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

[Edwin-S]

I should say I hope it is somehow a cut above in its game play versus a game like Horizon Zero Dawn, because from a graphical perspective Zelda: BotW looks like an animatic next to the finishes on HZD.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The graphics in Zelda are phenomenal. You aren't complaining that they're bad, you're complaining that they're not realistic. It's much, MUCH more in line with something like a Studio Ghibli cartoon or Ni no Kuni. Keep in mind that fans have come to absolutely love Wind Waker and this style is a cross between that and Skyward Sword.

I'm not sure how much you've seen/read about the game because you're bringing up things that I haven't experienced as negative or even neutral in my experience playing it. The game world is absolutely MASSIVE and I really, truly don't think I've experienced an open-world game presented like this before. The graphics are stunning and the scale/scope of the game world matching them is a huge accomplishment.

 

[joshEH]

Somehow I end up on the edge of a butte-thing, raid a Bokoblin-camp, get a horse, but I can't get the horse off the butte, because the sides are too steep. I go all Man From Snowy River down a hillside, thinking it's an exit, but it's a big sinkhole, and I reload because I'm not going to leave a damn digital-horse to die in a damn pit.

 

[Sam Posten]

It's held my attention longer than any non mmo, non Bioware or Rock Star title in a long time.

 

[Edwin-S]

The graphics in Zelda are phenomenal. You aren't complaining that they're bad, you're complaining that they're not realistic. It's much, MUCH more in line with something like a Studio Ghibli cartoon or Ni no Kuni. Keep in mind that fans have come to absolutely love Wind Waker and this style is a cross between that and Skyward Sword.

I'm not sure how much you've seen/read about the game because you're bringing up things that I haven't experienced as negative or even neutral in my experience playing it. The game world is absolutely MASSIVE and I really, truly don't think I've experienced an open-world game presented like this before. The graphics are stunning and the scale/scope of the game world matching them is a huge accomplishment.

I know you are quite impressed with the system and game, but the online footage I have been watching makes the graphical quality look like it barely measures up to anything that appeared on the PS3 and XBOX360, let alone any later system. I'm looking for the WiiU version, so I can look for myself, but comparing the animatic look that I am seeing to a Ghibli animated film puts up a big, flashing, "no way in hell" sign in my mind; however, I can always change my mind once I see it for myself.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I would agree that the graphics are not super-detailed like Metal Gear Solid V or Horizon Zero Dawn, but they are still absolutely stunning from an artistic and technical viewpoint.

Does your distaste for the visuals come from a place of "not enough polygons" or "I don't like games that look like cartoons?" Because every review calls out how gorgeous the game is.

 

[Edwin-S]

I don't have an issue with games that look like cartoons. I like the "Ratchet and Clank" series and "Splatoon" was great. BoTW just looks low rez to me compared to the usual level of graphics on open world style games; however, like I said, I have to see it for myself. Looking at a screen of someone's screen is not really a fair way of evaluating a game. Also, like you have said, graphics aren't everything in a game.

 

[Bryan^H]

About 2:26 into the video he talks about review scores for Zelda.




I know it is off topic, but I have always believed that review scores are completely trivial.
Going back to the days when I used to read Gamepro magazine, and a low review for a SNES, or Genesis title did not match how I felt about the game.
I know people that use review scores as a measure on whether not to buy a certain game or not. That in itself makes me sad, because there are so many good games that friends passed on because of an "average" review grade.

Regarding my Zelda BOTW experience. I'm not in love with it as so many people are. I find there are many things I dislike, but the positives certainly outweigh the negative.

 

[joshEH]

Some real talk from Jim Sterling on this game:



And:

The Sad Ghost-War Between Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn

Basically, Sterling takes a look at the stupid anal reactionary nature of hardcore-obsessive Nintendo Zelda fanboy-cultists who are getting all bent out of shape and butthurt due to certain gaming-critics actually declining to give Breath of the Wild PERFECT 10/10 review-scores, and their immature behavior towards fans of Horizon: Zero Dawn. In other words, they feel incredibly threatened for some weird reason.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

While I think there's something to be said about everyone being able to have their own opinion, especially when it comes to something as unimportant as review scores for videogames, there's also something to be said for whether or not a dude who runs his own YouTube channel should be given the same weight in review score averaging that a professional publication with real journalists and years of experience and accountability would get.

Sterling is, let's be honest, more of an entertainer. He does his own thing and has fans who appreciate that. And he's good at articulating his views. But I don't think his review should count as equal to GameSpot, IGN, Kotaku, etc. when it comes to Metacritic or Gamerankings or anywhere else. What value does his opinion have over any other person who uploads a video to YouTube? There's a reason why people look to professionals who are published for opinions. With social media and the internet, ANYONE can be a critic but that doesn't mean we should care.

Honestly, I don't think his criticisms warrant the review score he gives the game. And he has some bad blood with Nintendo that could be influencing his score. Plus, he's getting a lot of exposure because of this so you could possibly call it a publicity stunt.

Whatever. I'm loving the hell out of the game and so are millions of other people.

The reason the fans were so upset by his review score is that it is so far outside of what pretty much everyone else says about the game and is hurting the game's rankings on aggregation sites. If the game had gotten a bunch of 8s, nobody would care about a 7. His score comes across more as different-to-be-different and vindictive rather than genuine. But does that warrant death threats or DDoS attacks? Absolutely not. Nerds, in general, are a fragile bunch.

 

[Bryan^H]

Zelda has always been a favorite game series for me going back to 1987 when I played the first game.
Playing every Zelda game for 30 years, my opinion is more important than any game reviewer.

Above the hype, I honestly do not see this game as great, or perfect.

 

[joshEH]

While I think there's something to be said about everyone being able to have their own opinion, especially when it comes to something as unimportant as review scores for videogames, there's also something to be said for whether or not a dude who runs his own YouTube channel should be given the same weight in review score averaging that a professional publication with real journalists and years of experience and accountability would get.

Sterling is, let's be honest, more of an entertainer. He does his own thing and has fans who appreciate that. And he's good at articulating his views. But I don't think his review should count as equal to GameSpot, IGN, Kotaku, etc. when it comes to Metacritic or Gamerankings or anywhere else. What value does his opinion have over any other person who uploads a video to YouTube? There's a reason why people look to professionals who are published for opinions. With social media and the internet, ANYONE can be a critic but that doesn't mean we should care.

Honestly, I don't think his criticisms warrant the review score he gives the game. And he has some bad blood with Nintendo that could be influencing his score. Plus, he's getting a lot of exposure because of this so you could possibly call it a publicity stunt.

Except Jim Sterling has legitimate journalistic credibility, having been the leading critic for years at Destructoid, as well as a critical stint at GameSpy -- he left those sites because of all the increasing corporate pressures being brought to bear upon critics by developers (like Nintendo) to award "perfect" 10 out of 10 scores for their major releases, or else face an advertising backlash. He took a principled stand against this growing trend, and just because he's now on YouTube doesn't negate the essential truths of the points he's making, here.

Plus, of course, he still actually writes full-length, in-depth 4,000-word print reviews on his site the way a proper critic should -- sites like IGN rarely approach his level of deep-drill analysis on games.

Whatever. I'm loving the hell out of the game and so are millions of other people.

The reason the fans were so upset by his review score is that it is so far outside of what pretty much everyone else says about the game and is hurting the game's rankings on aggregation sites. If the game had gotten a bunch of 8s, nobody would care about a 7. His score comes across more as different-to-be-different and vindictive rather than genuine.

Not hardly -- if you read Jim's full, official review of the game, he goes well out of his way several times to clearly state that he thinks that Breath of the Wild is a great game, but it's those specific elements that he delineates (obnoxious weapon-deterioration, the "green" stamina-meter, Nintendo's idiotic Amiibo-microtransactions) that end up knocking three points off his final score. I have no problem with any of these criticisms -- he's absolutely correct.

By Jim Sterling's standards, a "7' is still a very good game, but the fragile Zelda snowflake-hooligans who simply can't abide any critic daring to award one of their preciouses with anything less than an 11 out of 10 just couldn't handle it -- we saw this exact same bullshit when Skyward Sword came out, and some critics actually gave it less-than-glowing-scores, which totally drove the Zelda-fanbois up a wall, leading to the same nonsense we're seeing right now.

 

[Bryan^H]

There's a reason why people look to professionals who are published for opinions.

The reason being?
Why should I, or anyone give more credence to a "professional" than say someone like me that has played Zelda games my whole life. Wouldn't that qualify me as a "professional" Zelda player? There is no such thing as a "Professional" video game player.

Because someone got their degree in journalism, does not make their opinion any more valid than someone who didn't.

Other than a game being mechanically broken, or glitch infested or performing flawlessly in Gameplay(Zelda BOTW) reviews have no weight whatsoever.

 

[Sam Posten]

The problem is in developers agreeing to have their bonuses tied to metacritic rather than the ill defined criteria over whose credentials 'deserve' to be included in metacritic ranking. Like Whose Line Is it Anyway the points are made up and the score doesn't matter.

 

[Edwin-S]

Some real talk from Jim Sterling on this game:



And:

The Sad Ghost-War Between Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn

Basically, Sterling takes a look at the stupid anal reactionary nature of hardcore-obsessive Nintendo Zelda fanboy-cultists who are getting all bent out of shape and butthurt due to certain gaming-critics actually declining to give Breath of the Wild PERFECT 10/10 review-scores, and their immature behavior towards fans of Horizon: Zero Dawn. In other words, they feel incredibly threatened for some weird reason.

That was quite funny. Man, that some people are getting bent out of shape so badly, because other people don't give the game a higher score than Horizon Zero Dawn or less than a 10 is something else. I normally don't like the use of the term but, in this case, these guys really are examples of the stereotypical "get out of your mom's basement" types. Going over and trying to do the internet equivalent of "burning your house down" over an opposing opinion of a video game is beyond pathetic.

Also, I totally agree with him on the subject of degradable weapons. When I play something like HZD or even BoTW, I just want to relax and play the game to see how the story unfolds, for better or worse. I do not want to have constantly "manage" in a video game and breakable weapons is some of the worst sort of management possible. It can be a PITA to have to stop in the middle of a combat sequence just to pick another weapon, let alone having to stop to pick another weapon because the one you were using broke.

if I wanted to manage wear on weapons then I would play a strategy simulation on a PC, not a fantasy exploration game on a console.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

People have talked about how BotW is such an amazing game because the realistic physics-based puzzles and movement make the game feel natural and predictable, because think-outside-the-box has turned into think-about-what-you-can-really-do, and because the ability to go anywhere and do anything without being restricted by walls is exactly what the real world is like.

Yet, they complain when weapons degrade because...it's also realistic?

It's a weird hypocrisy to me. Frankly, yeah, the weapons degrading sucks. So does dying often, not having infinite life, not being able to fly on a whim, and having to go into a menu to fast travel instead of the game magically knowing exactly what I want to do. But oh well.

I'm being facetious, but you get my point.

I think there's something to be said for that fact that Jim is using his position to make a statement with his review score rather than actually review the game for what it is. I do not believe he sees 7/10 as "very good" in the same way other sites are saying 10/10. He sees it as "I'm going to go against the hype to get attention." This guy got sued (wrongfully, mind you) for the damage caused by his reviews. He's like every other person on YouTube: trying to make a ruckus and get attention for clicks and views. He is to Zelda what PewDiePie is to anti-semitism.

Yes, he's entitled to his opinion. No, it shouldn't matter to me (and it doesn't). But I do not genuinely believe he really has an unbiased 7/10 view of Zelda.

 

[joshEH]

^ Comparing Jim Sterling to PewDiePie? Seriously?

That's a very reductionist and misleading way of looking at things, Morgan -- again, Jim actually writes deep, analytical critical reviews on his website, and has journalistic credibility going back years. So what if he's also quite entertaining in his YouTube videos? This somehow negates the critical validity of his print-reviews? By this line of reasoning, any site like IGN which also happens to have a YouTube presence shouldn't be taken seriously, either.

When you look at all the sites today who instantly award perfect "10/10" scores regardless of a game's shortcomings, Jim is positively cautious with his approach to handing out points -- again, he lists three major areas where the game falls short, and subtracts three points from the score accordingly for each fault. Hardly "[going] against the hype to get attention" -- some people are pissed because he's actually ruthless with his scoring, something that we see in all of his reviews, not just for Zelda games. Would that more critics were the same way.

 

[Bryan^H]

He's like every other person on YouTube: trying to make a ruckus and get attention for clicks and views. He is to Zelda what PewDiePie is to anti-semitism.

no

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I don't discount Jim's opinion simply because he has a YouTube channel. I discount it because he does a good job of articulating the faults of the game but not to the point of what a 7/10 seems to be. If each negative thing about the game is equal to 1 review score point, then that's an incredibly strict rating system. Sure, it's "his" rating system, but then the argument should be more about whether we should even assign points to game reviews or not. (And this is exactly why some sites, like Kotaku, have moved away from scores or even "yes/no" recommendations entirely.)

Breath of the Wild is an insanely large game that you could easily sink 100 hours into. The things he criticizes are, frankly, not that big of a deal in the sense that you eventually get to sort of work around them and they become absolutely minor compared to the game as a whole. Granted, again, it's all his opinion, but I don't think he has justified the score he gave.

The reason I personally put more stock in something like IGN or Koraku is because the editorial process involves multiple people looking at the review before it is published in order to ensure you're getting as close as possible to unbiased-yet-subjective opinions. Self-publishing and YT videos are far away from that and Jim Sterling's entire career now is based on getting people to watch his videos and read his site. If he parroted what everyone else said about everything else, then he wouldn't be interesting enough to warrant any attention, even if his opinions were incredibly deep and thoughtful. I see his 7/10 as a protest score that gets him attention.

And no, I'm not saying that BotW is SO AMAZING that every single person MUST give it a 10/10. But rather, I don't see someone nitpicking a couple flaws as being justified for a 7/10 score. Looking at the text of his review, nearly all of his complaints are things that are kind of minor or can be skipped (like long/boring/repetitive cutscenes, annoying fights that break weapons often). The issue with the stamina meter is kind of silly because the consensus around the game now is that the priority should be on upgrading the stamina meter instead of getting more hearts and it appears that he didn't do that. As much as it's kind of a weak argument, I really do think he simply played the game wrong, whether because the game did a poor job of communicating it's expectations to him, because he's not a good gamer, or because he's too used to the "videogame logic" that Breath of the Wild tried to avoid and rewrite.

 

[Sam Posten]

None of that justifies your ridiculous equating of him to the dopiness of PDP and his anti Semitic attitudes.