#how to fix nintendo breath of the wild

[cupcake-mcsprinkleman-iii]

I really don’t understand people who think the Switch 2 is pointless or not a worthwhile upgrade.

I love my Switch 1 as much as anyone else does - I’ve poured several thousand of hours into hundreds of games, so I’ve seen the best and worse of the console. It’s amazing, but it’s really outdated. That doesn’t mean its bad - I still pick it up from time to time because its portable play is still very comfortable, but games are struggling to run well on it and thats just factually correct.

It’s not even a ‘Pokémon runs like shit’ situation because everyone knows that and I truly believe the fault there lies with GameFreak’s horrible optimisation. But look at how many other first party Switch titles struggle - Mario and Luigi: Brothership has horrible frame drops in the overworld. Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s constant performance difficulties made it hard to appreciate the game as much as I should. Breath of the Wild, even back at the launch of the Switch, was having a rough time running optimally. Animal Crossing New Horizons’ load times are abysmal. Xenoblade Chronicles’ dynamic resolution makes the game look extremely blurry. There’s a good reason people were clamouring for a Switch Pro to make these games play better.

I know most people buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games, but when you look at third parties as well, it’s really easy to see the Switch, which is on par with 20-year-old Xbox 360 hardware, can barely run most PS4-level games and definitely fails at PS5-level ports. We have miracle ports like Nier Automata which look and play phenomenally on the Switch, but then you have Mortal Kombat 1, Batman: Arkham Knight, even the miracle ports like Doom Eternal really struggle on the Switch 1, because the hardware is objectively outdated for the games.

But what the Switch 2 does, absolutely miraculously, is fix almost all of Switch 1 games’ problems for free thanks to its backwards compatibility. Brothership and Echoes of Wisdom perform excellently now. Breath of the Wild, without the upgrade pack, still runs at a constant 30fps on Switch 2. The Xenoblade Chronicles games now run at their highest possible resolution at a fixed framerate and look sharper and clearer than before. Animal Crossing New Horizons’ load times are massively shortened! And 99% of the Switch 1’s library is playable on the Switch 2. What Nintendo accomplished with backwards compatibility is nothing short of miraculous, because these games needed better hardware to reach their full potential.

And it makes me excited for future Nintendo games too. Donkey Kong Bananza looks far more ambitious and expansive than Mario Odyssey. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment runs at a flawless 60 frames per second when Age of Calamity had notoriously abysmal performance on the Switch 1 (now fixed with the Switch 2). Metroid Prime 4: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition looks unbelievably beautiful and runs at 120 frames per second - Absolutely jaw dropping! It’s obvious too that Nintendo has outgrown the Switch with their development ambitions. They want to make bigger, bolder, more ambitious games that the Switch hardware is incapable of. The development interview for Mario Kart World revealed it was originally being developed for the Switch 1, but wouldn’t run without massive compromises, and the developers desperately needed the stronger hardware for their artistic vision.

I understand if you don’t care that much about performance, you just want to play the games. Believe me, I beat Outer Worlds and Doom Eternal on my Switch, I’ve been through hell (pun intended). Nintendo isn’t abandoning the Switch because they clearly have games planned for it in the foreseeable future - Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon Legends Z-A are releasing on the Switch 1, and next year Tomodachi Life 2 and Rhythm Heaven Groove are as well. You can keep playing your Switch, especially if you own an OLED or think its too soon to upgrade, and don’t personally see value in the stronger hardware unless more games like a big new Animal Crossing or Zelda release. That’s okay!

But calling the entire console unnecessary because of some spite towards the company is silly. I know how badly the Switch needed the upgrade. I played dozens of hours of No Man’s Sky religiously on my Switch and believe me, as amazing as it is to play the game portably, I can’t pretend the Switch 2 edition wasn’t direly needed. Developers are moving forward at a pace that was unsustainable for the Switch. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Street Fighter 6 or Yakuza 0 shine on the new console. Nintendo’s upcoming titles show me they feel freed from the hardware shackles of the Switch 1. That is a good thing. The Switch 2 won’t be outdated in 5 years as much as the Switch 1 was.

If you’re an artist, you can’t live with a compromised creative vision for the rest of your life - Eventually, you need better tools. And for players like me, the Switch 2 answers all my dreams and then some - It makes all my Switch 1 games run flawlessly, and opens the gateway to an amazing new library to explore. It’s expensive, but it’s worth the price in my opinion, and the same is true for millions of players around the world. Because of that I think denouncing the console as unnecessary is just a bit goofy.

And before anyone else does this, I’m not excusing $80 games or game key cards or $10 tech demo. I have legitimate gripes with the console and Nintendo, and I refuse to buy Mario Kart World at its price point. But I think the Switch 2 hardware is brilliant, and I can finally experience the games I love better than ever before.

[alittlehouseinhateno]

Oh no, look who's back here again...

Yes, I have started a fifth play of Breath of the Wild. Mostly I can't afford a new game but also Nintendo fixed my joycons so this will be the first time ever I can (potentially) do the motion control shrines without wanting to scream. I'm also interested to see how much I have forgotten/overwritten with TOTK stuff. My challenge this time is GUARDIANS ARE FRIENDS and not to be murdered, which I have been thinking about since my memories challenge. This applies to Stalkers, Skywatchers, Turrets & Decayed Guardians, but not Scouts or the training ones. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the main game that forces you to kill them and there's enough giant/ancient cores in shrines for the stasis upgrade etc. Minor challenges I may eventually drop if it stops being fun:

Only 1 clothing set can be upgraded (Stealth). If I want buffs, I need to take the defence hit, use meals etc.

No horses until all the towers are unlocked

Minimum fast travel & only to towers and a few hard to reach places.

No looking up Guardian locations or marking them on the map. Hyrule Field is going to be entertaining at least.

It's unlikely I'll update here very often but I will when something fun/interesting/surprising happens or to share some thoughts.

[daeyumi]

What’s your favorite LOZ game and why?

it’s breath of the wild by far, haha.

i just adore the world, the exploration, the implications of the lore, the design aesthetics (especially the ancient sheikah tech side of things), the characters— it’s not to say i don’t have issues with the game, but it’s honestly just such this perfect storm of things that appealed to me specifically, especially at the time the game came out. i remember not liking skyward sword very much even back when ss first released, and when they showed botw off before release i was convinced that botw would fix every problem i had with skyward sword and the general trajectory nintendo seemed to be taking with zelda games up to that point

it did. (mostly.)

but yeah, like, botw was kind of the most “zelda” zelda game since the original, since it returned to a more open exploration format, and it’s just so much fun to explore and to run around— and oughhhhhhhh, the COLOR SCHEME!! my art would not be what it is today without botw’s inspiration. in basically every way. and even tho i have major issues with how botw handled its storytelling— the implications of the lore itself, sheikah tech/shrines/etc, unexplained locations in the overworld, its all very compelling to me in a way that totk just couldn’t build upon (or i guess replicate would be a better word, since nintendo seems to have wanted to make both a sequel and the same game as botw, which obviously can’t work, being that those things are diametrically opposed— but that’s a discussion for a different day lol)

and of course, there’s link. botw link is my favorite link by far, lol there’s a reason why all i ever draw is botw or totk fanart haha. i think he was made for me specifically lololol

i could honestly go on and on, maybe one day i will make a huge long text post compiling all my thoughts on botw. maybe i should do the same for totk or for other zelda games too someday, idk. but thanks for this question, anon! i’m always down for an excuse to talk about zelda

[ashley-kins]

Every time I look at Tears of the Kingdom criticisms, they aren't even about actual criticisms, they just don't like the story. It's fine to not like the story. But when you criticize, you need to explain why and how you would've fixed the problem. (No, saying "I would've changed the whole story" is not the why and how.)

For example, I didn't like that there wasn't any explanation on where the Sheikah technology went until a developer basically panicked in an interview and said that it just vanished after the Calamity. I would've made it so that while Purah is explaining the Purah Towers and/or Purah Pad, she offhandedly commented that she got the parts from the guardians/shrines/Divine Beasts.

What really irks me is the "but the story doesn't line up to past Zelda games" that's right. Good job on understanding that. Ocarina of Time had 2 direct sequels: Majora's Mask and Wind Waker. Zelda 1 has a direct sequel: Link's Adventure. Wind Waker has a direct sequel: Phantom Hourglass. Breath of the Wild has a direct sequel: Tears of the Kingdom.

The only thing that was promised was that it was a sequel (and technically also prequel) to Breath of the Wild. People take the timeline way too seriously. Twilight Princess is technically after Majora's Mask, but we are only told that from the timeline. The Hero's Shade was hinted at being the Hero of Time, but just like the Bridge of Hylia existing in BotW/TotK those hints were just made as a reference.

The Zelda timeline doesn't make sense. Why did 4 Sword adventure take place in the Child timeline? How does a "the hero is killed" timeline exist if the hero canonically wins? Why is it only Ocarina of Time that had the timeline split when time travel is a common thing in many Zelda games?

Sure, you are allowed to not like the story, but stop blaming it on Nintendo not caring about the Zelda timeline. They were all meant to be a brand of games with the same name, we as a community just wanted a timeline, so Nintendo just made one and threw it at us.

If you want to argue that it has no connection to Breath of the Wild, please replay the game again and see how many things are connected:

If you've played BotW, your horses transfer over

Zelda has made monuments dedicated to the people that lost their lives to Calamity Ganon

People still remember him. I've seen arguments that people don't; so I will say: talk to the Zora, the people around Lookout Landing, Master Kohga, the Sheikah, some of the Rito, Riju and her right hand, and Yunobo.

If you've beaten the Champions' Balad DLC, you keep the picture of the Champions.

Anyway, I just needed to rant because I keep seeing "criticisms" that are just bitching at the story, which as I said before: if you don't like the story, that's your opinion, but don't think that's what a criticism is because it's not.

[karakulialiny]

As I learned from a TV show I watched recently, giving a golden turd to a person symbolizes wishing happy and lucky life in Japan. Knowing that Nintendo is Japanese game, it makes sence why Hestu gave Link such a ridiculous gift.

But I still think that such reward is too lame to be given for going around Hyrule for weeks to collect 900 koroks. So, I think it would be way better, if Link got broken Terrako as a gift from Hestu. Then, according to the game, we had to go to Robbie and Purah so that they could fix the little eggbot, after which, he will become our ally in battles, just like the pets in the Roblox game called World Zero. Then Link will go back to Hestu to thank him for giving a new friend, and they will have a little party.

You may ask, how did Terrako end up in the forest? Well, he went to find Link and Zelda, only to be killed by a larger guardian and lost in the middle of the forest. Then Hestu found him and hid under the Great Deku Tree. Of course, this would make sense if Nintendo had Age of Calamity on their mind while developing Breath of the Wild and decided to make it a part of canon.

{Previous drawing] [Next drawing}

[vowill89]

So, I just saw the Nintendo Direct for the Switch 2, and I've got some thoughts. First, the bad: That was a rough presentation on a technical level. The video and audio were desynced and at one point the video froze while the audio kept playing. They tried to fix it, but over corrected and replayed the video too far back from where the audio was. Oof. That being said, this is the only complaint I have concerning the Direct. Here are what I liked. The Good:

We got a release date, June 5th, 2025. Get your wallets ready. All Switch titles will be playable on the Switch 2, with some even getting a Switch 2 specific upgrade. For example, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will be getting an upgrade pack that will improve the performance of these games. Data transfer has been confirmed, move games and save data from your Switch to the Switch 2. Performance wise, it does seem to be on par with a Sony PS4, seeing as how Yakuza Zero and Street Fighter 6 seemingly played well. That's another thing, multiple companies that have partnered with Sony in the past are moving their titles onto the Switch 2, with the likes of Elden Ring and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade being available on Switch 2. New Hyrule Warriors game coming out, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Love the continued use of the "Age of" subtitle, I feel that helps open up a whole new venues of Zelda stories to tell in future Hyrule Warriors titles. Also, more central focus on Zelda during TotK. Switch 2 console features look interesting. Love the idea of the dock having it's own cooling system, this will help put less strain on the Switch 2. Bravely Default getting a remastered version on the console, haven't played the original 3DS version, so I'm looking forward to that. Game Cube being added to NSO, and the first game they showed was Wind Waker. Unfortunately I think this means the Wind Waker HD version will not be coming to the Switch 2, and forever isolated to the Wii U... which is fine for me because I have a Wii U, so... eh. There seemed to be a little more emphasis on open world play in some of the titles, with the new Mario Kart and Donkey Kong games looking likely to be prime examples. Guess BotW didn't just open the door to that concept, but ripped the damn thing of the hinges. So those are my thoughts on what I saw. Technical difficulties aside, if you look at what was actually shown, you'll see that there are a lot of promising things to look forward to with this new console. Now, if only they get off their asses and release Metroid Prime 2 and 3 already. They gave us hope with Prime 1, STOP TEASING US, NINTENDO!

[djcube1701]

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Platform: Switch

NA release: 26th September 2024

EU release: 26th September 2024

JP release: 26th September 2024

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

N-Europe Score: 8/10

The first mainline Legend of Zelda game that features Zelda herself as the main character, while also taking some inspiration from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and incorporating aspects of those into a more traditional 2D Zelda, with the style of the Link’s Awakening remake and a map heavily inspired by A Link to the Past. It’s quite an amalgamation of different Zelda concepts, but it all blends together to form a lovely package.

As Link falls into a dark void after saving Zelda, Zelda teams up with a mysterious entity called Tri to try and fix these rifts that are tearing Hyrule apart. Together, they have two main powers, Echo and Bind, with the Echo system being the core concept of the game – hence it being part of the game’s title.

Zelda can scan various objects and any non-boss enemy (after defeating it) to add it to her collection of Echoes. After this, she can then summon it at will, with a certain number being “active” at any one time – summon another and the earliest one you summoned will disappear. There’s no recharge timer, so which opens up a lot of possibilities for how to use them – in ways, a few too many.

Hold right on the D-pad and you get a colossal list to scroll. This was one of the big problems in Tears of the Kingdom and it doesn’t get any better here. It’s potentially even worse as Echoes are the main way you interact with the environment. There’s a few ways to sort, but they really don’t help.

What Echoes of Wisdom really needed was to let the player create their own lists. For example, there are a few echoes such as the Strandula, Bombfish, a Carrot and a Wind Cannon which are more or less vital items that you’ll use every so often. If you play around with Echoes, they can end up quite a way down the list, which is not only a pain, but you can also easily forget their use. I would have liked to have made separate lists for attacks, platforms and items.

Once you get used to the frustrating system, though, then they really are a joy to use and you can adapt them to suit your playstyle. Some people prefer to summon a few monsters and sit back, while I like to be a bit more active. If you’re targeting an enemy, your Echoes will start off by launching an immediate attack. With the more powerful Echoes, you can keep summoning new ones and have the old one vanish after one hit, making it feel more like you’re more active in fights.

But at the same time, the openness of the system is also a bit of a flaw. It’s easy to get stuck into habits (especially as experimenting can make it a pain to scroll the ones you like) and some tactics just work a bit too well. On top of powerful enemies, some platform objects can make it easy to get around obstacles and the beds let you rest and recharge your health, even in the middle of boss battles. I found myself often tanking damage as environmental hazards are quite weak and just sleeping afterwards, a tactic which renders the smoothie creation fairly useless.

The dungeons in Echoes of Wisdom take a more traditional, structured approach, with a few instances where you can go through a couple of dungeons in any order. I really enjoyed the dungeons in the game, as they provided some fun puzzles that make use of the Echoes as well as the Bind move, where you can grab and object and move it as Zelda moves (or reverse it so Zelda follows the path of the object). Some of the platform challenges can be cheesed, but there are still some good ones to be found.

Bosses are one area where I use another one of Zelda’s abilities: being able to turn into Link for a short time. It starts out as just using a sword, but you add a bow and bombs throughout the game. Their tricks are easy to figure out and they usually don’t last long, but they’re enjoyable. You can use this ability at any point, but outside of bosses I just preferred using Zelda’s other abilities – it seems a waste to just resort to using Link’s abilities.

The overworld itself is adorable, being based on the map of A Link to the Past but much bigger, with locations from that game now being ruins. There are a lot of things to find and a lot of people to meet, and the side quests are enjoyable to complete. This is especially important because the rewards for the side quests are dreadful, usually rupees or smoothie ingredients, which aren’t really needed that much.

There’s a lot of charm and character throughout every moment of Echoes of Wisdom. It’s in the graphical style, the animations, the dialogue and the many enemy designs. It’s hard not to be smiling the entire time playing the game. There are lots of little details and touches all over the place and everything just works together really well.

Despite some flaws and annoyances, I had an absolutely lovely time with Echoes of Wisdom. Everything about the game is adorable and there’s just a wonderful atmosphere. The Echo system does lead to some issues with letting you break the game and resort to some easy options, but the freedom is also amazing, especially in combination with the more traditional structure of the game.

If I were to change some things about the game, it would be letting players categorise Echoes themselves, and add a few more accessories and clothing as side quest rewards. Overall, Echoes of Wisdom is an immensely cute and happy game.

Gameplay: 4.5/5

Overworld: 4/5

Dungeons: 4/5

Sound: 3.5/5

Style: 5/5

Overall: 4.5/5

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Nintendo-vember Level 4 (Part 2): Because this one had way too many pictures to make a point...

Continuation of the following post

Okay, so in addition to Dobson's own Link not really looking very familiar to the actual Nnintendo designs, I also decided to do the following. Getting a bit into hair sperging, I pulled out this little chart for hair color.

Now, to compare it with the Link designs predominant before OoT came out.

So we got Link from the first Zelda being somewhere between light blond and blond, Zelda 2 Link being dark blond and SNES and Gameboy era Link (who are the same and as such the favorite incarnation of Link gamewise according to Dobson) at Light Blond.

Where could dark brown haired Link come from?

Oh, right! The Douchebag of Time.

It is just weird to me, that the hair color is something Dobson has taken such a grief with when it comes to Link. Cause in all honesty, I am not certain how such a minor design detail can affect ones enjoyment of the Zelda games that much. Anyway, to the last point

?????

Yeah okay, I admit I am not quite certain what the last panel is even supposed to be about. I think Dobson wants to criticize the fact that now multiple Links exist, instead of the Legend of Zelda series being kinda like Mario. You know, one character all the time fighting the same villain over and over, instead of there being different incarnation of the character (and others such as Zelda and Ganondorf). I should admit, that aside of the OoT/Majora’s Mask Link, I kinda assumed actually till the release of Four Swords/Wind Waker, that the Game Boy and the SNES games followed only one Link. Which even nowadays in the branched timeline continuity they still do

Which btw proves my point from earlier, that it was only post OoT the execs kinda screwed the timeline up in such a manner, we would need the TVA to fix it. Anyway, till Four Swords came out, I thought Link was really just going to be the same hero in all games, just with a different design each depending on whatever console’s technical abilities. Then the multiple incarnatins and timeline thing became the norm and… well, I don’t get what is bad about multiple Links or making it that the games are kinda their own thing/continuity in a certain manner.

For example, I can still play Wind Waker also as something of a solo game if I take the backstory of how Hyrule ended up under the sea just as a backstory on its own, instead of thinking about its context in a bigger narrative. Plus it allows programmers and people in the story development department to kinda go crazy/creative with designs for characters and locations, because they aren’t “bond” to capture the style of a previous game to the point that even slight variations would feel out of place. Like imagine doing Breath of the Wild style Ritos in Wind Waker or adapting the 2D Zelda environment of A Link to the Past without much variety into 3D. Plus I think that if we only followed one Link time and time again, his adventures would pretty much become less special over time, because him fighting Ganon then becomes more of an average Tuesday chore.

So…That was Dobson’s comic venting about what he hates about OoT. And I have to say, a lot of these complains (as I tried to explain here) are arbitrary as hell to me. Dobson essentially complaind about aesthetical choices the game made, that all things considered were kinda necessary for this franchise to make the jump not only into the 3D era of gaming, but also in the storydriven era of gaming itself.

See, I like the Zelda series, but as a fantasy series up to this point, I wouldn’t really call it the most “challenging” game storywise. Defeat an evil pig demon, save the princess, explore dungeons. That was it and kinda is still the base line appeal of those games. But even just compared to some stories we got by comparison for example on the SNES (Breath of the Wild 2, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6) Zelda was not really that deep. This game may not have even been the first Zelda game with a bit more “depth” to it (Link’s Awakening was that for me with the island being revealed to cease exisisting once the Widfish awoke), but it certainly was one that fleshed the world of Hyrule out a lot and in doing so introduced multiple technical, story relevant and aesthetical aspects to the franchise, that went beyond what A Link to the Past already had done in 1991. And that game in my opinion, while great, mostly just improved on the aesthetical aspects by assuring the game looked better in 16-bits than anything on the 8-bit NES.  

To be fair though, I may also just be a bit biased here, because Ocarina of Time was an important game in my childhood I have very fond memories of. Both in context of the game, but also outside of it. But considering I am not the only one who likes it, I think it is safe to say that it is a good game. Is it the best Zelda game ever? Well, we have Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom now, so likely no. But it is certainly within the top four Zelda games and will likely stay there even the next few decades. And acting like it is total shit and its fans are “lesser” being for enjoying it, is not just contrarian, it is outright insulting. So in that regard: Fuck you Andy. May Octorocks ejaculate upon you, while the rest of the world finds enjoyment in that game.

And on that note... Happy anniversary to the Ocarina of Time. The best wishes from me for Impa, Ruto, Darunia, the Twinorvas, Ganondorf, Epona, Sheik, Zelda, Link, Navi, Sarina and all the other characters and the people behind Ocarina of Time for giving us one of the best games on the N64 and within one of the most beloved Nintendo game series ever.

May your melody be heard for 25 more years at least.

[the-awakened-insomnis]

BOTW, AOC & TOTK

Warning! Opinions ahead, keep scrolling if you don't wanna read them.

Every time I play Age of Calamity, I get reminded of what could've been with Tears of The Kingdom. Specifically, the advancements in Sheikah technology, and with the sages. In AOC Sidon, Yunobo, Teba and Riju are all BUSTED in AOC. Obviously, a big part of that is because it's a HW type of game. But then TOTK dropped, and after beating the game I feel I can say this complete confidence.

Age of Calamity complimented and honored Breathe of The Wild better than Tears of The Kingdom ever will.

While yes, AOC is basically a fix-it fic of "what if they lived" with extra elements from BOTW. The stakes felt far higher, they was much more to lose, and when Calamity Ganon was defeated and sealed away? That victory felt more satisfying. We manage to save Hyrule, we prevented this kingdom from sharing the same fate in BOTW.

[Gaming conventions]

BOTW broke conventions of a typical Zelda game and it worked for the story BOTW was trying to tell. BOTW is about taking back what was stolen and avenging what was lost. AOC reminds us of that lost in BOTW, it's largely why the defeat of CG feels more rewarding in BOTW.

Another convention that desperately needs to break letting Zelda be playable, TOTK would have been the perfect game for this. There is 6 year gap between the games in-story. 6 years that we don't get to see, we could've seen what Zelda has become in between that time, we see she became a teacher, valuing the education of the next generation rather than restoring the monarchy at large. We see she clearly met the champion decedents, we know she was ready to explore and research.

Having Zelda be a companion would have been more groundbreaking than having her fly around as head-empty-no-thought-behind-the-eyes dragon. If anything, turning her into a goofy ass dragon is a spit in the face to her character. Zelda put herself front and center to save her kingdom in BOTW, this "sacrifice and potential eternal solitude" has already been done, there was no need to repeat this. If anything Nintendo took that and ruined it.

I can see dragon!Zelda as a final fight with Gandondorf, she swallows the stone she picked at the beginning of the game and turns into the light dragon so Link isn't fuckin falling to his demise whilst fighting Dragon!Ganon.

The side-quests were one of the best things about TOTK, I felt involved with the people more, doing that with Zelda by your side would've been more impactful. Seeing her interact with the people of Hyrule compared to how Link interacts with them would've been interesting.

The potential of what she could have brought onto the table is endless with possibilities, especially with the Zonai and all the research and mysteries surrounding this massive world. We will never get the chance to see Zelda interact with her the same way we did with Link.

They took what made BOTW great and served undercook BS in Tears of The Kingdom. The Concept art only strengthens my feelings about it.

[The Future?]

Nintendo got me feeling every type of way except the good one. EOW was pretty solid and the ending actually got to me. However, that doesn't really ease the bitterness TOTK left me.

I will mourn what The Kingdom could've been for a good long while.

Thank you for reading if you made this far.

[Random ass feelings]

This Zelda feels Green to me, whilst this Link feels Blue. Gandorf still feels red, but he hasn't been interesting since WW. IDK how to describe other than with words. Might draw that one day to properly convey that feeling.

If Zelda was a companion, she should get all the amino fits like Link did. Just for meme sake.

[omamervt]

I still see bizarre critiques of Scarlet/Violet that betray a lack of understanding about the nature of gamedev so I wanna set a few things straight.

Now because this is the internet, I'm gonna get this out of the way. This is not a defense of GameFreak. They scaled too big considering they had a locked-in deadline beyond their control and a development pipeline that spreads decision-making way too thin between 3-4 separate entities. And this is certainly not a defense of The Pokemon Company International as a whole. They'd happily stop publishing games entirely if they thought they could sell plushies and figurines of brand-new Pokemon without them, and I frankly won't be shocked if they eventually try that.

Now first and foremost, as I'm sure many of you know, the Switch's hardware lags SO far behind its competitors. There are several reasons for this and I honestly can't fault Nintendo for some of them but that's the simple truth - from a modern standpoint, the hardware sucks. They basically just packed Wii-U hardware into a mobile device, and the Wii-U was just an Xbox 360 with a significantly worse video card.

But why is it that some games like Tears of the Kingdom run perfectly with no issues ever under any circumstances, and even other Pokemon games released the same year manage significantly better performance?

Well, long story short, those three games all decided to do the exact same thing, ran into the exact same problem, and came up with three different solutions.

Starting with Tears of the Kingdom, a massive open-world action RPG/Puzzle game, they saw the limits of the hardware, knew there was only so many assets (items, environment art, NPCs, enemies, etc) they could keep onscreen without compromising the beauty and immersion of the world, and decided they were only going to have a handful of enemies on screen at a time. Usually groups of 10 or less. There are a handful of challenges with significantly more enemies, and the game performs noticeably worse in those areas. They also had fixed spawn locations. Enemies would always appear in the exact same spot, every time you go to that area. If you've killed the enemies in that area already, they won't come back until the Blood Moon resets all encounters on the map. The reset happens periodically to prevent a memory overload from crashing the game.

In this way, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were very expertly designed around some luxuries that a Pokemon game doesn't have. Pokemon games need to be able to populate an area with Pokemon. Pokemon need to respawn in that area more than once every 3 hours. Once again, though, an elegant decision was reached. First, they split the map up into 5 Areas, each about as big as the main Wild Area in Pokemon Sword/Shield. Then, they tied Pokemon spawns to a random seed. You know how Minecraft uses "seeds" to generate a new world, and putting in a custom seed affects how the world is generated? Yeah, it's the same concept but with Pokemon spawns. Then, they created a 24-minute Day/Night cycle. Every 6 minutes, the time of day would change. At the end of a full cycle, the seed would be regenerated, giving you a new set of pokemon in the area. You could prevent the generation of a new seed by "Sleeping" at camp, which would return you to an earlier point in the day, potentially allowing one seed to last significantly longer, and thereby reduce the amount of data stored in short-term memory when the seed is regenerated. Returning to Jubilife Village would dump leftover data from the previous seed(s), and generate new seeds for all 5 areas. Because of the seed, the game only needed to generate new pokemon while the scene was loading, which, if you spend less than an hour in a specific area at a time, took significantly less effort. And by creating some, quite frankly, bland environments with LOTS of big clearings where most of the Pokemon appear, they were able to have loads of Pokemon on screen at a time. Also, because the Pokemon are fixed to the seed, the exact same pokemon will spawn in if you walk far enough away from them to make them despawn. Nothing is decided in the moment, so no room for hiccups!

For Scarlet and Violet, GameFreak flew too close to the sun and got burned. Rather than use the smart system they came up with for Legends: Arceus, they wanted one big open world that'd be heavily populated with Pokemon, those pokemon would have minor interactions programmed in, and the player was given access to the whole map as soon as they finished the tutorial! And... oof, you can't put that on a seed anymore, it's too many moving parts over too big of an area! With virtually no areas to load into, you can't load the Pokemon from the next area all at once. You also don't have anywhere to hide a memory dump. The only two areas that aren't part of the same big open world are the city of Mesagoza, and Area Zero. So, pokemon spawn and despawn based purely on proximity to the player and the area the player is standing in. If the player leaves the pokemon's proximity, it's gone forever, and a brand-new pokemon is generated on the spot in its place. Even though it keeps the amount of assets on screen low, it's still a lot more ongoing work that the system has to do. And to trade off for that, they cut down on the amount of environment assets even further. EVERYWHERE in Paldea is a big open field. This game doesn't even have a proper forest, and no, Tagtree Thicket doesn't count. The trees are so sparse that you can't even properly call it a Thicket. It's an embarrassment to Thickets everywhere. And even with that compromise, there were STILL massive areas of the game that simply couldn't handle the amount of work that was needed to keep up with making these big, empty fields look populated.

Look, the point is, Scarlet and Violet don't suck because of corporate greed preventing them from getting a proper development cycle. Another year in the oven might have helped, but frankly it wouldn't have fixed this mess. The core issue at the heart of Scarlet and Violet is that GameFreak had a specific experience they wanted to deliver, they made massive compromises to deliver it, and in the end, those compromises weren't enough to provide a smooth experience. They should have split the map up the same way they did Legends: Arceus, with the school and Mesagoza as the hub area you'd return to after an expedition. It's perfectly set up for it, they just chose not to for some reason. If they had, they could have copied the setup they used to make Legends: Arceus work, and the game would have likely had significantly fewer performance issues.

But even so, I find it hard to fault them for trying. They did it because it's been clear this is the experience they've been building to ever since the series went 3D. Scarlet and Violet are the games they've wanted to make for a long time, and it's evident everywhere you look that a LOT of love went into building it. This game had possibly the best supporting cast of any Pokemon game ever, a story that focused on those characters rather than the world's lore, and an absolutely killer finale. Despite its technical flaws, it's a delight to play, and even after it's been out for months, I still can't put it down, and if the people making it didn't love what they were doing, I don't think that would be the case.

[option-monad]

ok i finally played breath of the wild + tears of the kingdom and i have. some opinions

for starters i want to focus on totk because it feels like a straight-up improvement across every possible dimension. i get how people might have been disappointed after botw was super novel and totk just iterated on it, but it fixed a huge number of annoyances i had with botw and the central design pillar of "open world immersive sim with zelda flavouring" is unquestionably a lot stronger.

and when it's doing what it's good at, holy shit is it ever good. i think there's a lot of system shock/thief dna in it, and i get the same feeling from the exploration and problem-solving sections of it. which is absolutely wild, because it feels like that design philosophy has been dormant for a long time (m&m dark messiah felt sorta generic despite the mechanical flair and the new deus ex sequels are story-driven AAA rpgs far more than imsims imo).

that being said, while we're all hopefully on the same page re: botw and totk are both very good videogames, there are definitely times when it feels like they don't live up to their own potential, mostly because of the constraints of being a nintendo flagship title (which, to be clear, is also the only thing that made these games possible to produce).

here's problem 1: they can't fully commit to being player-driven open-ended games. they need to add a bunch of handholding along the critical path, because otherwise the game risks being too weird and confusing for general audiences. the first time i went to the depths felt amazing: i found a big hole in the ground, jumped down it, and found a whole second map. there's weird wildlife down there, you have to navigate completely differently, and hitting the first lightroot and being able to actually see feels incredibly liberating after bumbling around tossing out lights every few feet. then at some point later on, i realise i'm missing the compendium and have to do the "depths intro quest" to get it, and... that quest would have ruined the experience for me. constantly being interrupted by random npcs, having the camera grabbed away from me, and being shoved towards a single very specific target while everyone spells out exactly how to interact with the region felt bad. i got to experience it as a complete unknown: no lights, no other people down there, no clue where i am. that contrast makes the story sections feel so much worse, because i'm mentally so connected with the game that having my camera taken away and mashing through dialog is a huge cognitive interruption. i put off the main quest stuff for so long precisely because i hated how the guide rails felt - after having the game pause mid-fight in the fire temple for yunobo to point out the giant glowing interactible item, that has a quest marker over it, that i'm clearly approaching because i think it's something i need to interact with... i wish there was a difficulty slider for "guidance" or something, because having everyone else shut the hell up and leave my camera alone would have lead to a better experience across the board.

and problem 2 is the rest of the difficulty. there is just zero reason to keep collecting gear beyond a pretty early point. at 2* gear and <1/2 the available hearts, i am not encountering any gear walls whatsoever. the only upgrades i really want are the ones that increase attack damage, because enemies become complete damage sponges at higher difficulties. and getting those upgrades requires me to farm out drops from specific rare miniboss enemies that are hell to find thanks to a combination of level scaling and far too few map icons to track rare spawns, and here's where the third problem starts.

problem 3: there are elements of the design that are clearly inspired by other games, but they're not what the game is designed around, unlike their inspirations, so i'm always left wishing i was playing something else when i engage with them. when i'm looking over my gear, i can feel myself playing a watered-down version of monster hunter and i hate it because i could be playing full-fat monster hunter. when i'm trying to build a vehicle, i at least want a more transparent control scheme and more levers to pull when im piloting the damn thing, because i'm used to playing from the depths and being able to manually decide what rpm to spin each individual propellor at after each button press. and to be clear, totk should absolutely not be replicating the notoriously niche and obtuse Boat Game or the ridiculous difficulty of late-game monster hunter, because those are things that the average audience member just does not want. but the streamlined, simplified versions of these still end up feeling unsatisfying for the lack of commitment. and the worst part is that they don't really interface that well with anything else. i always have to dismount a vehicle to interact with anything, there are no obstacles that genuinely require better gear, and miniboss hunting doesn't give you any new tools for screwing around with the environment.

i like these games, but i want to like them a lot more. the solid core makes the flimsy gearing, generally kinda bland story and extremely old-fashioned storytelling feel so much worse. this engine can only exist because the games are going to shift millions of copies, but shifting millions of copies prevents them from doing anything sincerely interesting. they manage to mostly escape the feeling of bloat and repetitiveness that comes with most open-world designs, but replaced it with a kind of sad, risk-averse "streamlined" approach to their mechanics. i just wish there was more to really get my teeth stuck into.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #679

Top Ten Games of the 2010s

Once again I return to the whole decade-based ranking thing, this time turning my beady eye Sauron-like onto the world of videogames. This is a good week to do so, too, because of the announcement of the Videogame BAFTA nominations; a nice list, I thought, that celebrated a lot of great British talent (including the exquisitely British Thank Goodness You’re Here, which I really must play soon).

However, we’re not here to talk about the present; no, we’re journeying back in time, like Liev Schreiber in sci-fi classic Kate & Leopold. But rather than cock up the invention of the elevator and get sectioned under the mental health act, I’m instead going to rank videogames that were released in the 2010s. That is, to be irritatingly clear, the decade that bestraddles the years 2010-2019 inclusive. Come on, it’s not that hard, I did the same thing about films a couple of weeks ago.

This feels like the decade when, as much as I retained a vested interest in gaming, the amount of time I could actually spend on the things began to seriously dwindle. I remember when Mass Effect 3 came out, which coincided more or less with the birth of Daughter #1, that it took me about eighteen months to complete it. Back then, I thought it was insane that it took that long; nowadays, it’s pretty normal for me to spend a year or more playing a large story-based game. I’m trying to think about what the last really big RPGs I completed were, and how long it took; look back at my data (yes I have data), Starfield took me about fourteen months, and Cyberpunk 2077 about eleven months; and this is when the kids are old enough to put themselves to bed! And when I say “completed” for a game like this, I’m just talking about finishing the story more. There’s loads I could still do in these games, and whilst I’ll be going back to finish the Cyberpunk DLC at some point this year, I doubt I’ll ever play Starfield again (sorry guys).

Also, I feel this is the decade where the fact that I never play PlayStation games and rarely play Nintendo ones, and the fact that there are entire franchises I just basically don’t touch, becomes increasingly evident. There’s no The Last of Us on this list, no God of War. Similarly, there’s no GTA, because I played GTA IV too close to Crackdown, and the fact you couldn’t hop from one roof to another or throw cars at people just rendered Rockstar’s effort way too dull for my refined palette. As such, I had no interest in GTA V. And then there are other games that either didn’t tickle my fancy or I just never got round to: everything from Dark Souls to Destiny, Fallout to Fortnite. What I’m trying to say is, if you’re a big gamer, chances are you’ll notice some big games missing from this list.

Before I start talking about some tremendous classics, however, I did want to sort of tip my hat to a few games that I think could, or should, or even nearly were, on this list. Games like Witcher III, Spider-Man, Life is Strange, and especially Breath of the Wild. These are games that I’ve played, and enjoyed, but for various reasons never quite got into them; certainly, never came close to completing them. I’m giving myself a pass with Spider-Man as I’ve only got it on PC, and I tend not to enjoy playing action games on PC anymore, and also I’ve not really had it very long; but Zelda I’ve had for about five years and barely scratched the surface. I’m not sure why, as it “fixes” (for want of a better word) almost every issue that’s caused me to bounce off previous Zelda games; and yet here we are. I think it’s probably because I tend to play the Switch handheld, and like playing an action game on the PC, I find it difficult to get emersed in a dense RPG-esque game when I’m staring at my hands. Pokémon Sword was okay, but then again Pokémon Sword was, well, only okay; but generally I find the Switch more suitable for games like Mario + Rabbids or Animal Crossing or Civilization. So, look, Breath of the Wild is a classic and a masterpiece and all the rest; but I have to confess that, late at night, when I could have played anything in the world, I instead chose to fire up the Xbox and play Crackdown 3. I don’t know what to tell you.

Crackdown 3 is also not on the list.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (2016): my love for the whole Civ endeavour has abated somewhat, due to the developers – in my opinion – ditching everything I love about the franchise with Civ VII (so drastic a gameplay change that it’s genuinely put me off the older games). however, I can’t ignore the vice-like grip this game has grasped me in for nearly a decade. It’s possibly my most-played game of all time; I’ve completed it I don’t know how many times, probably in the hundreds. As far as these sorts of games go, I think this one is exceedingly accessible; the gameplay tweaks (districts built outside the city for instance) work really well to its advantage. The colourful graphics allow for really easy sight-reading of situations. And it’s fun. It’s funny. You get to tell your own alternative history across the millennia, crafting a civilization that feels exclusively yours. It’s a masterpiece, it really is. One of the greatest games of all time. The fact they’ve ditched the specific thing about it that I love the most makes me so sad.

Mass Effect 2 (2010): playing Avowed recently has reminded me how much I love this style of open but quest-based adventure-RPG, and at the time Mass Effect was clearly the pinnacle. Building on the success of both Knights of the Old Republic and the first Mass Effect, BioWare gave us a glorious sci-fi universe of wonderful aliens, with gameplay systems that were easy to understand but also delightfully deep. More than anything else, though, it’s the writing that sticks; a cast of amazing characters who you really wanted to spend time with. Knowing how much you’d just like chatting with these guys, the game rewards you for your investment, giving you structured missions built around each character. One of the first times a game felt like a prestige streaming drama, years before those things became popular.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017): I find Mario Kart to be one of those series that’s so ubiquitous you forget about its greatness. But doesn’t everyone love Mario Kart? It’s a bright and colourful racer, easy to understand but with hidden quirk and complexities for the purist. This version is expansive, with a squillion characters and tons of options. At its core remains the incredibly fun gameplay experience that’s been there since the start, tinkering with and refined over generations with new concepts (bikes, gliders, hills). Arguably the greatest multiplayer game of all time. There might be a new one this year. Callooh callay.  

Slay the Spire (2019): technically I don’t think I played this until this decade, but it came out in 2019 so it totally counts. These deck-building rogue-like games are increasingly popular, and I’ve discovered – to some mild surprise, I’ll admit – that they are absolutely my jam. Battling baddies by dealing cards with different abilities is a nuanced and tactical affair, but there’s always the accursed spectre of luck to kick your legs from under you. Slay the Spire’s art style and fairly stripped-back approach to its decks and its battles – less complex or varied than, say, Monster Train – is, I think, the thing that keeps me coming back for more. It feels like an almost infinite number of possibilities with each encounter, making starting a new game a joy.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes (2013): it feels like my adoration of the Lego games might be something that’s sliding into the rearview mirror – Skywalker Saga was great in a lot of ways but also flawed in others – and this one remains the overall best of the bunch. The Marvel universe is a perfect fit for the blasting and brawling these games present, giving us a larger and more varied roster of abilities than Star Wars, with less nerfing of the over-powered than you have to do with DC. The open world of Marvel New York gives you a great canvas for play, as well as much to discover and do; but the missions themselves are brilliantly conceived and designed, and also serve as a cool showcase for characters and powers. And, of course, these things are a delight to play with children.

Forza Horizon 4 (2018): the Horizon series has taken Project Gotham’s crown as my go-to arcade racer (outside of the goofiness of Mario Kart, natch). The open worlds they present, in glorious fidelity, coupled with the score-attack nature of the game’s points sytem, and the accessibility presented by being able to rewind time if you make a mistake, all adds up to one incredibly fun package. Truth be told, the individualities of each iteration kinda blur together; each one is great in its own way. This one’s probably my favourite, though, as it’s set in the North of England (and Scotland).

Doom (2016): the very idea of remaking the practically-perfect, genre-defining original Doom in the modern age seemed folly; after all, FPS games had come on immeasurably in the nearly twenty years since. But this Doom managed to bottle lightning. Retaining both the creepiness of its forbearer, as well as its penchant for incredibly fast-paced, gory gameplay, this nu-Doom innovated by forcing us players to get up close and personal, rewarding us for grisly melee kills, making it almost as much a puzzler as a blaster. Divine.

Portal 2 (2011): for me it somehow lacks the tiniest bit of magic from the first game, but still – blimey. Even more brain-frying puzzles to solve using, well portals (and lasers, and cubes, and pass-agg computers), with some incredibly funny writing and performances. Like its predecessor, it features sumptuous yet subtle world-building. A work of twisty genius.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017): on the one hand, this is a brilliant effort from a very small team. A game of high fidelity featuring some brilliant effects and modelling, and a stupendous central performance, it has the trappings of a third-person hack-and-slash affair but is actually a complex puzzle game, requiring a great deal of environmental awareness and the ability to think beyond what you can clearly see. However, that’s not what makes it so great; it’s the phenomenal sound design, and how that contributes to an incredibly nuanced and moving story of trauma and mental health, as Senua battles with her own condition as much as she battles with gods. Prickly and powerful, like an interactive A-24 drama.  

Minecraft (2011): how could I not include this? One of the most influential and important games of all time. In its scope and complexity, it offers an entire world: both a robust survival RPG and a complex construction kit. However, it’s how accessible it is, how child-friendly, that really makes it shine. This is more than a playground, more than a sandbox; it’s basically an entire videogame ecosystem in one title. And kids have taken it to their heart, tearing it down and building it back up again. Attempts to diversify can be fun – Minecraft Dungeons – but they move too far away from the core of: what if Lego but also D&D and also Doom and also I am Legend and also and also and also…?

[fulgursmediaanalysisdrama]

After collecting more side quests and items that seemed like side quests but weren't I finished Ikana Castle and moved on to Stone Tower

There's no place for me to progress though, not even using the bunny mask for longer jumps. On the third floor I'm just stuck, I can reach only two platforms neither of which have any buttons or anything to interact with except for one hookshot pillar used to traverse between said platforms. It clearly is the only place to progress though, as the game had the rare instance of directly stating where to progress. And like, you generally being locked out of story relevant areas completely unless you have the tools to advance, and I don't think there be another tool I need other than the song.

What would suck is if I need to call back the plaforms I used to reach the third floor in a specific order in order to build a bridge to the fourth floor

The reason this would suck is that no matter where you fall from on the first or second floor you get send back to the entrance, but now I did get send back to the third floor after being knocked off the hookshot pillar (by something I couldn't see, but I was standing on top of it and all enemies are generally out of reach? There's only a few bats that don't even spot you), so I'd assume that I can always continue on from floor 3. Unless it wants me to manually go back to floor 1, as I can't reach floor 2 from 3.

Unrelated, but I do have sidequests left over that I'm 100% aware of. They have the usual problem of unclear objectives huge time waste by waiting or both. There's a lot of redoing in this, some of which is sped up, but I thought the appeal of this game was resetting cycles and doing things differently to achieve different things.

Not redoing the same things in the same way, with it not even speeding up and getting repetitive/boring (especially since most "challenges" are just annoying, in the sonic locking the player out of having control way, and don't provide any meaningful challenge to interact with in a way that can really be practiced. Everything that can be practiced is boringly trivial once you figure out how the mechanics work, if it wasn't spelled out to you), a number of times only to then time skip/wait and do one or two things before resetting and redoing again.

Sure at some point you have done everything and there's not that many things you need to redo any given thing for but in fact it's really annoying. Like at least make rechallenging the bosses worth something and keep the swamp healthy, the mountain thawed (you'd still get a reward upon replaying if you finish the temple quickly and gain the gold dust, since you don't need the sword for the dungeon), etc etc.

Shit like making me recollect the Zora Eggs because I didn't want to recollect the fairies is garbage btw, but at least more understandable. Now I just wish I had done the band side quest before the dungeon as the new wave bossa nova is permanent at least. What pains me still is that this is a remake and they fixed none of the errors of the first version, the quality of life changes that do exist hurt the immersion more than anything I have listed in this post of my big thread imo.

They were lazy quality of life changes too, bare minimum effort. But this is the way of this company, remakes as nintended. Money good, putting effort for money bad.

It's even more shocking as good remakes are 100% possible (ie a link between worlds), and what I'm asking is in the realm of a remaster. This is a remaster, I shouldn't have been calling it a remake my bad.

Anyways: tears of the kingdom is just a breath of the wild remaster and neither game is particularly good, botw is excusable as an interesting experiment that had good ideas with often poor execution. No one but Nintendo fans was impressed by this open world title, and no one should have been. Totk is an insult and should make it clear that botw wasn't bad because of lack of experience or anything but because of a lack of effort and care. The same bad designs got repeated uncritically even in the face of criticism, the reasons why botw was popular and sold well weren't examined and no growth took place, no improvements were made.

[sunnidaydreamer]

Zelda Rant

The more I think about Tears of the Kingdom, the more disappointed I am.

I miss Breath of the Wild.

Yeah it had it’s problems, what game doesn’t? No game is perfect.

But it was a hell of a lot more coherent.

The world was supposed to feel empty, because the world was still recovering from a traumatic world-ending event, that was still happening!

The settlements were small and far apart because they had lost THOUSANDS of lives!

Towns, small villages, the CENTER OF HYRULE ITSELF, all destroyed.

If the game wasn’t Nintendo and had the rating it did we’d be seeing Fallout levels of skeletons, blood stains and remains around.

(that’d be kinda cool ngl)

What about all the incredible technology?

The Sheikah! They were intelligent, they created it long ago, and what we see in the game is just the remnants of what they used to have.

Why was it gone? Because a jerkass king thought the Sheikah were a threat, and made them destroy or bury it.

Why do we have the Yiga? Because not every Sheikah was alright with this. The royal family made their own enemy.

Why are the shrines there, doing what they do? Because a Calamity had already happened once, and they knew it would happen again, so they made them and put the puzzles and monks in them to prepare the new Hero.

We learn about the Calamity that happened one hundred years ago, the Champions, things like that over the course of the game proper.

The memories system worked because Link had no memories, and the locations were acting as a trigger for these memories he’d lost.

He didn’t regain all of his memories either. Just the important one tied to that location.

We have the chance to read diaries that give insight as well.

We learn more about the characters writing them, and others as well.

We learn more about Zelda and how hard things have been for her since the death of her mother, and the prophecy being told.

How she feels like the lowest of the low, a true and utter failure.

But we also learn about Link.

It’s through Zelda’s diary that we learn why Link is always silent and expressionless.

We learn through Mipha’s diary in the dlc about her friendship with Link, how she feels, etc.

And the environmental storytelling as well.

The abandoned and destroyed remains of towns, the ranch, the castle itself.

I can’t remember where it’s said exactly but I remember learning that Bolson’s company uses wood because all the stonemasons and resources teaching about building with stone, the equipment, etc were gone.

And yes, the Zonai ruins, that we only know are called Zonai because of the map.

It had mysteries, some of which were even found out/theorized by fans before even the first teaser trailer for the squeal!

Like that the Calamity's source had to be beneath Hyrule Castle, since that’s where it emerged from.

You can’t have Ganon without Ganondorf, so people said that he must be sealed down there.

And they were right!

A mystery that had a logical answer, an answer that made sense.

But there were mysteries that a lot of us… really didn’t want answered.

Who was the Hero of the Calamity of 10,000 years ago? Who were the Zonai people? What are the dragons?

These were fun mysteries with as many answers as stars in the sky, and a lot of the fun came from making up our own answers.

And like I said, the game isn’t perfect by a long shot.

The rain mechanic having no way to combat it. If it rains while you are climbing you better hope you’re close to the top or be prepared to wait it out for however long it rains, which can be a long time.

The weapons breaking also have nothing you can do about it. Have a unique weapon, perhaps an amiibo drop?

Welp, enjoy it while it lasts, or get the house and mount it on the wall to never be touched.

The only weapons you can break and ‘fix’ are the Champions weapons, and those are pricey materialwise.

Then there’s the Gerudo's… everything.

They are still objectified, in game they are fetishized, with multiple Hylian men trying to find a way in so they can find girlfriends/wives/sex.

There’s at least one man always outside of the city, implicitly waiting for women to leave so he can try to flirt and score dates. He even has a quest he deems impossible ready to more or less trap a woman into spending time with him in the hopes she’ll fall in love with him.

He admits as much when you dress as a vai and talk to him about the quests, saying the Eighth Heroine was an urban legend and he wanted an excuse to get close to Link.

There’s the matter of the quest to get into the city. While many enjoy the Gerudo Vai set, many people have pointed out the transphobic elements in the quest, especially regarding the person you get the set from.

Are they a transwoman? Are they a man who dresses as a woman to sneak into the female only town for some reason? Are they some kind of pervert? The game leans more toward them being a man, but that leaves the question of why they dress in Gerudo Vai clothes.

Gerudo Town also brings up the issue of how would they treat a transwoman? Is she a woman in their eyes, even if she looks more masculine? Or would they not allow her in, as she was born and is biologically a male?

Or is it as some have theorized, and as long as you seem to identify as a woman by dressing in feminine clothing you are a woman to them?

The laws of Gerudo Town around men don’t help. While it’s understandable that they would have issues due to Ganondorf, in BotW and TotK they treat men as both horrible creatures and the ultimate life goal.

We learn in Tears that at a certain age any Gerudo child outside of Gerudo Town is taken from their parents to be raised in Gerudo Town. We see a group of these girls, at least three I believe, seemingly under the care of what I can only call a governess.

They break up families, and the father is not allowed to see them until they are considered adults.

In Tears we see what happens if he tries: a man hears about the trouble at Gerudo Town, where his wife and daughter currently are, and sneaks in to make sure they’re alright.

He’s caught, and locked in a dungeon with no comment on when, or if, they plan to let him out. And his family isn’t allowed to see him, if they even know he’s there. The guards very well might not have even told his wife that he was there.

When you enter in Tears you don’t need a disguise, because the town is in shambles. The creepy shoe guy is even waiting on the top of the City walls looking for women, and if I recall right he never leaves even when it’s fixed.

In Tears when Link initially talks to one of the girls she covers her face and looks away, as young girls are forbidden to look at men as it’s bad luck or something. The girl had to get permission to talk and look at you. Later an older Gerudo warns you about behaving, like you’re some pervert waiting to strike.

The Zora also have issues, mainly concerning aging.

Mipha and Link are childhood friends, with Mipha even commenting on how young Link was when they met and how incredibly powerful he was even at four years old.

But it never states how old Mipha was. In fact we never learn how old she was at all.

Link is most likely seventeen, and Zelda turns seventeen the day the Calamity hits.

But we don’t know how old Mipha, Link’s other implied love interest, was.

And with what we know of Zora’s and how they age this has led to… potential problems for some people.

Not helping is the quest where, in English, you deliver a love letter from a young Zora(who has the model of a child) to a grown Hylian man.

From what people have found, in other translations the letter is a pen pal letter not a love letter.

It doesn’t help that they kept her child model in Tears, her saying something like that she hasn’t hit her growth spurt or something.

But she’s supposed to be an adult.

It bugs people to the point where I’ve seen fics where Link has a child and refuses to take them to Zora’s Domain so as to prevent a Zora from falling in love with them while they’re a child.

It’s poorly explained how they age. You could have just said that the Zora live longer, but the game implies they age faster? How much faster? Body and mind? Just mind? How does it work?

There’s also some confusion with Gorons.

Yunobo is Daruk’s descendant. But Gorons are born from the earth.

So how is Yunobo Daruk’s grandson? How did he inherit Daruk’s power, if Gorons don’t have things like bloodlines? Does it have to do with where a Goron is born? Like in a certain area makes you family? If so, why is it only Yunobo who inherited Daruk’s ability? Surely others would be born from that area too.

The Yiga are also… not that great, you could say, and I KNOW that’s gonna ruffle some feathers.

They’re a joke, in essence, especially Kohga.

They’re obsessed with bananas, and with Kohga.

Kohga, who is admittedly strong, but is characterized as a lazy, overweight dumbass with a fluffed up ego.

His boss fight is centered around you making him hit himself, so that he is stuck in the sand with his ass sticking out so you can hit him.

You don’t even finish him off, he gets thrown down the pit by his own technique.

And somehow survives.

(I call bullshit)

His questline in Tears is also one of the most annoying as it’s you chasing him around the depths before he, once again, takes himself out with his own technique.

I saw someone theorize that they’re portrayed the way they are as Japan has a cult problem, and that portraying them as competent and cool etc would risk glorifying cults there.

I truly hope that’s why, and I can understand it.

But they’re a little too much of a joke for my tastes.

And I still can’t understand their motives.

They want to support the Calamity, and in Tears Ganondorf, and end the world.

Like, they know the world is going to be destroyed, and that includes them, right?

In Tears Kohga even admits as such.

So why are they supporting the Calamity? They must have an amazing pr strategy since in BotW someone states that the reason only Paya and the two girls are the only young Sheikah around is that all of the others ran off to join the Yiga clan.

(In Age of Calamity, which has a dubious relationship with canonicity, they’re portrayed as wanting revenge on the Royal family, but also that they care enough about each other that when Kohga finds Astor sacrificing his peoples souls to fuel the Calamity the whole clan turns against it and joins the rest of Hyrule fighting the Calamity. I enjoyed this portrayal way more than in BotW/Tears, but that’s just me.)

Also, personal nitpick/opinion: Bolson construction and continued into Hudson construction is a fucking cult. You have to swear to name your child a certain way when you marry, and Rhondson was not told this either, and is kinda bullied/gaslit into agreeing to it when she marries Hudson. Grante has to add ‘son’ to his name before they’ll give him a job. It’s a cult.

Tears has so many issues story wise it makes peoples heads spin.

Where is all the Sheikah tech?

You’re telling me in the time between BotW and Tears they went to every corner of Hyrule and, what? Dismantled everything?

They tore down the towers? Took apart the Guardians? All of them?

The gigantic Divine Beasts, the fucking graves of the Champions? Just gone?

Not a trace of Sheikah tech is left, not even the slate.

These things, this tech, that was vital to the first game is just… gone? Save for a lone decayed Guardian on top of the Hateno Tech Lab?

And as far as I’ve seen, there is no explanation in game for it.

It might as well have never existed.

The time travel also makes no sense.

From what we are made to understand it’s a closed loop. We know this because Ganondorf knows who Zelda is and deduces who Link is the moment he wakes.

So Zelda would have had to have already gone to the past from this point, as we see her do.

But that raises some problems.

The Master Sword is broken, and Link sends it back in time to Zelda, who becomes a dragon to soak it in her sacred power to restore it.

So… how is it available for the Hero of the original Calamity? How is it available for Link to find at twelve? Why was it in the pedestal in Korok Forest if it should be with Zelda and getting restored?

How are the geoglyphs only visible after the Upheaval?

Did Zelda know Link would lose his arm and have it replaced by Rauru’s? Yes she saw his arm hurt, but she had no way of knowing it would need to be replaced.

So why is everything reliant on Rauru’s arm? Kohga can’t access autobuild because he doesn’t have it, this is made clear every time we pursue Kohga during his quest, there is no other explanation given.

Link needs it for the temples, he needs it when he finds the door leading to Mineru’s head for her construct.

Was the plan to always replace Link’s arm? Even if it wasn’t damaged beyond repair?

He even needs it to see the dragon tears, as recall is what triggers them.

Without Rauru’s arm, Link wouldn’t be able to do anything.

Why is Zelda’s power changed to time instead of light? So that Rauru can remain the Sage of Light?

Yes, in OoT she’s(unofficially they never say it in game as far as I know) the Sage of Time, but in BotW it’s established her sacred power is light. Unless you’re implying that she was using her power over time to seal Ganon for that 100 years.

I highly doubt Nintendo thought that far ahead.

So it had to have been changed to keep the reference to Rauru being the Sage of Light.

And it makes no sense.

It’s obvious that Zelda’s power being changed to time was not only to keep Rauru as the Sage of Light, but to get Zelda out of the way.

By sending her irreversibly back in time there’s no way for her to contribute to the main story except through the memories.

A system they should not have brought back.

It worked in BotW because Link had no memories and was rediscovering them.

Here, it comes across as a cheap way to give story without real effort.

And the memories shown have such wild time differences between them that we only get fractions of story. As well as how easy it is to get them out of order, and thus spoil everything for yourself.

And when you do get them all, doing so before the mission at Hyrule Castle or even any of the temples, takes away from the story because you know that the person you’re seeing isn’t Zelda.

A fact which Link apparently keeps to himself, letting everyone worry endlessly over where Zelda is.

If Zelda had to be sent back in time, why not make it to where when we find a dragon tear we switch to playing as her for a little while? Let us experience the story as Zelda as it happens. Let us interact with the npcs ourselves.

We would care more about them, learn more about them.

Instead we’re given scraps of information that need to be slightly supplemented by an optional side quest telling us that Zelda was totally having the time of her life, she made so many friends, if only you could see.

So let us see!

Why does Ganondorf want to cover the world in darkness? He was a human, Gerudo, not a demon or anything. So why does he hate the light? Why does he value strength so much? Where did his survival of the fittest mentality come from?

When he became the Demon King, what happened to his Gerudo followers? Did he abandon them? Were they turned into monsters?

How did he kill Sonia? He had no weapon, we see no blood.

Did he break her spine? Punch her soul out of her body?

The way it plays out getting bit by a mosquito would have taken this woman out. A gust of wind would have blown her very soul away.

You went out of your way to show us Ganondorf as a weapons master, even in the Gerudo Assault memory showing several Gerudo behind him holding his weapons.

At no point is he ever implied to do hand-to-hand, so why does he have megaton punches?

Just have him stab her from behind with his spear, her hair could block the wound and blood.

Did the Gerudo Sage follow him once, like Nabooru? Or was she always against him?

How convenient is it that all of the original Sages are the ancestors of the new Sages?

We’ve already talked about the issue with Goron lineage and how that makes no sense, so how is it possible that not only are all of the modern, and apparently the original, Sages leaders of their people(except Tulin) in some way(Sidon is king, Riju is Chief, Yunobo by way of being in charge of Yunobo corp which the Gorons rely on), but that their lines stay in power over potentially 20,000 years or more.

And we know they were in charge because they had the power to swear their entire races into the royal families service. And their people just go with it.

Also just how long ago is the Imprisoning war?

I throw out 20,000 years because the last Calamity was 10,000 years before BotW, so maybe that one was 10,000 years after the Imprisoning War(maybe the malice needs that long to collect and make Ganon).

(and no I don’t give a shit that it’s called ‘gloom’ in Tears. That shit is malice to me.)

So how long has it been between the Imprisoning War and the Calamity of 10,000 years ago?

Why is everything suddenly related to the Zonai, despite our only ever hint to the Zonai being their ruins in Faron, which apparently aren’t even their ruins, but ruins made by Hylians to honor them?

Why are they suddenly the God rulers who descended from the heavens who established Hyrule?

Then mysteriously died off/disappeared leaving only Rauru and Mineru as full-blooded Zonai?

How is the Hero of 10,000 years ago suddenly(supposedly) part Zonai, if they were all gone?

Wouldn’t that make him a descendant of Rauru and Sonia? We know they must have had at least one child, as Sonia senses a blood connection between her, Zelda and Rauru. It’s never so much as implied that Mineru is even married let alone that she has a child.

(I refuse to believe that the Hero is part Zonai. He looks nothing like a Zonai. That is a Frankenstein monster of some kind. I prefer the theory that he’s from the people shown in the statues in the Depths.)

Also were the Sheikah inspired by the Zonai tech? Or was at least some of the Zonai tech inspired by the Sheikah tech via the Purah Pad?

How were the sky islands raised? How were they kept in the sky? How were they hidden? And in such a way that it took the Light Dragon breaking through said barrier to reveal them?

In BotW it is shown that there is a barrier if you follow the dragons long enough. You’ll eventually see them ascend into a hole or portal of some kind in the clouds.

Can any of the dragons break this barrier? If so why wasn’t it broken before the Upheaval?

With the reveal that swallowing a Secret Stone turns you into a dragon, the mystery of the dragons is thrown out the window. What else are we to assume except that they are people(most likely Zonai) that swallowed a Stone for some reason?

This kills any sort of fun/mystery associated with them.

They’re all called servants of the sacred springs, named after the Three Golden Goddesses(the only reference anywhere in BotW/Tears to them), leading to so many theories.

Were they the Goddesses themselves? Were they created by them to guard the springs?

Nope. They are(most likely) just Zonai who swallowed a Stone for some reason. Zonai who probably just happened to have names referencing the Goddesses.

Since, ya know. For some reason by the era of the Wild only Hylia exists, despite not being mentioned(timeline wise) since Skyward Sword.

Also, really playing up the Skyward Sword refs in this game aren’t they?

The sky islands, the reforging of the Master Sword, Ganondorf’s Demon King form basically being Demise.

Throw in Ghirahim and the refs will be complete!

(speaking of I am really surprised there’s no ref to Ghirahim. Like at all. Not a weapon, not a clothes item. He’s one of the most popular Zelda villains, where’s his rep Nintendo?)

Ganondorf is also just… evil to be evil. Because the iconic villain of Zelda is apparently not allowed to be deeper than evil for evils sake.

After so long out of the spotlight this man is still just evil because he can.

Lame.

Sonia and Rauru are little better, we know next to nothing about them.

All things that would have been made better by making the dragon tears playable segments where we could interact with them.

I don’t care enough about Mineru to be affected by her heartfelt farewell in the true end.

We don’t know anything about her aside from her and Zelda having being nerds in common. Apparently they were good friends, but we don’t get to see that.

Zelda is so sad when she moves on to the afterlife and I’m eating a snack as I wait for the rest of the credits.

Plus her Sage ability is near useless. If she kept what you attached to her it’d be fine, but they break so fast that I don’t even bother.

Most of the Sage abilities are not great.

Sidon is, to me, useless except against the Muktorok.

Yunobo you can at least use for mining and breaking rocks.

Riju is OK I guess.

Tulin too.

But chasing their asses down just to activate them…

I don’t bother.

And then you activate them when you don’t mean to, so you lose stuff or get damaged or something.

Hate it. 0/10.

I also have issues with the way Zelda is returned to being human.

A huge deal is made about how swallowing a Stone will irreversibly turn you into a mindless dragon, there is no turning back.

….Unless you know and matter enough to the ghosts of Rauru and Sonia, in which case they magically have the ability to reverse the process.

I know that there was no way they’d keep her as a dragon, but that was such a cop out.

Also, wasn’t Link’s arm ‘beyond saving’? Did we just rewind his arms removal and destruction while we were at it?

If someone lost their head, could they just rewind them to a point where it was attached?

We could have had a whole quest dedicated to finding out how to return her to human form! Impa mentions looking into it.

But all we get is someone pressing the rewind button and everything is fixed! Hurrah!

Consequences don’t matter if you’re Link and Zelda!

Alright, I’m ending this here I’ve gone on too long.

[three-bunnies-in-a-trenchcoat]

Breath of the Wild is commonly speculated to take place in a unified timeline

Hyrule Warriors opens portals to all three timelines

Nobody at Nintendo really gives a fuck about how time travel works

The Hyrule in hw is horribly unstable due to the sheer amount of time fuckery going on

All three timelines collapse in on each other. Death and destruction and Hyrule is gone everything is reshaped

Eventually everything stabilizes after. I don't know long enough for people to forget the past. It's not like anyone ever writes things down

Hey wait what's that? ITS THE FUCKING ZONAI

Rauru and Sonia found Hyrule; Tears of the Kingdom (Zelda's Journey)

Calamity. Sheikah. Divine Beasts.

10,000 years. Calamity again.

BREATH OF THE WILD.

Tears of the Kingdom (Link's Journey)

I have fixed the Zelda timeline you are welcome.

I think they should add Hyrule Warriors to the official timeline and see if that fixes whatever the fuck totk has going on