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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild |OT2| It's 98 All Over Again

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No fun allowed? OoT was a great game at its time just as BotW is now. Sure in 20 years time BotW will look poor but that does not reduce the feelings it invoked.

Oh yes, I love OoT and Majora's Mask. But there's a time for everything. 1998 was the time for the template they defined in OoT being a 3D version of the AlttP template. It made the best out of the available machine. As game hardware progressed however, that template was outprogressed left and right, only Nintendo largely stuck to it right up to 2011.

I'm not sure how well BotW will hold up. Never having played 2D Zeldas before OoT, I find them fun puzzle games but too limited by their 2D template. Their world just gives me nothing. ALttP never caught me like any 3D Zelda did. It can't, as I've come to expect what modern open world RPGs do in terms of world building. Less openness feels outdated. Who knows? Maybe 10 years from now, I'll have the same sentiments about BotW. Likewise, the technical limitations of OoT to which the following 3D Zeldas up to BotW largely stuck, make its world completely outdated when playing the game today. As the game was designed around separately loaded small areas gated by item progression and Nintendo was never been less than extremely proficient at game design, it's still a great game. But not being able to leave the preset path and explore the world unless you have item X or because the hardware simply never allowed to model it has been shown to be an unnecessary concept by RPGs into he last decade. It still has merits to control story progression, but nowhere to the extend of previous Zeldas slavishly relying on it.


Nothing to say against stumbling across an old ruined temple deep in the forest and having a moody music set in when you explore it. But a whole lot to be said against asinine item constraints preventing you from entering the temple instead of just wandering into it, as well as asinine small key filler and block pushing puzzles in such a temple.
 
I've gotten a little ways into the game and decided to go back to the Great Plateau to get my three DLC treasure chests. A couple questions:

The one chest I found had a
Nintendo Switch shirt
in it. But in my travels, and only in the Great Plateau thus far, I've also twice found "EX" treasure chests. In those two were just normal things from what I recall. The thing is, the chest with something significant in it made a deal out of me finding it, and explicitly stated it was from the DLC. The other two didn't. Did I already find all three?
 
Look, the bottom line is that this is Nintendo's take on open world design. In that concept, item gating doesn't make sense. Weapon collecting doesn't make sense. With the traversal tools available I would say even long traditional Zelda dungeons don't make sense.
What does make sense is exploration. Crafting. Emerging gameplay. Experimentation. Open system driven enemy encounters.
That doesn't mean to say that all these are now mainstays of Zelda. For all we know, the next one might not even be open world and could go back to the traditional template.
But for BOTW, all of Nintendo's choices have been justified and most of the suggestions for "improvements" I have seen here would actually make the game worse.
Content wise, sure I would have like some more unique boss encounters and a more varied visual style for the shrines, but with the amount of content on offer here... come on. There's only so much you can cram into a game within a single development cycle.

Bollocks. You remember the Korok quest in BOTW where you have to use specific equipment? or Eventide Island? Yeah, you can impose different rules per quest or dungeon. You're not using your imagination if you cant come up with ways to implement that kind of thing. I only ended up doing 1/5 of the Shrines because there was no incentive outside of making the game easier with heart containers or stamina that I didnt need at all. This has always been a problem in Zelda, but now that everything is comprised of visually identical micro dungeons that can be done in any order and are 100% optional, why should I even bother doing it? Theres no amusing dialogue, nor gear that I have any use for, so it boils down to whether or not you legitimately enjoy the puzzles.

Make Link like a beastmaster and give him some animal sidekicks or something. Recruit a small animal to help with some kind of puzzle or something i dont even know, some kind of LIFE to the whole thing since hes just running around by himself almost the entire game. All of the Shrines are these lifeless teal chambers, and the main dungeons are like concrete walls.
 
Bollocks. You remember the Korok quest in BOTW where you have to use specific equipment? or Eventide Island?

Those work in the open world system because they are short and in isolated areas. Same with the labyrinths. These shrine quests can be defined as an old-fashined dungeons by design. But they can't be large, since that would break the free open world design.
 
Those work in the open world system because they are short and in isolated areas. Same with the labyrinths. These shrine quests can be defined as an old-fashined dungeons by design. But they can't be large, since that would break the free open world design.

how would that break it?
 
Bollocks. You remember the Korok quest in BOTW where you have to use specific equipment? or Eventide Island? Yeah, you can impose different rules per quest or dungeon. You're not using your imagination if you cant come up with ways to implement that kind of thing. I only ended up doing 1/5 of the Shrines because there was no incentive outside of making the game easier with heart containers or stamina that I didnt need at all. This has always been a problem in Zelda, but now that everything is comprised of visually identical micro dungeons that can be done in any order and are 100% optional, why should I even bother doing it? Theres no amusing dialogue, nor gear that I have any use for, so it boils down to whether or not you legitimately enjoy the puzzles.

Make Link like a beastmaster and give him some animal sidekicks or something. Recruit a small animal to help with some kind of puzzle or something i dont even know, some kind of LIFE to the whole thing since hes just running around by himself almost the entire game. All of the Shrines are these lifeless teal chambers, and the main dungeons are like concrete walls.

I get what you're saying, but you're selling the game short. What about all these Shrine Quests that let you solve big puzzles directly in the overworld? Or those places that are departures from the rest of the game like
Typhlo Ruins, Lost Woods, the three labyrinths, the Forgotten Temple, Eventide Island.
There's still plenty of things to do if you don't like the Shrines.

As for the Shrines themselves, I can't really comment on that since finding them never stopped feeling special for me. The Orb, the puzzles themselves, the hidden chests, and the fast travel point... there's plenty of reasons I was excited for them.
 
Oh yes, I love OoT and Majora's Mask. But there's a time for everything. 1998 was the time for the template they defined in OoT being a 3D version of the AlttP template. It made the best out of the available machine. As game hardware progressed however, that template was outprogressed left and right, only Nintendo largely stuck to it right up to 2011.

I'm not sure how well BotW will hold up. Never having played 2D Zeldas before OoT, I find them fun puzzle games but too limited by their 2D template. Their world just gives me nothing. ALttP never caught me like any 3D Zelda did. It can't, as I've come to expect what modern open world RPGs do in terms of world building. Less openness feels outdated. Who knows? Maybe 10 years from now, I'll have the same sentiments about BotW. Likewise, the technical limitations of OoT to which the following 3D Zeldas up to BotW largely stuck, make its world completely outdated when playing the game today. As the game was designed around separately loaded small areas gated by item progression and Nintendo was never been less than extremely proficient at game design, it's still a great game. But not being able to leave the preset path and explore the world unless you have item X or because the hardware simply never allowed to model it has been shown to be an unnecessary concept by RPGs into he last decade. It still has merits to control story progression, but nowhere to the extend of previous Zeldas slavishly relying on it.


Nothing to say against stumbling across an old ruined temple deep in the forest and having a moody music set in when you explore it. But a whole lot to be said against asinine item constraints preventing you from entering the temple instead of just wandering into it, as well as asinine small key filler and block pushing puzzles in such a temple.

There is a genre called "action-adventure". All I got from you is that you probably thought Okami was outdated because it didn't play like Morrowind or something. Which is hilarious.
 
I get what you're saying, but you're selling the game short. What about all these Shrine Quests that let you solve big puzzles directly in the overworld? Or those places that are departures from the rest of the game like
Typhlo Ruins, Lost Woods, the three labyrinths, the Forgotten Temple, Eventide Island.
There's still plenty of things to do if you don't like the Shrines.

As for the Shrines themselves, I can't really comment on that since finding they never stopped feeling special for me. The Orb, the puzzles themselves, the hidden chests, and the fast travel point... there's plenty of reasons I was excited for them.

The only thing i can compare shrines to is like, short, custom maps for portal 2. Theres no story relevance but there are many of them ranging from great to really pointless. Stuff like
The Lost Woods
were great, but also such a very small part of the game.
 
Bollocks. You remember the Korok quest in BOTW where you have to use specific equipment? or Eventide Island? Yeah, you can impose different rules per quest or dungeon. You're not using your imagination if you cant come up with ways to implement that kind of thing. I only ended up doing 1/5 of the Shrines because there was no incentive outside of making the game easier with heart containers or stamina that I didnt need at all. This has always been a problem in Zelda, but now that everything is comprised of visually identical micro dungeons that can be done in any order and are 100% optional, why should I even bother doing it? Theres no amusing dialogue, nor gear that I have any use for, so it boils down to whether or not you legitimately enjoy the puzzles.
How do you know there isn't any gear you could find a use for? You can run to Ganon after 4 shrines, you don't really need much.

Isn't it great that this game allows so many people to pave their own way through the game. For people like you who hate the shrines and don't want hearts/stamina/gear/experiences, you can cook/explore different ways to get where you want to go. For people aiming to clear all the shrines, they can reap all the benefits and go through some entertaining quests through exploration and interaction with amusing dialouge of the various shrine be quests! Shrines in the end are used to test the player, if you don't want to be tested, so be it.
 
The only thing i can compare shrines to is like, short, custom maps for portal 2. Theres no story relevance but there are many of them ranging from great to really pointless. Stuff like
The Lost Woods
were great, but also such a very small part of the game.

As I mentioned earlier, some shrine quests are much better than any dungeon in previous games
And surprisely there are a lot of amazing shrine quest there
 
How do you know there isn't any gear you could find a use for? You can run to Ganon after 4 shrines, you don't really need much.

Isn't it great that this game allows so many people to pave their own way through the game. For people like you who hate the shrines and don't want hearts/stamina/gear/experiences, you can cook/explore different ways to get where you want to go. For people aiming to clear all the shrines, they can reap all the benefits and go through some entertaining quests through exploration and interaction with amusing dialouge of the various shrine be quests! Shrines in the end are used to test the player, if you don't want to be tested, so be it.

Because I beat the game without reaching the second bar of hearts, and using the barbarian armour which has low defense unless upgraded (it wasnt upgraded intentionally).
You can play the game how you want, but its definitely going to be a whole lot more rewarding to people who want to roam around and complete most of it. None of the shrines were testing me other than the Test of Strength ones which actually seemed to require decent weapons.

I understand that as an open world sandbox type game its worthy of a lot of praise. But that kind of game is certainly not for everyone, and I cant say its my favorite Zelda because of it.

As I mentioned earlier, some shrine quests are much better than any dungeon in previous games
And surprisely there are a lot of amazing shrine quest there

Name some of them for me. I dont see this being the case considering im so burned out on the visual style and music of the shrines.
 
eventide island, spirit of wisdom, spirit of power the one in completely dark, the maze in the northeast akala, etc

ive done some of these. Some of those arent even comparable to a temple in any way shape or form. Did not see
a shrine thats in the dark
unless ur talking about the
goron dungeon.
? The Labyrinths had nothing to them so hopefully ur not talking about that one in Akkala, which I have to ask how on earth that could be considered better than any previous zelda dungeon?!?! was literally just
walking through corridors.
 
ive done some of these. Some of those arent even comparable to a temple in any way shape or form. Did not see a shrine thats in the dark unless ur talking about the
goron dungeon.
? The Labyrinths had nothing to them so hopefully ur not talking about that one in Akkala, which I have to ask how on earth that could be considered better than any previous zelda dungeon?!?! was literally just
walking through corridors.

I think it's better because it's different and fresh
Granted Zelda is never be a series dedicated to dungeons , it's a series about adventure
you are tired of art in shrine, but I'm tired of entire old dungeon formula in the past
It's a fresh they changed it and I argue the trials and shrine quest should also be counted into the shrine itself which added a lot of variation
Also you missed a lot of good stuff
 
Bollocks. You remember the Korok quest in BOTW where you have to use specific equipment? or Eventide Island? Yeah, you can impose different rules per quest or dungeon. You're not using your imagination if you cant come up with ways to implement that kind of thing. I only ended up doing 1/5 of the Shrines because there was no incentive outside of making the game easier with heart containers or stamina that I didnt need at all. This has always been a problem in Zelda, but now that everything is comprised of visually identical micro dungeons that can be done in any order and are 100% optional, why should I even bother doing it? Theres no amusing dialogue, nor gear that I have any use for, so it boils down to whether or not you legitimately enjoy the puzzles.

Make Link like a beastmaster and give him some animal sidekicks or something. Recruit a small animal to help with some kind of puzzle or something i dont even know, some kind of LIFE to the whole thing since hes just running around by himself almost the entire game. All of the Shrines are these lifeless teal chambers, and the main dungeons are like concrete walls.
Ok, you could do things differently but then it would be a different game. It's like asking say, Just Cause to include large indoor areas to do missions in. Sure, it could, but that's not what the game is about.
It's interesting to think about what BOTW attempts to do. Contrary to what the open world genre might suggest, it's not a game that sets to be a lot of things to a lot of people. It has a very defined tempo and gameplay style that understandably won't mesh well with everyone.
 
Because I beat the game without reaching the second bar of hearts, and using the barbarian armour which has low defense unless upgraded (it wasnt upgraded intentionally).
You can play the game how you want, but its definitely going to be a whole lot more rewarding to people who want to roam around and complete most of it. None of the shrines were testing me other than the Test of Strength ones which actually seemed to require decent weapons.

I understand that as an open world sandbox type game its worthy of a lot of praise. But that kind of game is certainly not for everyone, and I cant say its my favorite Zelda because of it.
You don't need hearts or defense to beat the game so I got no idea what you're talking about with a 1-hit KO denial system in place. A test is still testing you even if you can clear it easily. Good on you for clearing 1/5 of them and then dropping them altogether.

I'm not trying to push you into liking the game more than whatever you do. People like what people like and if you didn't like it enough to see more of the game that is okay, but your criticisms can only dig so deep with such an experience (which is okay too).
 
Beginner question.

I just finished the fourth shrine and old dude told me to meet him at the time temple or whatevs. Can I still make his recipe for the cold weather clothes or do I need to reload?
 
Eh, Beasts are more like a single room with 5 small unrelated puzzles you can do in any order, though describing some of the terminals as puzzles is being generous. It doesn't help that the gimmick of 3 out of the 4 beasts are very similar.

They are definitely good, but they don't replace the grandiose dungeon designs from TP and SS where you feel a sense of progression and interconnectedness of the puzzles and integration of the puzzles with a strong theme. Probably one of the best examples is Lakebed Temple from Twilight Princess, where the central room is a giant puzzle and you have to solve sections of the dungeon and manipulate the dungeon itself to solve the overall dungeon. That's something it felt like they should have gone for with BotW. They really need that feeling of the puzzles being integrated into a theme and huge connected puzzles. Instead most of the puzzles feel like stations in an activity room.

I agree with this.
 
Now that I've finished the game I've been listening to the soundtrack and damn it's good. I think it's amazing actually, one of the best Zelda soundtracks yet. I did notice while playing but it's even more so obvious when isolating the tracks.

I feel a lot of great songs, like the champion themes and such, don't get enough play time and are only background music, so it's easy for them to pass by. All the village themes are superb, with day night transitions. Tarry Town's progression speaks for itself. Hyrule Castle is epic, as are all the beast songs that play as you approach them. General battle music is dynamic, the minigames all sound good (especially the parasailing one!). I enjoyed the floaty piano melodies that played as I explored the world or rode a horse..
Even the way the music is integrated into the game, like with Kass for instance, works so well. Whenever I stumbled upon Kass I'd just stand around for a bit to enjoy his playing, it gave a great sense of adventure and liveliness to the world. When he
finally played his full song for me in Rito Village then accompanied Rito's theme...
it really bookended my experience with the game and I felt ready to take on Ganon, haha.

On the whole I really love the piano centered tunes. Reminded me of the OoT title music in a way, the whole game was quite melancholic in it's themes so when something positive or intense played, it really had an impact.

Oh! And when I figured out how to get Molduga out of the sand and the violins kicked into overdrive, my heart skipped a beat it was so cool :P
 
Now that I've finished the game I've been listening to the soundtrack and damn it's good. I think it's amazing actually, one of the best Zelda soundtracks yet. I did notice while playing but it's even more so obvious when isolating the tracks.

I feel a lot of great songs, like the champion themes and such, don't get enough play time and are only background music, so it's easy for them to pass by. All the village themes are superb, with day night transitions. Tarry Town's progression speaks for itself. Hyrule Castle is epic, as are all the beast songs that play as you approach them. General battle music is dynamic, the minigames all sound good (especially the parasailing one!). I enjoyed the floaty piano melodies that played as I explored the world or rode a horse..
Even the way the music is integrated into the game, like with Kass for instance, works so well. Whenever I stumbled upon Kass I'd just stand around for a bit to enjoy his playing, it gave a great sense of adventure and liveliness to the world. When he
finally played his full song for me in Rito Village then accompanied Rito's theme...
it really bookended my experience with the game and I felt ready to take on Ganon, haha.

On the whole I really love the piano centered tunes. Reminded me of the OoT title music in a way, the whole game was quite melancholic in it's themes so when something positive or intense played, it really had an impact.

Oh! And when I figured out how to get Molduga out of the sand and the violins kicked into overdrive, my heart skipped a beat it was so cool :P

BotW's music is one of the best yet. Gives me goosebumps every time I hear some of the tunes, and a good number of them are so catchy.
 
but your criticisms can only dig so deep with such an experience (which is okay too).

I shouldnt have to 100% a game to guage that the shrines and divine beasts were visually and thematically just not very varied or bold. I finished all of the main quests people said were good, got the
Master Sword
as well as getting all of the towers and town related side quests and the Labyrinths even though I loathed them.

Id say thats a pretty good effort for someone who just cant get into sandbox type games which dont have strong narratives (probably didnt help that I beat Witcher3 then FFXV right before this)
I get by on being a huge Zelda fan, but Ocarina never got topped for me.
 
Just broke the 100 hour mark. I think this may be the fasted I have broke the 100 hour mark since I was a child with much more free time. The Switch is such a great way to play this game. I have mostly been avoiding this thread to avoid spoilers but wanted to drop in for an update. I have all divine beasts complete and 4 zones left to explore. My goodness this game. I haven't had this much fun exploring zones since vanilla Wow. Keep up the Goddess's work my fellow champions.
 
Is anyone else getting these green glitches in the sky on docked mode?

Its only happening in docked mode, looks like green interference.

Any ideas?

mYRDok8.jpg


FuNV8SP.jpg
 
Errrrr. Did you bother looking around the area or were you just focused on the text?

It's really obvious what the puzzle wants if you bother to look around and see that there are markers indicating 1, 2, 3, 4 for each row, so it wants you to count each one.

Having seen constellations as decorations in several shrines already, I disregarded
the 4 nearby constellations corresponding to the 4 rows, thought they were just decoration
. Which in turn made me fail to notice
that there were only 4 unique patterns just rotated
.

Had either of those been more obvious to me, it wouldn't have taken nearly as long... But probably would've been less satisfying to solve as well.
 
Is anyone else getting these green glitches in the sky on docked mode?

Its only happening in docked mode, looks like green interference.

Any ideas?

mYRDok8.jpg


FuNV8SP.jpg

Only thing I can think of is make sure your console is docked properly. I had an issue with my sound at one point because I didn't realize that the tablet wasn't properly set in the dock. I got too antsy lol
 
Having to constantly worry about repairing your weapons has always been the most obnoxious part about durability systems for me. Breath of the Wild cutting that out is great IMO.

I guess you could argue having repairing as another option, but then there'd probably have to be an incentive for players to repair their stuff like weapons becoming less powerful with use (which is awful).

I hear what you're saying, but I don't understand your reasoning. Instead of having to "worry" about repairing your weapons, you now have to "worry" about them breaking in their entirety. I hardly think the former is worse than the latter...

Also, why an incentive? The incentive if that you can repair your weapon before they break. It's not like it would be free, because that would take the balance out of the game, but it would require several (maybe uncommon) ingredients or other crafting materials to either do it yourself, at a cooking spot or whatever, or to let others do it for you for a fee.
 
Do what I did. Go to the statue in Haterno and trade it all for hearts temporarily then trade it back after you get what you came for.
Yep.

About the lost woods, my tip: use the power you get from the sky if you have trouble passing the running test :)
 
quick question

**late game spoilers**

I'm making my way through Hyrule castle right now, just reached a fight with a white Lynel. Is there going to be a warp point soon, or is the shrine near the entrance the only one? I want to back out and buy more ancient armor now that I picked up some more cores along the way.
 
I'm 60 hours in and I still have no idea what chuchu jelly does. Help please.

Also, I have a couple
large ancient cores
but can't figure out who I'm supposed to bring them to. I've tried the two facilities I've visited so far but no one seems interested in them.
 
quick question

**late game spoilers**

I'm making my way through Hyrule castle right now, just reached a fight with a white Lynel. Is there going to be a warp point soon, or is the shrine near the entrance the only one? I want to back out and buy more ancient armor now that I picked up some more cores along the way.

Its unlikely you will find the only warp point in hyrule castle as it in a different route (you dont fight a lynel).
 
I hear what you're saying, but I don't understand your reasoning. Instead of having to "worry" about repairing your weapons, you now have to "worry" about them breaking in their entirety. I hardly think the former is worse than the latter...

Also, why an incentive? The incentive if that you can repair your weapon before they break. It's not like it would be free, because that would take the balance out of the game, but it would require several (maybe uncommon) ingredients or other crafting materials to either do it yourself, at a cooking spot or whatever, or to let others do it for you for a fee.
It's probably been 80-90 hours of gameplay since I last "worried" a weapon would break.

And as far as I know there are no unique weapons in the game that can be lost forever by breaking it.
The unique weapons can be re-built with a system similar to what you outline
.
 
I'm 60 hours in and I still have no idea what chuchu jelly does. Help please.

Also, I have a couple
large ancient cores
but can't figure out who I'm supposed to bring them to. I've tried the two facilities I've visited so far but no one seems interested in them.

both are upgrading materials.

in the case of the large ancient cores, you can upgrade the
ancient armor
to the max level at a
great fairy's fountain
if you found all
four
of them
 
Just:
got the Master Sword. Does a shit ton of damage to bosses
Beat Vah Nabori, cool to know it was named after Nabooru and pretty saying this is the Child OoT timeline (Didn't say Nabooru was a sage, just a great Gorudo leader
got 6 of 12 Zelda memories
 
I like that guardian set. Wish I could afford it, but guardians chew me up so ;_;
 
I like that guardian set. Wish I could afford it, but guardians chew me up so ;_;
Guardians are quick to dispatch and are one of the most predictable enemy types in the game. Practice your parry.

I enjoy guardian combat in the same way I enjoy the Arkham series' "lightning bolt" prompt combat. It has a satisfying rhythmic quality.

Beep-beep-beep-BOOP. Ka-ching.
 
I have yet to face off against a Guardian at almost 70 hours in.

Now that I have semi-upgraded ancient armor, I might be well equipped to face one.
 
Guardians are quick to dispatch and are one of the most predictable enemy types in the game. Practice your parry.

I enjoy guardian combat in the same way I enjoy the Arkham series' "lightning bolt" prompt combat. It has a satisfying rhythmic quality.

Beep-beep-beep-BOOP. Ka-ching.

dude no matter how much I practice that parry I cant reflect shit :/
 
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