Zelda: Breath of the Wild [WU,NX]

Goodtwin

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With E3 coming in a couple months, and we have already heard confirmation that Nintendo will be showcasing the next Zelda adventure, its gotten me in the mood to go back and play some previous Zelda games in anticipation of getting to see what the next edition will be like. I have recently been playing Twilight Princess, and while it is probably Nintendo's largest Zelda adventure to date, it also showcases some areas where Nintendo simply needs to progress.

For example, the land of Hyrule is pretty large in Twilight Princess, but its also pretty bare. I would like to see a more people, houses, mini games, and shops scattered around outside of the main villages. And for the main villages, I would like to see considerable effort made to make those villages a bit more believable. Even Link's home village only houses a handful of families. I dont think they need to go full on massive RPG with 100's of characters in every village, but there is a happy medium in between that and where Zelda games have sat so far.

I would also like to see them include various items and abilities that are not necessary, but are extremely useful. Basically stuff that makes various task much easier to accomplish. I would also like to see Link's leveling come from a variety of task, and not leveraged so heavily on completing a dungeon. The majority of leveling up has come from getting the heart after completing a dungeon, perhaps getting rid of hearts and replacing them with a health meter. The difference being that you acquire various types of armor and upgrades that increase the damage you can take. Instead if side quest being a novelty, they would then become much more pertinent. You could choose to not do them, but at the cost of durability and perhaps in come cases convenience. Convenience items would be things like your horse or perhaps a transportation device.

Aonuma has already commented that Zelda has become a bit to linear over the years, and is looking to mix things up with the next game. I think they are going to get away from having to do dungeons in a certain order is going to go away. Instead of always finding items in dungeons, they may be moved to quest outside of those dungeons, and acquiring those items allow you to gain access to that area. Somewhat similar to the hookshot in OoT, you got it in the graveyard, and then that got you access to the forest temple.
 
The lack of detail may stem from older consoles' lack of hardware resources, after all, wii was very, very ancient in terms of processing power (fundamentally a late 1990s design, mildly spiced up, re-fried and launched as a mid-aughts console.) Game direction may also have played a part there, but I think a seriously stronger piece of hardware would inspire to build a more detailed world.

After all, barren-ness would stand out a lot more on a pseudo-HD console like wuu.
 
The lack of detail may stem from older consoles' lack of hardware resources, after all, wii was very, very ancient in terms of processing power (fundamentally a late 1990s design, mildly spiced up, re-fried and launched as a mid-aughts console.) Game direction may also have played a part there, but I think a seriously stronger piece of hardware would inspire to build a more detailed world.

After all, barren-ness would stand out a lot more on a pseudo-HD console like wuu.

Perhaps, but there are quite a few games from the GC and Wii era that were able to create cities and villages with much more going on. I think with TP, there was a mindset that they wanted the land of Hyrule to be pretty big, but because of the scope of the fields, they were pretty limited on what they could put in them. In the villages though, I think Nintendo simply doesnt put much value on creating a more believable village or city. Even in Hyrules castle city, they didnt really have that much more there than they did in OoT. When I enter a village, I would like to see a little influence from Assassins Creed, give me the sense that a real population could live there. So in my opinion they shouldn't try and increase the size to drastically, but instead fill it up a bit. Perhaps give the player a sense of a larger world by creating certain areas only accessible via transportation. Maybe one area requires a boat across a sea to access, or a desert that you must take a train to access. I dont mean a 5 minute ride either, but a 20 second load screen that gives the sense of travel.
 
I agreed 100%... but holy sh- would you look at this!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZmxvig1dXE

I am completely impressed
Actually, WiiU games have pretty good lighting -for instance Mario Kart.

Nintendo can afford the luxury of publishing always the same games once again, but some original games wouldn't hurt either.

That's what I don't like about Nintendo, and some of their policies, they sell everything as if it was more magical than it can actually be.
 
The zelda teaser was easily the most technically and artistically impressive piece they showcased in the entire nintendo webcast, by a seriously wide margin. Bayonetta and that mecha game whatsitscalled (xenogears?) were up there, looking quite good in their own way, but not nearly AS good IMO. Assuming it was all realtime that is, including the entire boss fight and not just the grassy field.

Also, rather liked the new Link. Very cute character design. A little more masculine-looking compared to some of the others perhaps, but still very mid-teenagery-ish. Also, blue tunic. Oooh, rad! :) I bet they did that just to mess with people on the internet... "Raaaargh! Link has always wore green!" *Rageragerage type angry posts on forums* :LOL:
 
Not all Zelda games are the same. Sure they carry things in common like weapons and recurring characters. Windwaker to Twilight princess are in completely different worlds along with Skyward Sword. The original LOZ is why I fell in love with gaming. I have never been disapointed in any way by any Zelda game ever.
 
I believe all Zelda games ARE in the same world, but set in different (geological) eras. Like the world of Wind Waker is post-OOT after flooding, and so on.
 
I don't know what the gameplay is going to look like, but if it follows that art style it'll be one of the prettiest games on any platform. May even be the highlight of e3 so far.
 
Anyone has a youtube link of juuuussst the zelda clip? Strangely, there seems to be none at Nintendo itself... Weird.
 
It looks very nice if that's really running on a Wii U.

I do think if Nintendo ditched the controller and got it down to $199 the Wii U might be viable.

I think we're hitting enough diminishing returns that the one-gen-behind power gap is less of a factor theoretically with each box Nintendo puts out. As shown by some nice looking Wii U games.
 
Kotaku claims it's in-engine footage. Obviously it's not all interactive (due to some of the camera angles and whatnot), but if it uses in-engine assets and rendering it might as well be. If this is an actual segment of the game you probably segue into a fight with the boss/monster itself, but it's probably something Nintendo put together just to show off the new Link I think.
 
Well, it looks better than Xbox One and PS4 launch games and we all know the hardware behind the Wii U is fairly modest.

Or it could be the cartoonish art / anime is fooling me.
 
Well, it looks better than Xbox One and PS4 launch games...
Please don't make such broad, subjective comparisons. They just lead to bickering. If you meant prettier, say prettier. If you meant technically more accomplished, you're wrong. But 'better' is just a can of worms.

It's a very pretty game, which comes down to art-style. The only striking point for me is the grass and I'd like to know what technique is used for that.
 
Mmm yeah it looks very very good. High density vegetation that reacts with wind too. If the game does look that good then I am extremely impressed
 
Please don't make such broad, subjective comparisons. They just lead to bickering. If you meant prettier, say prettier. If you meant technically more accomplished, you're wrong. But 'better' is just a can of worms.

It's a very pretty game, which comes down to art-style. The only striking point for me is the grass and I'd like to know what technique is used for that.

It should be fairly clear that I was talking about how the game looks and not about the mechanics. If there is any confusion surrounding my statement it wasn't meant to spark a heated discussion :)

Yes, it looks pretty, remarkably so taking into account the hardware it is running on.
 
The only striking point for me is the grass and I'd like to know what technique is used for that.
Looks like good ole alpha textures to me, stacked fairly densely, likely using instanced rendering which the wuu should support, considering the Radeon-descendant GPU.

The art style overall looks very interesting to me, like an evolved version of wind waker's cel shading, but with much more texture detail included. The end result has a vaguely oil painted look methinks. Stand-out details include Link's hair, tunic and boots, and the fur of Epona (or whatever Link's horsy is called these days.)

Not sure I prefer this style more to what was shown in the Wuu Zelda teaser years ago, but it does look really good, that's for sure. I'm just wondering if the Wuu can run this level of graphics without huge slowdowns; there's a lot of SFX flying around during the boss encounter, and even a fairly simple game like Wind Waker HD ran at 30fps on Wuu. But, we'll see...in 2015, or perhaps beyond. :p
 
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