The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Below2D

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Not sure why there isn't a thread about this game? Sure, it's not pushing any graphical boundaries but the physics and interactivity are quite mind-blowing, especially considering the limited hardware. It's closer to something like Teardown and Minecraft which in my opinion we need more of. From an ex Naughty Dog developer:



Anyone else playing it? I'm a couple of hours in and thoroughly enjoying myself.
 
It's easy to do when a developer cares more about gameplay than graphics which can't be said for most PS and Xbox developers.

Regards,
SB
No. This is hella hard dude. Lol

Reminds me when we had the rope physics discussion and TLOU2 came up
Take that and amp it up several times.

What they accomplished with such a weak CPU is impressive. The fact that you can have such physics based interaction in an open world is insane. Just think about all the intersections calculations you have to check for

The other challenge of course is the graphical portion. Having this amount of random interactivity requires a very robust graphical system as well if you don’t want graphics that look cell shaded. You are going to need something a little more nuanced. But you are right most of that cpu is being put towards graphics instead of gameplay.
 
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Not sure why there isn't a thread about this game? Sure, it's not pushing any graphical boundaries but the physics and interactivity are quite mind-blowing, especially considering the limited hardware. It's closer to something like Teardown and Minecraft which in my opinion we need more of. From an ex Naughty Dog developer:



Anyone else playing it? I'm a couple of hours in and thoroughly enjoying myself.
Ahh I will get it eventually. Just stuck on wanting to play Diablo. This looks incredible though.
 
No. This is hella hard dude. Lol

Reminds me when we had the rope physics discussion and TLOU2 came up
Take that and amp it up several times.

What they accomplished with such a weak CPU is impressive. The fact that you can have such physics based interaction in an open world is insane. Just think about all the intersections calculations you have to check for

The other challenge of course is the graphical portion. Having this amount of random interactivity requires a very robust graphical system as well if you don’t want graphics that look cell shaded. You are going to need something a little more nuanced. But you are right most of that cpu is being put towards graphics instead of gameplay.

And yet despite that physics based gameplay was far more prevalent on weaker CPUs (PS3/X360 generation) than it is on modern CPU based consoles.

Physics based gameplay is far more common and far more expansive in the indie developer scene and runs on far weaker CPUs than what is in the current gen consoles. We have entire games whose entire gameplay loop and world building is physics based. And they are all capable of running well on far weaker CPUs than the current gen consoles.

Anything even remotely similar is non-existent in PS/Xbox AAA games. Why? Because AAA games are sold based on how they look, not how they play. Thus physics isn't really something that any AAA game developer for PS or Xbox can afford to dedicate much time to except for maybe Sony and MS studios, but even they are far more focused on graphics and only do minor improvements to gameplay systems over 3rd party developers.

If they focused less on graphics and more on gameplay systems, something like what is in the new Legend of Zelda game would be fairly common. The Legend of Zelda developers have the luxury of their first and most important focus being on gameplay and gameplay systems. Graphics are then tailored to whatever gameplay systems they decide to implement. That's a complete 180 from PS and Xbox game development where graphics is the most important focus and then you try to get gameplay to work within the graphics focus of the game.

And thus you can see how modern AAA games do so many less interesting things WRT gameplay than the PS3/X360 generation. Until that hyper focus on graphics changes in the AAA space on PS and Xbox, you'll never see anything remotely like what we got in the latest Legend of Zelda made by any PS or Xbox AAA developer no matter how powerful of a CPU they get access to.

Regards,
SB
 
I bought and played Breath of the Wild on Switch's launch and couldn't get into it. It's a technical marvel for the hardware, but I'm in a minority who couldn't get into the game. As John Linneman said in a recent DF Direct, the game often feels a bit aimless. I played BoTW enough to free Vah Ruta, grab the Master Sword, buy and kit out my house and get the Bokoblin Mask.

I may try Tears of the Kingdom but I'm in no rush.
 
I bought and played Breath of the Wild on Switch's launch and couldn't get into it. It's a technical marvel for the hardware, but I'm in a minority who couldn't get into the game. As John Linneman said in a recent DF Direct, the game often feels a bit aimless. I played BoTW enough to free Vah Ruta, grab the Master Sword, buy and kit out my house and get the Bokoblin Mask.

I may try Tears of the Kingdom but I'm in no rush.
Lots of people feel this way. The game does feel a bit...empty and aimless at times where you just wander around for hours looking for something to do. It's not like say, Elden Ring where there is something interest every couple of dozens of meters.

This game does remedy a lot of that though. It feels fuller than BOTW.
 
I'm already 100+ hours into the game ... damn the scope alone compared to BOTW is mind breaking! Without going into spoilers I thought it was great they finally had caves again but holy f...!

The exploration alone is worth the price of admission and that's just barely scratching the surface ;)

The world also seems much more alive with a lot more NPCs having purpose and many not just being stationary.

I'm incapable of following a single quest as I am getting distracted all the time.
 
Well it's only 30fps, so literally unplayable according to most gamers these days. I'm guessing the reviews were probably quite harsh because of this, and the sales have disappointed massively.

Good straw man considering that even though many people don't like having to play it at 30 FPS they do so anyway because for most people it's the only way to play it.

In other words, 30 FPS can be suffered through if the game or IP is good enough in a person's mind to overcome the burden of being 30 FPS.

Just like many people really REALLY didn't like playing HZD on PS4 at 30 FPS but did so anyway because they really wanted to play the game. Once they got to play it at 60 FPS or higher, then they REALLY loved the game.

Regards,
SB
 
I think that's precisely the point of the "30 fps is ok sometimes" argument. If the game is good enough, it doesn't matter. I agree with Seanspeed that 60 fps isn't "necessary" for games. It's desired, but not necessary. I also think that people need to accept that as hardware ages 30 fps will become more common. It's easily for all these cross-gen games to be 60 fps, but once Devs are pushing The Last of Us 3 and Hellblade 3 out, good luck with 60 fps on existing hardware.

This game is no different, now that Switch is getting to the end of its life.
 
Good straw man considering that even though many people don't like having to play it at 30 FPS they do so anyway because for most people it's the only way to play it.

In other words, 30 FPS can be suffered through if the game or IP is good enough in a person's mind to overcome the burden of being 30 FPS.

Just like many people really REALLY didn't like playing HZD on PS4 at 30 FPS but did so anyway because they really wanted to play the game. Once they got to play it at 60 FPS or higher, then they REALLY loved the game.

Regards,
SB
If 30fps was really that bad and people were 'suffering' through it, it wouldn't have gotten the nearly universal mountains of praise it has. There would be loads of 'it's a good game BUT' and docked review scores, yet we see basically none of that. Come on now. The backlash against 30fps(outside of certain genres) is overall massively dramatized and ridiculous. 30fps has always been highly playable, even if 60fps is obviously always preferable when all else is equal.

"Just like many people REALLY didn't like playing HZD on PS4 at 30fps" - this is nonsense. Go back and look at reviews and impressions when the game launched. Pretty much nobody was complaining about the game only being 30fps. It was pretty much all praise, and the criticisms that did exist had nothing to do with performance. You're completely rewriting history here. In fact, nearly ALL of the major blockbuster Sony 1st party titles for PS4 were 30fps and yet it's probably the most successful generation Sony ever had in terms of 1st party brand reputation.
 
I just don't think there is a large group that cares much about Nintendo here due to their use of aged hardware.
 
Not sure why there isn't a thread about this game

Too busy playing it.

Yes, it's that good.
Even with it sometimes runs at like 20fps. The patch helped the performance but didn't completely solved it.

Its so much fun with cheats. Nintendo should have incorporated an extensive accessibility option so people doesn't need to cheat to tailor the game to their taste
 
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