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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

#281

Post by afterburner »

prohobo wrote: post #150
bschwindHN wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, I've been putting in baby steps of progress in the game over several years. The story is quite boring and once you've been introduced to the main gameplay mechanics they get old fairly quickly. Feels like a chore more than anything. I used to love Zelda games like OoT and Majora's Mask. Maybe I've just gotten older and my tastes have changed.

No, BotW is more like a theme park than a game, and I don't understand the love for it. The game is sparse and sterile, the characters are boring and generic, the story/dialogue is cringe inducing, the world is empty and plain, and there's nothing to do. It borrows heavily from open world game tropes, and it doesn't add anything. Once you've played about 5-6 hours you've seen the entire game, just not all of its perm…

The people who liked BotW the most are likely people who never really played many open world games, or none. To long time PC gamers it's nothing new of course.

I liked the style, I generally enjoy world exploration and that was fun in BotW, and there were many cool experiences scattered around, but it does end up feeling a little empty.

I still played it a ton mind you, but I don't consider it an important or ground breaking game the way many seem to.

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

#282

Post by rkangel »

johnchristopher wrote: post #276
rkangel wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Switch, but I'm still debating whether I play BoTW on Deck or Switch. Either way I'll probably buy it on Switch because developers should be rewarded for making good games, but it's handy for me to have all of my games in one place. Plus the Deck is a much more comfortable for me to hold - more ergonomic, better fit for larger hands.

> but I'm still debating whether I play BoTW on Deck or Switch. Debating what ? Are you pulling the "IP owners don't make their products available on my platform so I am forced to pirate it" netflix card when you own the device the game is supposed to be played on ?

If you read my comment, I said I'd pay for it either way. At that point while I might be technically pirating, I don't think I am ethically.

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

#283

Post by shp0ngle »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #10

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?

Look at the latest Pokemon game, it runs horribly on Switch. Even they don’t pull it off…

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

#284

Post by conaclos »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #20
qbasic_forever wrote: post #14

I was listening to a gaming podcast last week and they were talking about how this release was pirated and available for the last week or so on torrents. That in itself wasn't surprising, but the interesting point they talked about is that the game is much more enjoyable when played on PC with an emulated copy because modern gaming PC hardware is much smoother and higher resolution than the stock Switch. It really ma…

> 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…

> I think for Nintendo, the more prudent solution would be to release an updated Switch with some more powerful hardware that's fully backwards compatible with the existing Switch library. It would be very par for the course for them, and assuage most of the complaints about the Switch being underpowered.

This could result in fragmentation: some games could only run smoothly on the new version.

I pretty like the idea of using old hardware and to require game dev to adapt to this.

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

#285

Post by kenhwang »

prmoustache wrote: post #277
kenhwang wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather, I wish it'd have closer to PS5 performance while docked. Mobile performance is totally understandable given the battery/heat limitations. Even smartphones have been thermally limited for performance for the last couple years. What I'd like to see is a much stronger CPU/GPU that gets severely undervolted/underclocked while on mobile (or the big cores in it's big.LITTLE design being way bigger), but a dock that…

That would be counterproductive. Game DEVs would optimize for docked mode primarily and it would clash with the usage of the customers. Many users like the Switch for its portability. My kids only dock the switch when they want to play dance games.

They already have to optimize for docked/undocked modes separately anyway since it's rendering different resolutions using different hardware speeds depending on whether it's docked or not. There's already a mobile optimized hardware with the Switch Lite too, is it really that much of a stretch to make a dock-optimized version?

Besides, the Steam Deck has shown that even very demanding high end games designed without any consideration for mobile hardware can be sufficiently scaled down to run on mobile hardware (and mobile hardware has gotten powerful enough where the tradeoffs are tolerable).

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

#286

Post by effingwewt »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #272
peanuty1 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the Steam Deck emulates Switch games like Zelda BOTW much better than the Switch. And it's not much more expensive either.

Problem with emulators is that at some point they will fail you, and you will lose some saves.

Wrong.

I've used every emulator except the switch emu, and not only do you not randomly lose saves, you can duplicate, move them, etc.

I've used emulators on laptops, desktops, phones, etc.

And I have even transferred saves between them and never had an issue.

I have- right now, saves over 20+ years old.

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

#287

Post by tomgp »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #84
voz_ wrote: post #5

BOTW was almost perfect, but the weapon breaking system left me so tired of managing it. What a constant distraction! I get that they wanted to encourage experimentation, but they overtuned it, and it became a chore. If TOTK has the same system, I'm returning it.

The game design analysis was that it ties in to the open-world system. If you're good/lucky enough to pick up a powerful weapon early on, it still won't carry you for the rest of the game. As it is, I still end up buying ever more sword slots because I always have more than I can really use.

Yes! It also means privileging exploration over combat and discouraging min/max type character builds. I think it's a really great addition and ditching it would make BOTW a very different (and IMO much worse) game

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

#288

Post by goosedragons »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #181
jonwinstanley wrote: post #55

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.

IDK, mobile games don't tend to have a spending cap. On most PC/console releases the most you can spend on a game is few hundred for the game and all the DLC bought day 1 and usually goes down as time goes on. Mobile games will have one gem bundle or whatever that costs more than the complete package of a PC/console title. So you can easily get whales spending thousands on one game. The financials tell me mobile games are better at extracting money from their audience or a subset rather but that's kind of how they feel to play! Everything is geared towards extracting money.

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

#289

Post by zpeti »

haunter wrote: post #166
tjpnz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would put a lot of it down to Japanese craftsmanship coupled with relatively experienced engineers (average age in their Kyoto office is 40 IIRC). Their selection process is notoriously rigorous too and goes far beyond the usual LeetCode questions you'd get at a FAANG company.

> I would put a lot of it down to Japanese craftsmanship This is such an orientalist and borderline racist view it’s crazy. If it were true then it would also imply the other japanese game devs also affected by it. There countless bad games from Japan, don’t even have to walk far from Nintendo just look at the Pokémon games and how GameFreak release them with 0 optimization. And then the countless misses from Square…

Japanese are also extremely attached to their past and culture, which shows up in the game how its almost like a modern mythical representation of both old japanese myths and an obsession with technology.

There, is that racist too?

The result is beautiful, I love the whole "ancient technology" concept in it, which is not something we have in our world (except for pyramids perhaps).

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

#290

Post by cableshaft »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #65
salzig wrote: 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…

Yeah this is why I never picked BOTW back up, I'd no longer remember anything. I keep meaning to, I just haven't done so, and each time I consider it, it seems like too much to take on that weekend. I did beat 3 of the 4 Divine Beasts before that. I know I never tackled the Castle or the DLC.

At least with the sequel it's kind of expected I start fresh.

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