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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

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Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#201
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Nintendo's whole philosophy is all about doing more with less. They make money on every device by not putting out overly engineered / performant systems. So they have always been lagging in terms of cutting edge hardware, but they make up for it by focusing on joyful content.

I would argue Nintendo has their priorities straight. Joe Schmoe doesn't know and doesn't care about hardware. Ohled? Gigglehearts? Flame rates? WTF are you talking about, he'll say to you. What Joe Schmoe does know and does care about is whether the game he's playing is fun. This is where Nintendo focuses their energy.

Joe Schmoe and me both

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the last few generations Nintendo has been happy to be slightly behind Playstation and Xbox in terms of graphics so that they can be the lower-cost alternative. And based on unit sales, that strategy seems to be doing pretty well.

Yeah, and parents love it too for that reason. People really seem to underestimate the market for children (and parents / family gifting and indulging said children), not just with gaming but also with e.g. youtube. To add, people also underestimate mobile gaming; westerners still look down on it compared to console and PC gaming, despite the financials telling a whole different story.

Well I’m not a parent and switch is perfect for me. Would I want 4k? Ray tracing? Yeah sure, but it’s nowhere near a deal breaker. As long as it runs smooth I care orders of magnitude more about gameplay. Botw gave me so much joy, simply because it’s an amazingly well made game.

In my experience, graphics upgrades feel amazing at first, but if it’s a good game, you mostly forget about it after just a few minutes. But yes, sometimes you have very scenic environments, like in RDR2, but even then I feel like it’s 90% making good composition, color, lighting, and 10% is the actual GPU doing real time lighting etc. At least to me, this obsession with cutting edge graphics is just an expensive hobby of moving goal posts. I’m the same with TVs, I care much more about the movie or show than the TV specs.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#203

Apparently the game is just 16GB and runs seamlessly on a decade old hardware with no loading screens between game areas. How does Nintendo pull it off?

Nintendo games are like well crafted watches, they may not show the time perfectly but they are damn well optimized under the hood.

Perfect analogy.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#204
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low weapons durability encourages the player to use all the weapons instead of a small set of his favourite weapons. Notice how even though your weapons break all the time, you (almost) never [1] run out of weapons. You can steal weapons from the enemies or pick up whatever is around and use it as a weapon. Initially, I did not like this mechanism, but I have come to appreciate it. It reduces your comfort, but yo…

Yeah, I remember binging BOTW until I got to the part in the castle where the Lynel is. I still haven't picked up BOTW again because of that.

Lynel are a "skill wall" where you have to learn dodging to pass them. Once you can dodge and hit back reliably, they become much easier (still hard, but not impossible)

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#205
post #139
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Even if a new console would be twice as fast they still would be disappointed. It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch.

> People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Not really. If you can get better performance emulating a newly released game on the Steam Deck, then the complaints have merit. (See Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for instance.)

There always will be faster hardware, that's beside the point. Games that are designed for their target hardware should not have problems.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#206
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really makes me think Nintendo has an untapped market here to sell a little box you plug into your PC that plays switch games, interfaces with their controllers, etc. They've done oddball stuff like the SNES Gameboy player and GameCube GBA player add-ons in the past, it feels like there would be people willing to pay to properly play Switch games on their gaming PCs. It seems unlikely they would be willing to le…

People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Even if a new console would be twice as fast they still would be disappointed. It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch.

I don't expect PS5 level performance, but Steam Deck level performance should be the bare minimum.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#207
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Digital Foundry [0], the game is a perfectly stable 30fps the vast majority of the time [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLlZBwN_-C4

"30fps the vast majority of the time" in 2023 is just laughable.

Not when you add "on a complete system costing less than $300" to that sentence.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#208
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is sooooo boring as a casual that’s only playing on commute. It feels like no progress and only grinding. I really wished there was an option to disable grinding/breaking of stuff.

That’s been my problem with Zelda games since maybe OoT… well, maybe not exactly my problem. My problem is mostly that if I don’t play it for a week or two, and come back to it, I can’t remember what’s going on at all and it seems like too much of a chore to re-build my context. They do such a good job with Mario odyssey on showing you what to do and letting you teleport between worlds… there is no grinding at all I…

I have been stuck on the Lynel in the castle since last year.

I am afraid of picking it up again because I absolutely cannot remember where I was and what I was doing.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> striking a deal with Samsung for using their Exynos chips The fantasy world where they do a deal with Apple for M2 SOCs (or even just get bought wholesale by Apple.)

> (or even just get bought wholesale by Apple.) This is a crazy idea but... it might end up becoming reality. I don't see Nintendo selling any time soon though, it's been very independent for a very long time, to the point where it was huge when they released some things for smartphones (pokemon go, super mario jump, etc). That said, Apple's been trying some things with gaming (they pushed gaming as one of the use ca…

Apple seems very uninterested in gaming on Mac.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those two are their weakest selling home consoles Wii U would like a word.

Oh wow I just checked wikipedia, and I knew it did poorly, but did not know the Switch has outsold it by 10x (!!) What a turnaround! (My Wii U is collecting dust, though I did enjoy it)

Heads up, there was an issue a couple of months back of Wii U NANDs corrupting after being unused for a few years. Might be worth turning it on and off
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