Zelda: Breath of the wild thoughts, Qs, hints and experiences (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

I conquered and freed my first Divine Beast last night: Medoh, the bird over Riko village.

The game deceived me. The first beast I found was the elephant, up around the aquatic village. The quest was to go kill a Lynel and get its electric arrows. The Lynel is so powerful that I couldn't deal with it. I figured if I can't handle the sub-boss, there's no way I'll be able to deal with the Big Boss of a Divine Beast.

But after wandering some more, I went back and did the Flight Range, learning to use arrows in flight, and it was unexpectedly easy (with the Riko's special bows), so I went to the Divine Beast to check it out. And it was not hard. Mostly logic puzzles and exploration. The final boss was, to my surprise, much easier than Guardians (which I still can't really deal with) and Lynels. Even Hinox are more challenging overall.

So, ok. I'll get back to the other two Divine Beasts I've found (Elephant and Camel) and see how they are.

 

[DaveF]

I can say at this point, I'm completely won over by Zelda.

I was initially very skeptical of the Switch in general; it took two years before I was ready to buy one (which I don't regret, it wasn't a fit for me until this year). But with the USB-C dongle adapter for bluetooth headphones along with the Bose iPhone app for connecting, it's great. It's awesome playing in airports and on airplanes, and in hotels. Really enjoying it on travel.

Zelda, I was uncertain about the first ten or twenty hours. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I didn't really "get" it. But having played more intensively the past two weeks (and taking a couple days while sick, to play crashed out on the couch at home), I'm into it. I really do enjoy the open exploration. The puzzles are the right difficulty for this middle-aged, have a busy job, gamer. And when I'm impatient and decide I don't have the time to sort through gaming nuances, I look up solutions on the IGN walkthrough and enjoy the process.

What I didn't understand about Zelda initially, what's missing for me, is the story. I'm really into the story-experience lately. I love Bioshock Infinity, with its brilliant story. The Last of Us is just incredible. Even Fallout 3 and 4 have really strong mini-stories and macro-stories taking you through the quests. But Zelda, I find there's no story and no real emotional weight. It's just pure gaming mechanics.

But now that I accept that, it's like Diablo from 20 years ago: Zelda is pure, addictive, gaming mechanics at its best. Incredible exploration. Always something new to find. An amazing set of simple rules that combine for remarkable flexibility to the gamer to find their own path. I'm realizing that my experience is completely unique to my friends. The way I'm going about it, being completely lost at first, then getting down to finding towers to open maps, and then belatedly dealing with Divine Beasts, could be a completely different approach and path than other people experienced. Maybe the story is paper thin and has no emotional resonance. And the beepy-boopy dialogue is tediously outdated. But the gaming is gobsmackingly good.

It took me about 30+ hours to get into Zelda, but I'm really enjoying it now.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

In regards to your comment about Lynels and Guardians, there are a LOT of tricks you can use against them if you do some research. It's amazing what people have come up with.

As for the story, yeah, it's paper-thin, but...I honestly think most game stories aren't that great. There are a few exceptional ones (like The Last of Us) but they often sacrifice some amount of gameplay experience in order to tell that great story, or they offer a wonderful narrative alongside a surprisingly generic story (like Bioshock Infinite, which was way overhyped before release and disappointed even though the story was really cool). With Zelda: BotW, I look at it as the "story" being your experience as you play it. There are the many small villages you go to, the characters you interact with, the side quests that flesh out the world, the bombed-out battle ruins you discover, and just wait until you see the final dungeon...even though the overarching narrative is pretty light. But if you think about it, what would the narrative in a more story-focused game really be? More cutscenes (which you'll see later in Zelda)? More directions from NPCs to go on fetch quests? The central idea of BotW is that you're thrown into this world, given every tool that you need, and told "kill Ganon." If you want to beat the 4 divine beasts and collect better armor/weapons, then you can. But you can literally go straight to the final dungeon and fight the final boss right at the beginning of the game. So the story is what you make of it through your experience.

For what it's worth...I'm not actually sure if I like this idea as a replacement for a story. Shadow of Mordor tried to sort of do this with the Nemesis System and I found it neat but not really interesting from a narrative perspective. Part of that was, frankly, I beat most of the bad guys on my first time trying, so the idea of them coming back with scars from previous battles and taunting me just didn't materialize that much. I also don't know if I count "beat all the enemies" as a good story. I let Zelda pass on it because it basically tells the player upfront that there isn't much story, whereas Shadow of Mordor tried to have half a story while your play fleshed out the other half and it was mediocre. Overall the game was a lot of fun but the story stuff was a letdown.

 

[DaveF]

I borrowed Shadow for ps4, but never got around to playing it.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I found the boss of the camel Devine beast to be a much tougher fight than the final boss of the game.

That being said, I loved everything about BotW except the weapons system. That alone made the game feel broken and was often a point of frustration for me.

 

[Sam Posten]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1138490529644142592

Sequel video!

 

[LeoA]

Nice to see that the wait won't be nearly as long as many of us feared for the next original 3D Zelda. I hope there's some traditional dungeons in it this time, as well as another amazing overworld to explore (I want the best of both worlds; A large and varied world with lots of quests and exploration, but also classic Zelda style dungeons to break it up and progress a storyline with).

And I hope they sneak in a HD Zelda remaster or two before all is said and done. A Link Between Worlds HD for instance would be very nice and likely an easy (in relative terms) project for them after Link's Awakening HD (Which hopefully is a big hit and encourages just such a follow-up). And even though I'd probably skip these as a big Wii U fan, the Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD remasters deserve to reach a wider audience on the Switch.

Super Mario 3D World is the only automatic double dip for me for potential Wii U to Switch ports. Such a great game and a boost to 1080p and whatever else is added when that hopefully inevitable day arrives in the future is a perfect excuse for me to run through it all over again in enhanced form. Still is my favorite game of the 2010's.

 

[DaveF]

Got to get back to Zelda. Travel while sick plus watching The Tick S2 stopped my play the past two or three weeks. And now there’s a sequel coming so I’ve got to finish it before then!

 

[DaveF]

Super Mario 3D World is the only automatic double dip for me for potential Wii U to Switch ports. Such a great game and a boost to 1080p and whatever else is added when that hopefully inevitable day arrives in the future is a perfect excuse for me to run through it all over again in enhanced form. Still is my favorite game of the 2010's.

I didn’t Wii, so I’d be interested in that port. But I haven’t gotten to the current Mario Odyssey either. Too many games, too little time.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Super Mario 3D World was on the Wii U, not the Wii. The fact that it's a major first-party Wii U exclusive that HASN'T been ported to the Switch is actually kind of odd.

I think Nintendo has gotten into the groove of using game announcements and releases as promotion for future games. For instance, once Metroid Prime 4 is far enough along in development, they'll probably release Metroid Prime Trilogy HD to get people excited for 4. So once we get closer to BotW2 (or whatever it ends up being called) I wouldn't be surprised if they re-release some Zelda games again.

 

[LeoA]

I think they're just saving it for the right time, Morgan.

While a very different game than Super Mario Odyssey was, they're both ultimately still 3D Mario platformers. So they probably wanted to give that plenty of time to shine before directing attention towards something else like a port of an older title.

I'd personally bet on 2020 for Super Mario 3D World getting ported. Super Mario Odyssey will be three years old next year, Nintendo won't be taking attention away from it at that point, and Super Mario 3D World also won't get overlooked like it might've had it followed too soon on the heels of Odyssey.

It's much too good of a game for them to not bring it forward.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I could see them even releasing 3D World this winter. They released New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe in January and having another solid Mario platformer each winter is a good strategy.

 

[LeoA]

It wouldn't shock me.

I figure they'd like to give a major release like Odyssey at least 18 months as the latest entry on the platform. At that point it's pretty much yesterday's news and while sales stay healthy for such a major AAA Nintendo release for years, they're much diminished from what they had been.

I believe we're already past that year and a half mark since Odyssey released. So I think the business case is wide open for this whenever Nintendo decides to slot it into their calendar.

 

[Steve Y]

Nintendo's choices often baffle me, but yeah: I wouldn't be surprised if they released a port of 3D World to fill the Mario gap. It's really a top-tier Mario game, with a focus on multiplayer, which (I'm told) kids at rooftop parties really seem to dig these days. Seems ideal for Switch.

I am not even close to finishing Breath of the Wild... the scope of the game keeps pulling me away from the main quest. I suspect the announcement of the sequel will do more to prod me to the dungeons and the last boss more than the game ever could.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Leo - I agree that Odyssey was a major Mario release and that they don't want to cannibalize it's sales by releasing another Mario game too soon, but again, they released New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe in like January, which was roughly 15 months after Odyssey came out. I agree with your thinking but my point is that they already did what you're suggesting with NSMBUD like 5 months ago.

 

[LeoA]

I don't think they'd be that concerned about a 3D and a 2D Mario platformer releasing relatively soon one after the other. Such drastically different styles of game and we've seen them release in fairly close succession several times before.

But I don't believe you'll find any examples of something like a 3D Zelda adventure appearing on the same platform just a few months after a previous 3D Zelda had been released. Nintendo knows there's tons of shelf life in their biggest games, even just for the remasters and ports (Just look at those sales numbers for Mario Kart 8 on the NS, despite being the Wii U's top selling title).

So it makes little sense to follow-up too soon. As a Nintendo observer like yourself, 18-24 months feels like a good rule of thumb from my experience.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I mean, Nintendo did offer Ocarina of Time (plus the remix version of it) as a preorder bonus for Wind Waker on the GameCube...

I just realized (duh on me) that Mario Maker 2 is coming out very soon, which could sort of be considered a 2D Mario just 5-6 months after the re-release of NSMBUD. I could still see them trying to fill out the Switch with Wii U ports and bringing Mario 3D World or the Galaxy games (if they can get around any Wii-remote waggle issues) some time in the next year or so.

 

[DaveF]

I've had a month or two hiatus from Zelda. But I had a cross-country trip last week, and I took the opportunity to get a good six to ten hours of playtime in on planes and hotel. On a recent trip I finished the Divine Beasts and was chasing some secondary quests. This trip, I worked the Lost Forest, found the Darkness Breaker Sword of Awesomeness (I forget the name), and claimed that.

I'm confused on an important game detail: I've heard that defeating Ganon ends the game and keeps you from doing any more questing, and I've heard that's not the case. So: should I get on with defeating Ganon? Or do I wait until I'm tired of playing to do that as a final Zelda act?

 

[Morgan Jolley]

There's nothing that you can't do after beating Ganon. Worst case, if you want to be careful, save your game in another slot before you start the final boss.

 

[DaveF]

I just finished Zelda. Turns out I was standing outside his room in the castle when I left off a couple months ago.

So I’m still kinda confused...or perhaps I misunderstood what it means to be able to continue playing after defeating Gannon.

The game’s over? There’s no continuing playing the same game after defeating Gannon? There’s only loading a save game, leaving the castle, playing the game more, then coming back and defeating Gannon again to finish the game again?