There is an NPC around the Akkala Citadel that mentions that this spot was where a great many soldiers stood their ground against the Guardians. Someone says something to a similar affect at the gate that leads to Hateno Village mentioning that they wanted to see where it all took place.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
And if the shrines offered up world lore plus heart/stamina chunks instead of dumbass repetitive tokens? That would've probably turned around my whole opinion of the game. Shrine tokens were just an annoying middleman for real upgrades, so ditch that crap. And the one single most overriding thing I wanted out of the game was to find out about the setting and how it came to be. The game as it is gives you virtually nothing, which makes it feel utterly lifeless and dead to me. It doesn't even offer up decent environmental storytelling elements, just piles of nostalgic rubble and the like. No piecing together stories from bits of armor or where bodies fell, no poking through a ruin and realizing you're walking through the remains of an ancient siege, nothing.
So much of what I like about something like Fallout New Vegas is the mountains of explicit and implicit history. Little things like finding a old skeleton left by somebody killed by a trap, and warning the player what's ahead. Big things like digging through pre-war records to find out House isn't what he tells you. This stuff is just out there to find if you want to, and something that was desperately lacking in BotW. It also doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as Hyrule has been inhabitated since forever; there should be historical information all over the damn place, not a big chunk of geography where somehow every last scrap of writing is gone.
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but the Creating a Champion tie-in book has A LOT of background lore included, such as maps depicting Hyrule as it was before Ganon's attack, the routes refugees took to escape, areas where battles were fought, and even a thorough breakdown of a battle at one fortress detailing the series of key events and movements of Hylian troops and Ganon's forces that took place during the battle. It's around the level of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting sourcebook.
I'm assuming all this lore was reserved for this book instead of in-game text because Nintendo didn't think kids would want to read the sheer amount of lore you can find in games like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dishonored, etc.
I guess this a lot of what I feel was missing, and it's pretty lame it wasn't included in the game. Just have npc's dotted around that gives you extra info if you are worried about putting it in the main game.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
And if the shrines offered up world lore plus heart/stamina chunks instead of dumbass repetitive tokens? That would've probably turned around my whole opinion of the game. Shrine tokens were just an annoying middleman for real upgrades, so ditch that crap. And the one single most overriding thing I wanted out of the game was to find out about the setting and how it came to be. The game as it is gives you virtually nothing, which makes it feel utterly lifeless and dead to me. It doesn't even offer up decent environmental storytelling elements, just piles of nostalgic rubble and the like. No piecing together stories from bits of armor or where bodies fell, no poking through a ruin and realizing you're walking through the remains of an ancient siege, nothing.
So much of what I like about something like Fallout New Vegas is the mountains of explicit and implicit history. Little things like finding a old skeleton left by somebody killed by a trap, and warning the player what's ahead. Big things like digging through pre-war records to find out House isn't what he tells you. This stuff is just out there to find if you want to, and something that was desperately lacking in BotW. It also doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as Hyrule has been inhabitated since forever; there should be historical information all over the damn place, not a big chunk of geography where somehow every last scrap of writing is gone.
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but the Creating a Champion tie-in book has A LOT of background lore included, such as maps depicting Hyrule as it was before Ganon's attack, the routes refugees took to escape, areas where battles were fought, and even a thorough breakdown of a battle at one fortress detailing the series of key events and movements of Hylian troops and Ganon's forces that took place during the battle. It's around the level of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting sourcebook.
I'm assuming all this lore was reserved for this book instead of in-game text because Nintendo didn't think kids would want to read the sheer amount of lore you can find in games like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dishonored, etc.
I guess this a lot of what I feel was missing, and it's pretty lame it wasn't included in the game. Just have npc's dotted around that gives you extra info if you are worried about putting it in the main game.
Oof, having that kind of info and not bothering to get it into the game is one of my premiere standards of shitty storytelling/game design. Shuffling the guts of all the important world info off into tie-in books is like... Star Wars Sequel Trilogy levels of bad design.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
you might say it was a central theme of the game that you should be focused on the here and now rather than the nitty gritty details of a dead war from a century ago
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
you might say it was a central theme of the game that you should be focused on the here and now rather than the nitty gritty details of a dead war from a century ago
Yes, thanks for telling me what I should enjoy in a game, particularly when it's material people could just skip right over if they don't want to read and is specifically the material that informs me of the setting and why I should give even a remote shit about saving it.
And if the shrines offered up world lore plus heart/stamina chunks instead of dumbass repetitive tokens? That would've probably turned around my whole opinion of the game. Shrine tokens were just an annoying middleman for real upgrades, so ditch that crap. And the one single most overriding thing I wanted out of the game was to find out about the setting and how it came to be. The game as it is gives you virtually nothing, which makes it feel utterly lifeless and dead to me. It doesn't even offer up decent environmental storytelling elements, just piles of nostalgic rubble and the like. No piecing together stories from bits of armor or where bodies fell, no poking through a ruin and realizing you're walking through the remains of an ancient siege, nothing.
So much of what I like about something like Fallout New Vegas is the mountains of explicit and implicit history. Little things like finding a old skeleton left by somebody killed by a trap, and warning the player what's ahead. Big things like digging through pre-war records to find out House isn't what he tells you. This stuff is just out there to find if you want to, and something that was desperately lacking in BotW. It also doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as Hyrule has been inhabitated since forever; there should be historical information all over the damn place, not a big chunk of geography where somehow every last scrap of writing is gone.
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but the Creating a Champion tie-in book has A LOT of background lore included, such as maps depicting Hyrule as it was before Ganon's attack, the routes refugees took to escape, areas where battles were fought, and even a thorough breakdown of a battle at one fortress detailing the series of key events and movements of Hylian troops and Ganon's forces that took place during the battle. It's around the level of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting sourcebook.
I'm assuming all this lore was reserved for this book instead of in-game text because Nintendo didn't think kids would want to read the sheer amount of lore you can find in games like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dishonored, etc.
I guess this a lot of what I feel was missing, and it's pretty lame it wasn't included in the game. Just have npc's dotted around that gives you extra info if you are worried about putting it in the main game.
There are? The people around the fort talk about it a lot, it comes up in the memory scenes, etc. Not to the extent of "most everyone went that way, LZ went this way" but
Herein lies the problem with supplemental material like this. It's cool! It's great it's somewhere to be read! However, by releasing it, people will get upset that it's not in the game proper.
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
you might say it was a central theme of the game that you should be focused on the here and now rather than the nitty gritty details of a dead war from a century ago
Yes, thanks for telling me what I should enjoy in a game, particularly when it's material people could just skip right over if they don't want to read and is specifically the material that informs me of the setting and why I should give even a remote shit about saving it.
Oh, I'm not telling you what you should enjoy in the game. I'm telling you you didn't understand the story that was there and mistook it for not having a story.
More seriously, it seems odd to me that this background detail is apparently what would make you care about saving the world. Rather than interacting with the people in the world and their lives and preferring they not all die a horrible apocalyptic death.
I suppose that's a valid take! But trying to appease that would lead to a drastically different game. It reminds me of taking issue with the music for being so sparse and abstract. It's not that they forgot to write good, engaging music, it's a specific design choice made to effect how the world feels. Same goes for the density and detail of the lore.
But perhaps I'm just biased there because I like my post-apocalyptica to focus more on the rebuilding and how humanity adapts than the actual events of the apocalypse.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Herein lies the problem with supplemental material like this. It's cool! It's great it's somewhere to be read! However, by releasing it, people will get upset that it's not in the game proper.
It's one thing when it's something like an artbook, because you get to see all the final work in the game and I enjoy getting to see how all of that was developed. It's entirely another matter to leave out basically the entire history of the world and leave you with a nearly-blank nothing.
All those random pointless nostalgic spots that do fuck-all? Being able to dig up the history of those spots is exactly the thing that would've made the game enjoyable instead of tedious for me. As it was, I had zero connection to this Hyrule and no interest in saving it; nobody seemed particularly bothered by monsters and goblins anyway, outside the beasts bothering the immediate areas in some way.
Herein lies the problem with supplemental material like this. It's cool! It's great it's somewhere to be read! However, by releasing it, people will get upset that it's not in the game proper.
It's one thing when it's something like an artbook, because you get to see all the final work in the game and I enjoy getting to see how all of that was developed. It's entirely another matter to leave out basically the entire history of the world and leave you with a nearly-blank nothing.
All those random pointless nostalgic spots that do fuck-all? Being able to dig up the history of those spots is exactly the thing that would've made the game enjoyable instead of tedious for me. As it was, I had zero connection to this Hyrule and no interest in saving it; nobody seemed particularly bothered by monsters and goblins anyway, outside the beasts bothering the immediate areas in some way.
They... didn't, though? The history was there. It wasn't spelled out for you, but it was definitely there.
I'm still going with the hypotheses that Nintendo believed the younger players of the game wouldn't be interested reading through tons of lore when they could be out fighting monsters.
Me personally, I'll freely admit that I probably only read in-game lore about 30% of the time in games like Mass Effect, Dishonored, Skyrim, etc. Something needs to be short or seem immediately relevant to a topic I'd find interesting for me to bother.
In contrast, I love reading about obscure Dungeons & Dragons lore because I'm often using it for inspiration for game sessions I want to run. If I was in a D&D group where the DM was constantly giving us extended lore dumps in the middle of a session when I could be fighting monsters or roleplaying I'd be annoyed.
Herein lies the problem with supplemental material like this. It's cool! It's great it's somewhere to be read! However, by releasing it, people will get upset that it's not in the game proper.
It's one thing when it's something like an artbook, because you get to see all the final work in the game and I enjoy getting to see how all of that was developed. It's entirely another matter to leave out basically the entire history of the world and leave you with a nearly-blank nothing.
All those random pointless nostalgic spots that do fuck-all? Being able to dig up the history of those spots is exactly the thing that would've made the game enjoyable instead of tedious for me. As it was, I had zero connection to this Hyrule and no interest in saving it; nobody seemed particularly bothered by monsters and goblins anyway, outside the beasts bothering the immediate areas in some way.
They... didn't, though? The history was there. It wasn't spelled out for you, but it was definitely there.
Right, like if you came through the Dueling Peaks and when presented with this huge area with the remains of Guardians everywhere, most notably lined up along a stone gate appearing to be trying to climb it during their time of death, and didn't think something along the lines of "whoa, some shit went down here" then you weren't paying attention.
Not to mention there being battered settlements and the husks of buildings scattered all over the world. I didn't need some note that feels like the kind of thing no actual person would write describing details for you to conveniently find, I could see it. Also, the written entries in Hyrule Castle do a lot to highlight the danger that Link and Zelda were up against 100 years ago when Ganon first appeared. And again, the cutscenes from the memories too. There is plenty there.
You find multiple (main) characters' diaries... many of which cover 20-100 years of history/events in 4-6 'entries'. Reading for flavor text is completely absent, from my experience with the game. Minimizing read exposition was clearly a design goal, for better or worse.
They definitely went with a "show, don't tell" approach. The game wants you to play with its sandbox, not read about lore. It's one of a number of facets of the game's design that I imagine can be intensely frustrating if that's not how you choose/prefer to engage with games.
Welp, wrapped up all the shrine quests and side quests (except the two that require you to enter the castle). The last quest I found was the 3 Hinox brothers, somehow I missed that area of the map entirely. Have 15 shrines left to find, wondering if I should do the DLC now or wait until I've found all the shrines. Not going to bother maxing out all the armor, but I'll probably max the barbarian and ancient sets for endgame purposes. Disappointed that you can't enhance the Dark suit, like why even include it with such pitiful stats then?
Welp, wrapped up all the shrine quests and side quests (except the two that require you to enter the castle). The last quest I found was the 3 Hinox brothers, somehow I missed that area of the map entirely. Have 15 shrines left to find, wondering if I should do the DLC now or wait until I've found all the shrines. Not going to bother maxing out all the armor, but I'll probably max the barbarian and ancient sets for endgame purposes. Disappointed that you can't enhance the Dark suit, like why even include it with such pitiful stats then?
I think I did the DLC after I got all the shrines, but honestly I can't remember now. There are some advantages of having the stats from all the shrines, but not much if you ask me. The one thing that does bug me about the game is that you can't max out stamina and hearts. That bugged me for a while till I just gave up and maxed out my stamina and ate food to max the hearts.
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I really liked the storytelling of Breath of the Wild. It was mostly show, not tell, and it created some really great
m o o d
as a result. I didn't need or want deep exposition explaining all of the bits. It was cool enough coming to a field filled with the ruins of long-destroyed guardians and knowing some shit went down there. Tolkien wrote thousands of pages of world building that were merely for him, so that when he made his books they were consistent. Those things getting released to the public following his death did not make lord of the rings any better.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Finding diaries and logs and things is fun, but I don't know that it's really necessary. BotW made an intentional decision not to scatter the map with those things, and still manages to be a hundred hour game or (much) more. Instead of racking up hours reading notes, you spend that time actually playing and exploring and fighting. And talking to townspeople, of course, there is still plenty of actual story here.
I picture what if I had come across some log that was like "Year 360 common era. The guardians surround our fort. The damnable creatures have nearly breached the walls. Gerta is scared, and I do not blame her. The aid from the south is apparently not coming."
Would the game have been suddenly way better for including that? I can already tell that sort of situation happened.
Or "Lukas and I have made final preparations. He provided the rope and I provided the explosives. If all goes well, the Grand Bank of Hyrule will be breached tomorrow night, and we will be swimming in rupees. At last I will have my revenge on that smarmy bastard Niklaus."
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I don't think the game needed a ton more narrative material. A bit might have been nice, but too much would have just been overload.
Sidenote: I think the Blood Moon effectively erasing any work I'd done crawling the map in terms of wiping out monsters also eventually got to me, as I'm used to making incremental progress across open world maps in "taking back" the land. And I know why it was happening, the whole point of the mechanic was to remind you constantly that while Ganon was about, the monsters would just. Keep. Coming. There was no chance of reclaiming the land without wiping out the source of their immortality. But it goes against the grain of most open world games, which is probably why others liked it, and I didn't so much like it. There was only so much effect I could have on the world, and I like my Link to make a grand impact.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I don't think the game needed a ton more narrative material. A bit might have been nice, but too much would have just been overload.
Sidenote: I think the Blood Moon effectively erasing any work I'd done crawling the map in terms of wiping out monsters also eventually got to me, as I'm used to making incremental progress across open world maps in "taking back" the land. And I know why it was happening, the whole point of the mechanic was to remind you constantly that while Ganon was about, the monsters would just. Keep. Coming. There was no chance of reclaiming the land without wiping out the source of their immortality. But it goes against the grain of most open world games, which is probably why others liked it, and I didn't so much like it. There was only so much effect I could have on the world, and I like my Link to make a grand impact.
I loved rebuilding the town. I would love to do more of that and "reclaim" land as part of a game.
Yeah, the rebuilding of the town, and also the rebuilding of the home? That felt really good. I'd love to rebuild walls and and farms and homes and other ruins around that map, work towards helping reclaim the land from the folly of years past. Hell, it would also be cool to get a choice of rebuilding what was there, or making something new. Leaving the ruins to be ruins, and marching on with the world and time and all that.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I don't think the game needed a ton more narrative material. A bit might have been nice, but too much would have just been overload.
Sidenote: I think the Blood Moon effectively erasing any work I'd done crawling the map in terms of wiping out monsters also eventually got to me, as I'm used to making incremental progress across open world maps in "taking back" the land. And I know why it was happening, the whole point of the mechanic was to remind you constantly that while Ganon was about, the monsters would just. Keep. Coming. There was no chance of reclaiming the land without wiping out the source of their immortality. But it goes against the grain of most open world games, which is probably why others liked it, and I didn't so much like it. There was only so much effect I could have on the world, and I like my Link to make a grand impact.
I could see how that might be frustrating at first but the Blood Moon sort of has to be there for a couple things: one is should you accidentally fuck up one of the Korok puzzles (you ran out of boulders to throw in a circle or rocks, picked fruit off a tree in one of those "match three" puzzles in the wrong order, etc) as the Blood Moon resets the environmental elements for solving such puzzles, and secondly you wouldn't be able to fully upgrade all of your armor without the enemies respawning to provide the needed monster parts.
Beyond that, I just thought it was a cool gimmick that let me run around and kill Lynels and some of the tougher enemy camps again. I think the progress comes in the form of being able to handle enemies that much better over time to the point where they probably just wished they could stay dead.
I don't think the game needed a ton more narrative material. A bit might have been nice, but too much would have just been overload.
Sidenote: I think the Blood Moon effectively erasing any work I'd done crawling the map in terms of wiping out monsters also eventually got to me, as I'm used to making incremental progress across open world maps in "taking back" the land. And I know why it was happening, the whole point of the mechanic was to remind you constantly that while Ganon was about, the monsters would just. Keep. Coming. There was no chance of reclaiming the land without wiping out the source of their immortality. But it goes against the grain of most open world games, which is probably why others liked it, and I didn't so much like it. There was only so much effect I could have on the world, and I like my Link to make a grand impact.
The first time this happened i was so mad.
It made it very hard for me to remember what places I'd cleared and what I hadn't, and I had to start keeping a physical map of where I'd already cleared so I wouldn't waste time and weapons on fights with less than no reward.
I don't think the game needed a ton more narrative material. A bit might have been nice, but too much would have just been overload.
Sidenote: I think the Blood Moon effectively erasing any work I'd done crawling the map in terms of wiping out monsters also eventually got to me, as I'm used to making incremental progress across open world maps in "taking back" the land. And I know why it was happening, the whole point of the mechanic was to remind you constantly that while Ganon was about, the monsters would just. Keep. Coming. There was no chance of reclaiming the land without wiping out the source of their immortality. But it goes against the grain of most open world games, which is probably why others liked it, and I didn't so much like it. There was only so much effect I could have on the world, and I like my Link to make a grand impact.
I could see how that might be frustrating at first but the Blood Moon sort of has to be there for a couple things: one is should you accidentally fuck up one of the Korok puzzles (you ran out of boulders to throw in a circle or rocks, picked fruit off a tree in one of those "match three" puzzles in the wrong order, etc) as the Blood Moon resets the environmental elements for solving such puzzles, and secondly you wouldn't be able to fully upgrade all of your armor without the enemies respawning to provide the needed monster parts.
Beyond that, I just thought it was a cool gimmick that let me run around and kill Lynels and some of the tougher enemy camps again. I think the progress comes in the form of being able to handle enemies that much better over time to the point where they probably just wished they could stay dead.
That is almost certainly true, all of it! I mean, mechanically, it is 100% true. And again, it does seem the combat is less the obstacle and more a path, much like Dark Souls combat; you don't just get better at the character you picked, but also at fighting any enemy with the tools on hand that you've chosen, and learning the combat system as a whole seems virtually required to combat anything in BotW effectively.
Which, as I've stated, is something that turned me off. I mean, I do like the Dark Souls games, but I only like them at specific times. I have to be in the mood for that kind of unforgiving combat mode, and I don't play or want that ever in Zelda, so it existing that the combat is meant to be deeper than "block, slash, block again" or some version of easy combat that I come to Zelda games specifically for . . . it was a very abrupt and generally unfun time fighting anything, and only at the end of everything when I had to kill Lynels to upgrade my armor did I even come close to learning the combat system enough to do that. And at that point, sure it was pretty solid, the combat, but had stopped being fun because My brain didn't see a reason why I should be having to devote that much energy to learning a combat system in a Zelda game.
I honestly, more or less, come to Zelda games for fun but shallow gameplay and puzzles that are only so tough that they make the character a badass, without being so hard that I die more than a handful or two of times.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
The Blood Moon also has to be there to prevent memory leaks. I suspect that's the main reason it exists, actually.
It happens every couple of days or whenever the memory's leaking and needs a refresh.
Not so much leaking as overflowing. Every change that you make to the world is something that needs to be tracked, and there are just too many things in the world to be able to store them all.
The Blood Moon also has to be there to prevent memory leaks. I suspect that's the main reason it exists, actually.
It happens every couple of days or whenever the memory's leaking and needs a refresh.
Not so much leaking as overflowing. Every change that you make to the world is something that needs to be tracked, and there are just too many things in the world to be able to store them all.
This is a post on Reddit from a Modder who actually went through and figured out a lot about the Time System, Blood Moons, Lord of the Mountain and Panic Blood Moon. Basically the Blood Moons are not there to prevent memory leaks for number of monsters that died.
It is a great read for people who really want to know the details of the game. He has a lot to say which is why I didn't just copy and paste it here.
The Blood Moon also has to be there to prevent memory leaks. I suspect that's the main reason it exists, actually.
It happens every couple of days or whenever the memory's leaking and needs a refresh.
Not so much leaking as overflowing. Every change that you make to the world is something that needs to be tracked, and there are just too many things in the world to be able to store them all.
This is a post on Reddit from a Modder who actually went through and figured out a lot about the Time System, Blood Moons, Lord of the Mountain and Panic Blood Moon. Basically the Blood Moons are not there to prevent memory leaks for number of monsters that died.
It is a great read for people who really want to know the details of the game. He has a lot to say which is why I didn't just copy and paste it here.
The Blood Moon also has to be there to prevent memory leaks. I suspect that's the main reason it exists, actually.
It happens every couple of days or whenever the memory's leaking and needs a refresh.
Not so much leaking as overflowing. Every change that you make to the world is something that needs to be tracked, and there are just too many things in the world to be able to store them all.
This is a post on Reddit from a Modder who actually went through and figured out a lot about the Time System, Blood Moons, Lord of the Mountain and Panic Blood Moon. Basically the Blood Moons are not there to prevent memory leaks for number of monsters that died.
It is a great read for people who really want to know the details of the game. He has a lot to say which is why I didn't just copy and paste it here.
I like having monsters respawn, given that it's an open-world game. It would feel deeply, brokenly uncanny to me if I could single-handedly eradicate monsters from an area forever by killing them individually. That's not how infestations work.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I like having monsters respawn, given that it's an open-world game. It would feel deeply, brokenly uncanny to me if I could single-handedly eradicate monsters from an area forever by killing them individually. That's not how infestations work.
I agree, I just would have liked it if there was a pre-Link state, and a post Link, post Blood Moon state. Say, less creatures after you've gone through an area once, since all the spawns at least seem predetermined. Even a few less Bokoblins or something might have been nice, as well as some visual representation I'd cleared the place out prior.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I like having monsters respawn, given that it's an open-world game. It would feel deeply, brokenly uncanny to me if I could single-handedly eradicate monsters from an area forever by killing them individually. That's not how infestations work.
I agree, I just would have liked it if there was a pre-Link state, and a post Link, post Blood Moon state. Say, less creatures after you've gone through an area once, since all the spawns at least seem predetermined. Even a few less Bokoblins or something might have been nice, as well as some visual representation I'd cleared the place out prior.
"link was here" graffiti being hopelessly scrubbed at by a dejected Bokoblin
I mean, mobs do respawn as higher level enemies with better/different weaponry as the game progresses? Which, unless you're just brute-forcing everything, absolutely demands changing/smarter strategies.
It's also basically necessary to make the durability system viable. If you couldn't farm appropriate-tier weapons off enemies at any given point in the game it'd just be miserable (I know some of you think it's miserable regardless).
I mean, mobs do respawn as higher level enemies with better/different weaponry as the game progresses? Which, unless you're just brute-forcing everything, absolutely demands changing/smarter strategies.
It's also basically necessary to make the durability system viable. If you couldn't farm appropriate-tier weapons off enemies at any given point in the game it'd just be miserable (I know some of you think it's miserable regardless).
hi its me, the brute force guy.
i love the idea of the evolving world and hope they go there someday. i could see using resources to pay for forts/fortifactions to be built. So its your little village++. You can bring in traders, craftsman. You not only fight off the evil in the land but you actively try to change it for the better. Establish trade routes between the races, etc.
I like having monsters respawn, given that it's an open-world game. It would feel deeply, brokenly uncanny to me if I could single-handedly eradicate monsters from an area forever by killing them individually. That's not how infestations work.
I agree, I just would have liked it if there was a pre-Link state, and a post Link, post Blood Moon state. Say, less creatures after you've gone through an area once, since all the spawns at least seem predetermined. Even a few less Bokoblins or something might have been nice, as well as some visual representation I'd cleared the place out prior.
"link was here" graffiti being hopelessly scrubbed at by a dejected Bokoblin
Bokoblins picking up pottery shards, trying in vain to get the explosion impact scorch marks off the ground, picking pieces of bokoblin out of the walls . . . (okay, that last one is pretty dark)
I mean, mobs do respawn as higher level enemies with better/different weaponry as the game progresses? Which, unless you're just brute-forcing everything, absolutely demands changing/smarter strategies.
It's also basically necessary to make the durability system viable. If you couldn't farm appropriate-tier weapons off enemies at any given point in the game it'd just be miserable (I know some of you think it's miserable regardless).
hi its me, the brute force guy.
i love the idea of the evolving world and hope they go there someday. i could see using resources to pay for forts/fortifactions to be built. So its your little village++. You can bring in traders, craftsman. You not only fight off the evil in the land but you actively try to change it for the better. Establish trade routes between the races, etc.
but that's probably not a zelda game anymore
If Breath of the Wild counts as a Zelda game, I don't see why some resource management sim elements would change a game to be not part of the series.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I'm VERY curious what the seven day version of Majora's Mask would have been like. There's already a lot of NPCs in the final game who have stories you can follow that unfold over the course of the three days. I can't imagine how much more content there would have been if the original seven day plan had been followed.
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I guess this a lot of what I feel was missing, and it's pretty lame it wasn't included in the game. Just have npc's dotted around that gives you extra info if you are worried about putting it in the main game.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
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Oof, having that kind of info and not bothering to get it into the game is one of my premiere standards of shitty storytelling/game design. Shuffling the guts of all the important world info off into tie-in books is like... Star Wars Sequel Trilogy levels of bad design.
Yes, thanks for telling me what I should enjoy in a game, particularly when it's material people could just skip right over if they don't want to read and is specifically the material that informs me of the setting and why I should give even a remote shit about saving it.
There are? The people around the fort talk about it a lot, it comes up in the memory scenes, etc. Not to the extent of "most everyone went that way, LZ went this way" but
Oh, I'm not telling you what you should enjoy in the game. I'm telling you you didn't understand the story that was there and mistook it for not having a story.
More seriously, it seems odd to me that this background detail is apparently what would make you care about saving the world. Rather than interacting with the people in the world and their lives and preferring they not all die a horrible apocalyptic death.
I suppose that's a valid take! But trying to appease that would lead to a drastically different game. It reminds me of taking issue with the music for being so sparse and abstract. It's not that they forgot to write good, engaging music, it's a specific design choice made to effect how the world feels. Same goes for the density and detail of the lore.
But perhaps I'm just biased there because I like my post-apocalyptica to focus more on the rebuilding and how humanity adapts than the actual events of the apocalypse.
It's one thing when it's something like an artbook, because you get to see all the final work in the game and I enjoy getting to see how all of that was developed. It's entirely another matter to leave out basically the entire history of the world and leave you with a nearly-blank nothing.
All those random pointless nostalgic spots that do fuck-all? Being able to dig up the history of those spots is exactly the thing that would've made the game enjoyable instead of tedious for me. As it was, I had zero connection to this Hyrule and no interest in saving it; nobody seemed particularly bothered by monsters and goblins anyway, outside the beasts bothering the immediate areas in some way.
They... didn't, though? The history was there. It wasn't spelled out for you, but it was definitely there.
Me personally, I'll freely admit that I probably only read in-game lore about 30% of the time in games like Mass Effect, Dishonored, Skyrim, etc. Something needs to be short or seem immediately relevant to a topic I'd find interesting for me to bother.
In contrast, I love reading about obscure Dungeons & Dragons lore because I'm often using it for inspiration for game sessions I want to run. If I was in a D&D group where the DM was constantly giving us extended lore dumps in the middle of a session when I could be fighting monsters or roleplaying I'd be annoyed.
Right, like if you came through the Dueling Peaks and when presented with this huge area with the remains of Guardians everywhere, most notably lined up along a stone gate appearing to be trying to climb it during their time of death, and didn't think something along the lines of "whoa, some shit went down here" then you weren't paying attention.
Not to mention there being battered settlements and the husks of buildings scattered all over the world. I didn't need some note that feels like the kind of thing no actual person would write describing details for you to conveniently find, I could see it. Also, the written entries in Hyrule Castle do a lot to highlight the danger that Link and Zelda were up against 100 years ago when Ganon first appeared. And again, the cutscenes from the memories too. There is plenty there.
They definitely went with a "show, don't tell" approach. The game wants you to play with its sandbox, not read about lore. It's one of a number of facets of the game's design that I imagine can be intensely frustrating if that's not how you choose/prefer to engage with games.
I think I did the DLC after I got all the shrines, but honestly I can't remember now. There are some advantages of having the stats from all the shrines, but not much if you ask me. The one thing that does bug me about the game is that you can't max out stamina and hearts. That bugged me for a while till I just gave up and maxed out my stamina and ate food to max the hearts.
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m o o d
as a result. I didn't need or want deep exposition explaining all of the bits. It was cool enough coming to a field filled with the ruins of long-destroyed guardians and knowing some shit went down there. Tolkien wrote thousands of pages of world building that were merely for him, so that when he made his books they were consistent. Those things getting released to the public following his death did not make lord of the rings any better.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I picture what if I had come across some log that was like "Year 360 common era. The guardians surround our fort. The damnable creatures have nearly breached the walls. Gerta is scared, and I do not blame her. The aid from the south is apparently not coming."
Would the game have been suddenly way better for including that? I can already tell that sort of situation happened.
Or "Lukas and I have made final preparations. He provided the rope and I provided the explosives. If all goes well, the Grand Bank of Hyrule will be breached tomorrow night, and we will be swimming in rupees. At last I will have my revenge on that smarmy bastard Niklaus."
That isn't exactly revolutionary stuff.
Sidenote: I think the Blood Moon effectively erasing any work I'd done crawling the map in terms of wiping out monsters also eventually got to me, as I'm used to making incremental progress across open world maps in "taking back" the land. And I know why it was happening, the whole point of the mechanic was to remind you constantly that while Ganon was about, the monsters would just. Keep. Coming. There was no chance of reclaiming the land without wiping out the source of their immortality. But it goes against the grain of most open world games, which is probably why others liked it, and I didn't so much like it. There was only so much effect I could have on the world, and I like my Link to make a grand impact.
The first time this happened i was so mad.
Yeah, the rebuilding of the town, and also the rebuilding of the home? That felt really good. I'd love to rebuild walls and and farms and homes and other ruins around that map, work towards helping reclaim the land from the folly of years past. Hell, it would also be cool to get a choice of rebuilding what was there, or making something new. Leaving the ruins to be ruins, and marching on with the world and time and all that.
I could see how that might be frustrating at first but the Blood Moon sort of has to be there for a couple things: one is should you accidentally fuck up one of the Korok puzzles (you ran out of boulders to throw in a circle or rocks, picked fruit off a tree in one of those "match three" puzzles in the wrong order, etc) as the Blood Moon resets the environmental elements for solving such puzzles, and secondly you wouldn't be able to fully upgrade all of your armor without the enemies respawning to provide the needed monster parts.
Beyond that, I just thought it was a cool gimmick that let me run around and kill Lynels and some of the tougher enemy camps again. I think the progress comes in the form of being able to handle enemies that much better over time to the point where they probably just wished they could stay dead.
It happens every couple of days or whenever the memory's leaking and needs a refresh.
It made it very hard for me to remember what places I'd cleared and what I hadn't, and I had to start keeping a physical map of where I'd already cleared so I wouldn't waste time and weapons on fights with less than no reward.
That is almost certainly true, all of it! I mean, mechanically, it is 100% true. And again, it does seem the combat is less the obstacle and more a path, much like Dark Souls combat; you don't just get better at the character you picked, but also at fighting any enemy with the tools on hand that you've chosen, and learning the combat system as a whole seems virtually required to combat anything in BotW effectively.
Which, as I've stated, is something that turned me off. I mean, I do like the Dark Souls games, but I only like them at specific times. I have to be in the mood for that kind of unforgiving combat mode, and I don't play or want that ever in Zelda, so it existing that the combat is meant to be deeper than "block, slash, block again" or some version of easy combat that I come to Zelda games specifically for . . . it was a very abrupt and generally unfun time fighting anything, and only at the end of everything when I had to kill Lynels to upgrade my armor did I even come close to learning the combat system enough to do that. And at that point, sure it was pretty solid, the combat, but had stopped being fun because My brain didn't see a reason why I should be having to devote that much energy to learning a combat system in a Zelda game.
I honestly, more or less, come to Zelda games for fun but shallow gameplay and puzzles that are only so tough that they make the character a badass, without being so hard that I die more than a handful or two of times.
Not so much leaking as overflowing. Every change that you make to the world is something that needs to be tracked, and there are just too many things in the world to be able to store them all.
This is a post on Reddit from a Modder who actually went through and figured out a lot about the Time System, Blood Moons, Lord of the Mountain and Panic Blood Moon. Basically the Blood Moons are not there to prevent memory leaks for number of monsters that died.
It is a great read for people who really want to know the details of the game. He has a lot to say which is why I didn't just copy and paste it here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Breath_of_the_Wild/comments/9t0xdz/clarifying_the_time_system_blood_moons_and_lord/
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No, they do however trigger for other memory issues there though.
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Very true, I should have mentioned that.
Edit: Yep, should have mentioned that the panic blood moon is to help with performance issues and memory.
Steam: betsuni7
I agree, I just would have liked it if there was a pre-Link state, and a post Link, post Blood Moon state. Say, less creatures after you've gone through an area once, since all the spawns at least seem predetermined. Even a few less Bokoblins or something might have been nice, as well as some visual representation I'd cleared the place out prior.
"link was here" graffiti being hopelessly scrubbed at by a dejected Bokoblin
Say you beat three bokonlins around a fire. Next time they’ve got shields and they’re facing away from the fire, and one is behind a tree with a bow.
Even rarer, maybe an encounter is just done, and next time you go there you’ll find a lot of wildlife and resources instead.
It's also basically necessary to make the durability system viable. If you couldn't farm appropriate-tier weapons off enemies at any given point in the game it'd just be miserable (I know some of you think it's miserable regardless).
hi its me, the brute force guy.
i love the idea of the evolving world and hope they go there someday. i could see using resources to pay for forts/fortifactions to be built. So its your little village++. You can bring in traders, craftsman. You not only fight off the evil in the land but you actively try to change it for the better. Establish trade routes between the races, etc.
but that's probably not a zelda game anymore
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Bokoblins picking up pottery shards, trying in vain to get the explosion impact scorch marks off the ground, picking pieces of bokoblin out of the walls . . . (okay, that last one is pretty dark)
If Breath of the Wild counts as a Zelda game, I don't see why some resource management sim elements would change a game to be not part of the series.
Oh, and Ocarina of Time was going to have a boss rush dungeon.
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I'm VERY curious what the seven day version of Majora's Mask would have been like. There's already a lot of NPCs in the final game who have stories you can follow that unfold over the course of the three days. I can't imagine how much more content there would have been if the original seven day plan had been followed.
An boss rush dungeon in Ocarina of Time though? That feels out of place for a Zelda game, but I bet that would be fun.
Know what isn’t out of place for the next Zelda game?
Unlocking a sealed coffin deep beneath the earth half way through BotW2, and out pops Tingle. With a machine gun.