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[level1]

Of course there is, right in the op.

– You can spend rupees on a more expensive bed, giving you an extra heart the next morning
– These hearts are yellow and can’t be recovered if you’re hit in combat
Implying that visiting a specific place to get the maximum amount of life energy is required.


– Have to be careful during a thunderstorm, since your metal items can attract thunder
– Link can get killed by lightning
Random weather effects that may require you to wait or throw away your equipment, which in turn must be regained through redundant activities


– Link can keep multiple horses at a time
– Affection/loyalty important with horses
– Feed and take care of horses to raise their stats
– Can call horses over to you, but horses need to be within a certain proximity to be called
Seems like pure busywork, no mechanical challenge involved, leads to a lot of redundancies


– Horses can be killed by enemies
Implies the necessity of obtaining more horses through activities that can be done unboundedly often, so in all likelihood are not mechanically challenging, but just time-consuming


– Can mine rocks which can be solid for rupees or used for crafting
Mining is probably not mechanically challenging, but just a case of busywork


– No invincible weapons in the game, Nintendo says
Right to the end of the game, the player has to take on redundant tasks to obtain basic weapons that are a central part of the core moveset

I kind of think a lot of this sounds pretty cool, despite possibly not adding much to the final game. I agree with you regarding durability though. Fuck all weapon durability mechanics, and fuck em hard.

 

[Coffee Dog]

Mining is an indefensibly dogshit mechanic. Punching unresponsive rocks to get minerals is hitting the button with no reactivity, and it permeates open world games.
It's a time waster.

Plenty of open world games intend for you to follow a critical story path along a level appropriate series of areas, while still allowing you to access or even complete other areas earlier.

You're meant to follow a list of clues in New Vegas that take you from Goodsprings to Primm to Nipton to Novac to Freeside to the Vegas strip, and the game is balanced around that, but there's nothing stopping a smarter player from just using a stealth boy or chems to run and sneak past the Deathclaws around Quarry Junction, right to Camp McCarran, where you can steal a uniform and take the monorail straight to the strip.

Witcher 3 has recommended levels for its regions and quests, but you could technically go and do Skellige before even doing the Bloody Baron stuff in Velen.

This is assuming that Nintendo has made a reactive game world that responds to the player's decisions. Sneaking around deathclaws and using an alternate method to break into the strip is only satisfying because Obsidian planned for it and gave you many options and tools to do so.

I'm not putting a whole lot of stock in this massively budgeted open world game hitting the high bar of reactivity set by some of the best WRPGs of all time from a team that's never developed a game like this before, and who has fumbled in the past with a complete lack of reactivity in this sort of open ended design with ALBW.

 

[vareon]

I mean if there was a set difficulty, with certain areas and dungeons designated as hard areas and easier areas to a point that it would actually affect which areas could be traveled through, then you're playing a linear game. You are going where Nintendo tells you to go, in the order that they have decided for you based on your character's relative strength and capabilities at that point in the game. That isn't free. That's traditional Zelda, doing a series of dungeons that scale up in difficulty over the course of the experience.

I believe them when they say the game is truly open, that you can do the content in whatever order in the vein of ALBW. That means that you can walk into dungeon #4 (and the surrounding areas) about as easily as you can walk into dungeons #1 or #2 (and their surrounding areas). Anything else would be mechanically enforced linearity and the polar opposite of what this player choice focused open world zelda is all about.

A huge part of what makes Open World design appealing to me is the feeling of "you're not supposed to be here" when I'm in a particularly dangerous area. Do I push through? Should I go back to prepare? Do I just come back later? There's an immense satisfaction in being able to avoid or defeat an enemy with levels far above me.

A bad level scaling would actually be against the open world design, because it makes your choice meaningless.

 

[SRV]

You can catch fish while swimming and/or throwing bombs. I'm not sure if there a fishing rod.

I should have said rod fishing, sorry. Hopefully there will be rod fishing,.

 

[duckroll]

This is assuming that Nintendo has made a reactive game world that responds to the player's decisions. Sneaking around deathclaws and using an alternate method to break into the strip is only satisfying because Obsidian planned for it and gave you many options and tools to do so.

I'm not putting a whole lot of stock in this massively budgeted open world game hitting the high bar of reactivity set by some of the best WRPGs of all time from a team that's never developed a game like this before, and who has fumbled in the past with a complete lack of reactivity in this sort of open ended design with ALBW.

I dunno, I think Nintendo is keenly aware of the player experiences they create. It doesn't take open world RPG development experience to know what players get out of varied scenarios. Wind Waker is a good example of how they didn't need to make Metal Gear games to understand how thrilling and fun stealth can be, even if they were short segments.

I don't think the New Vegas comparison really works because you're thinking too much about the game world reacting to the fact that you achieved something rather than the feeling of personal achievement. If you sequence broke the game by sneaking past the Deathclaws to get to the Strip it would be satisfying even if all that was in the Strip was a quest item or a box saying "congratulations". The fact that New Vegas is extremely reactive is a consequence of it being a narrative driven RPG. The story is important to the developers and the players, and the game reacting to your actions makes it more interesting and fun. That doesn't mean that it is necessary for every component of the game to be satisfying. It's just a plus.

 

[Afrodium]

Of course there is, right in the op.

– You can spend rupees on a more expensive bed, giving you an extra heart the next morning
– These hearts are yellow and can’t be recovered if you’re hit in combat
Implying that visiting a specific place to get the maximum amount of life energy is required.


– Have to be careful during a thunderstorm, since your metal items can attract thunder
– Link can get killed by lightning
Random weather effects that may require you to wait or throw away your equipment, which in turn must be regained through redundant activities


– Link can keep multiple horses at a time
– Affection/loyalty important with horses
– Feed and take care of horses to raise their stats
– Can call horses over to you, but horses need to be within a certain proximity to be called
Seems like pure busywork, no mechanical challenge involved, leads to a lot of redundancies


– Horses can be killed by enemies
Implies the necessity of obtaining more horses through activities that can be done unboundedly often, so in all likelihood are not mechanically challenging, but just time-consuming


– Can mine rocks which can be solid for rupees or used for crafting
Mining is probably not mechanically challenging, but just a case of busywork


– No invincible weapons in the game, Nintendo says
Right to the end of the game, the player has to take on redundant tasks to obtain basic weapons that are a central part of the core moveset

Hey man I just want to let you know that it's totally fine to be cautiously optimistic and until this game comes out nobody in this thread knows if these things will be immersive or tedious so people should cut you some slack for having a different opinion than them about an unreleased video game.

 

[FloweryMarston]

The gameinformer article already mentions that there will be difficult spikes, where there are parts that are harder than you are prepared for. But you can go around it, you can explore it. The final boss is also like this, you won't be able to win against him at first most likely, so you can come back when you feel you can tackle him again. The dungeons are like this, the shrines, and multiple areas. There won't be level scaling, especially because there aren't levels in the game.

The idea behind the game is to explore and engage in multiple situations, if some are too hard for you, you can come back, no worries. When you feel strong enough, you can go back to then. Even the shrines work like this, as they mark which are completed and which aren't once you activate them.

 

[Flare]

Hmmmmm, there's a picture of the

Spoiler

dungeon boss mentioned in the article

floating around.

 

[casey_contra]

Hmmmmm, there's a picture of the

Spoiler

dungeon boss mentioned in the article

floating around.

I've seen it and it's unexpected, but terrific. Reminds me of

Spoiler

Majora

mixed with something from

Spoiler

Bloodborne

, though not as well designed... or grotesque.

 

[crooked spin]

I think it's fair to be concerned about how tedious these "immersive" open-world tropes can be after repeating dozens of times. I'm 100+ hours into FFXV and I wish to god I could just buy magic with the hundreds of thousands of gil I have because walking to a magic deposit is sooooo boring now.

 

[Pat]

You can save anywhere in this right? Just save often and if your horse dies reload the save.

It autosaves often, you can't save manually.

 

[FloweryMarston]

It autosaves often, you can't save manually.

it auto-saves and you can save any time

 

[Yonafunu]

It autosaves often, you can't save manually.

You can save manually.

 

[Pat]

Oh, my bad.

 

[m4st4]

New update (gameplay) when? I'm shaking.

 

[ckaneo]

I dunno, I think Nintendo is keenly aware of the player experiences they create. It doesn't take open world RPG development experience to know what players get out of varied scenarios. Wind Waker is a good example of how they didn't need to make Metal Gear games to understand how thrilling and fun stealth can be, even if they were short segments.

The stealth in wind waker is trash. So bad they had to make you drop perfectly good enemy weapons on the ground with no explanation

 

[Outtrigger888]

I should have said rod fishing, sorry. Hopefully there will be rod fishing,.

If they spent 4-5 years making this game and didn't put in a fishing mechanic I'm gonna be really disappointed. You can use a raft in the game, and it only make sense to have a fishing rod.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

Of course there is, right in the op.

– You can spend rupees on a more expensive bed, giving you an extra heart the next morning
– These hearts are yellow and can't be recovered if you're hit in combat
Implying that visiting a specific place to get the maximum amount of life energy is required.

You can craft food for yellow hearts, man. That's just one other option.

 

[Trey]

the only thing that sounds annoying to me is the fact the Master Sword can break. Everything else sounds amazing.

 

[kunonabi]

the only thing that sounds annoying to me is the fact the Master Sword can break. Everything else sounds amazing.

Yeah, doesn't bode well for getting the classic green tunic or Hylian shield either.

 

[Flare]

Yeah, doesn't bode well for getting the classic green tunic or Hylian shield either.

Blue looks so good though. I expect the shield to show up as an end game item.

 

[Mael]

There are plenty of open world games that don't use level scaling (or a very minimal level scaling) or a flat difficulty.

There's not even proper leveling in Zelda to begin with!

 

[kunonabi]

Blue looks so good though. I expect the shield to show up as an end game item.

It looks fine but when I'm taking on Ganon I prefer to be properly decked out is all.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

I'm curious how much thought they've put into a stealth system. I'd love to switch to ninja link at night and defeat a group of enemies with stealth kills.

 

[Mael]

I'm curious how much thought they've put into a stealth system. I'd love to switch to ninja link at night and defeat a group of enemies with stealth kills.

As long as it's not mandatory and shitty like before...
I have nothing against stealth sections but FORCED stealth sections are shit and shouldn't be done in an open world setting.

 

[Doorman]

If you want to claim that catching and raising new horses is tedious busywork because it lacks challenge...

...maybe the challenge for you should instead be found in acting in ways that don't get your horse killed? This method falls much more in line with the survivalist resource-managing style of the game than gaining one magical perma-horse that you feel little investment in. It's also a bit soon to complain about raising new horses when we don't really know how time-intensive of a process it is, anyway. They intend for you to be using multiple horses throughout the game so I can't imagine it's a super-obtrusive process anyway.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

If you can play the dungeons in any order how can there be a proper escalation in dungeon difficulty and the resulting tension? ALBW didn't have that.

You must hate the Mega Man series.

 

[Neoleo2143]

I'm curious how much thought they've put into a stealth system. I'd love to switch to ninja link at night and defeat a group of enemies with stealth kills.

Well, it doesn't look like they made it easy because to avoid notifying enemies you have to move extremely slowly in addition to making sure the gear and ground you walk on is correct as well as line of sight. Plus the Stealth Kill animation only locks Link into the animation, not the enemy so even if you engage it, if the enemy turns around, it won't work. It makes sense though, Pure Stealth uses the least resources so it should be more difficult to pull off than other methods.

 

[Debirudog]

So it looks like the next update's set for today, here's the hub page.

patiently waiting...

 

[arlucool]

If they spent 4-5 years making this game and didn't put in a fishing mechanic I'm gonna be really disappointed. You can use a raft in the game, and it only make sense to have a fishing rod.

Btw, using the raft to cross bodies of water is the only tedious mechanic I've seem so far, because the Deku Leaf verely moves it and it seems you have to blow the leaf in a very specific direction for it to work. Was not a fan of it during the Threehouse segment.

I'm curious how much thought they've put into a stealth system. I'd love to switch to ninja link at night and defeat a group of enemies with stealth kills.

A ninja armor that reduces Link's detection/sound + more stamina for running, but have poor defenses. I could see something like that.

 

[Charamiwa]

So it looks like the next update's set for today, here's the hub page.

Had that page up for a few hours, can't wait. Though I guess the first update should be a minor one.

 

[MiamiWesker]

This talk of the open nature of the game and structure, I assume it's like zelda 1. You can basically go where you want, walk into any dungeon but the last one at any time. Get items in any order and so on. To check this certain areas had tougher enemies, some dungeons required the item from the previous dungeon and so on. I assume that's how this game will play out.

 

[DisconnectD]

This talk of the open nature of the game and structure, I assume it's like zelda 1. You can basically go where you want, walk into any dungeon but the last one at any time. Get items in any order and so on. To check this certain areas had tougher enemies, some dungeons required the item from the previous dungeon and so on. I assume that's how this game will play out.

Similar, except for the dungeons having items part and the not being able to go into the final dungeon part. You get most if not all items at the start and can definitely go to the final boss from the beginning. You may die though.

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

If you want to claim that catching and raising new horses is tedious busywork because it lacks challenge...

...maybe the challenge for you should instead be found in acting in ways that don't get your horse killed? This method falls much more in line with the survivalist resource-managing style of the game than gaining one magical perma-horse that you feel little investment in. It's also a bit soon to complain about raising new horses when we don't really know how time-intensive of a process it is, anyway. They intend for you to be using multiple horses throughout the game so I can't imagine it's a super-obtrusive process anyway.

You can also play and finish the game without doing all of that stuff. Im not sure why that person labelling all the stuff as tedious.. just ignore it? And ride a donkey the whole game lol

 

[routerbad]

I dont know if its just me but the GI Footage looks way better than what we've seen so far, the draw distance looks even more improved than what we saw from the Switch demo's this past month and the colors look more vibrant. Maybe im trippin out but it does seem a step above before.

The switch demos at the presentation were running an old version of the game apparently. I think GameXplain said it was like 0.24S or something.

That said I don't really notice a huge difference personally, but some people are much more sensitive to that sort of thing.

 

[Illusive_Juan]

Not sure if it was officially confirmed, but it BOTW takes place after OOT.

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/829420245022449664

 

[Im_So_Pringles]

Can't wait to see the first speed run for this game. Shield surfing down every small hill for the most optimal movement, running straight into Ganon's boss room with nothing but a wood cutters axe, some sticks, and one or two swords scavenged off of enemies leading up to the final fight. Huge battle of attrition following where a single hit cannot be wasted, or else your weapons will all break before the fight is over. Glorious. Speedruns of this game are definitely going to be interesting!

 

[Charamiwa]

Can't wait to see the first speed run for this game. Shield surfing down every small hill for the most optimal movement, running straight into Ganon's boss room with nothing but a wood cutters axe, some sticks, and one or two swords scavenged off of enemies leading up to the final fight. Huge battle of attrition following where a single hit cannot be wasted, or else your weapons will all break before the fight is over. Glorious. Speedruns of this game are definitely going to be interesting!

A bunch of speedrunners I follow already said they were gonna play this game extensively. Between playing the game myself and watching all of this unfold that'll be enough Zelda for a lifetime lol

 

[Ocarina_117]

Not sure if it was officially confirmed, but it BOTW takes place after OOT.

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/829420245022449664

'Does Link have a last name?'

'It's the same as Mario.'

Made me laugh.

Love Miyamoto

 

[Inferno313]

Not sure if it was officially confirmed, but it BOTW takes place after OOT.

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/829420245022449664

Miyamoto and Aonuma's deadpanned reaction to the Majora's Mask sun question cracked me up, for some reason.

"That's fun. That's good."

 

[theaffection]

I should have said rod fishing, sorry. Hopefully there will be rod fishing,.

There better be. No word on it yet which is worrying




I wonder if this game will have FFXV style hunts. Maybe they're considered sidemissions?

 

[Vital Tundra]

Not sure if it was officially confirmed, but it BOTW takes place after OOT.

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/829420245022449664

Well we know that. It's which of the 3 timelines thereafter. WW is the only one that makes sense to me.

There better be. No word on it yet which is worrying




I wonder if this game will have FFXV style hunts. Maybe they're considered sidemissions?

There is a believe. Something about a side mission of a white bear or something.

 

[Kingpin Rogers]

Not sure if it was officially confirmed, but it BOTW takes place after OOT.

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/829420245022449664

Also confirms Link doesn't speak a full sentence in the game. Phew.

 

[MrSaturn99]

Not sure if it was officially confirmed, but it BOTW takes place after OOT.

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/829420245022449664

That was really fun to watch.

 

[Pinky]

Can't wait to see the first speed run for this game. Shield surfing down every small hill for the most optimal movement, running straight into Ganon's boss room with nothing but a wood cutters axe, some sticks, and one or two swords scavenged off of enemies leading up to the final fight. Huge battle of attrition following where a single hit cannot be wasted, or else your weapons will all break before the fight is over. Glorious. Speedruns of this game are definitely going to be interesting!

.

 

[theaffection]

There is a believe. Something about a side mission of a white bear or something.

Fuck yeah! With hunts and fishing theres no need to do anything else!

 

[Wandering Robot]

Part of me wants to be concerned about horses dying, but as far as other games where your horse can die are concerned, I'm really not.
I'm more interested in what kind of sidequests there'll be. If it's mostly fetch and kill, that might put a damper on how much effort goes into them (for me). Still looking forward to more info, though!

 

[Mory Dunz]

PAPER ZELDA CONFIRMED.

MAKE A THREAD.

MAKE 10 THREADS

 

[WordAssassin]

Not sure if it was officially confirmed, but it BOTW takes place after OOT.

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/829420245022449664

That doesn't really help much, if anything it makes things more complicated! The majority of Zelda games take place after OoT, the trick is figuring out which of the 3 timelines it takes place in.

.

LOL

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

Sounds....

like a very modern take on Zelda

interesting