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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Mr. Aonuma Gameplay Demonstration

Majukun

Member
Genuinely curious how anyone can be excited for this game. Nintendo is releasing this after Elden Ring...
They worked on this for 6 years and re-used the exact same map? Same enemies? Same terrible weapon durability?

If this had been called anything other than Zelda people wouldnt give a shit about it. Pretty amazing to see what Nintendo can get away with by name alone.
1)Elden ring and botw scratch very different itches in terms of open world..if there's something elden ring lacked, was the sensation of living in a breathing world where you could interact with it in different ways...almost everything inside the game world is hostile and there to kill you on sight, the rest are static NPCs that talk to you.Not saying it's bad, I loved elden ring, but botw is conceptually completely different

2)first thing Aonuma said is that the map changed, how much we don't know. of course it's still hyrule and of course it reuses assets, but right now we know little about the map

3)again, how do you know it's same enemies? we saw a grand total of one enemy in the demonstration and was a new one

and to be clear, i do agree that what has been shown so far looks more like a big dlc than a full fledged sequel, but it's not like this was the final media blowout where they show everything the game has to offer, it was the first gameplay we ever saw, and very limited in scope.
 

Jessmo23

Banned
1)Elden ring and botw scratch very different itches in terms of open world..if there's something elden ring lacked, was the sensation of living in a breathing world where you could interact with it in different ways...almost everything inside the game world is hostile and there to kill you on sight, the rest are static NPCs that talk to you.Not saying it's bad, I loved elden ring, but botw is conceptually completely different

2)first thing Aonuma said is that the map changed, how much we don't know. of course it's still hyrule and of course it reuses assets, but right now we know little about the map

3)again, how do you know it's same enemies? we saw a grand total of one enemy in the demonstration and was a new one

and to be clear, i do agree that what has been shown so far looks more like a big dlc than a full fledged sequel, but it's not like this was the final media blowout where they show everything the game has to offer, it was the first gameplay we ever saw, and very limited in scope.
I stand by my last thread is stating that Elden ring in technically inferior to breath of the wild. Its NOT a visually appealing game. What BOTW lacks in power and resolution, it makes up for in art style. In fact I don't think it surpasses BOTW at all. That's not saying that it isn't a good game.
 

Jessmo23

Banned

very interesting take on open world. The guy compares Zelda vs Elden ring vs Horizon forbidden west.
The thing is that many complain about Zelda's graphics and art style and lack of photo realism, but don't get that the painted canvas aesthetic was done for strategic reasons.
Sometimes photo realism can be a hinderance. And developers are making games big and open world for the sake of being big and open world.
 

Zephyrus0

Banned
Again, all you are doing is passing off personal subjective opinions as objective facts.

The Ubisoft clone is at

79 on Open Critic

77 on Metacritic

So nobody agrees with your own personal opinion, while most agree that Zelda Breath Of The Wild is one of the greatest games of all time.

I'm stating my own opinions which is what everyone else does with theirs.
I've specifically mention my tastes and opinion.
Reviews are nothing more than someone else's opinions.
And the ubisoft clone perfectly encapsulates why I believe what I believe. Botw would've never got that score if it featured a different IP.
But reviewers are always pressured to give these big, legendary, IP's good scores because their fanbase is rabid.
You might be too young to remember what happened with twilight or wind waker. I'm not.
Or hyrule warriors. One of the weakest musou collabs and one of the highest rated. Go figure.
 

Tg89

Member
BotW had issues but actual dungeons is one of the most critical so I would say surely Nintendo listened to feedback right? Shrines + 8 big dungeons would be fantastic.

Would be great, definitely the biggest issue with BOTW.

I'm not sure how they'd implement a traditional Zelda dungeon though - particularly the aspect of getting a key item in a dungeon that allows you to progress (hookshot, bow, hammer, etc.) and how that fits in with the rest of the game. I guess they could just omit that part and have every dungeon be solveable with your base set of skills (and done in any order, presumably). Probably the best approach. BOTW + the enhancements we've seen here + slightly less and more curated shrines + 8 traditional (forest, fire, water, etc.) dungeons would be fantastic.
 
Weapons durability system still in????
That and the stamina system ruined BOTW for me :messenger_downcast_sweat:
Those two things are literally the backbone of the game's encouragement to find different ways to do things and try new things. Once you spent enough time in the game, these two things become a lot less inconvenient and honestly bring a sense of urgency to certain situations. Not having enough stamina to climb a certain mountain or something is like finding a door in Metroid that you can't open until you get the proper ability. It just encourages you to get more powerful. And the weapon breaking encourages you to try lots of different weapons and if you don't have a weapon to face someone head on then there might be another way to approach the situation. Instead of just relying on your favorite weapon all the time, you are encouraged to try different weapons and different tactics.

I feel like people who don't like these two concepts just aren't meant for this type of game. If
 

Robb

Gold Member
Shrines + 8 big dungeons
20zwnu.jpg
 

Teletraan1

Banned
The amount of cope regarding this game and its graphics are hilarious. Game looks ugly. It is also my smallest complaint. It looks like they took none of the actual criticism of the first game and just listened to the praise so they could just add some silly features and get 11/10 this time. It is the problem with listening to fake reviewers who have Nintendo duvets rather than actual people who aren't trying to get a community manager job. The user score is currently 8.7 which is closer to reality but is still probably filled with 10s and 1s. Weapon Durability nobody liked but a bunch of Nintendo Cultists who would literally eat Nintendo branded shit. Even the poll here was 75/25 against and this place is a hive of Nintendo sycophants. By extension the loot system sucked balls. Absolutely no reward for exploration. Combat was as shallow as a puddle. The dungeons were mediocre and the worst of the series. Zelda 1 had better dungeon exploration on the NES. This is the biggest complaint for me. It should have been addressed but because the game is perfect to paid schills why would they even talk about it since it isn't a problem?

Those two things are literally the backbone of the game's encouragement to find different ways to do things and try new things. Once you spent enough time in the game, these two things become a lot less inconvenient and honestly bring a sense of urgency to certain situations. Not having enough stamina to climb a certain mountain or something is like finding a door in Metroid that you can't open until you get the proper ability. It just encourages you to get more powerful. And the weapon breaking encourages you to try lots of different weapons and if you don't have a weapon to face someone head on then there might be another way to approach the situation. Instead of just relying on your favorite weapon all the time, you are encouraged to try different weapons and different tactics.

I feel like people who don't like these two concepts just aren't meant for this type of game. If
I am fine with the stamina component. The weapon durability didn't add anything but the necessity to swap out weapons multiple times and go into menus mid fight, it was not fun at all. The durability needed to be at least 5x more durable. It was obscene. Sounds like you are on the Nintendo branded shit meal plan.
 

Days like these...

Have a Blessed Day

very interesting take on open world. The guy compares Zelda vs Elden ring vs Horizon forbidden west.
The thing is that many complain about Zelda's graphics and art style and lack of photo realism, but don't get that the painted canvas aesthetic was done for strategic reasons.
Sometimes photo realism can be a hinderance. And developers are making games big and open world for the sake of being big and open world.

Couldn't watch for more than 10 seconds because of his voice.
 

kondorBonk

Member
Yeah, the ascend Ability does seem odd at first showing.

The Stasis, Bombs, Magnet, and block were all very versatile. You had every tool at the start to complete every Shrine and as you progressed you had those "Ah Ha" moments on how to be a little more creative with them.

I think the build mechanic will replace those small space, "McGyvering a solution" moments, and I can see how the time reverse/fuse can work in problem solving...

But ascend seems almost purely traversal right now which is odd. I can imagine finding hidden pockets in buildings and caves while ascending but that seems so bare bones compared to the others.

I think there is more to this one, I just dont know what. Like others are guessing maybe underwater segments or some connection to the building mechanics...
 

Mozza

Member
I'm stating my own opinions which is what everyone else does with theirs.
I've specifically mention my tastes and opinion.
Reviews are nothing more than someone else's opinions.
And the ubisoft clone perfectly encapsulates why I believe what I believe. Botw would've never got that score if it featured a different IP.
But reviewers are always pressured to give these big, legendary, IP's good scores because their fanbase is rabid.
You might be too young to remember what happened with twilight or wind waker. I'm not.
Or hyrule warriors. One of the weakest musou collabs and one of the highest rated. Go figure.
Of course it all subjective opinions at the end of the day, but when so many are coming to the same conclusion, you have to consider the fact it's a great game, you personally do not like.
 

naguanatak

Member
I'm looking forward to it. Very much.
Reading through the thread was an experience :messenger_grimmacing_
So many emotions, so much love, so much hate :messenger_smiling_with_eyes:

Never played through a Zelda completely until Link's Awakening Remake, but I have fond memories of playing and watching parts of Ocarina of Time at a friends place when we were kids.
Never played Majoras Mask, Twighlight Princess or Skyward Sword or any other Zelda Title.
Dropped BotW around 10 hours into my playthrough :messenger_neutral: ...on Wii U. Dropped it again at the same mark on Switch. Over a year later I revisited the game, was engrossed by it. Marvellous experience. The climbing mechanic is simple, but very effective in making the game world feel like a place to explore and have fun navigating in (the glider was nice, too, but wasn't as important to me as the climbing mechanic itself).
Did some shrines, did a lot of Korok Seed 'puzzles', but I'm not one who completely finishes every task in a game. So I eventually fought and beat Ganon after finishing the 4 devine beasts.
I really would have like more story in the game. The bits that were there made it seem like it was incomplete. Like they ran out of time even though it seems like deliberate design.
I really hope we get more story and lore bits throughout TotK, preferably voiced, but I can understand if that is not everyones cup of tea.

To add to the discussion. Of course I would like better graphics and framerate, but then again I don't care that much about it when the game is fun and still enjoyable. And that isn't an objective point somewhere on a scale, it depends on the game and the player.
I don't care much about the new skills, but will experiment with them and reserve my judgement til then.
The exploration and the world itself will be engrossing again, I hope. Rest is icing for me :messenger_peace:
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
The entire Hyrule castle is in the sky! that's the entire middle of the map! How can you make this assessment?

There is alot up there


Huh, the castle is tiny compared to the rest of the map, I don't know what you mean by "the entire middle".

And yeah, there's "a lot" of stuff in the sky, but a tiny amount of total area compared to the surface.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
You speculation is totally devoid of any facts or information, so by the same token I believe the Sky Islands add another 40% of surface area, there is now a massive underground area to explore, there are also many dungeons as well. I have based this on a 12 minute gameplay video, and two trailers. ;)

40% would mean almost half of the sky would be covered in islands (not counting overlapping ones), which is clearly not the case.
 

Robb

Gold Member
I think there is more to this one, I just dont know what. Like others are guessing maybe underwater segments or some connection to the building mechanics...
Yeah it does seem strangely one-dimensional. I hope they have more clever uses for it, although I have no clue what that could be..

Maybe you can use it on e.g. a stone talus (or other larger enemies) to get on top of it?

They did make that strange example of being stuck in a room with no obvious way out which felt like a direct hint towards puzzles so I’m guessing they have come up with some clever uses.

Either way it’ll be a godsend when it rains.

40% would mean almost half of the sky would be covered in islands (not counting overlapping ones), which is clearly not the case.
That’s not necessarily true, we know the islands are at various elevation and that there’s a Z-axis on the map icon now. There’ll likely be land masses stacked on top of each other.

Below is the island that they were on in the most recent footage, and we’ve seen Link fall towards it from a much higher altitude in a previous trailer so there seem to be islands far above it.
tloz_tearsofthekingdom_scrn_25_jpg_1600x900_crop_q85.jpg
 
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naguanatak

Member
This thread has proven hilarious. I don't think I've ever seen such a collection of angry incoherent rants against a small gameplay clip showing a couple of new gameplay mechanics.
I think you have, so have I...but everytime it's as strange as the first time. Your mind tries to comprehend logic behind the anger, but there isn't any. It's just mindless
 

daveonezero

Banned
Yeah it does seem strangely one-dimensional. I hope they have more clever uses for it, although I have no clue what that could be..

Maybe you can use it on e.g. a stone talus (or other larger enemies) to get on top of it?

They did make that strange example of being stuck in a room with no obvious way out which felt like a direct hint towards puzzles so I’m guessing they have come up with some clever uses.

Either way it’ll be a godsend when it rains.


That’s not necessarily true, we know the islands are at various elevation and that there’s a Z-axis on the map icon now. There’ll likely be land masses stacked on top of each other.

Below is the island that they were on in the most recent footage, and we’ve seen Link fall towards it from a much higher altitude in a previous trailer so there seem to be islands far above it.
tloz_tearsofthekingdom_scrn_25_jpg_1600x900_crop_q85.jpg
The break down in the trailer showed x y a coordinates.

4 digits each.

The islands could go to 9999 height. The island in the demo was at ~5000
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Yeah it does seem strangely one-dimensional. I hope they have more clever uses for it, although I have no clue what that could be..

Maybe you can use it on e.g. a stone talus (or other larger enemies) to get on top of it?

They did make that strange example of being stuck in a room with no obvious way out which felt like a direct hint towards puzzles so I’m guessing they have come up with some clever uses.

Either way it’ll be a godsend when it rains.


That’s not necessarily true, we know the islands are at various elevation and that there’s a Z-axis on the map icon now. There’ll likely be land masses stacked on top of each other.

Below is the island that they were on in the most recent footage, and we’ve seen Link fall towards it from a much higher altitude in a previous trailer so there seem to be islands far above it.
tloz_tearsofthekingdom_scrn_25_jpg_1600x900_crop_q85.jpg

Yeah, some overlap exists for sure, but I think that won't be the norm. Like, you won't have two or three full layers of islands.

Anyway, my original point was just that I highly doubt the islands will make up another entire "map" of similar size to the surface, as some seem to believe.

But it seems much more expansive and explorable than the sorry few islands in the sky in SS, of course. I had hoped the sky in that game would be something like the great sea in WW, with a similar number of islands to visit. Man was I disappointed! This seems to finally achieve something like that.
 
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The game looks like shit
I still haven't seen dungeons so I'm not pumped on it yet

My other biggest complaint is the graphics quality degrading five feet away just like BotW. If you play BotW on PC at a higher resolution it's pretty clear the grass around you almost disappears just beyond arms length and this isn't going to change.
 

Raven117

Member
I stand by my last thread is stating that Elden ring in technically inferior to breath of the wild. Its NOT a visually appealing game. What BOTW lacks in power and resolution, it makes up for in art style. In fact I don't think it surpasses BOTW at all. That's not saying that it isn't a good game.
I suppose everyone is entitled to their own opinion.....
 
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Raven117

Member
This thread has proven hilarious. I don't think I've ever seen such a collection of angry incoherent rants against a small gameplay clip showing a couple of new gameplay mechanics.
Oh man....just you wait on release.

There will be the one contingent that will say dumb shit like "This is simply, the best game ever made" and there will be the others that point out the flaws (or at least questionable) design choices (looking at you, weapon durability)....and around and around we will go. Just like for BotW. That said....I think this game gets more criticism that BotW just due to it being the second game....and while this may have plenty of new changes to it that we don't know yet....the pure magic of the first time through this open world Zelda will be gone.
 

Jessmo23

Banned
Yeah it does seem strangely one-dimensional. I hope they have more clever uses for it, although I have no clue what that could be..

Maybe you can use it on e.g. a stone talus (or other larger enemies) to get on top of it?

They did make that strange example of being stuck in a room with no obvious way out which felt like a direct hint towards puzzles so I’m guessing they have come up with some clever uses.

Either way it’ll be a godsend when it rains.


That’s not necessarily true, we know the islands are at various elevation and that there’s a Z-axis on the map icon now. There’ll likely be land masses stacked on top of each other.

I know right, someone it's impossible for people to understand that objects might be stacked in a vertical plane.
And for the record, Hyrule castle tanks up a nice chunk of map. It likely takes up more if you're pulling up underground's
qrbOevB.jpg
sections.
 
I think you have, so have I...but everytime it's as strange as the first time. Your mind tries to comprehend logic behind the anger, but there isn't any. It's just mindless

Nah, I'm used to it and in fact its quite expected. It's not just Nintendo but also every Microsoft and PC thread that has the same rants and anger.
 
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Robb

Gold Member
I know right, someone it's impossible for people to understand that objects might be stacked in a vertical plane.
Let’s hope that’s the case. At the very least it looks like you can go very high up.

Can’t wait to sail through the sky above the clouds!
Breath-Of-The-Wild-2-paraglider-2000x1270-1.jpg
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Once again one of these games has an ugly art style and washed-out color. one does not.
What part of Elden Ring artstyle is ugly? It’s dark fantasy similar to Berserk, while Zelda’s style is similar Ghibli movies.

I personally like both visual style.
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
My other biggest complaint is the graphics quality degrading five feet away just like BotW. If you play BotW on PC at a higher resolution it's pretty clear the grass around you almost disappears just beyond arms length and this isn't going to change.

I mean, that's the problem with putting a game into an emulator and artificially forcing the resolution upwards. It was designed around the resolution it has on the actual target platform, so of course they chose compromises which aren't very noticeable within those constraints, and none of that can be experienced accurately under upscaled emulation.

dN61F6U.jpg
7peBasR.jpg


Once again one of these games has an ugly art style and washed-out color. one does not.

I fully agree with you that in many ways BOTW is the more impressive game visually--although the problem here is that most people will read that and only think of things like resolution and textures.

Where BOTW shines far, far beyond nearly every high budget game even in our current years is with elements like animation, where the fluidity of things is gorgeous in a way that definitely puts the stiff reused animations of Elden Ring to shame (ER has plenty of other areas where it excels of course, but BOTW has genuine areas of extremely high quality that get ignored on a gaming forum).
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
but BOTW has genuine areas of extremely high quality that get ignored on a gaming forum).
Thats GAF in general, they value tech like texture, raytracing and other crap over everything else. I mean for fuck sake we literally have a thread about wanting game to be only 3 hours....3 fucking hours long for sake of high tech graphics.

90% topic game discussion in GAF is about tech crap or sales charts.
 
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Punished Miku

Gold Member
Thats GAF in general, they value tech like texture, raytracing and other crap over everything else. I mean for fuck sake we literally have a thread about wanting game to be only 3 hours....3 fucking houre long for sake of high tech graphics.

90% topic game discussion in GAF is about tech crap or sales charts.
I come for the gaming exec attractiveness ratings threads, but stay for the UK physical only sales threads.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I come for the gaming exec attractiveness ratings threads, but stay for the UK physical only sales threads.
I simply come here to discuss games and be excite for upcoming games, but instead we get threads that goes full blown graphics tech or about controversy about what someone said on twitter or other social media crap or powerpoint presentation of sales charts as if they are some kind of investors or most weirdest one is obsessing over CEOs.
 
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