The Imprisoned is horrifying looking... as long as you don't look at its feet.
Seriously. It's super menacing in that initial nightmare sequence, and the scene of it breaking free is effective... and then you get to see its stubby little legs, with toes that have the same properties as water balloons. And they're its weak point, so you can't not focus on them.
Really, I think the Imprisoned should've either had big claw feet, had proportions like a giant blind dinosaur, or had no legs at all, acting more like an enormous snake.
I need to understand the thought process that went into this design. I really do.
It was designed in Japan. The end.
So is Silent Hill. Japan can do actually scary monsters.
My kids, especially my son, were legit scared of the Imprisoned. Even when I have to fight it and the big, goofy toes are shown, it's not going to be any less scary for them. It's design is just a few steps away from a Resident Evil monster. Throw on some clawed feet, arms with clawed hands, and have it dripping saliva and you're basically there.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
My kids, especially my son, were legit scared of the Imprisoned. Even when I have to fight it and the big, goofy toes are shown, it's not going to be any less scary for them. It's design is just a few steps away from a Resident Evil monster. Throw on some clawed feet, arms with clawed hands, and have it dripping saliva and you're basically there.
Yeah, fair enough. This is just my view of the monster. It has a really strong initial concept, and its final form is legit. It just made a bad second impression on me, is all.
I dunno. People have in the past complained about linear design, but like... even the OG game, and ALTTP, had an intended path. Heck, the dungeons were outright numbered, and grew in complexity with each one. You could skip about, but the intended path is clear, and often required items from prior dungeons.
To be fair, the games didn't actually go hard on linearity until... what, Wind Waker? Zelda 1, Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time all let you choose between a number of different dungeons at some point (OoT lets you do three different dungeons the moment you get to the future, for instance), and while Majora's Mask is fairly linear you can technically continue on to beat other dungeons as soon as you've gotten the dungeon item - something that seems likely to have happened to people given the whole "reset the time loop" thing.
Wind Waker's world design is a lot more freeform in how you get to explore the seas than Twilight Princess is with its shadow-gated regions, though, and Skyward Sword is obviously just extremely linear and almost level-based in design. And then they amped up what they'd done in previous games by making the companion character very chatty about giving hints and directions.
Also, an important thing to note about Zelda 1's numbered dungeons is that while the numbers indicate difficulty, their locations are largely hidden from the player so just because you know where dungeons 4 & 6 are doesn't mean that you know where to find 5.
To be a boring nerd about things, here's the dungeon order for Zelda 1:
Unlike the newer games, particularly post-LttP where they start to establish a formula, there's not really that many lock-and-key items in Zelda 1. You need the Raft to get to Level 4, you need the Stepladder to cross a pit in Level 5, and level 6 needs both the Stepladder to cross a pit and the Bow to kill Gohma. Level 7 is revealed by the Recorder, and Level 9 can't be entered until you get the full Triforce of Wisdom.
Note that level 5 and 6 just have you get stuck at some point and have to turn back, you can still do half the dungeon or so before realizing you have no way to continue. (Or the entire dungeon, in the case of Level 6 - Gohma is the last boss!)
While there's some suggested linearity in the numbering (mostly "hey, this dungeon is harder than the last one, you might want to come back later"), it was also very much intended to be a nonlinear explorative adventure where you poke around in random spots and see if you can find a cave with something interesting inside it.
I remember me and my friends all finding dungeon 8 really early because it's the most obvious tree in the whole game to burn. Funnily enough, you get the Red Candle in dungeon 7 which allows you to use the Candle an unlimited amount of times per screen, as opposed to just once per screen with the Blue Candle.
And I'll say it now, dungeon 6 is the hardest dungeon in the game. Wizrobes, Bubbles, and Like-Likes in the same room were no joke. Oddly enough, Dungeon 7 is actually a lot easier than 6 or 8, just based on the enemies in it.
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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+1
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I remember me and my friends all finding dungeon 8 really early because it's the most obvious tree in the whole game to burn. Funnily enough, you get the Red Candle in dungeon 7 which allows you to use the Candle an unlimited amount of times per screen, as opposed to just once per screen with the Blue Candle.
And I'll say it now, dungeon 6 is the hardest dungeon in the game. Wizrobes, Bubbles, and Like-Likes in the same room were no joke. Oddly enough, Dungeon 7 is actually a lot easier than 6 or 8, just based on the enemies in it.
Dungeon 7 is the puzzle dungeon. I think they overestimated the difficulty thinking the fact that it was huge and also had the Grumble Grumble puzzle made it "hard." (which to be fair, in the absence of the internet existing and like, a strategy guide or hint book or kid on the playground, Grumble Grumble was a pretty esoteric puzzle given the bait has a perfectly serviceable - albeit somewhat useless - function outside of that)
I remember me and my friends all finding dungeon 8 really early because it's the most obvious tree in the whole game to burn. Funnily enough, you get the Red Candle in dungeon 7 which allows you to use the Candle an unlimited amount of times per screen, as opposed to just once per screen with the Blue Candle.
It's amazing how every single time I hear about the original Legend of Zelda I realize another set of items or mechanics in the Binding of Isaac is very literally ripped from it.
I think TLOZ's freedom was largely accidental from the devs and largely exaggerated by the fans. I think if Nintendo had a better handle on world design, we would've seen a lot more ALTTP style gating. And while you can go slightly out of order, there are some that still need to be played sequentially, and the game just flows better sticking at least somewhat close to the numbered order.
ALBW and BOTW are really the only non-linear games, and while I rate them both highly, I see them as evidence of how important linear progression can be.
The Imprisoned is horrifying looking... as long as you don't look at its feet.
Seriously. It's super menacing in that initial nightmare sequence, and the scene of it breaking free is effective... and then you get to see its stubby little legs, with toes that have the same properties as water balloons. And they're its weak point, so you can't not focus on them.
Really, I think the Imprisoned should've either had big claw feet, had proportions like a giant blind dinosaur, or had no legs at all, acting more like an enormous snake.
I need to understand the thought process that went into this design. I really do.
They had to give it a weak point somehow and couldn't figure out how to put an eye at that level.
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I now have Skyward Sword in my possession thanks to you all talking about it.
Ok, so it helped that Walmart has it for $49.99 and I wanted to unwrap something for my birthday today. More the former than latter, but I am feeling a bit silly today.
The Imprisoned is horrifying looking... as long as you don't look at its feet.
Seriously. It's super menacing in that initial nightmare sequence, and the scene of it breaking free is effective... and then you get to see its stubby little legs, with toes that have the same properties as water balloons. And they're its weak point, so you can't not focus on them.
Really, I think the Imprisoned should've either had big claw feet, had proportions like a giant blind dinosaur, or had no legs at all, acting more like an enormous snake.
I need to understand the thought process that went into this design. I really do.
They had to give it a weak point somehow and couldn't figure out how to put an eye at that level.
Man. If it had been Eyes all over the body, that would’ve been kinda neat.
Okay I'm clearly a fucking idiot. How the hell do I pull out the harp?? I'm at the light tower. I got both windmills lined up. I'm watching a YouTube video and he just walks in the middle and pulls it out but I can't fucking figure it out.
And the more I play Skyward Sword the more I miss a traditional Zelda game with traditional dungeons. As much as I enjoyed Breath of the Wild I vastly prefer this style of game.
Yeah, BotW never felt like more to me than dicking around in a Zelda-themed open world without any point to it. I could not give less of a fuck about how many recipes there are or how many junk weapons they designed that you break in a dozen swings or how many vistas there are, none of it means the slightest to me when the world itself just doesn't feel alive in the slightest. A disconnected village or two here, a few big places there, scattered enemy camps, the odd ruin or two, it all entirely felt like a flat, built-for-this-game world and not a world anything actually lived in. Even the dungeons were short snorefests. Look at all these ways to screw with bokoblins! Why in the world would I give a fuck about that when every bokoblin camp, at best, just yields another weapon/shield and I'm probably going to break a weapon or two killing everything? It's not like the bokoblins actually do anything, they just hang around camps and you can go right around them. And Link has about as much importance to the game as a sack of old ham bones; he could've just sold the tablet off to somebody at the first village he found, bought a house, gone to farming, and the world never would've missed him.
With the traditional games, beating the likes of Ganon fucking matters in the context of the world. People are afraid, bad things are happening, they want a hero to fix things. They aren't just shrugging their shoulders like nothing happened and moving on. There's an actual arc to the adventure as you collect things and develop into that legendary hero everybody is looking for, with actual suspense as you get to explore what comes next.
Man, I took the opposite impression from the world of BOTW. It felt like a post-apocalyptic landscape where small pockets of civilization are barely hanging on, but people go on with their lives as best they can regardless because what else can you do? It's been three generations since the calamity; most people aren't freaking out about the current state of affairs because it's all they've ever known. But at the same time, in three generations all they've managed to do is hold on to what was left - not fight back or even really build back. Even the population is still a fraction of what it was before Ganon. The Hyrule of BOTW is in a slow death spiral, but its people refuse to give in to despair.
The bleak melancholy of the setting combined with the stubborn hope of its inhabitants is a huge part of what pulled me in. It made the world feel worth fighting for.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, I didn't see any of that. People are just kicking around normal-ass villages and normal-ass farms plopped down onto the landscape. Nobody seems at all actually worried or bothered, monsters are a mostly casual concern. They don't so much as bother to build walls or something to defend themselves, you can literally just walk into every village (unless there happens to actually be some guards, but they're usually there just to keep Link out). The handful of identifiable ruins are cheap nostalgia shots with no meat to them at all; it takes a lot more than a run-down version of the Temple of Time with no context to it to even remotely be impressive. As far as I could tell, Link was almost the only person actually trying to do anything about the world; nobody seemed to care enough to even try to improve things in their own town, much less Hyrule in general.
I've definitely played my share of games in post-apocalyptic settings and Hyrule's in BotW is so weak I'd far more readily label it as just a poorly-populated map than post-apocalyptic. After a disaster, people rebuild over what was ruined and restore what wasn't, they don't just shrug it all off as a bad idea and sit around waiting for somebody to save them.
Instead the place looks like nothing more than the Calamity took over the castle, some villages decided to call it a wrap, and the rest decided to just sit around doing nothing at all for a hundred years. Why would I want to try and save a bunch of people who look like anything but people that actually need, or even particularly want, any saving?
Defeated the first dungeon and acquired the second slate.
Highlight moments
-My son being really not cool with the plant monsters
-Flying the Beetle around to cut the spiders down and then stabbing them on the ground!
-Making the eyeballs dizzy by swinging our sword
If my daughter sees a rupee, she yells out "A gem!" and gets excited until I get it. My son whines for me to turn the game off when I come across the plants, so I just tell him to cover his eyes. Oddly enough, the skeleton mid-boss didn't bother him at all. They were both very disappointed that Zelda was nowhere to be found.
But yeah, they are both extremely drawn into the game, more so than anything we've watched or played thus far. My daughter loves helping me try to solve the puzzles. For all his fear of the enemies, my son has shown signs of excitement in all other situations (climbing, opening chests, swinging, etc).
There's a 95% that we'll be heading to Eldin next!
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Defeated the first dungeon and acquired the second slate.
Highlight moments
-My son being really not cool with the plant monsters
-Flying the Beetle around to cut the spiders down and then stabbing them on the ground!
-Making the eyeballs dizzy by swinging our sword
If my daughter sees a rupee, she yells out "A gem!" and gets excited until I get it. My son whines for me to turn the game off when I come across the plants, so I just tell him to cover his eyes. Oddly enough, the skeleton mid-boss didn't bother him at all. They were both very disappointed that Zelda was nowhere to be found.
But yeah, they are both extremely drawn into the game, more so than anything we've watched or played thus far. My daughter loves helping me try to solve the puzzles. For all his fear of the enemies, my son has shown signs of excitement in all other situations (climbing, opening chests, swinging, etc).
There's a 95% that we'll be heading to Eldin next!
Man, you are making me relive my first playthrough of this game. My daughter was nearly 5 and my son 3 1/2 when this came out and they watched me play through it. They loved it then. I'm so glad you are able to make some fun memories with them!
Yeah, I didn't see any of that. People are just kicking around normal-ass villages and normal-ass farms plopped down onto the landscape. Nobody seems at all actually worried or bothered, monsters are a mostly casual concern. They don't so much as bother to build walls or something to defend themselves, you can literally just walk into every village (unless there happens to actually be some guards, but they're usually there just to keep Link out). The handful of identifiable ruins are cheap nostalgia shots with no meat to them at all; it takes a lot more than a run-down version of the Temple of Time with no context to it to even remotely be impressive. As far as I could tell, Link was almost the only person actually trying to do anything about the world; nobody seemed to care enough to even try to improve things in their own town, much less Hyrule in general.
I've definitely played my share of games in post-apocalyptic settings and Hyrule's in BotW is so weak I'd far more readily label it as just a poorly-populated map than post-apocalyptic. After a disaster, people rebuild over what was ruined and restore what wasn't, they don't just shrug it all off as a bad idea and sit around waiting for somebody to save them.
Instead the place looks like nothing more than the Calamity took over the castle, some villages decided to call it a wrap, and the rest decided to just sit around doing nothing at all for a hundred years. Why would I want to try and save a bunch of people who look like anything but people that actually need, or even particularly want, any saving?
This is a strange post to me. Even if I agreed with your reading of the facts of the game, which I don't, really - I'm not sure what you're really wanting here? Did you want to have Link wake up and be greeted by an army of Hylians, who have matters well in hand and don't need Link's help? No Gods, No Kings, No Ancient Mythical Heroes of Time?
Besides which, Hyrule being populated by weaklings who can't defend themselves in the slightest is a series staple at this point. They are always helpless until Link comes along.
+7
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Defeated the first dungeon and acquired the second slate.
Highlight moments
-My son being really not cool with the plant monsters
-Flying the Beetle around to cut the spiders down and then stabbing them on the ground!
-Making the eyeballs dizzy by swinging our sword
If my daughter sees a rupee, she yells out "A gem!" and gets excited until I get it. My son whines for me to turn the game off when I come across the plants, so I just tell him to cover his eyes. Oddly enough, the skeleton mid-boss didn't bother him at all. They were both very disappointed that Zelda was nowhere to be found.
But yeah, they are both extremely drawn into the game, more so than anything we've watched or played thus far. My daughter loves helping me try to solve the puzzles. For all his fear of the enemies, my son has shown signs of excitement in all other situations (climbing, opening chests, swinging, etc).
There's a 95% that we'll be heading to Eldin next!
I am very curious about what they thought of Girahim :P
Defeated the first dungeon and acquired the second slate.
Highlight moments
-My son being really not cool with the plant monsters
-Flying the Beetle around to cut the spiders down and then stabbing them on the ground!
-Making the eyeballs dizzy by swinging our sword
If my daughter sees a rupee, she yells out "A gem!" and gets excited until I get it. My son whines for me to turn the game off when I come across the plants, so I just tell him to cover his eyes. Oddly enough, the skeleton mid-boss didn't bother him at all. They were both very disappointed that Zelda was nowhere to be found.
But yeah, they are both extremely drawn into the game, more so than anything we've watched or played thus far. My daughter loves helping me try to solve the puzzles. For all his fear of the enemies, my son has shown signs of excitement in all other situations (climbing, opening chests, swinging, etc).
There's a 95% that we'll be heading to Eldin next!
I am very curious about what they thought of Girahim :P
I didn’t know what to expect. They were both caught up in the story and didn’t react much to him. Not even the tongue waggle.
I gave him a vile, arrogant, and crazed voice which I think helped them to get really caught up in the scene. During the fight, my daughter would yell “whoa!” or “ah!” when I got attacked. My son didn’t like that my sword got stolen and used against me. “That’s not his sword!”
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Yeah, I didn't see any of that. People are just kicking around normal-ass villages and normal-ass farms plopped down onto the landscape. Nobody seems at all actually worried or bothered, monsters are a mostly casual concern. They don't so much as bother to build walls or something to defend themselves, you can literally just walk into every village (unless there happens to actually be some guards, but they're usually there just to keep Link out). The handful of identifiable ruins are cheap nostalgia shots with no meat to them at all; it takes a lot more than a run-down version of the Temple of Time with no context to it to even remotely be impressive. As far as I could tell, Link was almost the only person actually trying to do anything about the world; nobody seemed to care enough to even try to improve things in their own town, much less Hyrule in general.
I've definitely played my share of games in post-apocalyptic settings and Hyrule's in BotW is so weak I'd far more readily label it as just a poorly-populated map than post-apocalyptic. After a disaster, people rebuild over what was ruined and restore what wasn't, they don't just shrug it all off as a bad idea and sit around waiting for somebody to save them.
Instead the place looks like nothing more than the Calamity took over the castle, some villages decided to call it a wrap, and the rest decided to just sit around doing nothing at all for a hundred years. Why would I want to try and save a bunch of people who look like anything but people that actually need, or even particularly want, any saving?
To be fair, you're coming in 100 years after the war ended. There may have been brave villagers that took on the Guardians and failed. Now they've found that any areas that have Guardians are a lost cause, but since the Guardians don't have any interest in gaining territory, and only attack when approached, it's easier for them to make their homes and have their trade routes elsewhere. They're not hyper concerned about the monsters because they just see it as the way things are, for all but the very old, it's all they've ever known. And they're not concerned with their impending doom because they don't actually know about it. Regular folk have no idea that Zelda's magic is the only thing keeping Calamity at bay, or that said magic will eventually no longer be enough.
I don't get takes that try to frame BOTW as being a horrible failure in any of the aspects.
people can freely disagree with many of its decisions, but a bad game it is not.
And, in the end, all zelda games are the WORST (except maybe LTTP) if you listen to enough fans of the series, even OoT. That's why i try to not impose a vision into a game before playing it. That way lies only disappointment.
and it's also funny to see so many people disliking the openness of BOTW when most of the online discourse before it was that LoZ had become waaay too linear.
I presume it wasn't the same people complaining about the 2 things, but more of an example of how the disgruntled are far more vocal than the gruntled.
Yeah, I didn't see any of that. People are just kicking around normal-ass villages and normal-ass farms plopped down onto the landscape. Nobody seems at all actually worried or bothered, monsters are a mostly casual concern. They don't so much as bother to build walls or something to defend themselves, you can literally just walk into every village (unless there happens to actually be some guards, but they're usually there just to keep Link out). The handful of identifiable ruins are cheap nostalgia shots with no meat to them at all; it takes a lot more than a run-down version of the Temple of Time with no context to it to even remotely be impressive. As far as I could tell, Link was almost the only person actually trying to do anything about the world; nobody seemed to care enough to even try to improve things in their own town, much less Hyrule in general.
I've definitely played my share of games in post-apocalyptic settings and Hyrule's in BotW is so weak I'd far more readily label it as just a poorly-populated map than post-apocalyptic. After a disaster, people rebuild over what was ruined and restore what wasn't, they don't just shrug it all off as a bad idea and sit around waiting for somebody to save them.
Instead the place looks like nothing more than the Calamity took over the castle, some villages decided to call it a wrap, and the rest decided to just sit around doing nothing at all for a hundred years. Why would I want to try and save a bunch of people who look like anything but people that actually need, or even particularly want, any saving?
This is a strange post to me. Even if I agreed with your reading of the facts of the game, which I don't, really - I'm not sure what you're really wanting here? Did you want to have Link wake up and be greeted by an army of Hylians, who have matters well in hand and don't need Link's help? No Gods, No Kings, No Ancient Mythical Heroes of Time?
Besides which, Hyrule being populated by weaklings who can't defend themselves in the slightest is a series staple at this point. They are always helpless until Link comes along.
Step back to A Link to the Past and you talk to a ton of people worried about Death Mountain, Ganon, the vanished princesses, etc. And you repeatedly come across people who are trying to oppose Ganon's takeover. Hell, the game intro happens because your own uncle makes a try to save Zelda himself and you end up taking on his mission. The people of Hyrule are anything but established weaklings unless the current game is intent on sticking them at that setting, and each of the various races has their own champion and warriors. Ocarina of Time is about freeing a whole pile of people who opposed Ganon, with help from people along the way. Twilight Princess has you directly assisted by another champion whose kingdom was threatened by Ganon. Skyward Sword has a whole order of protectors entrusted to help save the world from evil.
And then in BotW, the people can't even be motivated to so much as fortify their towns. The Calamity hardly seems more than a slight inconvenience, and even then you have to go outside a village for it to be any kind of problem. It's a kingdom with a lineage of knights and heroes and everybody has just kinda packed it all in to fish and farm because, really, there doesn't seem to be any pressing reason to bother with any hero stuff.
People are more urgent in ALttP (and the other games) because shit is going down right the hell now. For the Hylians of BOTW, the war was over before they were born. You talk about the lineage of knights and heroes. Those guys all died. In the war.
It’s a fair argument. Taking into account the team behind it did the others (with natural changeovers in staff across the years) I guess that’s how they wanted it. The people have got over it, and they don’t know Ganon will break free.
Early in development they might have considered a village getting destroyed, or some other escalation, but as the design moved to allow for speed running from plateau to castle, they dropped it.
For all we know the sequel might have the same cast of NPCs more actively fearing or opposing mummy Ganondorf, because it has plot beats that allow for it.
Though I think relative peace worked in BotW’s favour, one more Divine Beast that stomped in a circle around the Hylian and Shiekah villages could have been great. Go to a village while it’s around and everyone is hiding indoors.
and it's also funny to see so many people disliking the openness of BOTW when most of the online discourse before it was that LoZ had become waaay too linear.
I presume it wasn't the same people complaining about the 2 things, but more of an example of how the disgruntled are far more vocal than the gruntled.
Yeah, I'm sure I could dig up some of my own comments from back when ALBW was new and find that I was kinda meh to the whole "any order" thing even back then. Different folks want different things. And sometimes changes make you appreciate more the way it was before.
Yeah, I didn't see any of that. People are just kicking around normal-ass villages and normal-ass farms plopped down onto the landscape. Nobody seems at all actually worried or bothered, monsters are a mostly casual concern. They don't so much as bother to build walls or something to defend themselves, you can literally just walk into every village (unless there happens to actually be some guards, but they're usually there just to keep Link out). The handful of identifiable ruins are cheap nostalgia shots with no meat to them at all; it takes a lot more than a run-down version of the Temple of Time with no context to it to even remotely be impressive. As far as I could tell, Link was almost the only person actually trying to do anything about the world; nobody seemed to care enough to even try to improve things in their own town, much less Hyrule in general.
I've definitely played my share of games in post-apocalyptic settings and Hyrule's in BotW is so weak I'd far more readily label it as just a poorly-populated map than post-apocalyptic. After a disaster, people rebuild over what was ruined and restore what wasn't, they don't just shrug it all off as a bad idea and sit around waiting for somebody to save them.
Instead the place looks like nothing more than the Calamity took over the castle, some villages decided to call it a wrap, and the rest decided to just sit around doing nothing at all for a hundred years. Why would I want to try and save a bunch of people who look like anything but people that actually need, or even particularly want, any saving?
This is a strange post to me. Even if I agreed with your reading of the facts of the game, which I don't, really - I'm not sure what you're really wanting here? Did you want to have Link wake up and be greeted by an army of Hylians, who have matters well in hand and don't need Link's help? No Gods, No Kings, No Ancient Mythical Heroes of Time?
Besides which, Hyrule being populated by weaklings who can't defend themselves in the slightest is a series staple at this point. They are always helpless until Link comes along.
Step back to A Link to the Past and you talk to a ton of people worried about Death Mountain, Ganon, the vanished princesses, etc. And you repeatedly come across people who are trying to oppose Ganon's takeover. Hell, the game intro happens because your own uncle makes a try to save Zelda himself and you end up taking on his mission. The people of Hyrule are anything but established weaklings unless the current game is intent on sticking them at that setting, and each of the various races has their own champion and warriors. Ocarina of Time is about freeing a whole pile of people who opposed Ganon, with help from people along the way. Twilight Princess has you directly assisted by another champion whose kingdom was threatened by Ganon. Skyward Sword has a whole order of protectors entrusted to help save the world from evil.
And then in BotW, the people can't even be motivated to so much as fortify their towns. The Calamity hardly seems more than a slight inconvenience, and even then you have to go outside a village for it to be any kind of problem. It's a kingdom with a lineage of knights and heroes and everybody has just kinda packed it all in to fish and farm because, really, there doesn't seem to be any pressing reason to bother with any hero stuff.
The thing is, there's no real reason to fortify the towns. The monsters don't really attack settlements; they make camps of their own and mostly stay there. They do harass travellers on the road, which is why you don't see very many people travelling.
Meanwhile, the Blood Moons make it pointless to try to take territory back from monsters.
It's never explicitly stated, but I had the impression that Zelda is the reason the monsters are in a holding pattern instead of overrunning the few settlements that are left.
Yeah, I didn't see any of that. People are just kicking around normal-ass villages and normal-ass farms plopped down onto the landscape. Nobody seems at all actually worried or bothered, monsters are a mostly casual concern. They don't so much as bother to build walls or something to defend themselves, you can literally just walk into every village (unless there happens to actually be some guards, but they're usually there just to keep Link out). The handful of identifiable ruins are cheap nostalgia shots with no meat to them at all; it takes a lot more than a run-down version of the Temple of Time with no context to it to even remotely be impressive. As far as I could tell, Link was almost the only person actually trying to do anything about the world; nobody seemed to care enough to even try to improve things in their own town, much less Hyrule in general.
I've definitely played my share of games in post-apocalyptic settings and Hyrule's in BotW is so weak I'd far more readily label it as just a poorly-populated map than post-apocalyptic. After a disaster, people rebuild over what was ruined and restore what wasn't, they don't just shrug it all off as a bad idea and sit around waiting for somebody to save them.
Instead the place looks like nothing more than the Calamity took over the castle, some villages decided to call it a wrap, and the rest decided to just sit around doing nothing at all for a hundred years. Why would I want to try and save a bunch of people who look like anything but people that actually need, or even particularly want, any saving?
This is a strange post to me. Even if I agreed with your reading of the facts of the game, which I don't, really - I'm not sure what you're really wanting here? Did you want to have Link wake up and be greeted by an army of Hylians, who have matters well in hand and don't need Link's help? No Gods, No Kings, No Ancient Mythical Heroes of Time?
Besides which, Hyrule being populated by weaklings who can't defend themselves in the slightest is a series staple at this point. They are always helpless until Link comes along.
Step back to A Link to the Past and you talk to a ton of people worried about Death Mountain, Ganon, the vanished princesses, etc. And you repeatedly come across people who are trying to oppose Ganon's takeover. Hell, the game intro happens because your own uncle makes a try to save Zelda himself and you end up taking on his mission. The people of Hyrule are anything but established weaklings unless the current game is intent on sticking them at that setting, and each of the various races has their own champion and warriors. Ocarina of Time is about freeing a whole pile of people who opposed Ganon, with help from people along the way. Twilight Princess has you directly assisted by another champion whose kingdom was threatened by Ganon. Skyward Sword has a whole order of protectors entrusted to help save the world from evil.
And then in BotW, the people can't even be motivated to so much as fortify their towns. The Calamity hardly seems more than a slight inconvenience, and even then you have to go outside a village for it to be any kind of problem. It's a kingdom with a lineage of knights and heroes and everybody has just kinda packed it all in to fish and farm because, really, there doesn't seem to be any pressing reason to bother with any hero stuff.
And none of those people DO anything until you come around (except the lttp uncle who is killed instantly). So again, what exactly are you wanting here?
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Age of Calamity is right there to show you how the war was like though.
...up to a point, anyway.
I like to imagine that the events depicted in Age of Calamity is basically just a history report from a Hyrulian student who barely paid attention in class and then made the rest of it up.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
The people (and setting) of BotW is all about bleak nihilism. The Calamity happened. Most of the world and its people were destroyed, with a lot of it reclaimed by nature. A lot of the people do talk about Calamity Ganon finishing the job at some point... I mean, from a lot of places in Hyrule you can see the thing circling the castle. The reprieve is a mystery to most people, but what Ganon is, what he represents, is not.
The people try to live as normal a life as possible under such circumstances, but there's this undercurrent of anxiety. Especially in the areas where the 4 Guardians are still doing their damage. For those people, in a very real way, the Calamity never ended. They've adapted to it, to survive around it, but there's a constant reminder of what went down, and what might happen again, right in their back yards.
Maybe you didn't feel it. Maybe the devs didn't do enough to hammer the point home. But for me, the world was an incredibly sad place, on the knife's edge of complete ruin, with the people doing 'normal' things because trying to find a sense of normalcy is all they had left. The common thread is that these are all defeated people. They're not going to rise up on their own.
Hey also random thought but I wish it was stated that Ganon cursed Link to break anything he wielded, it would have been a cute world building equals mechanics thing. I can picture FromSoft saying that if they’d made a game with durability like that.
Hey also random thought but I wish it was stated that Ganon cursed Link to break anything he wielded, it would have been a cute world building equals mechanics thing. I can picture FromSoft saying that if they’d made a game with durability like that.
"Awaken, Scion of Ruin. At your right hand is the power to destroy your enemies, but at the cost of your means of doing so. Go forth and rage against the decline of the world while you can, with whatever resources survive you."
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Both weird af tho. That's what I'm driving at.
I'll see myself out.
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Yeah, fair enough. This is just my view of the monster. It has a really strong initial concept, and its final form is legit. It just made a bad second impression on me, is all.
Wind Waker's world design is a lot more freeform in how you get to explore the seas than Twilight Princess is with its shadow-gated regions, though, and Skyward Sword is obviously just extremely linear and almost level-based in design. And then they amped up what they'd done in previous games by making the companion character very chatty about giving hints and directions.
Also, an important thing to note about Zelda 1's numbered dungeons is that while the numbers indicate difficulty, their locations are largely hidden from the player so just because you know where dungeons 4 & 6 are doesn't mean that you know where to find 5.
To be a boring nerd about things, here's the dungeon order for Zelda 1:
Unlike the newer games, particularly post-LttP where they start to establish a formula, there's not really that many lock-and-key items in Zelda 1. You need the Raft to get to Level 4, you need the Stepladder to cross a pit in Level 5, and level 6 needs both the Stepladder to cross a pit and the Bow to kill Gohma. Level 7 is revealed by the Recorder, and Level 9 can't be entered until you get the full Triforce of Wisdom.
Note that level 5 and 6 just have you get stuck at some point and have to turn back, you can still do half the dungeon or so before realizing you have no way to continue. (Or the entire dungeon, in the case of Level 6 - Gohma is the last boss!)
While there's some suggested linearity in the numbering (mostly "hey, this dungeon is harder than the last one, you might want to come back later"), it was also very much intended to be a nonlinear explorative adventure where you poke around in random spots and see if you can find a cave with something interesting inside it.
And I'll say it now, dungeon 6 is the hardest dungeon in the game. Wizrobes, Bubbles, and Like-Likes in the same room were no joke. Oddly enough, Dungeon 7 is actually a lot easier than 6 or 8, just based on the enemies in it.
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Dungeon 7 is the puzzle dungeon. I think they overestimated the difficulty thinking the fact that it was huge and also had the Grumble Grumble puzzle made it "hard." (which to be fair, in the absence of the internet existing and like, a strategy guide or hint book or kid on the playground, Grumble Grumble was a pretty esoteric puzzle given the bait has a perfectly serviceable - albeit somewhat useless - function outside of that)
It's amazing how every single time I hear about the original Legend of Zelda I realize another set of items or mechanics in the Binding of Isaac is very literally ripped from it.
ALBW and BOTW are really the only non-linear games, and while I rate them both highly, I see them as evidence of how important linear progression can be.
They had to give it a weak point somehow and couldn't figure out how to put an eye at that level.
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Ok, so it helped that Walmart has it for $49.99 and I wanted to unwrap something for my birthday today. More the former than latter, but I am feeling a bit silly today.
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Man. If it had been Eyes all over the body, that would’ve been kinda neat.
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The speedrun strategy is nevertheless to do the first thing. :biggrin:
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Man, I took the opposite impression from the world of BOTW. It felt like a post-apocalyptic landscape where small pockets of civilization are barely hanging on, but people go on with their lives as best they can regardless because what else can you do? It's been three generations since the calamity; most people aren't freaking out about the current state of affairs because it's all they've ever known. But at the same time, in three generations all they've managed to do is hold on to what was left - not fight back or even really build back. Even the population is still a fraction of what it was before Ganon. The Hyrule of BOTW is in a slow death spiral, but its people refuse to give in to despair.
The bleak melancholy of the setting combined with the stubborn hope of its inhabitants is a huge part of what pulled me in. It made the world feel worth fighting for.
I've definitely played my share of games in post-apocalyptic settings and Hyrule's in BotW is so weak I'd far more readily label it as just a poorly-populated map than post-apocalyptic. After a disaster, people rebuild over what was ruined and restore what wasn't, they don't just shrug it all off as a bad idea and sit around waiting for somebody to save them.
Instead the place looks like nothing more than the Calamity took over the castle, some villages decided to call it a wrap, and the rest decided to just sit around doing nothing at all for a hundred years. Why would I want to try and save a bunch of people who look like anything but people that actually need, or even particularly want, any saving?
Defeated the first dungeon and acquired the second slate.
Highlight moments
-My son being really not cool with the plant monsters
-Flying the Beetle around to cut the spiders down and then stabbing them on the ground!
-Making the eyeballs dizzy by swinging our sword
If my daughter sees a rupee, she yells out "A gem!" and gets excited until I get it. My son whines for me to turn the game off when I come across the plants, so I just tell him to cover his eyes. Oddly enough, the skeleton mid-boss didn't bother him at all. They were both very disappointed that Zelda was nowhere to be found.
But yeah, they are both extremely drawn into the game, more so than anything we've watched or played thus far. My daughter loves helping me try to solve the puzzles. For all his fear of the enemies, my son has shown signs of excitement in all other situations (climbing, opening chests, swinging, etc).
There's a 95% that we'll be heading to Eldin next!
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Man, you are making me relive my first playthrough of this game. My daughter was nearly 5 and my son 3 1/2 when this came out and they watched me play through it. They loved it then. I'm so glad you are able to make some fun memories with them!
This is a strange post to me. Even if I agreed with your reading of the facts of the game, which I don't, really - I'm not sure what you're really wanting here? Did you want to have Link wake up and be greeted by an army of Hylians, who have matters well in hand and don't need Link's help? No Gods, No Kings, No Ancient Mythical Heroes of Time?
Besides which, Hyrule being populated by weaklings who can't defend themselves in the slightest is a series staple at this point. They are always helpless until Link comes along.
I am very curious about what they thought of Girahim :P
I didn’t know what to expect. They were both caught up in the story and didn’t react much to him. Not even the tongue waggle.
I gave him a vile, arrogant, and crazed voice which I think helped them to get really caught up in the scene. During the fight, my daughter would yell “whoa!” or “ah!” when I got attacked. My son didn’t like that my sword got stolen and used against me. “That’s not his sword!”
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To be fair, you're coming in 100 years after the war ended. There may have been brave villagers that took on the Guardians and failed. Now they've found that any areas that have Guardians are a lost cause, but since the Guardians don't have any interest in gaining territory, and only attack when approached, it's easier for them to make their homes and have their trade routes elsewhere. They're not hyper concerned about the monsters because they just see it as the way things are, for all but the very old, it's all they've ever known. And they're not concerned with their impending doom because they don't actually know about it. Regular folk have no idea that Zelda's magic is the only thing keeping Calamity at bay, or that said magic will eventually no longer be enough.
people can freely disagree with many of its decisions, but a bad game it is not.
And, in the end, all zelda games are the WORST (except maybe LTTP) if you listen to enough fans of the series, even OoT. That's why i try to not impose a vision into a game before playing it. That way lies only disappointment.
and it's also funny to see so many people disliking the openness of BOTW when most of the online discourse before it was that LoZ had become waaay too linear.
I presume it wasn't the same people complaining about the 2 things, but more of an example of how the disgruntled are far more vocal than the gruntled.
Step back to A Link to the Past and you talk to a ton of people worried about Death Mountain, Ganon, the vanished princesses, etc. And you repeatedly come across people who are trying to oppose Ganon's takeover. Hell, the game intro happens because your own uncle makes a try to save Zelda himself and you end up taking on his mission. The people of Hyrule are anything but established weaklings unless the current game is intent on sticking them at that setting, and each of the various races has their own champion and warriors. Ocarina of Time is about freeing a whole pile of people who opposed Ganon, with help from people along the way. Twilight Princess has you directly assisted by another champion whose kingdom was threatened by Ganon. Skyward Sword has a whole order of protectors entrusted to help save the world from evil.
And then in BotW, the people can't even be motivated to so much as fortify their towns. The Calamity hardly seems more than a slight inconvenience, and even then you have to go outside a village for it to be any kind of problem. It's a kingdom with a lineage of knights and heroes and everybody has just kinda packed it all in to fish and farm because, really, there doesn't seem to be any pressing reason to bother with any hero stuff.
Early in development they might have considered a village getting destroyed, or some other escalation, but as the design moved to allow for speed running from plateau to castle, they dropped it.
For all we know the sequel might have the same cast of NPCs more actively fearing or opposing mummy Ganondorf, because it has plot beats that allow for it.
...up to a point, anyway.
Yeah, I'm sure I could dig up some of my own comments from back when ALBW was new and find that I was kinda meh to the whole "any order" thing even back then. Different folks want different things. And sometimes changes make you appreciate more the way it was before.
The thing is, there's no real reason to fortify the towns. The monsters don't really attack settlements; they make camps of their own and mostly stay there. They do harass travellers on the road, which is why you don't see very many people travelling.
Meanwhile, the Blood Moons make it pointless to try to take territory back from monsters.
It's never explicitly stated, but I had the impression that Zelda is the reason the monsters are in a holding pattern instead of overrunning the few settlements that are left.
And none of those people DO anything until you come around (except the lttp uncle who is killed instantly). So again, what exactly are you wanting here?
I like to imagine that the events depicted in Age of Calamity is basically just a history report from a Hyrulian student who barely paid attention in class and then made the rest of it up.
The people try to live as normal a life as possible under such circumstances, but there's this undercurrent of anxiety. Especially in the areas where the 4 Guardians are still doing their damage. For those people, in a very real way, the Calamity never ended. They've adapted to it, to survive around it, but there's a constant reminder of what went down, and what might happen again, right in their back yards.
Maybe you didn't feel it. Maybe the devs didn't do enough to hammer the point home. But for me, the world was an incredibly sad place, on the knife's edge of complete ruin, with the people doing 'normal' things because trying to find a sense of normalcy is all they had left. The common thread is that these are all defeated people. They're not going to rise up on their own.
"Awaken, Scion of Ruin. At your right hand is the power to destroy your enemies, but at the cost of your means of doing so. Go forth and rage against the decline of the world while you can, with whatever resources survive you."