The Legend of Zelda Thread

[TheMightyEthan]

Spoiler for Master Sword location:

 

 

The forest directly north of Hyrule Castle, west of Death Mountain.

 

 

Spoiler for unique weapons:

 

 

You can repair/reforge the unique Champion weapons.  It costs 1 of the equivalent regular weapon (such as a Zora Spear for the Light Fork or whatever it was called), 1 diamond, and like 10 flint.

 

[CorgiShinobi]

Cowboy, give Angry Joe's review a chance. I was leery of it at first because in the past he's been very much pissed at Nintendo as a company, but he states in the first part of the video that he believes the game needed to be reviewed on his channel. He points to how much it has blown up with 10/10 scores and that it would be unfair to assume those behind the game agree with Nintendo's YouTube policy.

 

The reason I ended up liking his video is because he can't be accused of Zelda bias as he has no prior experience with the series. His score will be from a gameplay first, series last perspective. He's experiencing a series that has had decades of world building and character for the first time! Sure he won't see how much of a mold breaker Breath of the Wild is, and that could have affected his score, but if you've seen the video you can see the direct effect this game would have as a first impression.

 

If I say more it would spoil it, and truth is Angry Joe isn't much my style either. He tends to attract the wrong crowd of gamers, i.e. just view his comments. Like, hey he has something nice to say about the game, but that must obviously mean he's kissing ass.

 

Going back to the main discussion, I run into getting too many good weapons with a full inventory. Even after I've expanded my inventory, I usually have to make a decision on what weapon to throw away. I have 2 Royal Claymores, 1 Royal Broadsword, 3 Giant Boomerangs, 1 Lynel "Breaker", 1 Thunderblade, 1 Frost Spear, and some others I can't quite remember. I'm also getting 40+ weapons with high durability perks a lot. Though lately I've been getting some with that Long Throw perk.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

How do yo survive on Death Mountain? Currently skirting around its edges and catching fire when I get too close.

[TheMightyEthan]

Death Mountain spoiler:

 

 

Approach from south-southeast.  There's a stable there with a character who will sell you potions that make you immune to being set on fire.

 

 

Follow-up spoiler for once you're actually on Death Mountain proper:

 

 

Once you get to the Goron village you can get armor that makes you immune to fire so you don't have to use the potions constantly.

 

[Mister Jack]

Question: Do guardians respawn?  Specifically the big ones with the lasers?  I found a reliable way to take them out, but it involves using money and resources I'd rather not waste if they're just going to come back anyway.

[deanb]

[Mr. GOH!]

Hey, looks like folks will be able to play this on PC, at least after they violate national and international copyright law!

 

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/wii-u-emulator-devs-show-incredible-breath-of-the-wild-progress-in-new-video/

[TheMightyEthan]

Question: Do guardians respawn?  Specifically the big ones with the lasers?  I found a reliable way to take them out, but it involves using money and resources I'd rather not waste if they're just going to come back anyway.

 

Yes, they respawn.  I recommend keeping the reliable way handy, but only using it when you actually need to kill one because you can't get away from it for whatever reason.

 

You'll also find another reliable way that doesn't do quite so effective a job but is much much less resource intensive.

[TCP]

Death Mountain spoiler:

 

 

Approach from south-southeast.  There's a stable there with a character who will sell you potions that make you immune to being set on fire.

 

 

 

I wish I knew that, I stripped Link down and ran like hell to the village, having to eat most of my food along the way! 

[TheFlyingGerbil]

...wow... I feel slightly less bad about asking now.

[CorgiShinobi]

Did you guys not collect the fireproof lizards? Right before Goron Village, when you're in that lower mining area, a Hylian character will give you something helpful. Not sure if it's really a spoiler, but basically...

 

 

It's the fireproof chest piece. No need for elixirs on your way to Goron Village.

 

 

Also, I just perfect guard the Guardian's laser beam to take 'em out. It's very much risk-reward because if you don't have the timing down, you're basically out of a shield. You can do it with either a cheap wooden shield or big sturdy shield. Also doesn't degrade the shield if you perfect guard. Still, if you mess up, most times the shield is gone instantly.

[TheMightyEthan]

 

I was rushing to get the most out of the elixers, so I didn't see that guy until after I'd already been to the village and bought the full set.  Also, you'd still need at least one elixer because the part where you catch on fire is before you get to that guy.

 

[FMW]

So I've got a hot take:  Zelda is bad.

 

See, old Zelda was a level design game.  The connective tissue between the levels changed (fly around in the sky, wander a barren hyrule field, play pac man on railroad tracks) but the core of each game was that there were gonna be 5-10 dungeons that would each take 1-2 hours of really well paced and designed puzzle solving and traversal obstacles.  That was the meat of the games, and frankly nobody else does that style of long form level design better right now.  The satisfaction of figuring out the large puzzle of a dungeon that ties all its little puzzles together is profound.

 

NEW Zelda has only 4 dungeons and they're tiny compared to series standard.  35 minutes or so.  And to replace that you've got this great big open world and a ton of tiny one off shrines and combat camps sprinkled everywhere.

 

That's not the same thing!  And it's not as good.  Any old game can come up with 100 ideas that will hold interest for 5 minutes.  Fleshing an idea out, providing progression of difficulty, introducing new layers to old mechanics, and demanding mastery is what's hard.

 

Well at least we'll still have Mario for classic level design OH WAIT THAT'S GOING OPEN WORLD TOO.

 

God damn it everyone.  There are better ways to structure game content than in 5 minute chunks to be accessed in a random order.  Zelda Breath of the Wild feels like ADHD Zelda.  "What if you never got stuck, you never had to be in the same place for more than half an hour, and any time the game gets hard you can 1. Do something else or 2. Beat the challenge using tools overmatched for the task at hand (Blizzard rod makes 90% of this game negligible)."

 

Why did Zelda want to be Skyrim?  Skyrim sucks.  Make good levels again please.

[TCP]

I have no words for the travesty that has been committed in this thread. I do, however, have reaction gifs.

 

So I've got a hot take:  Zelda is bad.

 

 

Why did Zelda want to be Skyrim?  Skyrim sucks.

 

Oh and:

[Mal]

FMW brings up a very valid point. Open world games are by design disjointed adventure and with that comes with a cost taken from tight level design and, potentially, narrative. If a game is going open world from a previously more closed one, it can suffer greatly due to decline in level design and/or narrative. Having the best game play in the series might not be able to save it. See MGSV for a great example.

 

Anyhow, at least I'm not as attached to Zelda as I am with Metal Gear. Besides, BotW really do seem to be the realization of Zelda 1 (tainted by more modern/common takes on open world game designs).

[Mister Jack]

Honestly, I prefer the shorter dungeons.  Hunting for small keys, compasses, maps, dungeon items, and boss keys over and over got really tedious after a while.

[TCP]

Exactly. Having the content of 8 or so dungeons split up in shrines across the world was a much better approach (honestly if you add them all together, it's probably far beyond 8 dungeons). The four beasts were the perfect length, right when you feel like you've seen enough, you're fighting the boss. I just replayed Twilight Princess, the water temple, Snow Mansion, and City in the Sky are great dungeons but each one is about an hour too long. You more than display that you understand that dungeons gimmick but they just keep going... and going... and going. 

Exploration of the open world was always some of the best parts of Zelda games. I think they got away with Twilight Princess and especially with Skyward Sword so it's very exciting to see Nintendo go back to that in such a big way.

[Mr. GOH!]

What? I just thought FMW's take was interesting, nuanced, and challenging in the face of the overwhelming positive reaction from media and the fans. As someone who would not spend $300 for a relatively useless child's toy, I have no dog in this fight.

[CorgiShinobi]

♫ Every party needs a pooper that's why we invited you. Party pooper, party pooper. ♫

 

Zelda was becoming constrained by linear progression. It was one of the biggest gripes about Skyward Sword. In that game they gave you a colorful and fantastic world, but it was heavily dependent on going from Point A to Point B. I still love the game, but it represented a very narrow focus of how expansive the Zelda mythos has expanded both in character and gameplay.

 

The reason why I find the design of Breath of the Wild genius is because you can go on any path, use any method of gear/powers, and go at your own speed to complete this game. Personally I am at 80 hours and going to face my third Divine Beast. Notice I put emphasis on "my." The reason these Shrines, Korok Seeds, and Dungeons are shorter and scattered is because you won't feel you're playing out of order. For example, while it feels like it was intended to visit Zora's Domain first, nothing forces you to go there first for Vah Ruta. Hell, the game doesn't force you to collect Korok Seeds. You can bypass the obvious puzzles if you're dead set on getting somewhere.

 

You'll be doing yourself a disservice, but technically the game still allows people to play that way. Whether you get gear to combat temperatures, or cook meals for enhanced effects, or even resort to simple elixirs. It's just like our prior discussion. Reaching Goron Village and tackling its environment has different solutions.

 

I'm not saying anyone is wrong for wanting to have the old formula because there definitely is a crowd for it after the launch of BotW. I can respect that, but in my opinion to say this game has terrible design and does a disservice to Zelda as a whole is grossly misguided. This entire game might as well be a love letter to the entire franchise.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Atomsk88

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Haven't played the game yet, but I agree with what FMW said as an idea. Also, everything I see about Zelda is "wow this is open world crap from 2005 but Zelda".

[TheMightyEthan]

"wow this is open world crap from 2005 but Zelda and polished to perfection ".

ftfy

 

It's not that it does things that have never been done before, it's that it does them so amazingly well.

[Mal]

That's so like Nintendo that it hurts. It's why I still care.

[CorgiShinobi]

It will come down to personal interpretation, but I enjoy the side quests in that they are neither extremely exhausting and most are doable at whatever pace you're going. This is different from other open world games where there's an obvious grind and it some cases it's just not worth going to "starting" areas where they're a waste of time for xp/loot.

 

Even more so, different Shrines can end up teaching you more about the mechanics of the game.

 

 

Now I almost did the exact same thing as this guy. Here I learned I could have the two different bombs out at the same time. The "intended" solution is much easier, but quite a number of Shrines have alternative solutions that work wonderfully well.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

I dunno. I have a hard time believing that, Ethan.

 

Open world is incredibly difficult to do well, and multitudes more difficult to do while doing anything else well.  I can count on one hand the number of games that have accomplished that as far as I'm concerned.

 

But as someone who really enjoyed Zelda until Wii done goofed, I'm happy to be proved wrong when I do get around it. Just doesn't instill confidence.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Saturnine Tenshi

[FMW]

I mean, the counter argument to make here is "It's unfair to judge a game for not having satisfactory long form level design when that game is making no attempt to have long form level design."

 

My position is just that isolated snippets of level design consumed in a random order is inherently worse.  When the authorial control is reduced you lose pacing, you lose sequential progression of ideas, you lose cause and effect, and you lose any semblance of a difficulty and power curve.  These are all good things that Zelda games usually are really good at!  Even Skyward Sword which had some CRUMMY pacing turned white hot as soon as the game got out of its way and just left you to conquer a level.  It wasn't even just the dungeons in that game, just getting to a dungeon almost always required an hour plus of tricky scripted level progression.  Linear level design just has a higher ceiling for craft than open world level design.

 

So if you accept that new Zelda is an open world game and judge it on the rubric you would use to judge Just Cause 3 or Mass Effect Andromeda... yeah!  It's better!  The NPCs are more distinct, the content is less nakedly presented as a content checklist, the actual terrain you clamber over is more detailed and distinct.

 

...but lets not lower our standards because other games suck.  Classic Zelda is a delicious beef wellington.  Carefully made of highest quality ingredients with each specifically layered, cooked, and proportioned to maximize deliciousness.  New Zelda is a slow cooker beef roast eaten on toast.  You've still got your beef, your mushrooms, your onion, your bread component, and your seasoning.  The basic ingredients are the same.  But a beef wellington is harder to make and will always be superior unless you REALLY fuck it up.  New Zelda is just a well seasoned beef roast where you fish out the good parts with your ladle and even if you get all your favorite bits it won't ever be as tasty as a wellington.

Edited March 25, 2017 by FMW