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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Preview Thread

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Has there been any framerate comparisons yet between the Wii U version and the docked Switch version?

Edit: Based on the impressions thread, seems like the framerate drops are more severe in the Switch version.

Huh? Everyone in that thread is playing the Wii U version. And the comparisons that do exist clearly state that the Switch version is more stable.
 

Justinian

Member
Huh? Everyone in that thread is playing the Wii U version. And the comparisons that do exist clearly state that the Switch version is more stable.

This. I can watch 5 minutes of any footage on WiiU and it's guaranteed to drop frames more consistently than Switch.
 

NSESN

Member
I wonder if many people complain about the difficulty Nintendo patches an easy mode.
Lol, I would never predict people wanting an easy mode for Zelda.
 

Charamiwa

Banned
I think there's a weird vibe going on right now, in that the spoiler free impressions threads are always about a few people playing the game, and a hundred others hanging on their every word. There's always this dynamic in these threads.

But in this case, the people playing it are playing the inferior version, but most importantly, are probably pirating it. Oh I'm sure some of them got the game early by mistake or something, but let's not kid ourselves. So I just think it adds a weird layer on top of the already weird impressions threads.

At this point I just want the reviews and the game out to end this torture.
 

Audioboxer

Member
I wonder if many people complain about the difficulty Nintendo patches an easy mode.
Lol, I would never predict people wanting an easy mode for Zelda.

I certainly don't want an easy mode, a bit of a challenge is good. The open world aspects bring about being able to charge off to areas early and have to face enemies that can one shot you.

The durability system is more annoying than hard. Shit just seems to break way too quickly, just for the sake of them clogging up your inventory and forcing you to play a meta-game with durability.
 

jariw

Member
I certainly don't want an easy mode, a bit of a challenge is good. The open world aspects bring about being able to charge off to areas early and have to face enemies that can one shot you.

The durability system is more annoying than hard. Shit just seems to break way too quickly, just for the sake of them clogging up your inventory and forcing you to play a meta-game with durability.

How many hours have you played so far?
 

Audioboxer

Member
How many hours have you played so far?

0.

Just watching videos. Yay for having your weapons inventory clogged up with rakes, farming tools and other shit! :p If they wanted a more complex weapon system they should just have copied crafting, +1/+2/+3 weapons from something like Souls. Although, maybe there is crafting later.

My suggestion is to give it a shot. They've put that mechanic in there for a reason and the game is balanced around it.

Possibly, but it certainly looks like it takes away from "fun levels" a bit. I mean, even bows are breaking like brittle candy.
 

AmyS

Member
From what has been learned about the size of the world over the last few days, weeks and months, how large is it believe to be, compared to:

*Zelda Twilight Princess

*Skyrim

*The Witcher 3
 

Audioboxer

Member
From what has been learned about the size of the world over the last few days, weeks and months, how large is it believe to be, compared to:

*Zelda Twilight Princess

*Skyrim

*The Witcher 3

Excuse the language, but the best way to describe it looks to be fucking massive. It's no wonder the Wii U chugs along a bit, and heck, even the Switch seems to have some minor hiccups. It's probably the closest we'll see to an Animal Crossing on a home console as well, with the bug catching and cooking :p

Massive open world AC game... *drools*
 

Verder

Member
A guy I was talking to in my lyft ride from gdc has been playing switch + Zelda and his impressions have been real well .

He's about 20 hours In and says the dungeons are fresh and have a different take than old zeldas . And the world and npcs feel alive . He's hoping for a traversal option like mechs/skulls in Xeno X because the world is massive and takes a ton of time traversing

Slow start but picks up tremendously as well .
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
From what has been learned about the size of the world over the last few days, weeks and months, how large is it believe to be, compared to:

*Zelda Twilight Princess

*Skyrim

*The Witcher 3

TP is pretty tiny (even though it's the largest land-based overworld in a 3D Zelda before this).


But it's supposedly significantly larger than Skyrim, and a bit larger than TW3.
 

Antagon

Member
From what has been learned about the size of the world over the last few days, weeks and months, how large is it believe to be, compared to:

*Zelda Twilight Princess

*Skyrim

*The Witcher 3

Someone calculated a while ago that it's about 2 times Skyrim. That still seems reasonable.

Someone on Youtube walked from the southern edge to the northern edge of the map in just under 30 minutes and based on that he calculated that east to west would be just over htat time. That's as straight as possible.
 

Boem

Member
Someone calculated a while ago that it's about 2 times Skyrim. That still seems reasonable.

Someone on Youtube walked from the southern edge to the northern edge of the map in just under 30 minutes and based on that he calculated that east to west would be just over htat time. That's as straight as possible.

This isn't proof of anything of course, but wouldn't both Skyrim and especially Witcher 3 take significantly longer to walk from edge to edge?

I looked it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqMMAnpz7TU

According to this youtube experiment, Skyrim takes 2 hours, 10 minutes, Witcher 3 takes 2 hours, 1 minute. The longest amount of time on that list is Just Cause 2 with 5 hours, and, funnily enough, the lowest is Fifa 15 with 35 seconds. That one cracked me up.

Of course, this is a bit of fuzzy science and not any real way of discovering how large a map really is, and I'm sure BotW is the biggest Zelda ever, but we've had a lot of large, detailed worlds in recent years.
 

PrimeBeef

Member
So is anyone else still playing a Zelda in anticipation for the release? Any reason for why you chose your specific last one?
I played through both Darksiders games in anticipation. I have a hard time getting back into most of the older 3D Zeldas due to the hour plus intros of not doing anything but learning the basics. Just get me to the actual gameplay already. One of the reasons I'm excited for BoTW. I hooe this becomes a trend for all games going forward.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
This isn't proof of anything of course, but wouldn't both Skyrim and especially Witcher 3 take significantly longer to walk from edge to edge?

I looked it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqMMAnpz7TU

According to this youtube experiment, Skyrim takes 2 hours, 10 minutes, Witcher 3 takes 2 hours, 1 minute. The longest amount of time on that list is Just Cause 2 with 5 hours, and, funnily enough, the lowest is Fifa 15 with 35 seconds. That one cracked me up.

Of course, this is a bit of fuzzy science and not any real way of discovering how large a map really is, and I'm sure BotW is the biggest Zelda ever, but we've had a lot of large, detailed worlds in recent years.

Hmm, yeah. If 30 min when walking is accurate this world is much smaller than both Skyrim and TW3 (which is what I originally expected), and whoever calculated it to be larger got their scales wrong.
 
This isn't proof of anything of course, but wouldn't both Skyrim and especially Witcher 3 take significantly longer to walk from edge to edge?

I looked it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqMMAnpz7TU

According to this youtube experiment, Skyrim takes 2 hours, 10 minutes, Witcher 3 takes 2 hours, 1 minute. The longest amount of time on that list is Just Cause 2 with 5 hours, and, funnily enough, the lowest is Fifa 15 with 35 seconds. That one cracked me up.

Of course, this is a bit of fuzzy science and not any real way of discovering how large a map really is, and I'm sure BotW is the biggest Zelda ever, but we've had a lot of large, detailed worlds in recent years.
You have to take in account that in Breath of the wild you can literally go on a straight line, swimming across water and climbing walls.

The others games requires detours and specific path to cross the map, it takes longer.
 

Dystify

Member
Countdown until review thread goes up:

t1488448800z1.png


Countdown until reviews drop:

t1488452400z1.png
 

spekkeh

Banned
I think there's a weird vibe going on right now, in that the spoiler free impressions threads are always about a few people playing the game, and a hundred others hanging on their every word. There's always this dynamic in these threads.

But in this case, the people playing it are playing the inferior version, but most importantly, are probably pirating it. Oh I'm sure some of them got the game early by mistake or something, but let's not kid ourselves. So I just think it adds a weird layer on top of the already weird impressions threads.

At this point I just want the reviews and the game out to end this torture.
Dont forget the people who watch some streams from pirated copies and then impart the arcane knowledge they gleaned on the unwashed masses.

But yeah, somewhat shocked how many people on GAF pirate and are kind of open about it.
 

Boem

Member
Cucurbitacée;231247548 said:
You have to take in account that in Breath of the wild you can literally go on a straight line, swimming across water and climbing walls.

The others games requires detours and specific path to cross the map, it takes longer.

Sure, but still, you can swim in games like Skyrim, and having to avoid some mountains instead of climbing over them (the question is which would be quicker, climbing vertically in BtoW also slows down your traversal speed) still means the BtoW map traversal is 4 times quicker. That's a lot for games like this.

Again, it's fuzzy science, but those early articles with 'BtoW is 10 times larger than Skyrim' always felt like a bit of nonsense to me really. Those kind of articles always get released before a big open world game release (especially for something like GTA), and they're always based on complete guesswork based on leaked early maps and guessing the distance between landmarks in trailers/screenshots. The hype of the people doing that research always gets to them and the ultimate guess always significantly overstates the actual size of the game world.

I'll wait until people actually figure out how big the world is compared to other games based on the physical final product rather than screenshots/trailers, but I think some of the early estimates were a bit silly. Not that this isn't a big Zelda (obviously the biggest Zelda world), but again, this is the first time Nintendo tried a world of this size and there have been a lot of absolutely giant, detailed open world games by companies who worked in that format for years now.

And hey, size isn't everything, it's all about gameplay. A game can definitely be too big. I'm just trying to say that some of the claims about BtoW are a bit silly right now. It has already been proven that 'the Great Plateau is just 1% of the game world' was marketing speak for example, which already destroys some early estimates.
 
Hmm, yeah. If 30 min when walking is accurate this world is much smaller than both Skyrim and TW3 (which is what I originally expected), and whoever calculated it to be larger got their scales wrong.

It might not be as big as those games but it certainly doesn't feel small when playing the game, it's still massive.
 

pringles

Member
Someone calculated a while ago that it's about 2 times Skyrim. That still seems reasonable.

Someone on Youtube walked from the southern edge to the northern edge of the map in just under 30 minutes and based on that he calculated that east to west would be just over htat time. That's as straight as possible.

This isn't proof of anything of course, but wouldn't both Skyrim and especially Witcher 3 take significantly longer to walk from edge to edge?

I looked it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqMMAnpz7TU

According to this youtube experiment, Skyrim takes 2 hours, 10 minutes, Witcher 3 takes 2 hours, 1 minute. The longest amount of time on that list is Just Cause 2 with 5 hours, and, funnily enough, the lowest is Fifa 15 with 35 seconds. That one cracked me up.

Of course, this is a bit of fuzzy science and not any real way of discovering how large a map really is, and I'm sure BotW is the biggest Zelda ever, but we've had a lot of large, detailed worlds in recent years.
Did that person actually WALK across the Zelda map? Because no way does it take 2 hours to actually run across the map of Skyrim.
 

Scrawnton

Member
Cucurbitacée;231248282 said:
He was not walking, he was "jogging", going the maximum speed without using the sprint button.
I still have a very hard time believing that it took 2 hours. I've played that game for hundreds of hours and it never took barely any time at all to walk from one edge to the next.

On that fallout video the guy was walking at the slowest pace he could. Not full jogging speed for the entire treck.
 

AmyS

Member
Excuse the language, but the best way to describe it looks to be fucking massive. It's no wonder the Wii U chugs along a bit, and heck, even the Switch seems to have some minor hiccups. It's probably the closest we'll see to an Animal Crossing on a home console as well, with the bug catching and cooking :p

Massive open world AC game... *drools*

TP is pretty tiny (even though it's the largest land-based overworld in a 3D Zelda before this).


But it's supposedly significantly larger than Skyrim, and a bit larger than TW3.

Someone calculated a while ago that it's about 2 times Skyrim. That still seems reasonable.

Someone on Youtube walked from the southern edge to the northern edge of the map in just under 30 minutes and based on that he calculated that east to west would be just over htat time. That's as straight as possible.

Holy shit.

Edit:

The best estimate we currently have for Breath of the Wild's map size is 62 K^2, with some sound math.



EngineeringHyrule on Reddit/Google+ said he would update his estimate once the game released.

Witcher 3 with all DLC (+Invisible Walls) is ~54 km^2. When you take out the invisible borders its a fair amount smaller than that (no consistent way to calculate this, but over the weekend I'll run the game and try to get a better idea of the barrier on each map).

This is what I posted when Blood and Wine released:



Also note, Witcher 3 is split into 5 different maps that collectively comprise that size. BOTW is one single map that is ~15% bigger than Witcher 3 with both DLC Expansions.

I believe Witcher 3 base game maps are collectively ~30% larger than Skyrim's.

That's pretty freaking incredible.
 

m051293

Member
The best estimate we currently have for Breath of the Wild's map size is 62 K^2, with some sound math.


EngineeringHyrule on Reddit/Google+ said he would update his estimate once the game released.

Witcher 3 with all DLC (+Invisible Walls) is ~54 km^2. When you take out the invisible borders its a fair amount smaller than that (no consistent way to calculate this, but over the weekend I'll run the game and try to get a better idea of the barrier on each map).

This is what I posted when Blood and Wine released:

I measured the in-game distances from N-S & W-E (the mini-map distances). The map is approximately 3085m X 2579m, or 7.96 km2. This is about 53% of the Novigrad/Velen/HOS total map size, and about the same size as all of the land area in Skellige (~35-40% of the full Skellige map, definitely a bit larger than Ard Skellig).

Note that this measurement (and the other map measurements) do not account for the restricted area at the border of each map where Geralt refuses to walk to. Accounting for those is a little difficult because the invisible border is not made up of straight lines. Mentally, I just tack off 10-15% of the sizes listed below.

Here are the rough calculations I did for the other maps:

Measuring the map from end to end (so including small restricted boundaries of each world map) gave me the dimensions, from which I got:

Novigrad & Velen (+HOS): 15.2 km2 (5.8 mi2)
Skellige Isles & Ocean: 28.9 km2 (11.1 mi2)
White Orchard: 0.8 km2 (0.3 mi2)
Kaer Morhen: 1.4 km2 (0.6 mi2)

Total: 46.3 km2 (17.8 mi2)

If we account for the boundaries it's probably a total right around 45 km2.

Also note, Witcher 3 is split into 5 different maps that collectively comprise that size. BOTW is one single map that is ~15% bigger than Witcher 3 with both DLC Expansions.

I believe Witcher 3 base game maps are collectively ~30% larger than Skyrim's, BOTW is just under double the size of Skyrim's above-ground map (not counting Blackreach).
 

duality1123

Neo Member
Countdown until review thread goes up:

t1488448800z1.png


Countdown until reviews drop:

t1488452400z1.png

Gonna be an awesome time reading the reviews here in Australia since the midnight launch is about 3 hours after that.

Though I have to admit that is really cutting it close. If i'm thinking time zones right reviews for Zelda will drop AFTER the game launches in New Zealand. Got to admit that's kind of amazing.
 

Scrawnton

Member
Cucurbitacée;231248406 said:
I was talking about Breath of the Wild, no idea about Skyrim.
Ahh okay. I was gonna say those distance videos on YouTube are straight walking and it took 2 hours to slowly walk across skyrim. I'm sure if someone walked across BotW it would take that much time.
 

Rodin

Member
Jogging vs walking comparison is useless, Skyrim takes about 20-30 minutes from top to bottom, and remember that this is also related to the speed of the character (so if Skyrim guy is slower than Link, it will take longer for him to run the same distance).

The best estimate we currently have for Breath of the Wild's map size is 62 K^2, with some sound math.



EngineeringHyrule on Reddit/Google+ said he would update his estimate once the game released.

Witcher 3 with all DLC (+Invisible Walls) is ~54 km^2. When you take out the invisible borders its a fair amount smaller than that (no consistent way to calculate this, but over the weekend I'll run the game and try to get a better idea of the barrier on each map).

This is what I posted when Blood and Wine released:



Also note, Witcher 3 is split into 5 different maps that collectively comprise that size. BOTW is one single map that is ~15% bigger than Witcher 3 with both DLC Expansions.

I believe Witcher 3 base game maps are collectively ~30% larger than Skyrim's, BOTW is just under double the size of Skyrim's above-ground map (not counting Blackreach).
Another guy made a calculation based on this one (fixing what according to him was an error) and he ended up with 81km2.
 
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