Support NeoGAF

[GigaBowser]

Shayna Moon, engine producer at The Coalition, associate producer at Sony Santa Monica on God of War: "The most impressive thing I've seen is having so many objects physics-enabled; that means they had to do a lot more QA testing to see all the possible issues. When people hear about polish in games they probably think of creative content being added, but polish is a lot more about bug fixing and minor design and visual adjustments to take a game from good to great."

Gregorios Kythreotis, creative director on Sable at Shedworks: "TOTK is incredibly impressive on a technical level. The draw distances and seamless air-to-ground-to-Chasm movement on a console as old as the Switch is truly a feat - especially when you consider the fidelity of physics interactions the game offers, on top of the way it is recording and making reversible all of these interactions. They've developed the gameplay to tightly fit these systems without making it feel broken or toy-like. My favorite new mechanic is probably the Ascend ability. It's so clever and unique; it provides a new manner by which players appreciate 3D space and layout in the world."

 

[Gambit2483]

TOTK has some of the best visual effects I've ever seen (all seamlessly working together at least). The way different colored light sources interact with everything from ground mist to water surface reflections, all the way to its different weather effects like volumetric clouds, sheet rain in a torrential storm, freaking rainbows after said storms, snow blizzards and the heat haze effect of the desert (Just to name a few).

It may not be as technically impressive as something like HFW but the way all of these different visual effects come together in an artistic cohesion is extremely impressive (in a way most games just simply can't or won't do). Nintendo truly does have some of the most talented developers and artists in the industry.

 

[Zannegan]

TOTK has some of the best visual effects I've ever seen (all seamlessly working together at least). The way different colored light sources interact with everything from ground mist to water surface reflections, all the way to its different weather effects like volumetric clouds, sheet rain in a torrential storm, freaking rainbows after said storms, snow blizzards and the heat haze effect of the desert (Just to name a few).

It may not be as technically impressive as something like HFW but the way all of these different visual effects come together in an artistic cohesion is extremely impressive (in a way most games just simply can't or won't do). Nintendo truly does have some of the most talented developers and artists in the industry.

Well, the clouds objectively are not volumetric. In fact, if you get too close to some of them and happen to rotate the camera, they'll turn with your view which is pretty immersion breaking.

That said, I agree that when everything is working it's a really nice art style that comes together well to create an impressive overall effect... kind of like everything else in the game.

 

[Umbasaborne]

It's an amazing game, probably one of the best of the last ten years. The fact that nintendo was able to squeeze something like this out on switch makes you wonder what the hell other devs are doing on more powerful hardware

 

[Kataploom]

Suppose you never heard of Oblivion.

Look, i get it, TotK has some really good design with its physics and puzzles, but it didn't invent systemic game design, nor is it doing any miracles with its hardware. The biggest achievement here really is in terms of production and the extensive amount of game testing this must've required.

Nobody is saying Zelda INVENTED that type of gameplay or physics or whatever, but that almost nobody dares to try pushing the complexity in a meaningful way besides graphics and yet they're releasing broken messes each month. So they don't try to push the medium forward (actually I don't care about this one) and yet they release games in a very poor states.

Nintendo lesson here are: Get out of the fucking box and let the product mature.

 

[daclynk]

This Nintendo hyperbole is always what annoyed me so much about the fandom> Switch was my favorite system during the whole PS4, OneX gen, but all of this praise on what utterly amazing things Nintendo is supposedly doing is getting ridiculous.

Tears of the Kingdom looks a touch better than Breath of the Wild, which was a Wii U game. Visually, it doesn't even touch uncharted 3 on ps3.

Physics wise, it does some impressive things, but all of this OH MY GOOODNESS HOW DID U MAKE THIS AMAZING UNBELIEVABLE MASTERPIECE THAT NOBODY CAN DUPLICATE rhetoric is annoying.

 

[Hero_Select]

Lmfao some people are so fucking salty that TotK is just better than their favorite games.

 

[crackajack]

It's like with the N64, which had some advantages but also big disadvantages, a programmer, trying and wanting to compete with other stuff, can probably squeeze a lot out of anything if tasked with that and given the required time. Considering what modders did with Mario64 and how much optimisation was possible with that, even Nintendo is possibly not maxing what a Switch can do. Crazy to think what a team could do with the much better HW of other consoles and PCs if going all in. I would assume while impressive stuff was done on PS3 a few extra years would still show new advancements, also on the PS4 gen, where some devs possibly came from the brute force PC world, and did not really max out the to the metal thing, that is in modern times with all layers of code anyway not really as natural.
Since 4, 3, 2 nm and other architetecture changes won't allow leaps like in the past, current gen already didn't deliver revolution, software guys will need to step up their game to offer new stuff. After 4k and HDR and RT, we hopefully invest more in actualy gamey stuff, and stop just making it shinier, which is nice still, but should not be the main or only thing changing.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Nobody is saying Zelda INVENTED that type of gameplay or physics or whatever, but that almost nobody dares to try pushing the complexity in a meaningful way besides graphics and yet they're releasing broken messes each month. So they don't try to push the medium forward (actually I don't care about this one) and yet they release games in a very poor states.

Nintendo lesson here are: Get out of the fucking box and let the product mature.

That used to be true for big developers, but last year we got Elden Ring which is in its own class of world design, and this year we're getting Starfield and Baldurs Gate 3, both also pushing boundaries in terms of scope, systemic design and interactivity. Then we're not even counting mid-sized and small developers doing similar work with games like Kenshi and Ctrl Alt Ego.

I don't want to dismiss the great work Nintendo has done in this game, but trying to act as if they're the only ones trying to push boundaries, or as if TotK is somehow extremely more complex than anything else out there is not just false but also very unfair to other developers.

 

[BbMajor7th]

TOTK is an outstanding achievement, no doubt, but it makes no sense to extrapolate it. PlayStation Studios put out new graphical benchmarks nearly every year during the last generation. It was highly impressive stuff on a shitty Jaguar CPU, but I wouldn't say they ever made the rest of the industry look like fools. They were targeting fixed hardware, had low-level API access and sizeable budgets.

Both publishers' internal studios do highly impressive work and massively stretch the technical capacity of their platforms, but both are subject to some fairly unique development circumstances and both compromise in some areas to excel in others.

 

[Punished Miku]

I'm in a post-TotK funk right now. Other games just feel worse.

 

[BlackTron]

Lmfao some people are so fucking salty that TotK is just better than their favorite games.

Switch was his favorite system last gen, but he probably sold it since then. So he has to convince himself that he made the right choice by making literally the entire rest of the world hyperbole-spewing fanboys.

 

[tr1p1ex]

Well, the clouds objectively are not volumetric. In fact, if you get too close to some of them and happen to rotate the camera, they'll turn with your view which is pretty immersion breaking.

That said, I agree that when everything is working it's a really nice art style that comes together well to create an impressive overall effect... kind of like everything else in the game.

Looking over at my media center is immersion breaking. But sometimes I can't help myself.

Same with looking down at the controller.

Also hearing a family member yell. Grabbing a potato chip from the bowl. Or checking the phone.

Lot of immersion breaking going on when I play a game. lol.

Immersion never been about how photo realistic the graphics are. I played games 25 years ago that drew me in more than many games today.

 

[Zannegan]

Looking over at my media center is immersion breaking. But sometimes I can't help myself.

Same with looking down at the controller.

Also hearing a family member yell. Grabbing a potato chip from the bowl. Or checking the phone.

Lot of immersion breaking going on when I play a game. lol.

Immersion never been about how photo realistic the graphics are. I played games 25 years ago that drew me in more than many games today.

...of course.

All I was pointing out is that the clouds are not volumetric as he had said. They look like 3D objects in the distance if you're just gliding towards them, but I discovered (by accident) that they're actually just 2D textures that are much closer, which briefly ruins the effect. I love the art style, and, overall, the game is gorgeous, especially given the limitations of the hardware.

Tangential thought: If the next Switch does have any kind of VR functionality, they'll have to redo the clouds to actually be volumetric. Player perspective changes way too much in VR.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

TL;DW. Dev discover physics and game systems

In all seriousness, we had more impressive physics systems running on fucking ps3s and x360s than many modern games. Saying this would be a monumental thing to do on current next-gen consoles is just ridiculous.

The game/level design however is indeed quite impressive, having all these systems working together is rather difficult to do, but thats hardware agnostic.

This. Nuts and Bolts had amazing physics.

 

[kevm3]

Dude we get it, you didn't play the new Zelda yet. Even the children figured it out, you don't have to convince us.

Children usually don't have the context to know what they are talking about because they aren't old enough to have played games on earlier systems or may not own multiple systems.

Little Big Planet did the physics sandbox thing on PS3.


Even before that, Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 did mindblowing things with physics, albeit with a focus on fighting the colossi. Assassin's creed pretty much pioneered the free form climbing/parkour in an open world a long time ago. GTA and Rockstar mastered open world with autonomous npcs with gta on ps2.

If you want to say Nintendo did a masterful job of blending different gameplay systems into one package with a minimum of bugs, sure, I'm fine with that.

But this nonsense hyperbole that Nintendo is doing some unbelievable thing that has never been seen before and they're just blowing away every other developer needs to go away.

 

[BlackTron]

Children usually don't have the context to know what they are talking about because they aren't old enough to have played games on earlier systems or may not own multiple systems.

Little Big Planet did the physics sandbox thing on PS3.


Even before that, Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 did mindblowing things with physics, albeit with a focus on fighting the colossi. Assassin's creed pretty much pioneered the free form climbing/parkour in an open world a long time ago. GTA and Rockstar mastered open world with autonomous npcs with gta on ps2.

If you want to say Nintendo did a masterful job of blending different gameplay systems into one package with a minimum of bugs, sure, I'm fine with that.

But this nonsense hyperbole that Nintendo is doing some unbelievable thing that has never been seen before and they're just blowing away every other developer needs to go away.

The more you post examples of other games and systems, the more evidence you provide that you haven't played the game yet.

Give us more.

Edit: By the way, once you play the game, we will allow you to come back to the thread and apologize.

 

[midasmulligan]

The thing is, there not investing in IP experiments, 100% of focus on refining existing IP which concentrates their investment, no wasted resources

 

[diffusionx]

Children usually don't have the context to know what they are talking about because they aren't old enough to have played games on earlier systems or may not own multiple systems.

Little Big Planet did the physics sandbox thing on PS3.


Even before that, Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 did mindblowing things with physics, albeit with a focus on fighting the colossi. Assassin's creed pretty much pioneered the free form climbing/parkour in an open world a long time ago. GTA and Rockstar mastered open world with autonomous npcs with gta on ps2.

If you want to say Nintendo did a masterful job of blending different gameplay systems into one package with a minimum of bugs, sure, I'm fine with that.

But this nonsense hyperbole that Nintendo is doing some unbelievable thing that has never been seen before and they're just blowing away every other developer needs to go away.

"look, here's examples of 500 games doing 1 specific thing each, 1 specific game doing those 500 things all at the same time, into a seamless whole, is not impressive, checkmate"

 

[BlackTron]

"look, here's examples of 500 games doing 1 specific thing each, 1 specific game doing those 500 things all at the same time, into a seamless whole, is not impressive, checkmate"

With the amount of time you spend finding and writing 500 examples, you could make enough money to buy another Nintendo Switch.

The best part is, for some anamoly of the universe, "the fandom" has referred to low-standard sycophants up until now when, suddenly overnight, it also refers to the development community. I don't remember developers coming out and falling over each other for Nintendo for competently implementing features in 20 year old games before. It's almost like there might be something unique or special about an event that makes everyone who actually makes games lose themselves over it, AND breaks sales records all over the world. One might presume they should play this game before judging it. Actually, nah. It's all fandom hyperbole, cause I sold my Switch already!