The fuse and recall abilities are really cool. Phooey on the return of breakable weapons. There had better be a blacksmith in town. I was hoping to see at least a dungeon.

 

Spoiler

One thing I can say is, after watching this, prototyping, playtesting, and QAing these new systems are almost certainly a huge part of why the game took as long as it did. You can combine seemingly almost anything to make seemingly almost any configuration you want, and all of it functions within the game's physics engine. Playtesting and polishing nightmare IMO. Figuring out what's too much and breaks the game or feels like instability, vs what is just goofy enough that players might want to do it for the hell of it and not see it as counterintuitive or broken, etc.

It's one thing if a given player isn't excited by or interested in this prospect. But I hope people at least appreciate the development/engineering challenge it likely represents. Designing the intuitive sense in which weapons can be made (e.g. stick + hard thing = hammer, stick but long thing, such as rake, = spear) probably took a lot of iterating too. We're seeing the end result so it seems obvious, but if you step back and look at what we just watched, this is an insane thing to implement in a Zelda game and definitely took a lot of work and creative problem solving to make functional I suspect.  

Well, they seem to continue to keep the story and world elements more under wraps, so I do suspect we'll be seeing more before release. We have over a month to go. This was impressive to me, much more extensive than I expected honestly. But the thing that's missing is the why do we care about this stuff as Link in this world and how is the world overall different now and why? That's spoiler territory so I suspect we won't get that until very close to release and even then in subtle nods rather than explicitly.

 

I just wish Zelda (particularly 3D Zelda, which I prefer) wasn't aping concepts that didn't have literally dozens of high-budget and/or popular alternatives these days.

Big, open world games are a dime a dozen.
Crafting-focused games seem pretty common, too, though probably not as much so as open world (though I'd say Minecraft alone more than makes up for it due to its popularity).
Zelda-like games (let alone good, 3D ones) are few and far between.

This might sound petty/selfish, but it feels like I'm not able to get/have what I want because everyone else wants everything to cater to them. And what they want are things I specifically don't. I don't have options to get my Zelda fix in a new game (and arguably haven't since 2011) anywhere else while everyone else can hardly spit without finding something new to suit their tastes for open worlds. I am literally losing what used to be my favorite game series due to it adopting/focusing on so many things I don't like and de-emphasizing or forgoing things I do.

All I can do is hope that the dungeons, puzzles, and bosses (and any other heretofore undiscussed and unrevealed aspects/mechanics) make up for the increased focus on things I don't like/care about. But I'm not optimistic.

 

If the next zelda game is like skyward sword, then I’m fine with Nintendo taking awhile to make a good version of that. I’m looking forward to how they evolve the BOTW formula.

 

Shouldn't you be bitching about the "High-budget/or popular alternatives" for aping Zelda's systems?

 

If you mean those that have rushed to capitalize on BotW by making even more open world games, I've lamented that before, possibly on this site or even this thread. But BotW didn't start the open world trend, it capitalized on it and succeeded, which reinforced the trend. Games/series like Grand Theft Auto, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, etc. were doing it to popular and critical acclaim before BotW ever entered development.

If you mean games that copy 3D Zelda's core format/formula pre-BotW, then like I said in my post there are very few of them. Otherwise I could/would turn to those instead, but I can't. That's my biggest gripe: I have nowhere to turn to get my "fix".

If you mean something else, then feel free to elaborate.

 

Spoiler

I was thinking that too. There are a potentially huge number of combinations and presumably they all have to be evaluated to make sure they don't give any issues. That's an enormous effort. Having said that, I hope they didn't get too into the weeds and spend all the development resources on it because I would like to see more "high level" stuff like more of an overall story and (as already mentioned) real dungeons. Also caves would be nice and it appears like we may be getting them.

 

You could argue that most open world games aped the original LoZ.
And plenty of games ripped off the 3D zeldas. Like.. that was the literal effing standard at the time.

 

Is there a list somewhere of the BoTW clones that are out there for Switch? And maybe recommendations as to which ones are worth playing?

If there has been a massive explosion in the amount of (good) 3D open world games I guess I've missed it. We still don't have Elder Scrolls 6 (or appear anywhere close to it). Witcher franchise seems done, and the developers next game was a mess. There's the Horizon Zero Dawn franchise on PS, I guess. And Red Dead. That's all I can come up with as far as AAA titles.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I'm very very curious about what the split between more traditional dungeons in this game is (since the Divine Beasts that previously stood in for them, somewhat controversially, are out now presumably) vs smaller "shrine-like" things from the previous game.

I'm of two minds about it kind of. On the one hand, we've always had things like grottos and mini-dungeon-like areas in Zelda games, and in a seamless open world it makes sense to me that some of the hard delineations between "dungeon" and "not a dungeon" might melt away in favor of more natural exploration. Like maybe instead of a "fire dungeon" we just naturally stumble upon an opening in a cave that if explored leads to a massive interior, only some of which is volcanic. And with the immense customization we seem to have, key items seem less relevant too.

On the other hand... I really like traditional, arbitrarily themed dungeons, and key items.   So I hope this game strikes a bit more of a balance between the freedom of BotW and those more traditional elements. And I hope there isn't a replacement for shrines that all feel aesthetically super similar like the last game had. I loved the shrine puzzles and thought the level design was brilliant, but I hope for more variation and distinctiveness this time, both visually and thematically. Maybe by having a lot of puzzle elements up in the sky and underground that's how they go about that this time? Will be interesting to see.

On a side note, my little brother a while back made a really amusing set of his personal criteria for what features dungeons have, and how much "dungeony-ness" rating the presence of each of those features contributed, to determine what did and didn't "count" as a dungeon, and to assign each dungeon an "is it a dungeon?" score, and it was really funny because he was so serious about it.   But it was also interesting because even in that he concluded that the only universal key dungeon factors he could think of were: a clearly delineated area (doesn't have to be discrete, its own loaded area, or even a building or cave, just an "area" of any kind that is uniquely identifiable as somehow distinct from the rest of the world,) progression gating (e.g. do this thing to open that door or some variation thereof,) optional rewards, puzzles, boss fights, and completion rewards.

Those are his criteria, not mine, but I found it interesting that the way he broke it down didn't require a traditional dungeon so much as a set of "dungeony things" (lol) which I wonder whether might be how Nintendo looks at it now given all the vertical puzzle elements they seem to be implementing.

 

My major point is that they just don't make new games like 3D Zeldas much anymore, Nintendo or otherwise, and even fewer that are good or part of ongoing series. It's not like I said there weren't or never had been any at all.

When was the last 3D Zelda-like game? How many of them are actually even good? How many nailed the intermixing of puzzles, the dungeons, the bosses, the tools/items/abilities, and overall progression (the things I am looking for in a 3D Zelda)? If we stick to old games circa OoT and want to do a 1-to-1 comparison, how many of them were a popular and well-regarded series being transformed to appeal to Zelda fans and proceeded to succeed and stick with it long term? The answers to these questions, to the degree I am aware of them, are usually things like "a long time ago", "few", "very few", and "never"

Again, if good 3D Zelda-likes/clones were anywhere near as common today as good open world games, or even just one consistent series, I wouldn't have a problem (or such a problem as not having my video game tastes catered to can be said to be). I would move onto them and be done with it. But they're just not there. I feel like I've been very clear about that at this point.

Put another way, if Okami was putting out new, quality games every 3-5 years while sticking to the same core formula instead of being relegated to generational remasters then I would be more active in that thread than this one because that would be where I was getting what I wanted. But that's not the case, and there's not really an alternative for me that I have ever been made aware of.

 

Like its been stated, the overworld may be the same, but there will be numerous changes to the environment that will create a whole new sense of exploration and discovery along with a nostalgic feeling of familiarity.

A comparison from the today's video.

So far we know that fallen ruins and debris will now scatter the landscape, Shiekah Towers, Shrines and Guardians are gone. Now new structures and the replacements for shrines take up their spot in different locations and areas now. Enemy bases are gone and rebuilt in new forms as well, such as Bokoblin making bases on top of Stone Talus'. The Stables now have chimney smoke coming out of the horse head to show where they are easier and new structures that seem to be construction zones for new buildings are all over the place too.

Add the Sky Islands, what seems to be a new cave system below Hyrule to explore and you have a whole new experience to choose any which way to explore.

 

The sky islands weren't any fun to explore in SS, so I don't have high hopes for the one we did see. (No pun intended.) Also, other then the amazing bosses, I personally despised Palace of Winds and City in the Sky.

 

Agree about the SS islands but these look to have a lot more to them so hopefully they will be more satisfying. Fingers crossed.

 

They'll definitely not be like SS it seems.

Looks like Sky Islands really are just exterior shrines and mini dungeons. You can see them of various sizes, heights, shapes and even different weather. One was covered in thunderclouds (no metal can be equipped) and one covered in snow (need to have warm clothes).

We know as well there will be bosses and puzzles to solve.

Also the little Zonia dragon robot custodians are cute. As are the new Zonai Construct enemies.

 

Yeah, there’s a crap ton that the developers haven’t elaborated on in the trailers or artbook.

 

and even from the artbook, there is a lot of new implications of what the game is going to give us.

 

Especially when it showed some new NPCs, returning NPCs, and new enemies.

 

As well as new armor sets that bring a lot of questions with them.

 

Yep. A lot of stuff from the artbook was pretty nuts.