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Game Dev "Nintendo's out here making people look like fools on hardware that's literally tenfold what the Switch is"

Exactly.
Dreams also.

Granted, Dreams wasn't a game per se, but its level of complexity was enormous.

Look, TotK is no doubt a great game. Amazing even. But I'm getting tired of games being proclaimed as the 2nd coming of Christ.
Maybe not the second coming but maybe the best first party game release since BoTW? Kind of a sad statement when you think about it, I mean the graphics/resolution is unfortunate…yet the game design itself overcomes the flaws. And Microsoft/Sony can’t replicate even with better tech
 

Melfice7

Member
If LittleBigPlanet 1/2 had been made by Nintendo it would have been hailed as one of the greatest games of all time
 
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Marvel14

Banned
Eh this is definitely blown way out of proportion. It's impressive for sure but it is just physics and world interactions. These things use to exist in games in the long long ago.

I'd say RDR2 is still 1000x more of a technical achievement then totk is and it's not even close. Trying to use a horse in totk is a perfect example.

It is great they are putting physics and world interactions forward however. It can't just be Rockstar carrying the torch by themselves. More games need to be pushing these aspects of design
What a load of bs. RdR2 is pretty and has loads of systems but it's got extremely dumb shit design that breaks gameplay immersion completely . I hunted a legendary bear ...it should have killed me but the game kept me alive despite multiple hits and me being a newbie in the game. That was bad enough. I got the legendary pelt and then lost it as my horse fell into a river gorge. No biggie...the pelt will magically appear at some pelt dealers storage facility ( can't remember exactly it was several years ago).

Turned it off and never played it again. What a con.

In TOTK powerful enemies one shot you and if you lose an item you either find it where it landed or you lose it completely.
 

Robb

Gold Member
In this thread:

Nintendo fans rejoice at the astounding discovery that their videogames can have physics and building blocks, which PC games have had for two decades.
The only PC game that does what Zelda does is Zelda being played on an emulator.
Michael Scott Wink GIF
 

Marvel14

Banned
In this thread:

Nintendo fans rejoice at the astounding discovery that their videogames can have physics and building blocks, which PC games have had for two decades.
More like in this thread:

Non Nintendo Developers acknowledge the supreme technical achievement of a game on lower power hardware while Sony and Xbox fans, already raging at their companies because graphics not good enough or not enough surprise announcements or quality games not coming out fast enough, see their ire enflamed , and go into precipitous denial

A bit of a mouthful but far more accurate

Saying this would be a monumental thing to do on current next-gen consoles is just ridiculous.

but I think to proclaim it as a technical masterpiece is overstating it massively.

Let me know when you can use Zelda's physics and game design to make a shooter, calculator or racing game

Zelda does nothing new, the developers just invested time and effort into making the physics a gameplay mechanic, again nothing we haven't seen before.
The levels of "in denial " here are delicious.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Some here dismissing the enormous technical achievement of the game 😂

Yes, it's a master class of design at every level.

Yes, it's a technical (programming) achievement at all levels too... The game running all those systems at once and not being broken? Those are clearly words of people that haven't even being close to develop something barely worth mentioning.

Yes, it's a management achievement, money alone doesn't put you there, not even talent and technical skills, you better count on some top class project managers and culture in order to make such task at that level of quality.

TOTK is so well done, so complex, so polished, there's no way someone with any amount of experience working on those fields cannot see it, it just seems so out of this world, like... HOW did they?

Seriously, being salty is one thing but not admitting the excellence of such a product feels like some are not being honest or can't understand it.
 

ToTTenTranz

Banned
Drop the persecution complex and childish war bait.
The only PC game that does what Zelda does is Zelda being played on an emulator.
Michael Scott Wink GIF
Yes, I can see you were very successful at convincing yourself of that.



Move along, people. I guarantee this 11 year-old video of a guy making a calculator out of the game's building blocks doesn't even exist.




Or this game where you plan, design and build a spaceship according to a set of laws of physics exists. It's probably text to video AI.




And this 21 year-old game where the player would assume the role of a god, use physics to build stuff, interact with NPCs and structures never really existed. It's all in people's minds.




Nor its 18 year-old sequel.


Yes guys, if we really think about it, Nintendo invented game physics, and sandbox. While we're at it, I think they probably invented 3D graphics. And polygons.
 
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Redneckerz

Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
Nintendo's coder basically embrace the demoscene philosophy of coding, optimizing for a very specific set of hardware in unusual ways.

Imagine if the PS4/XBO or the current-gen machines would get the same treatment.

Crysis Remastered had a slight hint of this, using SVOGI on Switch and software raytracing on PS4 Pro/Xbox One X. That was legit impressive.
 

Fredrik

Member
Again, all good design, but it's not doing anything magical with the given hardware like the developer here suggests. Basically, as you alluded to, developers outside of Nintendo just seem to go about things in a lazier way, even in games in which physics supposedly play a large part.
Todd Howard talked about the struggle in Bethesda RPGs to keep track of all objects and NPCs when their position aren’t static like in most games. I imagine keeping track of all the objects in the game with them all using physics from material and weight and wind and temperature etc is a lot more taxing. So I’d say getting it all working together in harmony without introducing jank and bugs with a fairly decent framerate most of the time on a Switch is impressive. But to be fair I have no real knowledge of what it takes to get it to work. If it’s easy then it’s even more strange that not more devs are using physics. It honestly makes a huge difference.
 

Robb

Gold Member
And this 21 year-old game where the player would assume the role of a god, use physics to build stuff, interact with NPCs and structures never really existed. It's all in people's minds.
Man I loved B&W, it’s a crime Lionhead Studios got decapitated..

Anyway, got this tricky 'Courage to Fall' shrine that requires my attention on my totes legit "virtual" switch. Byeeeeeee
That one took me a while tbh. I did not have the courage.
 
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BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
Todd Howard talked about the struggle in Bethesda RPGs to keep track of all objects and NPCs when their position aren’t static like in most games. I imagine keeping track of all the objects in the game with them all using physics from material and weight and wind and temperature etc is a lot more taxing. So I’d say getting it all working together in harmony without introducing jank and bugs with a fairly decent framerate most of the time on a Switch is impressive. But to be fair I have no real knowledge of what it takes to get it to work. If it’s easy then it’s even more strange that not more devs are using physics. It honestly makes a huge difference.

I would assume many didn't think such high-functioning physics was a priority for their games. For TotK it obviously was.
 

BabyYoda

Banned
In order to build or add parts to your vehicle you had to be inside the garage.

If a part fell off your vehicle during gameplay, you could hold the wrench button to reattach everything, but you couldn’t add a fresh part without being in the garage.

(from memory).

You could completely modify your vehicle into anything you wanted, but sure, you couldn't introduce new parts.
 

Tams

Member
TotK is an amazing achievement and I don't want to knock the people who worked on it. They did an incredible job!

But there are three issues:

1. Output is not exponential or even linear. The other consoles are much more powerful, but to take advantage of that performance requires much more work. Even Nintendo have struggled with this in the move to HD and FullHD.

2. Clearly there are a lot of developers out there who are not performing anywhere near as well as they could or even should. The reasons could be many, but clearly many are just putting out low effort shit.

3. TotK seems rather more a continuation of the attitude of the pioneers of computer games. They had very limited hardware and squeezed amazing things out of it. It's no surprise that Doom Eternal runs well and looks pretty good on the Switch. id Software still have that pioneering culture.

You see it in apps too. The things people made for old 'PDAs' on Symbian, Windows Mobile, BBOS, PalmOS/WebOS were incredible.

Now most just shit out shitty Electron apps that have issues on comparative supercomputers in your pocket. Pathetic.
 
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Tams

Member
Too bad it gets unappreciated because of the ancient abysmal hardware. Makes the game fucking ugly, and it doesn’t get the respect it probably deserves. At least not from me. I can’t look past it.

Mate, it's being called the best game ever by quite a few.

Hyperbole? Sure, as it's all subjective. But to say it's ugly suggests your senses are off.
 

StueyDuck

Member
What a load of bs. RdR2 is pretty and has loads of systems but it's got extremely dumb shit design that breaks gameplay immersion completely . I hunted a legendary bear ...it should have killed me but the game kept me alive despite multiple hits and me being a newbie in the game. That was bad enough. I got the legendary pelt and then lost it as my horse fell into a river gorge. No biggie...the pelt will magically appear at some pelt dealers storage facility ( can't remember exactly it was several years ago).

Turned it off and never played it again. What a con.

In TOTK powerful enemies one shot you and if you lose an item you either find it where it landed or you lose it completely.
So totk is great because enemies can kill you one hit and you can pick up something that was dropped... as in a physics system.

Wowwee we really are pushing gaming to its limits here.

RDR2 has an entire ecological system that will exist with or without the player. And that's literally just a completely unnecessary extra part of the world.

But when totk spawns a fox in a mountain and it runs vertically up wall I guess we are pushing boundaries 🤣
 

Marvel14

Banned
Yes, I can see you were very successful at convincing yourself of that.



Move along, people. I guarantee this 11 year-old video of a guy making a calculator out of the game's building blocks doesn't even exist.




Or this game where you plan, design and build a spaceship according to a set of laws of physics exists. It's probably text to video AI.




And this 21 year-old game where the player would assume the role of a god, use physics to build stuff, interact with NPCs and structures never really existed. It's all in people's minds.




Nor its 18 year-old sequel.


Yes guys, if we really think about it, Nintendo invented game physics, and sandbox. While we're at it, I think they probably invented 3D graphics. And polygons.

You seem to be confusing the terms "invented " and "did this one thing already" with "combined seamlessly and incredibly well into a coherent system"
 

Marvel14

Banned
So totk is great because enemies can kill you one hit and you can pick up something that was dropped... as in a physics system.

Wowwee we really are pushing gaming to its limits here.

RDR2 has an entire ecological system that will exist with or without the player. And that's literally just a completely unnecessary extra part of the world.

But when totk spawns a fox in a mountain and it runs vertically up wall I guess we are pushing boundaries 🤣
No comment on my RDR2 critique huh? Figures
 

Fredrik

Member
I would assume many didn't think such high-functioning physics was a priority for their games. For TotK it obviously was.
That’s another reason why they all look like fools now.
Remember this video?

That was 6 years ago, things would be even worse today. Games are more expensive to make but the AAA space hasn’t evolved much at all in the last 6 years. Zelda has though. Most AAA games is just smoke and mirrors, pretty surface and nice animations, linear in structure, invisible walls or portals or well-produced cutscenes to mask that it’s not really a cohesive fully functional game world.
 

StueyDuck

Member
No comment on my RDR2 critique huh? Figures
It's just you being mad that it wasn't Zelda. Wasn't much of a critique.

You say it yourself. Rdr2 has many many systems. In terms of gaming it's still far and away more than. Haz physics. Haz minecraft lite elements.

Rdr2 is a far far far more technical achievement than totk other than the fact its on a hand held. That is impressive but for what totk is doing its nothing more than what it did in botw. And as many have said, physics existed before in games.
 

KXVXII9X

Member
I started with Nintendo, then pulled away from them, and now slowly starting to gravitate towards them and it is reasons like this.

Zelda TotK feels more "next gen" than the games on the current gen consoles from a gameplay and technical aspect. The physics alone is impressive and makes such a huge difference in the believability and the gameplay depth (no pun intended). This is all running on mobile hardware that is two generations behind.

Nintendo is known to make the most out of their hardware (I'm not saying Sony or Microsoft don't have games that do either).

Then we have games like Gollum that looks like a PS3 game that pushes a high end graphics card.

I think a lot of focus on modern games have went purely into graphics and monetization and not enough into new gameplay ideas and things like physics/interactivity, AI, level design, etc.

One of my favorite genres is Immersive Sims, which I feel Zelda TotK is and I think they are hardly made because it is such a huge task. Instead we get these stripped down games that rely solely on stats, XP, and busywork, instead of complex systems that all work together.

Just like Zelda BotW, I think TotK will influence some games going forward.
 

mrmustard

Banned
Nintendo is making everybody look like a fool.

High end eye-candy graphics? Nope, our games just have to be fun.
100 million Dollar developing cost? Lol, we are not crazy.
100 million Dollar for marketing? Nope, we don't need that to sell games.
Huge price cuts after a few months? Nope, we don't need that to sell games.
Game Pass? Why rent our games? People buy them at full price. For years.
 

Marvel14

Banned
Of course! That's it! None of those games used those features seamlessly and coherently!

Nintendo invented coherency!
You forgot together! Combined systems thats the innovation. ..you're so salty I want to get out my surf board and ride on the waves of your ire...
It's just you being mad that it wasn't Zelda. Wasn't much of a critique.
If you're not going to engage with the substance of someone's post and youre just going to dismiss it maybe go play a game instead?
 
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Marvel14

Banned
I mean you seem to be ignoring alot of what everyone else is saying...

You will be fine if someone doesn't agree that totk invented gaming 🤣 you will still exist and you can still do minecraft lite things in a flat empty dead open world.

It doesn't make it the most technically impressive important inventor of video games ever.

I am playing the game. It's fun. But I'm also not a 12 year old on a playground needing to defend my purchase. The game just isn't all that technically impressive other than it runs on a handheld. That is impressive.
I was talking about RDR2 and immersion. You seem incapable of engaging with substantive arguments. Run along and go play with your toys ...you sound like a 12 year old.
 

Robb

Gold Member
I think a lot of focus on modern games have went purely into graphics and monetization
Yeah, although I also think Nintendo relies a lot on their games being non-realistic looking. While something like e.g. fuse probably took a ton of work to implement given all the options it also works well because it’s cartoonish and silly.

I can’t imagine a dev like e.g. Naughty Dog come up with that idea because their games are so serious and having an apple attached to a gun would look stupid and goofy. It’s more about looks than fun gameplay mechanics in most cases.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
Nintendo has always been ahead of the rest of the industry.
Its all about design and the designers.
Its why most older games are still better than new.
Its how - as an artist - when certain people first ask or taut about what art programs are used - are entirely missing the point.
 

KXVXII9X

Member
Zelda does nothing new, the developers just invested time and effort into making the physics a gameplay mechanic, again nothing we haven't seen before.

Most developers want to control the gameplay experience to the nth degree, and any kind of freedom for the players is seen as a hassle by the developers so they restrict, reduce or remove interesting gameplay mechanics such as physics.
I would be okay with that but don't sell your game as realistic. Don't spend all that time and energy on making photorealistic textures and such because you are missing one of the biggest ingredients for realism. Don't sell me on an immersive world if you leave out physics, AI, and other game design principles that makes your world believable.
 
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KXVXII9X

Member
Yeah, although I also think Nintendo relies a lot on their games being non-realistic looking. While something like e.g. fuse probably took a ton of work to implement given all the options it also works well because it’s cartoonish and silly.

I can’t imagine a dev like e.g. Naughty Dog come up with that idea because their games are so serious and having an apple attached to a gun would look stupid and goofy. It’s more about looks than fun gameplay mechanics in most cases.
It is interesting you mentioned Naughty Dog, because I actually think they do implement some physics and even some impressive A.I. work into their games. The level and sound design were also excellent. They are one of the very few devs that show me both high end graphics and impressive game design are possible. Both the gameplay of Zelda BotW and The Last of Us Part 2 set a high bar for me.
 
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Impotaku

Member
The fucking salt around here.

It is an absolute masterpiece of game design. And so far in advance of some of the shit being produced on the other consoles that it’s not even funny.

It’s what happens when you employ extremely talented devs, and give them the time, money and leadership to put a truly remarkable game together.

Or, you know, you can hire second rate talent, push them to meet shareholder deadlines, demand micro transactions, and not give two fucks about the player experience.

Honestly, I hope Nintendo wipes the fucking floor with Sony and MS in the coming few years. They seem to be the only ones left who care about making actual good games these days.
It's glorious to be honest hope they don't die of salt poisioning, reading through you can tell the ones that haven't even played botw or totk and think the physics are just some basic shit and nothing special.

fvTdivI.jpg

p9jM0Pf.jpg


It's telling what state the hobby is in where a dev releases an ambitious game & it's not half finished. Maybe other devs need to start putting the graft into making their games run properly before they half shit it out the door followed by a hasty apology graphic on twitter saying how sorry they are.
 
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daclynk

Member
Nintendo just created one of the most impressive sandbox game that will live forever. they would have easily charged for those Zonai parts in those pachinko machines in the game if they were greedy and people would pay for it like they do other company. And its on a almost 7yrs old tech. Thats why people and Devs are Amazed, i just dont get why some are hating. Wow

Power means nothing when its not used wisely and we have seen it countless times with Nintendo.
 
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Totk is what happens when a aaa dev isnt compulsively chasing graphical fidelity.

The less you have to factor in graphics, the more freedom you have with other aspects of the game and their complexity. Hell, look at dwarf fortress or cataclysm dda. Profoundly intricate, with ascii graphics.

That totk does the level of physics simulation it does in 3d is extremely impressive - and I was a totk skeptic pre release.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
Todd Howard talked about the struggle in Bethesda RPGs to keep track of all objects and NPCs when their position aren’t static like in most games. I imagine keeping track of all the objects in the game with them all using physics from material and weight and wind and temperature etc is a lot more taxing. So I’d say getting it all working together in harmony without introducing jank and bugs with a fairly decent framerate most of the time on a Switch is impressive. But to be fair I have no real knowledge of what it takes to get it to work. If it’s easy then it’s even more strange that not more devs are using physics. It honestly makes a huge difference.
He's talking about objects and NPCs, that keep on existing and moving, throughout the entire map, even without the player being there. Its far too many and its naturally hard to keep track of all of them.

In TotK, at least when it comes to the physics objects you can play around with and have all these properties, they only exist within the scene of the player. Walk away further enough and they'll disappear (and apparently the components go back to where you first found them according to some guide). So ultimately the game is only really simulating one or two dozen objects at a time, it doesn't keep track of them.

We have two different concepts here, the difficult thing to do is persistency (the former), and can be extremely CPU taxing depending on the scale and the properties, as well as the precision of this persistency. The reason you don't see games with large cities where every single citizen has a complex routine would be this.
If its just simulating a handful of objects with special properties in a given scene, its been done over and over, even on much older hardware. Many examples were given on this thread, including one from me.

Honestly, i hate having to sound like i'm trying to downplay TotK. The amount of tweaking, balancing, changing and re-design that must've gone into this game to make sure everything feels balanced and fun is insane, anything but an easy thing to achieve.
However, i have to call out bullshit when i see it. TotK didn't invent physics objects.
 
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Liamario

Banned
I don't think anyone could argue against the quality of Nintendo's gameplay. Unfortunately their hardware leaves a lot to be desired.
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
What's so weird about it? There are plenty of other physics based puzzles games out. Not knocking zelda at all, but why are people acting like it's a new thing. The devs trust their players to make it work the same way others do. It just happens to be incorporated into a beloved franchise.

It's a AAA game from a beloved franchise and so it is going to get all the attention for innovation, whether earned or not. The idea that NINTENDO is the only one out there that can make game worlds with complex game systems (physics systems in the case of ZELDA) is absurd - STEAM is full of these kinds of LEGO x "Physics" games; NINTENDO's grand idea was putting one in ZELDA.

. . .all these developers falling all over themselves to cream over TOTK are kind of just showing how shallow their industry exposure is.
 

rolandss

Member
TL;DW. Dev discover physics and game systems

In all seriousness, we had more impressive physics systems running on fucking ps3s and x360s than many modern games. Saying this would be a monumental thing to do on current next-gen consoles is just ridiculous.

The game/level design however is indeed quite impressive, having all these systems working together is rather difficult to do, but thats hardware agnostic.
Totally. Game physics haven’t advanced at anything like the pace of the graphics. Most of the time I still feel as if I’m just playing smoother, prettier PS3 games.
 

DragonNCM

Member
TL;DW. Dev discover physics and game systems

In all seriousness, we had more impressive physics systems running on fucking ps3s and x360s than many modern games. Saying this would be a monumental thing to do on current next-gen consoles is just ridiculous.

The game/level design however is indeed quite impressive, having all these systems working together is rather difficult to do, but thats hardware agnostic.
Useless shiny graphic's eating all CPU & GPU resources, that's why we are getting dumb ass AI enemy's & lifeless worlds with 0 physics.
 
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Non Nintendo Game Dev: ToK is a marvel…
Salty Gafer with 0 knowledge of coding: No because Nintendo are fanboys, I never touched ToK and Nuts & Bolts 😅😅😅
 
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ungalo

Member
What a load of bs. RdR2 is pretty and has loads of systems but it's got extremely dumb shit design that breaks gameplay immersion completely . I hunted a legendary bear ...it should have killed me but the game kept me alive despite multiple hits and me being a newbie in the game. That was bad enough. I got the legendary pelt and then lost it as my horse fell into a river gorge. No biggie...the pelt will magically appear at some pelt dealers storage facility ( can't remember exactly it was several years ago).

Turned it off and never played it again. What a con.

In TOTK powerful enemies one shot you and if you lose an item you either find it where it landed or you lose it completely.
How is that dumb design to make an important object re-appear if you lose it ? It's the opposite.

In Zelda a npc that i saved in a well gave me some kind of ball as a reward, saying that i should give it to someone in the gerudo city. I thought i was supposed to transport it on my own to the city (which would be the logical design choice in a game like that and make for an interesting challenge, which this game lacks a lot) but it actually teleports to the feet of the npc i should have given it to if i go to the city. It seems even more absurd than your legendary pelt because i didn't even lose the ball.

Although i doubt the thread was about things like that.

But if we talk about programming in general i doubt Nintendo are the best in the industry. They have more hardware constraints fine but they also deal with way less expectations on the graphical side. Weak hardware is good for them.
 
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”today”
I literally haven’t touched another game since the TOTK release. Makes me wonder how many games that are still seeing dips in player numbers because of this game.
Lol, I've been looking forward to 40K Boltgun since it's announcement and haven't even loaded once since it came out. I'll say I think I've hit a very good "cooling" off point. Probably altogether put in close to 120+hours or so and finished the last boss last night. I was just stunned at how awesome that last fight was. Just completely epic. I have so many screenshots and I can't wait to talk more about it and go through and read others impressions and ideas as I've been cold turkey on pretty much anything Tears of the Kingdom for the last 2 months or so.
 
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