The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

[Nukebelly]

My son just clued me in about this video.

I forgot about the chickens and didn't even think of the possibilities with the balloons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvbqxBUG_c

[bigbadboaz]

But I'm also getting Nier Automata today

Hell of a combo there.

I'm playing Zelda now and looking forward to Nier + Horizon during the holiday sale timeframe.

[Strider77]

Potentially the best 3D title I've ever played

Right

[Austin]

I haven't been sucked into a 3D Zelda game enough in the past to comment past the first couple of hours of gameplay. However, I'm probably close to 50 hours into Breath of the Wild right now. It feels insanely fresh for the series and whatever roadblocks there were that kept me from getting into the others, I haven't experienced here. I have problems with it (the story and main characters is a big sticking point), but the issues don't take me too far out of the experience to matter that much. The game world and exploration itself is too much fun.

I don't think I'm qualified to say if it's the best 3D title ever made, as I still have several of the big ones to play for the first time. That said, I still think it's pretty damn good.

[Sumez]

I don't think I could ever qualify this game as objectively "good", and it's definitely not as timeless as the best of the Zelda titles out there, but it's one of the most addicting things I have tried in a long time.
The world is huge and full of things that will sidetrack you like there is no tomorrow. I'm not a big fan of open world games full of repetition and errands, but out of all of them, Breath of the Wild is probably the best at keeping it fresh all the way through.

[Xyga]

So it's not the best Zelda but the best sandbox ?

[cools]

You could slap a whole different face on it and it'd still be fantastic. It's a Zelda title in assets only.

Potentially the best 3D title I've ever played

Right

Right, it's a personal statement. It's made me really think about the other games I've enjoyed long term over the years, they've all had similar features in terms of minimal story and an open ended nature. I'm having me the same feeling I got from SSX3 (Xbox), Carmageddon (PC), Frontier: Elite 2 (Amiga) - all had an absolute ton of play time where I wasn't chasing objectives.

[Sumez]

You could slap a whole different face on it and it'd still be fantastic. It's a Zelda title in assets only.

Absolutely. I was sort of expecting a Zelda game in an open world guise, but it's not really. It's also in no way "open world" in the sense that especially the first Zelda game was, this is very much the Skyrim, Ubisoft, GTA, etc. formula as approached by Nintendo, and much more derivative than any other Nintendo game I have ever seen.
That said, they got away from it very well, and it could have easily been its own franchise entirely. In fact it may even have benefitted from it... except in sales. Slapping the Zelda title/skin on it probably increased sales around 500%.

[Blinge]

Hm, did you play Skyrim? You can just go to any area in the world from the get go (with a few exceptions). Also the main quest can be completely ignored at no detriment to the game or 'progress.' In that way it's way more open than GTA, ubisoft so yeah I'd place it along zeldo 1 in terms of openness.
I'm just being pedantic though, I know what you mean.

[Skykid]

You could slap a whole different face on it and it'd still be fantastic. It's a Zelda title in assets only.

Potentially the best 3D title I've ever played

Right

Right, it's a personal statement.

No need to justify it. He's just salty that anything with "Zelda" on it receives praise. And I enjoy the salt.

That said I'm glad to hear this is 'less Zelda, still Nintendo' if that tallies with your sentiment. I think Zelda as a formula has been increasingly underwhelming for well over a decade and needed to be torn up (if for no other reason than they couldn't find ways to improve the original formula meaningfully enough).

[Sumez]

I kinda agree. While I do think there are a lot of ways you could mix up the classic Zelda formula and still have something that wholly feels like the classic games, I definitely wouldn't want yet another Ocarina of Time. And Skyward Sword was a huge misstep in my opinion.
Now that Nintendo have proven that they CAN do a true open world environment, and better than everyone else, too, I would be really curious to see how a "true" Zelda game in an open world setting could turn out now. But if that's to ever happen, I will have to wait another 10 or 15 years.

[Blinge]

Yeah skyward schlong was awful in comparison to the rest of the series, why so many people revere it I'll never know.

I am curious as to what you mean by true Zelda. Is it, "no hints, markers maps or waypoints: now get movin' " ?

[Sumez]

Not really that, no. It's kinda hard to explain. But classic Zelda gameplay, in my book anyway, is a lot more "methodic" in a way, and limits your abilities in a way that makes you much more dependant on the ones you do have.
Breath of the Wild is immensely open ended, every puzzle is weirdly physics based, and link can jump and even climb almost everywhere. Even the third dimension is employed a lot more strongly, where looking at every other 3D Zelda up to now you'll see that a lot of them feel more like 2D games "filmed in 3D". I think "the trunk puzzle" if any of you have made it to that, is a pretty good example of something that feels very out of place in a Zelda game, but really most of the puzzles that use the runes (especially the magnetism, or using the time stop to apply velocity to a frozen object) has that. I don't dislike it, it just feels like a very different game, and I'm sure a lot of people share that impression.

The abscense of major dungeons in general goes well with this, and is a huge departure for the series, but honestly - if I had to take time out to venture into a huge puzzle oriented dungeon in the middle of this game, I wouldn't have been up for it. It's a big game where I always have a lot of ideas going on in my head about other places I'd like to visit, quests that need solving, and stuff I want to try out, so I like the size that they kept it in, just to break up the pace.

[Sumez]

Honestly the game is very light on hints and quest markers. You're very dependent on free exploration and the marks you put on your map yourself by finding a high vantage point and trying to manually identify points of interest. Shrines and towers are not marked until you activate them, but function well as landmarks. Only a few major quests mark where you need to go, but unless they are somewhere you have already been (in which case it should be pretty obvious where you need to go anyway), you can't really use them for anything other than a general direction.

Breath of the Wild feels like what the quest marker was created to be, "before" every other game completely spoiled it and used it to remove focus from the game world itself. Skyward Sword is much, much, much worse in this regard, pretty much telling you the solution to any puzzle before you even get to observe it yourself.

[cools]

That said I'm glad to hear this is 'less Zelda, still Nintendo' if that tallies with your sentiment. I think Zelda as a formula has been increasingly underwhelming for well over a decade and needed to be torn up (if for no other reason than they couldn't find ways to improve the original formula meaningfully enough).

Absolutely. Dunno how you feel about Mr Biffo but he's done a nice piece explaining far more eloquently than I could: http://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/ ... f-the-wild

Even the third dimension is employed a lot more strongly, where looking at every other 3D Zelda up to now you'll see that a lot of them feel more like 2D games "filmed in 3D". I think "the trunk puzzle" if any of you have made it to that, is a pretty good example of something that feels very out of place in a Zelda game, but really most of the puzzles that use the runes (especially the magnetism, or using the time stop to apply velocity to a frozen object) has that. I don't dislike it, it just feels like a very different game, and I'm sure a lot of people share that impression.

Assuming it's the same one I did, that whole "dungeon" took a few hours to figure out despite only being half a dozen different interlinked puzzles. It was precisely because it's three-dimensional that it took so long, I wasn't thinking beyond a flat plane. Even the Portal games that I see the puzzles being compared to did nothing like this.

[tomwhite2004]

Dunno how you feel about Mr Biffo but he's done a nice piece explaining far more eloquently than I could: http://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/ ... f-the-wild.

Had no idea digitiser had a website, thought that died 15 years ago with teletext, what a nice surprise! Have vey fond memories of Peter Pinsett clogging up the letter pages with gushing tributes to Geri Halliwell and The Spice Girls.

[NYN]

I'm curious.
What's the price for retail/digital in your respective markets? Just for comparison.
I got it for WiiU at €65 retail. Digital is €69,99.
Not saying it isn't worth it or starting to make an argument.
I was just surprised and suspected foul play, since I can get other games for the system new for 50.

[cools]

I paid £48 for the barebones Switch physical release.

Nintendo UK official pricing is £59.99 physical and digital. If you pre-ordered the physical you also got a t-shirt. Painfully high.

[Sumez]

It's rare for me to say this, but after having played much of the game (and still only seen a fraction of it), I can understand why it costs as much as it does. Producing this must be one of the biggest investments Nintendo has ever done, even compared to the hardware releases. The amount of work that has gone into Breath of the Wild is next to nothing, it's absolutely breathtaking, and they must have a LOT of expenses to recoup. Compare Mario Maker which was released at a really low retail price compared to everything else on especially PS4 and XBone.

Breath of the Wild is definitely expensive here as well, but the cheapest stores sell it for only a bit more than what you can find it for on zavvi.co.uk which is where I usually buy games from, as the UK prices tend to be a lot more fair than the Danish. Almost every other game costs at least £10 or £15 more when they are released in stores.

That said I was lucky and picked up the Wii U version for £30 from a friend who got the Switch one instead. So look out for similar occurances, I doubt this game is gonna go cheap on the used games market for at least a few years. Also look at what happened to the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess.

[Shelcoof]

It's rare for me to say this, but after having played much of the game (and still only seen a fraction of it), I can understand why it costs as much as it does. Producing this must be one of the biggest investments Nintendo has ever done, even compared to the hardware releases. The amount of work that has gone into Breath of the Wild is next to nothing, it's absolutely breathtaking, and they must have a LOT of expenses to recoup. Compare Mario Maker which was released at a really low retail price compared to everything else on especially PS4 and XBone.

Breath of the Wild is definitely expensive here as well, but the cheapest stores sell it for only a bit more than what you can find it for on zavvi.co.uk which is where I usually buy games from, as the UK prices tend to be a lot more fair than the Danish. Almost every other game costs at least £10 or £15 more when they are released in stores.

That said I was lucky and picked up the Wii U version for £30 from a friend who got the Switch one instead. So look out for similar occurances, I doubt this game is gonna go cheap on the used games market for at least a few years. Also look at what happened to the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess.

What happened to the GameCube version of Twilight Princess?

All I remember is Nintendo limitedly releasing that version about a month later so that they can push Wii sales
I was lucky I even found a copy of the GC version.

[Sumez]

The Gamecube version is one of the more sought after GC titles, and much more expensive than the Wii version, which everyone bought at the time to justify their purchase of Nintendo's new console.

[Shelcoof]

Back then the GC version was nowhere to be found

[Xyga]

^ Indeed, I remember it became an expensive one very soon after its release.

[Shelcoof]

^ Indeed, I remember it became an expensive one very soon after its release.

It was also the superior version

Full camera controls via the right analog stick and not flipped

[Sumez]

Just saying that the same thing could easily happen to the Wii U version of BotW. It was sold out everywhere like the day after release, while the Switch version was widely available. They are still restocking it though, but god knows how long they will keep it up.


Anyway, regarding the game. I feel like Pikango (traveller you meet at stables) should talk about something else apart from just the fairy at Kakariko village. I found her before even encountering him the first time, and now I've run into him at stables around the entire game world, and he still talks about the same Kakariko "rumor". Do I need to do something special to trigger new hints from him, or did my game glitch out so he will never realise that I already found the fairy he's talking about?

[Shoryukev]

I'd say it's the superior version of Twilight Princess just due to not having stupid waggle controls. Now that we have a wii-u HD remake maybe the GC version of TP will see a drop in price. I've been debating buying the wii-u version, but I own the wii version and I don't remember liking it all that much. Playing it with a traditional controller would definitely improve the experience, but is it worth a purchase?

I don't see the wii-u version of BotW demanding a high price in the future because it doesn't offer anything extra from the switch version. People wanted the GC version of twilight to play it with a regular controller.

So yesterday was the first day since the launch of BotW that I didn't play it. I felt like I needed a break, my right eye was starting to feel a bit irritated (I work a desk job staring at a computer all day so staring at the TV at home for hours on end doesn't help lol).

[Sumez]

I have played the game for hours upon hours - and I read the first line of your spoiler-text and already felt that it spoiled that part for me, so I didn't read the rest >_> My own fault though.

Just a warning for other people here. For reference, I'm assuming the spoiler-text refers to the southwestern of the four "main objectives" of the game. The only one I've done so far is the northeast one (which I also assume the game expects you to do first, even if it's not set in stone)

[Shoryukev]

Sorry Sumez, I'm going to edit it and take the whole spoiler section out. While I'm excited about the game and want to talk about it, probably best to wait a few weeks and make a thread labeled with tons of spoiler warnings.

[Sumez]

Yeah, I share your sentiments. It's impossible to get this game out of my head, and I want to discuss it to death. But I can't even dare searching for the title on YouTube, or enter its subreddit in fear of a spoiler flood.
Basically, it's the kind of game where knowing ANYTHING about any area in the game is sort of a spoiler >_>

[Shoryukev]

It's also very hard to talk about because of it's open-ended nature. My sister has been playing the game about the same time as I have but we've accomplished very different things and haven't really been able to talk about specifics lol