The Legend of Zelda: The Tears of the Kingdom

[Jay 37,369]

 

 

 

 

[JohnnyD 1,223]

This may be the only time in my young adult life that I have been anticipating the release of a video game (I’m more of a casual person when it comes to video games; I just have a Switch, and that’s all I need). I was looking forward to Star Wars: Battlefront II and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, but only to watch the stories unfold like a movie (I don’t own the system for those games); I’m looking forward to Star Wars: Jedi Survivor only to watch it.

[TolkienSS 407]

At the rate I've been dissapointed by Nintendo every time they addressed this game in a Direct, this will be the same trailer for a third time, with Eiji Aonuma pretending to play it.

[Bellosh 3,419]

i loved BOTW

 

but i just want there to be ACTUAL dungeons in this game!

[Jay 37,369]

Seems like there will be

[mstrox 6,651]

The four Divine Beasts always felt pretty much like actual dungeons to me!  They had a very linear puzzle room feeling and a boss at the end.

[Jay 37,369]

They were all literally non-linear.  They all had 4 things to unlock, that you could do in any order you wanted to

[mstrox 6,651]

I guess so, but that doesn’t feel any different to me than, say, a dungeon where you have a small key and can go through any one of three locked doors (like the one my kid and I played in Link’s Awakening yesterday).  It’s linear in the sense that you progress through a series of goals to attain Boss Fight status.

[Bellosh 3,419]

I'd rather this game have double the amount of shrines than one half assed dungeon that the divine beasts were.

 

calling them a dungeon is a stretch

[Jay 37,369]

My biggest question is will there be a grappling hook

[Bellosh 3,419]

19 minutes ago, Jay said:

My biggest question is will there be a grappling hook

 

this could be very fun with the paragliding!!!

[SilverTrumpet 638]

I'm more curious if it's going to be worth waiting six years.

 

Normally by this time we're getting ready for an all new setting, story, world, premise, style, etc that will become the Zelda standard for the next 5-6 years.

 

...not a BOTW expansion, but we'll see tomorrow I guess.

[Jay 37,369]

They said the 10 minutes will be focused on gameplay, but I suppose a trailer could play before or after, that goes into the story/setting

[Jay 37,369]

Here it is!

 

 

He says development is complete!

 

Horse riding music sounds the same

 

Amazing how similar the graphics and HUD is

 

Oh sweet Recall sounds like an awesome ability!

 

Link's new look is great, I love the long hair

 

Woah, Fuse is even cooler!

 

I love how fusing a stick with a giant boulder apparently makes the boulder quite light-weight as well  

 

Woah, being able to craft ice arrows on the fly is awesome

 

HA!  Using an eyeball to make homing arrows is sooooooooooo cool!

 

Man, Fusing seems so powerful, they let you fuse EVERYTHING together!

 

Oooh, Ultrahand is nifty too.  Make your own boats!

 

Ascend is cool too!

 

Wow that was a great tease, I definitely feel like this barely scratched the surface of what's going on in this game.  Nifty!

 

Ah, and nice to see confirmation of the TOTK Switch OLED; I'm getting one!

[Bellosh 3,419]

Well after that, I'm still in the same mindset.  A zelda game with 6 years of development, using botw's world and mechanics, i mean thats almost always gonna be a day one purchase for me.

 

They def doubled down on the crafting/sandbox stuff that loads of people messed around with in botw.  I never really cared for that stuff, but if theres hundreds and hundreds of different combos in TotK, then that could change my mind.  I assume there must be if that was almost the only thing they wanted to show today.

 

DIVING FROM THE SKY LIKE THAT LOOKED SO MUCH FUN THOUGH.

 

All in all, it's a world I wouldn't mind visiting again.

 

I'm just pissed i'm probably gonna have to collect all those acorns again.

[Jay 37,369]

Well what I found interesting is that he ONLY showed the 4 new abilities.  We don't even know if Bomb, Magnesis, Stasis, and Cryonis are even still included or not!

 

But yes, the extremely narrow focus of this really means there's still SO MUCH we don't know.  Nothing about the story, setting, timeline, what your goals are, anything.

 

It's clear the sandboxing is kicked up a notch to a whole new level, and that will affect the ways you can approach combat immensely too it seems, but I'm sure there's still a path people can take through this game that doesn't mess around with a lot of this stuff if they don't want to.

 

Also I doubt the map will be precisely the same as BOTW's just with stuff floating above.  I expect it to be similar but different

[Bellosh 3,419]

Is there any precedent of a game using basically (we think) the same map and just adding on stuff/slightly tweaking it for it's sequel.

 

Especially to this scale?

[Jay 37,369]

That's what I'm saying, I don't think it uses the same map "slightly tweaked", I think it's going to be significantly different

 

But to answer your question, I cannot think of a sequel that reuses a world map from a previous game outside of like specific throw-back sections

[Bellosh 3,419]

yeah i don't think it will either, i agree, i don't think Nintendo would do that to us....but as soon as that gameplay showed the Twin Mountains and the stable, I was concerned lots of it might still be the same (which still wouldn't be an issue to me personally, the game and world is fantastic to re-visit)

[Jay 37,369]

It's going to be soooooooooooooo much fun to trying fusing everything in your inventory with everything else to see what effects you can get.

 

This game is coming out at a good time for me, I have several long plane rides coming up in June.  I just hope I can secure the OLED model because the battery life on my launch Switch is pretty sad these days

[Bellosh 3,419]

haha yeah my launch switch is right there with yours.  i mostly play handheld these days, just fits my lifestyle better at the moment. 

 

but for this i think i'm gonna play most of it docked, and then post-game go back to handheld with all the collecting/quests.

[Jay 37,369]

[SilverTrumpet 638]

1 hour ago, Bellosh said:

Is there any precedent of a game using basically (we think) the same map and just adding on stuff/slightly tweaking it for it's sequel.

 

Especially to this scale?

 

I think Far Cry Primal's map was just Far Cry 4's used again.

 

Game looks good. Nothing has changed on my end. Looks so far like I expected it to look.

 

Doesn't mean I won't spend dozens of hours 100%ing it.

[Jay 37,369]

The mini-map shows that caves get their own icon, with a check-mark if you've complete (?) them, and also an icon that looks like the shrine icon, but I think is different enough they could just be fast-travel points and not actual shrines.  Perhaps caves basically are this game's version of shrines?

 

   

 

I wonder if those latitude/longitude/altitude numbers are something you can turn off if you want to

[Jay 37,369]

 

[mstrox 6,651]

Beginning to fear that this thing will come out on time.

[Goldfinger 59]

On 28/03/2023 at 11:15 AM, Bellosh said:

Is there any precedent of a game using basically (we think) the same map and just adding on stuff/slightly tweaking it for it's sequel.

 

Especially to this scale?

 

Pokemon Gold/Silver had the entire map from Red/Blue available after beating the Elite 4. Not all buildings were accessible but it was the same map using a new compression algorithm Iwata came up with before taking a leadership role in the company.

 

[Schilkeman 964]

15 hours ago, Goldfinger said:

Pokemon Gold/Silver had the entire map from Red/Blue available after beating the Elite 4. Not all buildings were accessible but it was the same map using a new compression algorithm Iwata came up with before taking a leadership role in the company.

 

Yeah, I always get the impression that Game Freak is not great at tech. Not to discount what Iwata did, he was clearly a genius, but their games have frequently had performance issues, which I'm sure spending some of their ridiculous amount of money could solve.

 

Not gonna lie, gang. I did not enjoy BotW. I want this one to be great, and everything I want in a Zelda, but I think they're moving harder in a direction I don't care to go.

[TolkienSS 407]

Why is it with Nintendo that everything always comes down to motion control or crafting?

The last thing I thought about when playing BotW was "golly gee, if only this had lots of crafting!"

What I thought was "god, I hope I can play a Zelda like this again soon".

Nintendo, I wanted you to make an open world Zelda again. I didn't want you to do the same game twice.

[SilverTrumpet 638]

6 hours ago, Schilkeman said:

Yeah, I always get the impression that Game Freak is not great at tech. Not to discount what Iwata did, he was clearly a genius, but their games have frequently had performance issues, which I'm sure spending some of their ridiculous amount of money could solve.

 

They used to be. The first Pokemon game was extremely impressive on a technical level. The Pokemon looked better than almost anything on Game Boy at that point and the amount of world they stuffed in the game was wild. This was even before Iwata's famous assistance that let them double the game's size for Gold and SIlver.

[Jay 37,369]

Oh shit!  The final trailer (3 minutes) drops 22 1/2 hours from now!

 

 

[JohnnyD 1,223]

 

[Jay 37,369]

Same joke I used in post #1

[Jay 37,369]

One month til launch!

 

 

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

On 31/03/2023 at 6:40 PM, TolkienSS said:

Why is it with Nintendo that everything always comes down to motion control or crafting?

The last thing I thought about when playing BotW was "golly gee, if only this had lots of crafting!"

What I thought was "god, I hope I can play a Zelda like this again soon".

Nintendo, I wanted you to make an open world Zelda again. I didn't want you to do the same game twice.

 

Nintendo are about innovation. They will always zag when everyone else zigs. It's how they've stayed in business for over a century.

 

For what it's worth, open world games are a dime a dozen. Why bother with the same again if we can have something fresh? 

 

 

Can't wait for this game. Considering the development time I feel like it's going to be something really special. 

 

[TolkienSS 407]

11 hours ago, Docteur Qui said:

 

Nintendo are about innovation. They will always zag when everyone else zigs. It's how they've stayed in business for over a century.

 

For what it's worth, open world games are a dime a dozen. Why bother with the same again if we can have something fresh? 

 

 

Can't wait for this game. Considering the development time I feel like it's going to be something really special. 

 

 

Nintendo is probably the last company to jump on innovation. Nintendo is a company that will ride a concept to its death. Motion controls aren't innovative. The Wii existed 15 years ago. They finally discovered that open world games are a thing years late, then they made a great one (BOTW), and now it seems like the focus is again not on an innovative game, but the same game with different abilities.

[Faleel 5,353]

 

[Jay 37,369]

Well bloody hell that looks awesome

 

Such an incredible amount of new ideas in there, holy cow

 

So happy to see so many new enemy types

[Bellosh 3,419]

that bounce-hopping on those platforms in the sky looks like so much fun.

 

also a minecart chase/fight!!

 

great trailer. the hype is real.

[Jay 37,369]

Was so cool to see this guy show up

 

[Jay 37,369]

Official site is up and nicely loops endlessly through the footage from the trailers, set to a cool music cue

 

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/zelda/totk/

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

12 hours ago, TolkienSS said:

 

Nintendo is probably the last company to jump on innovation. Nintendo is a company that will ride a concept to its death. Motion controls aren't innovative. The Wii existed 15 years ago. They finally discovered that open world games are a thing years late, then they made a great one (BOTW), and now it seems like the focus is again not on an innovative game, but the same game with different abilities.

 

That's... really not the case at all. And I'm not talking about things like motion controls when I say Nintendo are innovative (although the Wii was enormously innovative and successful), I'm talking about gameplay. When BOTW was released in 2017 we were approaching critical mass in terms of open-world gaming. But what Nintendo delivered was not only unlike any previous Zelda game, it was also unlike anything else on the market. While other games hammered the player with intrusive icons, empty side quests, endless collectathons and complex, Hollywood-movie storylines, BOTW had a minimal user interface and a lean main quest. The purpose of the game was literally exploration, and everything else was secondary to that experience.

Its intuitive and satisfying use of vertical exploration (with climbing and parasailing) is now all but the norm in open-world fantasy games. When the sequel was announced I was a little disappointed, as much as I love BOTW, I expect something new, fresh and different from my Zelda games. I shouldn't have doubted them though, in my 24 years of Zelda gaming they've never not done something different. Judging by these trailers, neither motion controls or crafting are being used as a gimmick - they're a core part of the gameplay. And knowing Nintendo, those elements won't outstay their welcome (give or take a Skyward Sword). 

 

Also, why are you complaining about "the same game with different abilities" when you previously said you wanted the same game again?

 

Trailer is incredible.... Wow I can't believe how much they're packing into this game. That wing suit looks awesome!

 

[JohnnyD 1,223]

As if there was any doubt from that first teaser trailer…

[mstrox 6,651]

The gameplay footage and the most recent trailer are giving me a bit of fear that the game is becoming much, much “busier” than BOTW, the simplicity of which being maybe the primary contributor to its success as a game.  I have no reason to doubt the team making it, but I do have to admit that the more I see, the more my hype kinda dies.

[Jay 37,369]

 

[DarthDementous 1,059]

This piece of music was absolutely incredible. Such an interesting mix of sounds that you wouldn't think would work as well together as they did, enjoying the creativity I'm seeing so far with this soundtrack. The musical storytelling as well was top-notch: 

 

[Jay 37,369]

YES!  The music was great!

[mstrox 6,651]

Broke down and started a new game of BOTW on my day off on Friday, this time on the Switch for the first time.  Damn, what a good dame.  I have a few longterm goals this time - every Shrine, every mission, and every entry in the Compendium (which will likely be the hardest…).  One of my other goals was a no-die game, but I ruined that on the plateau of all places, hitting “let go” instead of “jump” at the top of a mountain by accident.

[Faleel 5,353]

2 hours ago, mstrox said:

 Damn, what a good dame.

 

 

Heh.

[mstrox 6,651]

I’m playing with JUDI DENCH