that it's okay and subjective, and in some cases it is, but there is some legitimately bad voicing going on here and I'm sure you'll see this creep up a lot because it really stands out when the game is trying to do a deeper character moment and the voice either doesn't fit, is so bad it's funny, is legitimately cringe-worthy, and takes away when the game is trying to be story focused. It's a bad sign when a big cutscene is coming up you almost are hoping it's not voiced. Zelda can work with voicing, but I think they dropped the ball here quite a bit.

-Big open areas. This again is harder to say without going deeper, but since some people touched on it I will... This game has some of the staples of other big Sandbox games, and not always in the good way. It does have large empty spaces, it has literally the 'ubisoft' towers if you know what that is, and it's weird to see other open world game's problems turn their head in a Zelda title. And the thing that sticks out more is that much of this often doesn't even have Zelda charm to it, it just feels like they put in some of these big open spaces and elements because other sandbox games were doing it. It's not a game killer again, but I think it's definitely noticeable just how barren a number of places on the game map actually are.


---


But while all three of these things I think will be criticized by many, and rightfully so, they don't ruin the game. The game itself is fantastic in many ways, it has some interesting changes to the Zelda formula but in many ways feels like changes they needed and they got really creative with. There is a game more than worth experiencing here, these flaws aren't game breakers and the game seems really enjoyable despite these issues. But that's the thing, it's in spite of these issues, these issues are definitely noticeable and I don't think are exactly minor. But it's not like the game is bad, quite the opposite it's quite good, but its flaws are really noticeable but I think most everyone will still really enjoy the game in spite of the flaws.

Some thoughts I'll throw out there, don't worry it's not like the game is ridden with issues, it does a lot that it does extremely well and has a lot of memorable moments, elements, and captures a lot of what I think they were going for with the world. These things are just kind of blemishes on an otherwise very good game.
 
Shit. That bad?
I'm hoping for a day one patch.
Has a Nintendo game ever had a day one patch?

This frame rate issue is actually concerning me now, especially after watching that 15 minute video if the beginning of the game. A lot of posters said the frame drops in that video were not a big deal, but it was very annoying for me.

Looks like I might have to lineup early in the morning for a switch
 
Shit. That bad?
I'm hoping for a day one patch.

It almost feels like the other way around, like it was developed more with Switch in mind and then they're like "lol shit we were demonstrating it on Wii U we have to port it fully now". Seeing impressions on Switch performance compared to Wii U, Wii U definitely has more performance issues, but it doesn't take away enjoyment from the experience.
 
There's already a 2,5 gb Patch so I won't count on that.

And yes, it can get pretty bad even when nothing is happening but it is playable.
Still a shame to deliver something like this for a huge flagship title, but to be fair it was developed with the Switch in mind.

It wasn't, but whatever.
 
How many of yall got legal copies, just curious lol

I guess you cant answer that. But the second the Wii U version leaked, everyone and their mommas started playing.
 
Have to admit, I'm a little skeptical of the voice acting criticisms after hearing more positive stuff about it on Twitter. Part of me wonders if the novelty of voice acting in Zelda is causing people to over-analyze this shit way more than they normally would.
 
I'll mention there is some talk beyond the plateu but not specifically.

It's just a bit hard to go into details about some things since that would go into deeper spoilers to explain more. The thing is the game is fantastic, I expect it to score well and most will probably love it, but it's definitely not flawless. Its three biggest issues as far as I can tell are the following:
You're basing this on watching streams right? I think you should preface it with that, because it will color to quite some extent your "experiences".
 
"I only want to hear what I like" ;)
Or you know, if you've seen enough footage and you made an opinion for yourself you can choose not to entirely trust the opinion of someone who's been shitting on the game since the reveal for his own admission (not to mention he's barely off the plateau, so he can't really judge the entire world) and stick with what you've seen. Yes that extends to graphics as well, cause personally i've seen enough and i don't think it looks worse than a Gamecube game with 3 effects added and running at a higher resolution. Artstyle can be debated, but technically no.

This also applies to the pirates who are judging how the game runs (not saying griss pirated the game, but many on the internet clearly did) through loadiine.

He can say whatever he wants about the game, but people are free to believe it or ignore it. Both the positives and the negatives.

EDIT:
it has literally the 'ubisoft' towers if you know what that is,

Lmfao

See? This is what i'm talking about.
 
The thing about the towers doesn't bother me much because they took out the one thing that bothered me so much about the towers, in that they spoil literally everything about the region they reveal. Zeldas towers just map the location but other than that you're golden, just go.
 
How many of yall got legal copies, just curious lol

I guess you cant answer that. But the second the Wii U version leaked, everyone and their mommas started playing.

I just hope all the people who pirated the game go out and buy it. don't be a jerk.
 
deoee can you show us that you actually own the game? and not be a fucking pirate?
 
There's already a 2,5 gb Patch so I won't count on that.

And yes, it can get pretty bad even when nothing is happening but it is playable.
Still a shame to deliver something like this for a huge flagship title, but to be fair it was developed with the Switch in mind.

Keep or cancel my order?

If it's little drops then I can handle it but if it's really bad stutter that's another thing
 
Kid Icarus Uprising has more personality in the VA than most games, so I don't know if I could blame NoA for any bad voice acting.

When the German dub sounds way better than the English one the blame is most likely on NoA😉

They had way more misses than hits. It's not unprecedent.
 
I'll mention there is some talk beyond the plateu but not specifically.

...

Some thoughts I'll throw out there, don't worry it's not like the game is ridden with issues, it does a lot that it does extremely well and has a lot of memorable moments, elements, and captures a lot of what I think they were going for with the world. These things are just kind of blemishes on an otherwise very good game.

The VA and Wii U performance complaints were expected. But it feels strange that many previews disagree with you about the big open areas part. Why do you think some people think different about it?
 
Keep or cancel my order?

If it's little drops then I can handle it but if it's really bad stutter that's another thing

It's noticeable, if you can't deal with it, I'd wait and watch a stream or something.

It can be annoying in certain situations but for the most part it's "fine" with 20-30 fps.
 
"I only want to hear what I like" ;)


Yes, ignore all great previews for the game and the two high review scores and great impressions from people who actually finished the game like Alanah Pearce and focus on a gaffer impression who say the world doesn't look real lool
 
-Technical problems (this is definitely worse on WiiU than Switch, but Switch does seem to have some noticeable frame rate drops too). Frame rate on the WiiU drops fairly regularly, sometimes as low as to 5-15 frames. This isn't just something tech geeks will notice, it's incredibly noticeable. Also there's some TERRIBLE pop-in on the WiiU, sometimes as bad as a character not popping up until they're literally two meters in front of you in some of the most extreme cases. I hope that's better on the Switch.

HIGHLY doubt it. It's almost impossible to be that low. No evidence shown anywhere so far.
 
I'm curious... Are there not animals and stuff to gather in the large, 'barren' areas? I would imagine they'd have to have some space for the wild to breathe.
 
The VA and Performance complaints were expected. But it feels strange that many previews disagree with you about the big open areas part. Why do you think some people think different about it?

I'm willing to put it down to watching a stream vs. actually playing the game to be honest. From the tiny bit I saw about the stream it seems the streamer themselves is just bad with the game.
 
You will get NA voice acting with UK subs. Theres no way you are grttin english voices and subs in your language.

But being in europe, why would you want to hear the english mediocre voiceacting, when, from what we have heard of the other european dub, they are all much better.

Like, from your user name maybe you are from Spain. And the spanish dub is top quality. Ive read in a forum that even Gustems, one of the super good voice actors here, is doing the voice of
the main villain, that we think is probably ganon
. That Nintendo Iberia going for the top quality stuff.
I preffer to play in english, it´s much easier to engange in conversations with you guys or to look up stuff on the web, specially in these kind of games where there are a million different drops/characters/locations and translations a lot of times go for totally different names (a lot of Xenoblade X drops had no relation whatsoever to their english counterpart). Besides, as I´m not a native english speaker I might not catch the horrible entonations that make you guys cringe in the english version. And, for some reason (probably bad experiences in the past), I feel like this kind of stories/games loose a bit of credibility in spanish.

Thanks anyway, I think I´ll give the english version a try and if it´s too bad I´ll switch to the spanish one :)

BTW, I find it strange that UK gets the US VA, it´s a much bigger market than Spain. I know wouldn´t be able to play through the game in Latinamerican Spanish, guess people from UK might have grown accustomed to american english already.
 
How many of yall got legal copies, just curious lol

I guess you cant answer that. But the second the Wii U version leaked, everyone and their mommas started playing.

I have to agree, heh. It's really hard to assume everyone all of a sudden got their legit versions early on pretty much the exact timestamp of the leak ;D

I won't lose hope the patches will be substantial enough for pirates to actually buy it. I'm not really sure about that though.
 
There's already a 2,5 gb Patch so I won't count on that.

And yes, it can get pretty bad even when nothing is happening but it is playable.
Still a shame to deliver something like this for a huge flagship title, but to be fair it was developed with the Switch in mind.

Has a Nintendo game ever had a day one patch?

This frame rate issue is actually concerning me now, especially after watching that 15 minute video if the beginning of the game. A lot of posters said the frame drops in that video were not a big deal, but it was very annoying for me.

Looks like I might have to lineup early in the morning for a switch

It almost feels like the other way around, like it was developed more with Switch in mind and then they're like "lol shit we were demonstrating it on Wii U we have to port it fully now". Seeing impressions on Switch performance compared to Wii U, Wii U definitely has more performance issues, but it doesn't take away enjoyment from the experience.

Thanks for the thoughts guys.
 
I guess then Emilia Clarke is my only valid choice.

I guess so. I apologise for calling you a motherfucker.

Zelda: Emma Watson

Goron: Tom Hardy

Zora: Cate Blanchett

Rito: Idis Elba

Gerudo girl: Mila Kunis (I'll keep this one)

Old Man/ Deku Tree: Liam Neeson (and this one)

Ganon: Toby Stephens
 
I have to agree, heh. It's really hard to assume everyone all of a sudden got their legit versions early on pretty much the exact timestamp of the leak ;D

I won't lose hope the patches will be substantial enough for pirates to actually buy it. I'm not really sure about that though.

Yep, that's bullshit but hey, forum policy and all.
 
I'll mention there is some talk beyond the plateu but not specifically.

It's just a bit hard to go into details about some things since that would go into deeper spoilers to explain more. The thing is the game is fantastic, I expect it to score well and most will probably love it, but it's definitely not flawless. Its three biggest issues as far as I can tell are the following:

-Technical problems (this is definitely worse on WiiU than Switch, but Switch does seem to have some noticeable frame rate drops too). Frame rate on the WiiU drops fairly regularly, sometimes as low as to 5-15 frames. This isn't just something tech geeks will notice, it's incredibly noticeable. Also there's some TERRIBLE pop-in on the WiiU, sometimes as bad as a character not popping up until they're literally two meters in front of you in some of the most extreme cases. I hope that's better on the Switch.

-Voice Acting. This is in terms of the English dub, I don't know about the other dubs. It's really hard to talk about this one without going into specifics but I am lead to believe going more into this a big part of the problem was the voice directors. Some characters are fine or good, but some are really just awful. There's some scenes that are meant to be emotional, but it would've been more emotional if it didn't have voice acting because the delivery being done is just terrible. I can't go deeper into that or which characters or what because of spoilers, even the clip I posted earlier was just the next voiced bit that popped up on stream I managed to record briefly and hardly the worst example of the voice acting or anything. In some parts the voicing is good, don't get me wrong. But the voicing has some parts where it has bad delivery, forced put on voices that don't even sound cartoony they just sound bad, but the biggest issue is that it's not just bad voicing by itself, it's bad voicing which actively takes away from moments in the story. Many not hearing the voicing will probably want to believe that it's okay and subjective, and in some cases it is, but there is some legitimately bad voicing going on here and I'm sure you'll see this creep up a lot because it really stands out when the game is trying to do a deeper character moment and the voice either doesn't fit, is so bad it's funny, is legitimately cringe-worthy, and takes away when the game is trying to be story focused. It's a bad sign when a big cutscene is coming up you almost are hoping it's not voiced. Zelda can work with voicing, but I think they dropped the ball here quite a bit.

-Big open areas. This again is harder to say without going deeper, but since some people touched on it I will... This game has some of the staples of other big Sandbox games, and not always in the good way. It does have large empty spaces, it has literally the 'ubisoft' towers if you know what that is, and it's weird to see other open world game's problems turn their head in a Zelda title. And the thing that sticks out more is that much of this often doesn't even have Zelda charm to it, it just feels like they put in some of these big open spaces and elements because other sandbox games were doing it. It's not a game killer again, but I think it's definitely noticeable just how barren a number of places on the game map actually are.


---


But while all three of these things I think will be criticized by many, and rightfully so, they don't ruin the game. The game itself is fantastic in many ways, it has some interesting changes to the Zelda formula but in many ways feels like changes they needed and they got really creative with. There is a game more than worth experiencing here, these flaws aren't game breakers and the game seems really enjoyable despite these issues. But that's the thing, it's in spite of these issues, these issues are definitely noticeable and I don't think are exactly minor. But it's not like the game is bad, quite the opposite it's quite good, but its flaws are really noticeable but I think most everyone will still really enjoy the game in spite of the flaws.

Some thoughts I'll throw out there, don't worry it's not like the game is ridden with issues, it does a lot that it does extremely well and has a lot of memorable moments, elements, and captures a lot of what I think they were going for with the world. These things are just kind of blemishes on an otherwise very good game.

Mother of god, those negatives sound like they're going to be dealbreakers for lots of gamers.

Hmm, I don't think I would have minded a smaller and more dense Hyrule (honestly, like Horizon's world, which felt perfectly sized to me. Huge but not absurdly barren) that performed adequately instead of an overly ambitious world on the least powerful home console on the market.
 
There's already a 2,5 gb Patch so I won't count on that.

And yes, it can get pretty bad even when nothing is happening but it is playable.
Still a shame to deliver something like this for a huge flagship title, but to be fair it was developed with the Switch in mind.

so,exactly how much space do you need on your wii u to play this?
 
I guess so. I apologise for calling you a motherfucker.

Zelda: Emma Watson

Goron: Tom Hardy

Zora: Cate Blanchett


Rito: Idis Elba

Gerudo girl: Mila Kunis (I'll keep this one)

Old Man/ Deku Tree: Liam Neeson (and this one)

Ganon: Toby Stephens

Zelda and Zora are perfect suggestions. I'm also bolding my Gerudo suggestion because I'm really proud of it.

Cate Blanchett tho, great idea.
 
I don't know if I like the assertion that open worlds should be absent of blank spaces...

We have people says the world feels unnatural and like a game. While also saying there is a lot of empty grassland.

I want to ride my horse through open fields!
 
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