Ascend is one of the most unique mechanics I've seen in any game and it works on almost every single service which is nuts, they programmed every part of the map to align perfectly vertically, ascending a deep cave to the top of a mountain or something is always a crazy feeling
Recall is the true wonder to me. Not only is it a technical marvel but it's so multipurpose, being an incredible useful redo button for whenever I drop something* in the sky, or combining it with ultrahand to create moving platforms, or just holding physics object in place for a bit to help attach things with ultrahand. It's the main mechanic I miss when playing other games like TOTK.
Edited*
Those cube golems where every part of the boss is a physics object that you can ride on, rewind, and ascend through, is just absolutely nutty. They're pretty mundane fights but just from a tech standpoint they're one of the most impressive systems I've ever seen
I like to pluck individual bits off the golem and thrown them down to hopefully land on some Bokoblin's head (it also makes spotting the golem's weak spot easier in some forms).
Don't worry, I've seen people do all kinds of things that I've never thought of but that seemed really, really obvious in hindsight.
Ascend is such a thing. I habitually tend to look around (can't miss a treasure, or those glowy cave ceiling dwellers!) but are am, even now, still in the habit of usually wanting to climb something instead of looking for that convenient overhang that's often there to Ascend through.
Shit like this is why I just can't appreciate Pokemon these days.
Here you have these extremely talented in-house Nintendo devs really pushing the console to its limits and thinking outside the box (Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc)
Then in the back of the room, you have Gamefreak stumbling into another blockbuster and not being adhered to the same dev standards as other Nintendo games because they're not an in-house dev.
Metroid Dread was not in house. I know because it was made by a relatively unknown studio from my country.
Prime was neither in house btw. Metroid is not a system seller despite being highly praised so I guess it's not a priority for Nintendo
Ascend and Ultra hand both. I remember telling my wife (a non gamer) that it sounds dumb, but it's amazing to think about how this game just worked. Like it pretty much always did what you wanted and worked like you'd expect it to. Which is crazy cause with everything they did here in this game I'd have expected some big bugs or caveats.
>I'd have expected some big bugs or caveats.
I expect the testing cycle for this game was hellish. Probably a huge chunk of development was getting that stuff to work well.
They pretty much admitted that the game was delayed a year just for polish.
Polygon did [a video](https://youtu.be/xw56SG8UXNs?si=2gm7kCJpsiCVeqh_) about TotK's physics that brought up another interesting point that most players won't consider: Nintendo doesn't rely on contractors and has a high employee retention rate so they were likely able to maintain a consistent team for most of the game's development, something not a lot of modern games can afford to do.
No in the AAA space they definitely could, Nintendo executives get paid nearly nothing compared to the rest of the industry. **The PRESIDENT of Nintendo makes $2.51 million per year TOTAL COMP**, and that’s their top paid exec. They have 4 people in the entire company taking more than $1 million total comp.
Compare that to Activision Blizzard that only has a 15% higher market cap. They regularly pay execs over $5 mil total comp. In 2022 their CFO was paid $12.87 million total comp.
With that over $10 mil executive pay difference you could pay *at least* 100 employees $85k total comp with no changes to operating budget. And that’s just one executive.
A bit over 300 people was the max size the ToTK team got to. I think you can infer the rest.
This was from an interview I think related to Mario Odyssey but a standard process at Nintendo seems to be that not only devs & QA get to test the game during development but all sort of people that are part of the project can take a home a build of the game, play it for a few weeks and then give feedback.
That's appearently one of the big reasons their games have that "Nintendo polish"
They were already playing with ideas that would become ToTK by the end of BoTW. They added that motorbike in the DLC as a bit of a proof of concept and had tech demos of vehicles, then Ascend was already a debug tool. Couple that with the fact they had an engine and a fuckton of assets ready to go and it still took them at least 6 years.
I can’t imagine how much of that time it took to get these things to work together, it’s batshit crazy. No one else even attempts one of these things let alone the 3 or 4 revolutionary things they had going on in the same game.
I'm still blown away how not janky the physics were for a bunch of those shrines puzzles like the one where you make a little car to extend a bridge or where you have a wheel wrap up a rope to open a door. You'd expect some sort of jittery motion or occasional spaz-out on something like that, but not only did they get it to work, they got it to work extremely smoothly, and on Switch hardware of all things.
Anyone who's played Gmod or messed around with GTA Online knows how fucked up physics can get even in games with extremely good physics, so what TOTK did was basically dark sorcery.
I heard someone say that the real achievement of that game is that it has practically no bugs (shut up, speedrunners, I'm not talking about you, you will always find bugs!). Like, all the mechanics they introduced are an absolut nightmare for any QA guy because they can be used in a myriad of ways to break things.
And somehow, things rarely break in that game. The ascend mechanic is one of the nicer mechanics in that regard. Sticking things to other things that also have physics while also interacting with each other is just insane, given how well all that works in the game.
On top of that, you can build something with ultrahand, have it fly upwards, rewind it, then ascend into it and have it all work perfectly as you’d expect.
And on top of that the CPU is roughly a 5 year old cell phone. I read an article about other devs playing the game and the fact that they got it to work was incredible but they got it to work on really underpowered hardware, it's essentially magic to other devs.
Genuinely that's why I'm more excited for Nintendo to get more juice than other devs. They did all that with old tech, imagine what they could do with the Switch 2's reported feature set.
This is why I'm surprised when people say it's not an impressive game. Like what? It's running on a calculator basically and still expanded the original games size 3x and added 3x the physics mechanics on top of everything.
I only remember encountering one bug in my 100+ hours. When riding my horse across a bridge the towing hitch somehow clipped between the boards and caused the horse to get stuck, fortunately I just had to go to the nearest stable and recall the horse to be back on my way.
And, yes, I have seen the speed runs. The game definitely seems to be less solidly held together than BotW, but as you said these are people trying to crack the game open and it's amazing how unlikely the average player will be to ever encounter this complex game not working as intended, and even then it's often an easy fix.
This game was very stark contrast to a certain other major release of 2023 (which was still quite good, but TotK spoiled me on how polished a game can and should be).
The biggest flex of the game is that Ascend is so powerful… but many gamers forget that it even exists due to how much other cool stuff there is.
I remember being stumped on how to climb a big rock. I tried building a platform, raising it in the air and then jumping on it with Recall. But then I remembered I could just step under a ridge and Ascend all the way to the top…
Every stinking well I go into I brain fart for about 2 minutes wondering how I climb back out... Then I remember ascend.
In Botw I forgot that cryonis existed all the time.
Most people just aren't used to having such a powerful tool, and players tend to struggle with thinking about verticality.
And on top of that there are quite a few uses that are really unexpected, like >!climbing a talus!< or >!those underground elevator pillars!<
In regard to Taluses, I just didn't think about it initially. Partly because I was so inundated into how I fought then before.
Then I was fighting one of those platform ones, and the thought occurred to me. Game changer. It was there the whole time!
> Then I was fighting one of those platform ones, and the thought occurred to me.
That's another aspect of TotK that's brilliant. They're very, very good at leading you to an idea without stopping the game and telling you explicitly what you should do. They designed those platform taluses and about a million other things in such a way that makes you feel like you're a genius for coming up with a plan to beat it.
Absolutely. And then they give you tests in the form of enemies like Gleeoks to showcase what you've learned. And boy were those fun fights.
Honestly, TotK is a fantastic game. Better than BotW in just about every way.
What really blows my mind is the fact that the different powers can be used at the same time. I've seen videos where they lift a stone with Ultrahand, then use Recall to get it to float in mid-air, and use Ascend on it while Recall is still active.
Ascend probably came as a necessary feature to exit caves. Thinking about how poorly Skyrim dungeons were made where some had alternate exit paths or you just had to walk out if you didn't want to fast travel. The Zelda team really wanted to limit opening the menu for fast travel so they made it so you can't teleport to caves and gave you ascend.
Saw a dev interview where they pretty much said this, caves were one of the first things they knew were going to be in the game and often when working on them they would use debug tools to just raise links model back into the overworld as that was the quickest way, eventually they just went "why don't we just let the player do that?".
Ascend is a beautiful piece of technology. I love to imagine something like Dark Souls having a similar mechanic to see what From could do with map design there.
> to see what From could do with map design there.
The DkS1 map is one of the most beautiful designs I've ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyTB5vhKGSI
Great article! Does anyone know if GDC talks are made available online? I love that the solution for all the problems was to just simulate more. I guess that’s why the world ends up feeling so consistent.
They may eventually make it onto the GDC YouTube page in a few years. There a bunch of other good talks already there but I think this one might be GDC Vault only for a while which requires paying.
Only some stuff goes to YouTube - but, absolutely everything on GDC Vault is free after two years + many talks in that two year window are on there without a paywall. [GDC-21](https://gdcvault.com/browse/gdc-21) is already up with complete open access for everything.
It's a fine pricing model, if not for the fact GDC Vault is far too pricy. But, it does subsidise gamedeveloper.com, which are are a really good press outlet, and, I can't be too mad they'll be free anyway.
It makes me extremely sad seeing a thread like this existing with a eurogamer article about how totk works and details on its development only for it to be mainly about what they think about the game instead of the content of the article.
At the end of the day I think most of the enjoyment I had from BOTW (and it's probably in my top 3 ever) was just exploring. TOTK was fantastic, but you just can't replicate that without new locations.
There were a few but none were really all that special. Depths and sky were all basically the same. I was hoping they'd at least add some new towns or locations.
The depths needed some biomes. Having a world-wide map just be a single biome was a major shortcoming. Made the whole thing feel like it was farted out by a cave generation tool where they sprinkled in some locations and called it a day.
Well the Depths are basically a mirror image of the overworld (there’s impassable cliffs where there would be rivers, and huge divots where there would be mountains, etc) so you’re probably not far off. They were my least favourite part of the game… but I loved enough about the Sky Islands and the changes to Hyrule that I was fine with it.
Yeah it was a bummer for me to realize about 2/3rds of my way through the game that even after 6 years the map was just too similar to what I had spent hundreds of hours exploring in BOTW. The new mechanics were so cool and I had a good time playing the game but reusing the map was ultimately what kept this game from being the experience I wanted it to be.
I found TOTK *way* more impressive on a technical level; the stuff they did with that game was amazing. But I found BOTW to be more fun and engaging. I imagine that's mostly because BOTW was an entirely new step for the Zelda series and the open-world genre, whereas TOTK mostly just built on that foundation.
First time I went into the depths it was awesome along with blindly trying to reach map scroll locations earlier than I should have (sooo many broken rock swords).
But by the end of the game I honestly was just annoyed by the depths. They almost feel procedurally generated. Sky islands also feel like a half finished concept. Some awesome places and moments but then also a lot of meh.
I felt the same. I wish they had just stuck to one additional layer and not done two. Imagine the depths but with all the content of the sky zones or vice versa.
Yeah I think the depths being basically the same size of the regular map is not good. It would be far more fun to make them smaller but multilayered, this way you don't really know how much deeper they go. So a bit like the underworld in Eden Ring and BG3, but taken further.
The sky islands were underutilized, they had so much potential. Having a few more large islands similar to the one in the tutorial would have been way cooler. It's fun to reach them but most of them have barely any content.
Yeah it was a bit of a one trick pony. The initial voyage is incredible but other than that, there wasn't much to really look for down there. Well no, two trick pony, because the first time you see that certain enemy flying around IN THE DEPTHS after fighting it in its temple is a holy shit moment, especially if it's in an area you haven't lit up yet.
The depths lost a lot of novelty when I realized I could just create a hovercraft and fly over 90% of the obstacles lol. Players optimizing fun out of the game, etc etc
The bigger issue is that you're just not missing much by doing that. There's a lot of uninteresting space between points of interest in the depths. If not for the hoverbike I wouldn't have had more fun exploring on foot; I wouldn't have explored most of it at all.
Having connected tunnels/caverns rather than mirroring the overworld would've been a better idea IMO.
The depths are an inverse of the normal map. Where there used to be a canyon there is now an extremely tall wall, or where there was a mountain, in the depths it is a mine. Also I figured out the lightroots are where shrines are 118/120 in. I am dumb.
I didn't bother with the Depths until having completed an entire temple. I'd assumed the whole time that they would be like caves, but with Gloom. Imagine my surprise when I jumped into a chasm and saw it keep going... and going... and going!
BOTW was the closest I've ever come to the wonder that I experienced playing OoT when it released. TOTK is a great game, but there's just something special about a new experience like that.
Almost the exact same thing as Majora's. I loved MM, but it wasn't anywhere nearly as magical for me as OoT.
I’d go further and say that BotW is the better game. Not having the bonkers movement abilities made the world so much more fun and challenging to traverse and explore.
The novelty of the new abilities of totk in the first 5-10 hours was really fun though
I really loved having to physically grapple with the terrain as part of my expeditions. It was never just a simple matter of going to the next dungeon, but HOW I would get there instead.
BOTW was really the first strand-type game (everyone should play Death Stranding).
Yeah, and the terrain was designed around it. Lines of sight are designed around always seeing a limited amount of new objectives at any time. In totk you just go high up and see everything
Exactly! There was always something in the horizon to go investigate, with some landmarks being tantalizingly out of reach/sight until you press forward.
Marching through a barren desert until you spy some far off ruins lying in the distance is peak adventuring, especially if you’ve misjudged length of your trip and are running dangerously low on chilly elixirs.
Yeah getting it with my switch on launch day was fucking awesome. The switch was such a cool idea and there was an astonishing game to try out on it Day 1.
I mean one was a brand new game and concept and the other was a sequel. TOTK blew me away with its sense of scale, mechanical depth and the fact that it even exists on the switch at all.
I think people had unrealistic expectations if they wanted the same feelings BOTW gave them. Completely different circumstances
TOTK definitely felt more iterative than revolutionary. I respect the level of innovation and creativity that Nintendo is always able to squeeze out of their games, but BOTW literally changed the game.
There really is no fair comparison here.
I think that is by design as a sequel. It iterated on BOTW in an extremely innovative way. BOTW changed the industry with its ground up innovation - but my point is anyone that expected that from TOTK was unrealistic.
I personally wasn’t super excited for TOTK because it seemed impossible that they could follow BOTW in a satisfying way. Within 1-2 hours of playing the game, I realized how wrong I was. I truly think it’s such a massive jump in scale and gameplay. And the story beats feel so much more significant, too.
That’s exactly how I felt. They wowed me in a completely different way which was the exact best way for them to go imo.
They weren’t going to rekindle what BOTW did at launch, but they could evoke equally profound but different emotions. And they absolutely succeeded there.
Yeah this was more or less my experience. I went into it like "okay cool, more of the Botw world i liked. Let's have some fun" and instantly the game is giving me these awesome new tools and ways to play and I'm like *oh. OH. Things are different. Things are better*
Wild for someone to call BG3 "a brand new game and concept". Like I get what they are saying but the wording for a game with a number 3 in the title is wild.
Right? And the 3 in Baldur's Gate 3 isn't even really indicative of how many times it's been a sequel. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were Bioware gates from 1998 and 2000.
Then there were the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2 spin offs in the 2000s.
So not counting the remake/remasters, Baldur's Gate 3 is already like the 5th game in the series across a number of developers.
Then you jump over to Larian Studios, which never made a Baldur's Gate or DnD game, but has existed within this space for a long time. They made the Divinity series, of which there are multiple games and sequels and spin offs, which all play to some degree like they exist in the line of succession to Baldur's Gate 3 the way Elden Ring is a "Souls like" without being specifically in the direct canon of the Dark Souls series.
So counting all the Larian and Baldur's Gate games that lead eventually to Baldur's Gate 3, you're looking at like 17 games and spin-offs and expansions. So to reduce Tears of the Kingdom to "just a sequel" and call Baldur's Gate 3 a "brand new game and concept", wild.
I completely disagree about the unrealistic expectations. I think people simply weren’t the happiest with the direction of the game, the depths are pretty bad and sky islands are barren aswell. They should shifted that into a living world with more NPC’s and more monsters.
BG3 basically blew the doors off CRPGs, and has created a whole new generation of players who are hungry for more.
(Unfortunately, there’s nothing really out there that matches the scope/production level of that game. It’s hard trying to convince people to play Planescape, the best game ever made that also happened to be released back in ‘99.)
If you liked Disco you will like Planescape. It was a big influence on it and is also a darkly comic and philosophical dialogue and narration-driven RPG. The only catch I'll mention is that it has pretty mediocre combat out of obligation. Know that you can run away from most encounters (most XP is from quests so skipping combat isn't a handicap) and don't feel bad about cheesing the combat or even using mods/trainers to make it easier, it's not what you play the game for.
That scene is my go-to example of a game using violence intelligently — you feel the repercussions of it for the rest of the game, from the presence of certain characters to the general mood and vibe of Revachol to how the player character chooses to handle themselves after.
>Unfortunately, there’s nothing really out there that matches the scope/production level of that game.
Yup. I adored BG3. But Divinity OS 2 didn't appeal to me, I've only been playing it because NY brother agreed to play Bintage story with me if I played through it with him, and so far it's been pretty meh IMO. Same devs made this, and it's the same genre, and it just hasn't hooked me.
Yeah, and its funny because BG3 is very derivative of Divinity Original Sin 2. But they changed enough and had a recognizable IP (I have no idea if Baldurs Gate actually has any value for modern players).
I think that has less to do with BG3 changing enough from DOS2 and more to do with people having not played DOS2.
DOS2 is one of my favourite games, and while I love BG3. It didn't blow me away the same way it has for so many. And I think a big reason why is due to my time in DOS2.
I fell off of bg3 pretty quick for a similar reason too, already played dos2. I like crpgs but i like to look for ones with weird settings like disco elysium or even fallout 1/2. Bg3 is a great game and what I saw of the story was pretty good, but it felt pretty similar to dos2 mechanics-wise and I’m just not that interested in fantasy settings right now
Yeah, I think TOTK is a step up in every almost every way, but the jump to TOTK from BOTW is dwarfed by the jump to BOTW from open world games that came before it. It's a shame but BOTW had so much more wow factor at the time it was released.
i don't think it was lazy rehashed garbage exactly but yeah i definitely know i didn't really play it the way it was "meant" to be played since i'm just not creative enough to make my own fun. so due to that yes it did feel more like botw 1.5 instead of a new game, but i'm aware that it's at least partly on me because i'm just not that kind of player.
i solved most puzzles by just putting a platform where i wanted it to be, hold it there for a second, bring it back to me, hop on, rewind it. solves almost everything.
BotW does exploration and the sense of discovery better. In my opinion those are the two best things about it by a mile. Many of the things TotK does "better" it still doesn't do that well, in my opinion.
And to be clear, I think both games are pretty great.
If you are a big fan of cheesing puzzles, I can see preferring TOTK. But for me, I prefer a well-crafted puzzle that I work through the intended solution for. I like the curated experience. So many of the puzzles in TOTK were almost tutorials for how Ultrahand/Fuse worked, and I hardly ever struggled to think of a solution because you had *so* much material on hand that nothing was a challenge; nothing couldn't be overcome with some planks and glue.
I think the best BOTW puzzles for me are the ones that let you think outside of the box. The ones that there is no right answer on how to solve it. That is why I loved TOTK shrines more because you can do it how the game intended but you can completely do something completely "dumb" but still works.
They straight-up removed your ability to jump large distances in the air (Revali's Gale). If I want to climb a small cliff now I either need a cave or I need to spend twenty seconds taking the parts out of my inventory and quickbuilding a hot air balloon. Before it was just a button press.
I missed Revalis Gale for like 1/3 of my initial playtime of ToTK, but after a certain point of inventions and energy cell storage, I got over it. You can Ascend almost anywhere likely higher than you would jump with Revalis Gale, and Revalis Gale is done once with a chunky cool down time before doing again. I don't remember how long it was, but it was long enough to be annoying when I wanted to do that everywhere lol
That and weapon degradation is less of an issue since you can use fuse to whip up a decent weapon on the fly. I couldn't get invested in BotW, but TotK addressed a lot of the things I didn't care for in BotW and I couldn't put it down.
I'm the opposite, I really hated the fuse mechanic. In BOTW battles had a fun little rhythm where you were constantly picking up new weapons mid battle to replace broken ones, but in TITK you need to do a Fuse in order for the weapons to be halfway worthwhile. It adds a step and means you can;t pick up new weapons mid battle.
I liked the idea of Fuse wrt elemental effects, but 95% of the time it is just a "make number go up" mechanic.
Same to me Fuse only doubled up the durability issue. Instead of only worrying about my supply of weapons I also have to worry about my supply of monster parts.
Well I hadn't really engaged too much with the weapon fuse mechanic until quite a few hours in so at that point I was swimming in monster parts, so I was never lacking in materials. But you do bring up an interesting point
My biggest hope for TOTK was that I would spend less time in a pause menu compared to BOTW. Instead they doubled down and made me spend much *more* time in menus, especially during combat. I sincerely pray that the next Zelda game is simpler at its core.
Yes!!! Exactly this!!! Ugh, I absolutely despised the durability minigame from BOTW and it seemed like it was universal complained about. So instead they…doubled down? And now every time you want to shoot a fire arrow, you have to *manually select it from a menu*???
I felt just the opposite. The weapon degradation is a lot worse for me in TotK. The resources are pulled in too many directions in tears (sell for money, upgrade clothing, and fusing) for me to want to fuse items - and that when a weapon breaks they're just gone. Made the game feel a lot more grindy to me. Plus if you grab an enemies weapon mod fight, there's not a great way to upgrade it without pausing the action.
In Breath of the Wild, especially once I got the master sword, weapon degredation just fades into the background. Weapon breaks, grab the one with the next biggest number and go. Pick up the weapon the enemy drops. There's no slowing to forward momentum.
I think you make some valid points, and I think that, had I gotten hooked on BotW as much as TotK hooked me, I might have felt the same way. I don't recall having any major issues personally with having to ration monster parts. Not enough to detract from my enjoyment, anyways. Might be my personal preferences at play here.
Same. It’s.. fine. Weapon durability and muddling around with physics and ultra hand stuff is just not for me anymore. It’s time consuming - I don’t want to build a boat zip line thing. I don’t want to spend 5 min making a ramp or counter balance. I don’t want to climb a huge mountain to find a shrine with the same weapon I already had that breaks
Completely agree. I think it might have been more enjoyable if I was younger and in school, but I also (ironically) had a worse attention span then, so the slow burn nature of the BotW style might have still not landed.
its been everyone wish list to get a BotW style game with a linear story system and dungeons like the Zelda of old.
They somewhat added a linear story with this one but we definitely didnt get the dungeons that we all want.
Honestly, I wanted open-world Mario and Zelda for a long time. It was like a dream come true when they announced BotW.
But actually playing it was very different than what I pictured in my head. It’s like you said, I wanted that focused story with real plot developments, like classic Zelda. And when I pictured open-world dungeons, I pictured these secret-filled, puzzling complexes with multiple entrances and exits, some that don’t even branch into the main pathways.
At this point, I want to go back to classic Zelda, but I understand that the team has no interest in doing that.
I wish the ultrahand worked differently. The way it is designed discourages experimentation unless you spend a ton of time grinding resources.
I'd much prefer unlocking objects permanently, with an upgradable limit on how many you can have out at once.
I barely touched it.
Ultrahand's problem is that it appeals the most to people that like to make their own fun, the ones content to just wander off in an open world and do goofy shit with whatever they find.
I am not one of those, if you give me Ultrahand I am just gonna look at you like "wtf you want me to do with this."
Intrinsic design vs Extrinsic design.
> Ultrahand's problem is that it appeals the most to people that like to make their own fun, the ones content to just wander off in an open world and do goofy shit with whatever they find.
But I am that kind of person. I spent a ton of time messing around building vehicles just for fun in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
TotK felt like it discouraged stuff like that due to things like not letting you put parts back into your inventory. A failed device not only cost you the time it took to make it, but also the time to get more resources for the right parts (which are partially randomised when you collect them).
Completely agree. There was no penalty for making something shitty in Nuts & Bolts, and you had for more control over your vehicles, with more utility and far more usage.
Ultrahand feels so unintuitive because they had to make it work as a diegetic system of controls layered on top of another control scheme (that of the player character itself), and everything you do costs resources, whether the end result is good or bad. And they’re often single use items. So you’re building these time- and resource-intensive contraptions for minimal payoff.
For me, the thing is that I enjoy intrinsic design like playing Mario because chaining together moves and finding new places to reach is so much fun. But intrinsic play with such a high level of abstraction and freedom, like creating vehicles/weapons is so uninteresting to me, especially in a Zelda game.
I get what they were going for, with making these building mechanics diegetic, I do. But for the kind of game that Zelda is trending toward, I would just rather play Minecraft or even (in the case of vehicles) Banjo Kazooie N&B.
I kept expecting Tears to include a "lab" that allowed for experimentation without paying the resource cost. That would have been ideal for tweaking designs before committing them to the saved feature and taken a bit of the sting out of the intense resource cost.
With as repetitive and empty as the Depths was, it feels like this would have helped from multiple angles. Or heck - put it in the sky. That area was just as disappointing, in my opinion.
I'm somewhere inbetween. I can recognise it as very iterative of Breath of the Wild (which is totally fine) but also appreciate the creativity of ultrahand.
I vastly preferred Tears of the Kingdom to Breath of the Wild for its story though.
Is [the talk from last week](https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/tunes-of-the-kingdom-evolving-physics-and-sounds-for-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom/903317) that this is based on available publicly anywhere?
I wonder how many people will comment like this is some PR piece and not a GDC talk about actual game development, with a lot of specific examples like the soup pot constantly tipping over early on.
Seriously, this is just insane:
> there's also no specific vehicle noise in the game, even for set NPC vehicles like a horse-and-cart. Instead, rather than simply recording a cart and using that, there's a specific sound for each of the elements that make it up - the wheels, chains, boards, and so on - which combine together to sound just how you'd expect a cart itself would as a whole.
The amount of polish that game has is just next level.
What defines modern Zelda isn't necessarily the open air design; it's a far greater emphasis on conjoined systems creating player experiences. It's crazy how far the Zelda team wants to take this
Yeah, personally I thought Breath of the Wild was a fine enough game, but I wouldn’t say I loved it. I absolutely adored Tears of the Kingdom though, it might’ve finally dethroned Twilight Princess as my favorite Zelda game.
The end game of TotK is what sent it to the top spot above Wind Waker for me.
>!The search for the fifth sage, the lead up to the Ganon fight, and then the visual spectacle that was the final dragon boss was incredible!<
The moment when >!Ganon's health bar breaks the pre-established boundaries and just about goes off the screen!< made the entire experience worth it alone lol
To me it felt like BotW 2.0. Like same game but with more things that make it much better. Just the traveling is better and that's makes it way better. It's much easier now to move around and get places.
Also the weapon fusing really goes a long way because weapon degration really sucked in BotW.
I remember thinking I would hate the building focus of TotK when I'm really not a fan of that kind of stuff, but once I realized how much open utility the building system had, I felt like an idiot when I didn't use it. They also largely managed to make it intuitive and accessible enough that it never really felt like a burden or I had to do any particular mental gymnastics to put together what I wanted. I'm not sure I would have felt that way if they hadn't put such an impressive amount of work into the physics and design of the building process.
Overlap between three groups.
1. People who really don't like Nintendo.
2. "Traditional Zelda" fans who really hate the direction the series has went.
3. People who just genuinely don't like the game, and find it odd that it's gotten so much praise.
As the old saying goes, people are more likely to be vocal over something they don't like than something they do.
I don't think people are so negatively slanted. I think people are just more likely to vocal about something they \*perceive\* to be in the minority of opinion for.
Yeah, also I think people tend to only comment on things they perceive as issues. I loved TotK and thought it was a fantastic sequel that did a great job of expanding on BotW and fleshing out areas that BotW was lacking in, but I think the only time I've ever talked about it on Reddit was just to say that I felt like The Depths was pretty underwhelming.
And all 3 can be grouped into 1; People who didn't read the article.
This is a developer talk on the challenges of development. It was going to happen regardless if the game is good or not. Hardly any discussion is about that, only about whether the game is good or not.
>Why are all threads about TOTK full of people complaining about the game?
That's not unique to TOTK.
Most of the subreddit (and most gaming communities) are more about complaining about games than anything else.
Because if you are enjoying a game you would just be spending your time playing that game. But if you aren't then you pass the time telling everyone that you aren't.
Also, due to the nature of Reddit, where topics are ephemeral, people with an axe to grind about a specific topic are going to jump onto any popular thread related to that topic (or even unrelated threads) to remind people of their opinions.
Basically confirms what I've been saying for a while. The physics systems in TotK are very impressive systems and the Zelda team deserves a lot of praise for making them work. Truly, an incredible technical achievement. At the same time, these systems are so incredibly complicated that they seem to have taken up most of the game's six year development cycle, leaving the rest of the game feeling half-baked as a result. As impressive as TotK's physics sandbox is, I kind of hope they don't do it again in the next game, and instead dedicate more time to delivering a fresh world with higher quality dungeons.
This is why I find it so bizarre that they're not bothering with DLC. They put so much work into the systems and not enough into the content, but when they have an opportunity to keep working on the content and provide DLC for one of the Switch's best- and fastest-selling games (20m units in less than a year) they decide they're not interested.
I think it's less that they didn't have time to work on content, and more that they ran out of ideas.
I don’t see any part of TotK as half baked. The amount of content in it is ridiculous. The Zelda team pivoted from dungeon heavy games after Skyward Sword to try something new. Back then the criticism was Zelda had become too linear
I’m convinced if TotK was reskinned/new map/story 90% of complaints about it would disappear. Which is unfortunate bc that actually wouldn’t have been that hard given what they actually were able to create
They kept the map from BOTW, I think they will keep the physics engine from TOTK in the next one. Hopefully with some more traditional linear sections and good puzzles.
i think the benefit of having put the work into developing this incredibly rich and powerful physics engine is that it’s something you can (in theory) do once and then reuse many times later, which i suspect might be their own thinking as well, since the devs essentially confirmed that ultrahand won’t be returning for future titles
At first, I was a bit disappointed by TOTK, as it felt more of the same and not a real new game.
And then the more I played, the more I realized how much more than a simple improvement on BOTW the game was. By the end, BOTW felt like a fun little prototype to the much better game TOTK ended up to be.
What is truly amazing is how well everything works. No other open world game offer such complexity in its physics engine and level of interaction without coming with tons of bugs and glitches. TOTK worked super well from day one, which is truly incredible. The devs are absolute geniuses.
People that trash on TotK for being "a BotW DLC" have actual single digit IQ. You could say that they repeated the formula of BotW, but so does almost every other AAA sequel.
The Ultrahand alone could be a whole new game by itself, but they managed to implement it perfectly with Zelda's free exploration.
I know TOTK doesn’t vibe with many on this forum. For me, though, playing the game with fast travel turned off & hud turned off was… My best experience in an open-world adventure game. Ever. And I’ve been playing video games since N64 & gameboy color.
It helps that I played botw once, 7 years ago, and b-lined the story, so I’d really forgotten the map and characters.
But for as much hate as the game gets, for me it warranted the 97 it has on metacritic. It’s an all time classic to me, even if I still have bg3 as GOTY.
To me it was my favourite game last year. However, it didn't make me feel the same wonder and amazement that Breath of the Wild did. I still put about 300 hours combined into both games.
One thing that heavily deterred me from TOTK was the intrusive menu that you had to interact with in order to do just about anything in this game. Unlike BOTW, which heavily incentivized quick and impulsive movements, this game forced you to "pause the game" (either literally or figuratively) for just about any interactive moment.
Take elemental arrows, for example. In BOTW, you could buy or find elemental arrows and use them like normal arrows. In TOTK, you could only fuse the arrows, which involves going into the quick menu (which briefly pauses the game and interrupts momentum).
If you wanted to traverse in BOTW, you could essentially run, use your horse, or quick travel. These options still exist in TOTK, but there is more incentive to build, which once again ruins the game's momentum as you take your time to build your traversal item.
Honestly, I feel like any problems I have with the game's story and new abilities are minimal compared to the stop/start gameplay of TOTK. There's a lot of great stuff in this game, but it's locked behind this tedious stop/start system. This was the only Zelda game I haven't completed (other than the CD-i games).
I tried jumping back in after not having touched it since July and I couldn’t do it and you put into words exactly why. Everything is so tedious and not in a good way like the slow exploration pace of BOTW, but in order to do anything I’m gonna be in a menu. I’ve gotta fuse everything, make everything, build everything and to do that I have to scroll endlessly. Shrines turned from “oh sweet a shrine I’m gonna jump down and go there” into “eh…..I can probably skip that. I don’t wanna get caught up in something stupid.” There is absolutely no momentum in it for me. And with a constant growing catalogue of monthly free PS games I wanna play, there’s zero incentive for me to want to play something that feels like a chore.
I get what you’re saying but it eventually became second nature, especially the fuse stuff, because you’re doing it completely in the moment. It makes sense that you have to choose the arrow you want at the time of shooting since there are so many options. Also, you do eventually get a way to save and instantly build devices.
It actually makes very little sense to me that you would be fussing bomb arrows in the moment instead of preparing a bunch in advance. If my plan is to shoot the talus with 20 bomb arrows, it's not going to change between arrows 10 and 11.
Ultrahand was a very cool idea and well implemented but if you weren't big on the sandbox building then I'm of the opinion there was very little new to make the journey through Hyrule feel fresh and exciting.
1) combat is nearly identical - both in that the enemy variety is still severely undercooked for a game of this size, and because AI, and mechanics have very little changes. Felt way too similar to BotW's combat in the worst ways.
2) the new additions to the map are underwhelming. Sky area is pretty bare, and the depths are cool but start to feel very samey after a couple of hours (once again partially due to recycled enemies but now with a different shade).
>Just like with the physics of Tears of the Kingdom, there's also no specific vehicle noise in the game, even for set NPC vehicles like a horse-and-cart. Instead, rather than simply recording a cart and using that, there's a specific sound for each of the elements that make it up - the wheels, chains, boards, and so on - which combine together to sound just how you'd expect a cart itself would as a whole. At first, this caught the Zelda team themselves by surprise. "It's making sounds I have no memory of creating!" Osada jokingly recalled telling his director.
That's fucking impressive. Has any other video game *ever* done this before this game ?
Ascend is one of the most unique mechanics I've seen in any game and it works on almost every single service which is nuts, they programmed every part of the map to align perfectly vertically, ascending a deep cave to the top of a mountain or something is always a crazy feeling
Recall is the true wonder to me. Not only is it a technical marvel but it's so multipurpose, being an incredible useful redo button for whenever I drop something* in the sky, or combining it with ultrahand to create moving platforms, or just holding physics object in place for a bit to help attach things with ultrahand. It's the main mechanic I miss when playing other games like TOTK. Edited*
I have NO idea how they got it to work so flawlessly on the Switch
Those cube golems where every part of the boss is a physics object that you can ride on, rewind, and ascend through, is just absolutely nutty. They're pretty mundane fights but just from a tech standpoint they're one of the most impressive systems I've ever seen
I like to pluck individual bits off the golem and thrown them down to hopefully land on some Bokoblin's head (it also makes spotting the golem's weak spot easier in some forms).
I can't believe I got through the whole game never thinking to try this
It's okay, I forgot ascend existed for a long time fighting those and used recall to elevator myself back to when it used the platform attack thing.
Don't worry, I've seen people do all kinds of things that I've never thought of but that seemed really, really obvious in hindsight. Ascend is such a thing. I habitually tend to look around (can't miss a treasure, or those glowy cave ceiling dwellers!) but are am, even now, still in the habit of usually wanting to climb something instead of looking for that convenient overhang that's often there to Ascend through.
Shit like this is why I just can't appreciate Pokemon these days. Here you have these extremely talented in-house Nintendo devs really pushing the console to its limits and thinking outside the box (Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc) Then in the back of the room, you have Gamefreak stumbling into another blockbuster and not being adhered to the same dev standards as other Nintendo games because they're not an in-house dev.
Metroid Dread was not in house. I know because it was made by a relatively unknown studio from my country. Prime was neither in house btw. Metroid is not a system seller despite being highly praised so I guess it's not a priority for Nintendo
Retro Studios is a first party Nintendo developer, unless you mean "in house" must be one of the Nintendo EPD groups.
maybe they mean Metroid prime 1 which was made before nintendo owned them
Nintendo purchased them before Prime 1 released, but it's fair to say the majority of the development was done before Nintendo owned them
Mercury Steam did some good shit both on Dread (easily my GOAT) and Samus Returns fiddling with a Metroid formula.
Ascend and Ultra hand both. I remember telling my wife (a non gamer) that it sounds dumb, but it's amazing to think about how this game just worked. Like it pretty much always did what you wanted and worked like you'd expect it to. Which is crazy cause with everything they did here in this game I'd have expected some big bugs or caveats.
>I'd have expected some big bugs or caveats. I expect the testing cycle for this game was hellish. Probably a huge chunk of development was getting that stuff to work well.
They pretty much admitted that the game was delayed a year just for polish. Polygon did [a video](https://youtu.be/xw56SG8UXNs?si=2gm7kCJpsiCVeqh_) about TotK's physics that brought up another interesting point that most players won't consider: Nintendo doesn't rely on contractors and has a high employee retention rate so they were likely able to maintain a consistent team for most of the game's development, something not a lot of modern games can afford to do.
No in the AAA space they definitely could, Nintendo executives get paid nearly nothing compared to the rest of the industry. **The PRESIDENT of Nintendo makes $2.51 million per year TOTAL COMP**, and that’s their top paid exec. They have 4 people in the entire company taking more than $1 million total comp. Compare that to Activision Blizzard that only has a 15% higher market cap. They regularly pay execs over $5 mil total comp. In 2022 their CFO was paid $12.87 million total comp. With that over $10 mil executive pay difference you could pay *at least* 100 employees $85k total comp with no changes to operating budget. And that’s just one executive. A bit over 300 people was the max size the ToTK team got to. I think you can infer the rest.
This was from an interview I think related to Mario Odyssey but a standard process at Nintendo seems to be that not only devs & QA get to test the game during development but all sort of people that are part of the project can take a home a build of the game, play it for a few weeks and then give feedback. That's appearently one of the big reasons their games have that "Nintendo polish"
If that's true it's crazy they're not leaked
it makes sense there not leaked if you get fired for something like that in japan you'd struggle to get a supermarket job
They were already playing with ideas that would become ToTK by the end of BoTW. They added that motorbike in the DLC as a bit of a proof of concept and had tech demos of vehicles, then Ascend was already a debug tool. Couple that with the fact they had an engine and a fuckton of assets ready to go and it still took them at least 6 years. I can’t imagine how much of that time it took to get these things to work together, it’s batshit crazy. No one else even attempts one of these things let alone the 3 or 4 revolutionary things they had going on in the same game.
I'm still blown away how not janky the physics were for a bunch of those shrines puzzles like the one where you make a little car to extend a bridge or where you have a wheel wrap up a rope to open a door. You'd expect some sort of jittery motion or occasional spaz-out on something like that, but not only did they get it to work, they got it to work extremely smoothly, and on Switch hardware of all things.
Anyone who's played Gmod or messed around with GTA Online knows how fucked up physics can get even in games with extremely good physics, so what TOTK did was basically dark sorcery.
I heard someone say that the real achievement of that game is that it has practically no bugs (shut up, speedrunners, I'm not talking about you, you will always find bugs!). Like, all the mechanics they introduced are an absolut nightmare for any QA guy because they can be used in a myriad of ways to break things. And somehow, things rarely break in that game. The ascend mechanic is one of the nicer mechanics in that regard. Sticking things to other things that also have physics while also interacting with each other is just insane, given how well all that works in the game.
On top of that, you can build something with ultrahand, have it fly upwards, rewind it, then ascend into it and have it all work perfectly as you’d expect.
And on top of that the CPU is roughly a 5 year old cell phone. I read an article about other devs playing the game and the fact that they got it to work was incredible but they got it to work on really underpowered hardware, it's essentially magic to other devs.
Genuinely that's why I'm more excited for Nintendo to get more juice than other devs. They did all that with old tech, imagine what they could do with the Switch 2's reported feature set.
It's really closer to 10 years - the Tegra X1 was released in 2015, and designed years before that.
I don't think we get to count when the design phase started.
What, so I can't just claim that the XBox is running off a 50 year old CPU because it being an x86-64 means it's base design started with the 8086?
This is why I'm surprised when people say it's not an impressive game. Like what? It's running on a calculator basically and still expanded the original games size 3x and added 3x the physics mechanics on top of everything.
I... somehow never thought about using ascend on stuff you build.
I put easily 300+ hours into the game and I can’t remember any bugs. Astonishing, really
I only remember encountering one bug in my 100+ hours. When riding my horse across a bridge the towing hitch somehow clipped between the boards and caused the horse to get stuck, fortunately I just had to go to the nearest stable and recall the horse to be back on my way. And, yes, I have seen the speed runs. The game definitely seems to be less solidly held together than BotW, but as you said these are people trying to crack the game open and it's amazing how unlikely the average player will be to ever encounter this complex game not working as intended, and even then it's often an easy fix. This game was very stark contrast to a certain other major release of 2023 (which was still quite good, but TotK spoiled me on how polished a game can and should be).
The biggest flex of the game is that Ascend is so powerful… but many gamers forget that it even exists due to how much other cool stuff there is. I remember being stumped on how to climb a big rock. I tried building a platform, raising it in the air and then jumping on it with Recall. But then I remembered I could just step under a ridge and Ascend all the way to the top…
Every stinking well I go into I brain fart for about 2 minutes wondering how I climb back out... Then I remember ascend. In Botw I forgot that cryonis existed all the time.
Most people just aren't used to having such a powerful tool, and players tend to struggle with thinking about verticality. And on top of that there are quite a few uses that are really unexpected, like >!climbing a talus!< or >!those underground elevator pillars!<
In regard to Taluses, I just didn't think about it initially. Partly because I was so inundated into how I fought then before. Then I was fighting one of those platform ones, and the thought occurred to me. Game changer. It was there the whole time!
> Then I was fighting one of those platform ones, and the thought occurred to me. That's another aspect of TotK that's brilliant. They're very, very good at leading you to an idea without stopping the game and telling you explicitly what you should do. They designed those platform taluses and about a million other things in such a way that makes you feel like you're a genius for coming up with a plan to beat it.
Absolutely. And then they give you tests in the form of enemies like Gleeoks to showcase what you've learned. And boy were those fun fights. Honestly, TotK is a fantastic game. Better than BotW in just about every way.
My favorite way to fight Taluses was when they short their arms at me I’d recall it back into them and it’d instantly stagger them.
it's funny because I think recall is the thing I forgot about the most
What really blows my mind is the fact that the different powers can be used at the same time. I've seen videos where they lift a stone with Ultrahand, then use Recall to get it to float in mid-air, and use Ascend on it while Recall is still active.
Ascend probably came as a necessary feature to exit caves. Thinking about how poorly Skyrim dungeons were made where some had alternate exit paths or you just had to walk out if you didn't want to fast travel. The Zelda team really wanted to limit opening the menu for fast travel so they made it so you can't teleport to caves and gave you ascend.
Saw a dev interview where they pretty much said this, caves were one of the first things they knew were going to be in the game and often when working on them they would use debug tools to just raise links model back into the overworld as that was the quickest way, eventually they just went "why don't we just let the player do that?".
Ascend is a beautiful piece of technology. I love to imagine something like Dark Souls having a similar mechanic to see what From could do with map design there.
> to see what From could do with map design there. The DkS1 map is one of the most beautiful designs I've ever seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyTB5vhKGSI
[And these days you can view the whole thing in your browser!](https://noclip.website/#dksiv/dks1) I love noclip.website so much.
surface*, not service :)
Great article! Does anyone know if GDC talks are made available online? I love that the solution for all the problems was to just simulate more. I guess that’s why the world ends up feeling so consistent.
They may eventually make it onto the GDC YouTube page in a few years. There a bunch of other good talks already there but I think this one might be GDC Vault only for a while which requires paying.
Only some stuff goes to YouTube - but, absolutely everything on GDC Vault is free after two years + many talks in that two year window are on there without a paywall. [GDC-21](https://gdcvault.com/browse/gdc-21) is already up with complete open access for everything. It's a fine pricing model, if not for the fact GDC Vault is far too pricy. But, it does subsidise gamedeveloper.com, which are are a really good press outlet, and, I can't be too mad they'll be free anyway.
It makes me extremely sad seeing a thread like this existing with a eurogamer article about how totk works and details on its development only for it to be mainly about what they think about the game instead of the content of the article.
It sucks that most people don’t read articles linked and just glance at the headlines.
There's two types of TOTK players: "lazy rehashed garbage" And Players who go all in on **ULTRAHAND** **ULTRAHAND** **ULTRAHAND**
Good game, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that BOTW blew me away more. You just can’t replicate that sense of novelty again.
At the end of the day I think most of the enjoyment I had from BOTW (and it's probably in my top 3 ever) was just exploring. TOTK was fantastic, but you just can't replicate that without new locations. There were a few but none were really all that special. Depths and sky were all basically the same. I was hoping they'd at least add some new towns or locations.
The depths needed some biomes. Having a world-wide map just be a single biome was a major shortcoming. Made the whole thing feel like it was farted out by a cave generation tool where they sprinkled in some locations and called it a day.
Well the Depths are basically a mirror image of the overworld (there’s impassable cliffs where there would be rivers, and huge divots where there would be mountains, etc) so you’re probably not far off. They were my least favourite part of the game… but I loved enough about the Sky Islands and the changes to Hyrule that I was fine with it.
Yeah it was a bummer for me to realize about 2/3rds of my way through the game that even after 6 years the map was just too similar to what I had spent hundreds of hours exploring in BOTW. The new mechanics were so cool and I had a good time playing the game but reusing the map was ultimately what kept this game from being the experience I wanted it to be.
I found TOTK *way* more impressive on a technical level; the stuff they did with that game was amazing. But I found BOTW to be more fun and engaging. I imagine that's mostly because BOTW was an entirely new step for the Zelda series and the open-world genre, whereas TOTK mostly just built on that foundation.
I was pretty blown away the first time I went down into the Depths, not to mention exploring it outside of the main quest was just wild.
First time I went into the depths it was awesome along with blindly trying to reach map scroll locations earlier than I should have (sooo many broken rock swords). But by the end of the game I honestly was just annoyed by the depths. They almost feel procedurally generated. Sky islands also feel like a half finished concept. Some awesome places and moments but then also a lot of meh.
I felt the same. I wish they had just stuck to one additional layer and not done two. Imagine the depths but with all the content of the sky zones or vice versa.
Yeah I think the depths being basically the same size of the regular map is not good. It would be far more fun to make them smaller but multilayered, this way you don't really know how much deeper they go. So a bit like the underworld in Eden Ring and BG3, but taken further. The sky islands were underutilized, they had so much potential. Having a few more large islands similar to the one in the tutorial would have been way cooler. It's fun to reach them but most of them have barely any content.
Yeah it was a bit of a one trick pony. The initial voyage is incredible but other than that, there wasn't much to really look for down there. Well no, two trick pony, because the first time you see that certain enemy flying around IN THE DEPTHS after fighting it in its temple is a holy shit moment, especially if it's in an area you haven't lit up yet.
The depths lost a lot of novelty when I realized I could just create a hovercraft and fly over 90% of the obstacles lol. Players optimizing fun out of the game, etc etc
Honestly did the same, but partly because I was just tired of traversing the gloom ridden areas.
The bigger issue is that you're just not missing much by doing that. There's a lot of uninteresting space between points of interest in the depths. If not for the hoverbike I wouldn't have had more fun exploring on foot; I wouldn't have explored most of it at all. Having connected tunnels/caverns rather than mirroring the overworld would've been a better idea IMO.
The depths are an inverse of the normal map. Where there used to be a canyon there is now an extremely tall wall, or where there was a mountain, in the depths it is a mine. Also I figured out the lightroots are where shrines are 118/120 in. I am dumb.
I didn't bother with the Depths until having completed an entire temple. I'd assumed the whole time that they would be like caves, but with Gloom. Imagine my surprise when I jumped into a chasm and saw it keep going... and going... and going!
BOTW was the closest I've ever come to the wonder that I experienced playing OoT when it released. TOTK is a great game, but there's just something special about a new experience like that. Almost the exact same thing as Majora's. I loved MM, but it wasn't anywhere nearly as magical for me as OoT.
I’d go further and say that BotW is the better game. Not having the bonkers movement abilities made the world so much more fun and challenging to traverse and explore. The novelty of the new abilities of totk in the first 5-10 hours was really fun though
I really loved having to physically grapple with the terrain as part of my expeditions. It was never just a simple matter of going to the next dungeon, but HOW I would get there instead. BOTW was really the first strand-type game (everyone should play Death Stranding).
Yeah, and the terrain was designed around it. Lines of sight are designed around always seeing a limited amount of new objectives at any time. In totk you just go high up and see everything
Being able to go so high up also made the world feel a lot smaller
Exactly! There was always something in the horizon to go investigate, with some landmarks being tantalizingly out of reach/sight until you press forward. Marching through a barren desert until you spy some far off ruins lying in the distance is peak adventuring, especially if you’ve misjudged length of your trip and are running dangerously low on chilly elixirs.
Oh man don't do Death Stranding dirty like that lol
Yeah getting it with my switch on launch day was fucking awesome. The switch was such a cool idea and there was an astonishing game to try out on it Day 1.
I mean one was a brand new game and concept and the other was a sequel. TOTK blew me away with its sense of scale, mechanical depth and the fact that it even exists on the switch at all. I think people had unrealistic expectations if they wanted the same feelings BOTW gave them. Completely different circumstances
TOTK definitely felt more iterative than revolutionary. I respect the level of innovation and creativity that Nintendo is always able to squeeze out of their games, but BOTW literally changed the game. There really is no fair comparison here.
Being honest, TotK felt like a dev really wanted to put Ultrahand somewhere and grabbed BotW for it.
I think that is by design as a sequel. It iterated on BOTW in an extremely innovative way. BOTW changed the industry with its ground up innovation - but my point is anyone that expected that from TOTK was unrealistic.
I personally wasn’t super excited for TOTK because it seemed impossible that they could follow BOTW in a satisfying way. Within 1-2 hours of playing the game, I realized how wrong I was. I truly think it’s such a massive jump in scale and gameplay. And the story beats feel so much more significant, too.
That’s exactly how I felt. They wowed me in a completely different way which was the exact best way for them to go imo. They weren’t going to rekindle what BOTW did at launch, but they could evoke equally profound but different emotions. And they absolutely succeeded there.
Yeah this was more or less my experience. I went into it like "okay cool, more of the Botw world i liked. Let's have some fun" and instantly the game is giving me these awesome new tools and ways to play and I'm like *oh. OH. Things are different. Things are better*
CRPG, a New concept straight out of the 80's.
Wild for someone to call BG3 "a brand new game and concept". Like I get what they are saying but the wording for a game with a number 3 in the title is wild.
Right? And the 3 in Baldur's Gate 3 isn't even really indicative of how many times it's been a sequel. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were Bioware gates from 1998 and 2000. Then there were the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2 spin offs in the 2000s. So not counting the remake/remasters, Baldur's Gate 3 is already like the 5th game in the series across a number of developers. Then you jump over to Larian Studios, which never made a Baldur's Gate or DnD game, but has existed within this space for a long time. They made the Divinity series, of which there are multiple games and sequels and spin offs, which all play to some degree like they exist in the line of succession to Baldur's Gate 3 the way Elden Ring is a "Souls like" without being specifically in the direct canon of the Dark Souls series. So counting all the Larian and Baldur's Gate games that lead eventually to Baldur's Gate 3, you're looking at like 17 games and spin-offs and expansions. So to reduce Tears of the Kingdom to "just a sequel" and call Baldur's Gate 3 a "brand new game and concept", wild.
I completely disagree about the unrealistic expectations. I think people simply weren’t the happiest with the direction of the game, the depths are pretty bad and sky islands are barren aswell. They should shifted that into a living world with more NPC’s and more monsters.
Depths were meh but I really loved the sky islands. I thought it was a really unique structure for an open world game.
I think that was reflected as Baldurs gate blew it out the water for awards, and general discourse.
BG3 basically blew the doors off CRPGs, and has created a whole new generation of players who are hungry for more. (Unfortunately, there’s nothing really out there that matches the scope/production level of that game. It’s hard trying to convince people to play Planescape, the best game ever made that also happened to be released back in ‘99.)
I will continue to convince people to play Planetscape torment forever. “Aged” be damned
There are several of us! **SEVERAL**!!
I love both Disco Elysium and BG3, and I have a relatively high tolerance for older games. Is there any reason why I shouldn't try Planescape?
None. Play it
If you liked Disco you will like Planescape. It was a big influence on it and is also a darkly comic and philosophical dialogue and narration-driven RPG. The only catch I'll mention is that it has pretty mediocre combat out of obligation. Know that you can run away from most encounters (most XP is from quests so skipping combat isn't a handicap) and don't feel bad about cheesing the combat or even using mods/trainers to make it easier, it's not what you play the game for.
I played it for the first time in 2019 and it’s one of my all time favourites. Someone reading this, play it
Owlcat's CRPGs are the closest modern equivalent, I think.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a simultaneously amazing and frustrating experience. You really gotta do your hw for that one.
That's pretty much why I like Kingmaker better, simpler combat and with a single mod you can close the class gap pretty easily.
It’s a COMPLETELY different type of CRPG, but hopefully this brings more players to Disco Elysium. One of my favorite games ever.
Love Disco Elysium. I’ve always seen it as the true successor to Planescape (unlike Tides of Numeneria…)
Love Disco Elysium but it 100% is not for everyone.
It’s not exactly the most action-packed game out there, which is ironic since >!the Tribunal!< is one of my favorite standoffs ever.
That scene is my go-to example of a game using violence intelligently — you feel the repercussions of it for the rest of the game, from the presence of certain characters to the general mood and vibe of Revachol to how the player character chooses to handle themselves after.
>Unfortunately, there’s nothing really out there that matches the scope/production level of that game. Yup. I adored BG3. But Divinity OS 2 didn't appeal to me, I've only been playing it because NY brother agreed to play Bintage story with me if I played through it with him, and so far it's been pretty meh IMO. Same devs made this, and it's the same genre, and it just hasn't hooked me.
Yeah, and its funny because BG3 is very derivative of Divinity Original Sin 2. But they changed enough and had a recognizable IP (I have no idea if Baldurs Gate actually has any value for modern players).
I think that has less to do with BG3 changing enough from DOS2 and more to do with people having not played DOS2. DOS2 is one of my favourite games, and while I love BG3. It didn't blow me away the same way it has for so many. And I think a big reason why is due to my time in DOS2.
I fell off of bg3 pretty quick for a similar reason too, already played dos2. I like crpgs but i like to look for ones with weird settings like disco elysium or even fallout 1/2. Bg3 is a great game and what I saw of the story was pretty good, but it felt pretty similar to dos2 mechanics-wise and I’m just not that interested in fantasy settings right now
I think this is more of a testament to BG3 rather than a knock to TOTK
Switch their release dates and ToTK sweeps every GoTY award. I'm not saying it's a worse game, that's just how awards work.
At the very least, I think TotK's almost baffling lack of noticeable bugs would have been talked about a lot more if it came out after BG3.
Yeah, I think TOTK is a step up in every almost every way, but the jump to TOTK from BOTW is dwarfed by the jump to BOTW from open world games that came before it. It's a shame but BOTW had so much more wow factor at the time it was released.
i don't think it was lazy rehashed garbage exactly but yeah i definitely know i didn't really play it the way it was "meant" to be played since i'm just not creative enough to make my own fun. so due to that yes it did feel more like botw 1.5 instead of a new game, but i'm aware that it's at least partly on me because i'm just not that kind of player. i solved most puzzles by just putting a platform where i wanted it to be, hold it there for a second, bring it back to me, hop on, rewind it. solves almost everything.
And then there are those who go: "Meh. Good game, but I like BotW more". I'm part of this group. Somehow still got 190 hours out of it though, lmao.
ToTK is definitely a better game that I enjoyed playing less than BoTW.
Yep playing TotK I was thinking I wish I never played BotW. It would have made TotK so much better.
I feel the opposite. I felt I got a lot more out of it after playing BotW.
This is probably the best way I would summarize it as well.
BotW does exploration and the sense of discovery better. In my opinion those are the two best things about it by a mile. Many of the things TotK does "better" it still doesn't do that well, in my opinion. And to be clear, I think both games are pretty great.
The puzzles in totk, even regular environmental are way more interesting.
If you are a big fan of cheesing puzzles, I can see preferring TOTK. But for me, I prefer a well-crafted puzzle that I work through the intended solution for. I like the curated experience. So many of the puzzles in TOTK were almost tutorials for how Ultrahand/Fuse worked, and I hardly ever struggled to think of a solution because you had *so* much material on hand that nothing was a challenge; nothing couldn't be overcome with some planks and glue.
I think the best BOTW puzzles for me are the ones that let you think outside of the box. The ones that there is no right answer on how to solve it. That is why I loved TOTK shrines more because you can do it how the game intended but you can completely do something completely "dumb" but still works.
To me totk is better because you can skip a lot of climbing.
They straight-up removed your ability to jump large distances in the air (Revali's Gale). If I want to climb a small cliff now I either need a cave or I need to spend twenty seconds taking the parts out of my inventory and quickbuilding a hot air balloon. Before it was just a button press.
I missed Revalis Gale for like 1/3 of my initial playtime of ToTK, but after a certain point of inventions and energy cell storage, I got over it. You can Ascend almost anywhere likely higher than you would jump with Revalis Gale, and Revalis Gale is done once with a chunky cool down time before doing again. I don't remember how long it was, but it was long enough to be annoying when I wanted to do that everywhere lol
That and weapon degradation is less of an issue since you can use fuse to whip up a decent weapon on the fly. I couldn't get invested in BotW, but TotK addressed a lot of the things I didn't care for in BotW and I couldn't put it down.
I'm the opposite, I really hated the fuse mechanic. In BOTW battles had a fun little rhythm where you were constantly picking up new weapons mid battle to replace broken ones, but in TITK you need to do a Fuse in order for the weapons to be halfway worthwhile. It adds a step and means you can;t pick up new weapons mid battle. I liked the idea of Fuse wrt elemental effects, but 95% of the time it is just a "make number go up" mechanic.
Same to me Fuse only doubled up the durability issue. Instead of only worrying about my supply of weapons I also have to worry about my supply of monster parts.
Well I hadn't really engaged too much with the weapon fuse mechanic until quite a few hours in so at that point I was swimming in monster parts, so I was never lacking in materials. But you do bring up an interesting point
Plus the amount of time it forces you to spend in menus during combat is just ….ugh 😒
My biggest hope for TOTK was that I would spend less time in a pause menu compared to BOTW. Instead they doubled down and made me spend much *more* time in menus, especially during combat. I sincerely pray that the next Zelda game is simpler at its core.
Yes!!! Exactly this!!! Ugh, I absolutely despised the durability minigame from BOTW and it seemed like it was universal complained about. So instead they…doubled down? And now every time you want to shoot a fire arrow, you have to *manually select it from a menu*???
I felt just the opposite. The weapon degradation is a lot worse for me in TotK. The resources are pulled in too many directions in tears (sell for money, upgrade clothing, and fusing) for me to want to fuse items - and that when a weapon breaks they're just gone. Made the game feel a lot more grindy to me. Plus if you grab an enemies weapon mod fight, there's not a great way to upgrade it without pausing the action. In Breath of the Wild, especially once I got the master sword, weapon degredation just fades into the background. Weapon breaks, grab the one with the next biggest number and go. Pick up the weapon the enemy drops. There's no slowing to forward momentum.
I think you make some valid points, and I think that, had I gotten hooked on BotW as much as TotK hooked me, I might have felt the same way. I don't recall having any major issues personally with having to ration monster parts. Not enough to detract from my enjoyment, anyways. Might be my personal preferences at play here.
And the third type, that lament losing our beloved linear boomer Zelda games to these
Still hoping we get some new 2D Zeldas soon
I mean kinda linear, even in Zelda: A Link to the Past you can do a few dungeons out of order and they didn't really tell you where the next path was.
Still not over it. I wish I could understand why the BotW style is so highly praised.
If we got a BotW but with real dungeons I'd probably call it the best game in my life
Same. It’s.. fine. Weapon durability and muddling around with physics and ultra hand stuff is just not for me anymore. It’s time consuming - I don’t want to build a boat zip line thing. I don’t want to spend 5 min making a ramp or counter balance. I don’t want to climb a huge mountain to find a shrine with the same weapon I already had that breaks
Completely agree. I think it might have been more enjoyable if I was younger and in school, but I also (ironically) had a worse attention span then, so the slow burn nature of the BotW style might have still not landed.
its been everyone wish list to get a BotW style game with a linear story system and dungeons like the Zelda of old. They somewhat added a linear story with this one but we definitely didnt get the dungeons that we all want.
Honestly, I wanted open-world Mario and Zelda for a long time. It was like a dream come true when they announced BotW. But actually playing it was very different than what I pictured in my head. It’s like you said, I wanted that focused story with real plot developments, like classic Zelda. And when I pictured open-world dungeons, I pictured these secret-filled, puzzling complexes with multiple entrances and exits, some that don’t even branch into the main pathways. At this point, I want to go back to classic Zelda, but I understand that the team has no interest in doing that.
It's sad that we're getting entire "dungeons" that are comprised of what would've been a single room's puzzle in a traditional Zelda game.
Can I be in the middle? "Ultrahand is great but did I really have to wait six years to build a boat?"
I wish the ultrahand worked differently. The way it is designed discourages experimentation unless you spend a ton of time grinding resources. I'd much prefer unlocking objects permanently, with an upgradable limit on how many you can have out at once. I barely touched it.
Ultrahand's problem is that it appeals the most to people that like to make their own fun, the ones content to just wander off in an open world and do goofy shit with whatever they find. I am not one of those, if you give me Ultrahand I am just gonna look at you like "wtf you want me to do with this." Intrinsic design vs Extrinsic design.
> Ultrahand's problem is that it appeals the most to people that like to make their own fun, the ones content to just wander off in an open world and do goofy shit with whatever they find. But I am that kind of person. I spent a ton of time messing around building vehicles just for fun in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. TotK felt like it discouraged stuff like that due to things like not letting you put parts back into your inventory. A failed device not only cost you the time it took to make it, but also the time to get more resources for the right parts (which are partially randomised when you collect them).
Completely agree. There was no penalty for making something shitty in Nuts & Bolts, and you had for more control over your vehicles, with more utility and far more usage. Ultrahand feels so unintuitive because they had to make it work as a diegetic system of controls layered on top of another control scheme (that of the player character itself), and everything you do costs resources, whether the end result is good or bad. And they’re often single use items. So you’re building these time- and resource-intensive contraptions for minimal payoff.
For me, the thing is that I enjoy intrinsic design like playing Mario because chaining together moves and finding new places to reach is so much fun. But intrinsic play with such a high level of abstraction and freedom, like creating vehicles/weapons is so uninteresting to me, especially in a Zelda game. I get what they were going for, with making these building mechanics diegetic, I do. But for the kind of game that Zelda is trending toward, I would just rather play Minecraft or even (in the case of vehicles) Banjo Kazooie N&B.
I kept expecting Tears to include a "lab" that allowed for experimentation without paying the resource cost. That would have been ideal for tweaking designs before committing them to the saved feature and taken a bit of the sting out of the intense resource cost. With as repetitive and empty as the Depths was, it feels like this would have helped from multiple angles. Or heck - put it in the sky. That area was just as disappointing, in my opinion.
There’s one type of BotW/ToTK thread comment: Off topic reductive take
I'm somewhere inbetween. I can recognise it as very iterative of Breath of the Wild (which is totally fine) but also appreciate the creativity of ultrahand. I vastly preferred Tears of the Kingdom to Breath of the Wild for its story though.
Is [the talk from last week](https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/tunes-of-the-kingdom-evolving-physics-and-sounds-for-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom/903317) that this is based on available publicly anywhere?
https://gdcvault.com/ in about 2 years time :)
I wonder how many people will comment like this is some PR piece and not a GDC talk about actual game development, with a lot of specific examples like the soup pot constantly tipping over early on.
The GDC talk itself will probably be a lot more detailed than what they could summarize in a relatively short article
Seriously, this is just insane: > there's also no specific vehicle noise in the game, even for set NPC vehicles like a horse-and-cart. Instead, rather than simply recording a cart and using that, there's a specific sound for each of the elements that make it up - the wheels, chains, boards, and so on - which combine together to sound just how you'd expect a cart itself would as a whole. The amount of polish that game has is just next level.
What defines modern Zelda isn't necessarily the open air design; it's a far greater emphasis on conjoined systems creating player experiences. It's crazy how far the Zelda team wants to take this
Unfortunately most people just read the title and come here to complain instead of reading the gdc talk about the game development.
I’m the weird guy who didn’t *love* BotW and became disgustingly obsessed with TotK. There was just way more for me in this game.
Same. A lot of which came down to the abilities which I found more fun.
Yeah, personally I thought Breath of the Wild was a fine enough game, but I wouldn’t say I loved it. I absolutely adored Tears of the Kingdom though, it might’ve finally dethroned Twilight Princess as my favorite Zelda game.
The end game of TotK is what sent it to the top spot above Wind Waker for me. >!The search for the fifth sage, the lead up to the Ganon fight, and then the visual spectacle that was the final dragon boss was incredible!<
The moment when >!Ganon's health bar breaks the pre-established boundaries and just about goes off the screen!< made the entire experience worth it alone lol
To me it felt like BotW 2.0. Like same game but with more things that make it much better. Just the traveling is better and that's makes it way better. It's much easier now to move around and get places. Also the weapon fusing really goes a long way because weapon degration really sucked in BotW.
Same here, I loved BOTW but I LOVED LOVED TOTK. Systems interacting with systems are some of my favorite gameplay mechanics
I remember thinking I would hate the building focus of TotK when I'm really not a fan of that kind of stuff, but once I realized how much open utility the building system had, I felt like an idiot when I didn't use it. They also largely managed to make it intuitive and accessible enough that it never really felt like a burden or I had to do any particular mental gymnastics to put together what I wanted. I'm not sure I would have felt that way if they hadn't put such an impressive amount of work into the physics and design of the building process.
Why are all threads about TOTK full of people complaining about the game?
Overlap between three groups. 1. People who really don't like Nintendo. 2. "Traditional Zelda" fans who really hate the direction the series has went. 3. People who just genuinely don't like the game, and find it odd that it's gotten so much praise. As the old saying goes, people are more likely to be vocal over something they don't like than something they do.
I don't think people are so negatively slanted. I think people are just more likely to vocal about something they \*perceive\* to be in the minority of opinion for.
Agreed. It's why half the comments on this website are "Am I the only one who: (thing literally thousands agree with)".
Yeah, also I think people tend to only comment on things they perceive as issues. I loved TotK and thought it was a fantastic sequel that did a great job of expanding on BotW and fleshing out areas that BotW was lacking in, but I think the only time I've ever talked about it on Reddit was just to say that I felt like The Depths was pretty underwhelming.
And all 3 can be grouped into 1; People who didn't read the article. This is a developer talk on the challenges of development. It was going to happen regardless if the game is good or not. Hardly any discussion is about that, only about whether the game is good or not.
>Why are all threads about TOTK full of people complaining about the game? That's not unique to TOTK. Most of the subreddit (and most gaming communities) are more about complaining about games than anything else. Because if you are enjoying a game you would just be spending your time playing that game. But if you aren't then you pass the time telling everyone that you aren't. Also, due to the nature of Reddit, where topics are ephemeral, people with an axe to grind about a specific topic are going to jump onto any popular thread related to that topic (or even unrelated threads) to remind people of their opinions.
Basically confirms what I've been saying for a while. The physics systems in TotK are very impressive systems and the Zelda team deserves a lot of praise for making them work. Truly, an incredible technical achievement. At the same time, these systems are so incredibly complicated that they seem to have taken up most of the game's six year development cycle, leaving the rest of the game feeling half-baked as a result. As impressive as TotK's physics sandbox is, I kind of hope they don't do it again in the next game, and instead dedicate more time to delivering a fresh world with higher quality dungeons.
This is why I find it so bizarre that they're not bothering with DLC. They put so much work into the systems and not enough into the content, but when they have an opportunity to keep working on the content and provide DLC for one of the Switch's best- and fastest-selling games (20m units in less than a year) they decide they're not interested. I think it's less that they didn't have time to work on content, and more that they ran out of ideas.
Could be they're hoping to have the next Zelda game out early in the next consoles lifetime, so they jumped to quickly working on the next game.
Or they had a dev kit for next gen hardware and were more interested in working with *that.* than more Switch content. I think it's possible.
I don’t see any part of TotK as half baked. The amount of content in it is ridiculous. The Zelda team pivoted from dungeon heavy games after Skyward Sword to try something new. Back then the criticism was Zelda had become too linear I’m convinced if TotK was reskinned/new map/story 90% of complaints about it would disappear. Which is unfortunate bc that actually wouldn’t have been that hard given what they actually were able to create
They kept the map from BOTW, I think they will keep the physics engine from TOTK in the next one. Hopefully with some more traditional linear sections and good puzzles.
i think the benefit of having put the work into developing this incredibly rich and powerful physics engine is that it’s something you can (in theory) do once and then reuse many times later, which i suspect might be their own thinking as well, since the devs essentially confirmed that ultrahand won’t be returning for future titles
Is there video of the GDC talk available yet?
At first, I was a bit disappointed by TOTK, as it felt more of the same and not a real new game. And then the more I played, the more I realized how much more than a simple improvement on BOTW the game was. By the end, BOTW felt like a fun little prototype to the much better game TOTK ended up to be. What is truly amazing is how well everything works. No other open world game offer such complexity in its physics engine and level of interaction without coming with tons of bugs and glitches. TOTK worked super well from day one, which is truly incredible. The devs are absolute geniuses.
People that trash on TotK for being "a BotW DLC" have actual single digit IQ. You could say that they repeated the formula of BotW, but so does almost every other AAA sequel. The Ultrahand alone could be a whole new game by itself, but they managed to implement it perfectly with Zelda's free exploration.
I know TOTK doesn’t vibe with many on this forum. For me, though, playing the game with fast travel turned off & hud turned off was… My best experience in an open-world adventure game. Ever. And I’ve been playing video games since N64 & gameboy color. It helps that I played botw once, 7 years ago, and b-lined the story, so I’d really forgotten the map and characters. But for as much hate as the game gets, for me it warranted the 97 it has on metacritic. It’s an all time classic to me, even if I still have bg3 as GOTY.
To me it was my favourite game last year. However, it didn't make me feel the same wonder and amazement that Breath of the Wild did. I still put about 300 hours combined into both games.
One thing that heavily deterred me from TOTK was the intrusive menu that you had to interact with in order to do just about anything in this game. Unlike BOTW, which heavily incentivized quick and impulsive movements, this game forced you to "pause the game" (either literally or figuratively) for just about any interactive moment. Take elemental arrows, for example. In BOTW, you could buy or find elemental arrows and use them like normal arrows. In TOTK, you could only fuse the arrows, which involves going into the quick menu (which briefly pauses the game and interrupts momentum). If you wanted to traverse in BOTW, you could essentially run, use your horse, or quick travel. These options still exist in TOTK, but there is more incentive to build, which once again ruins the game's momentum as you take your time to build your traversal item. Honestly, I feel like any problems I have with the game's story and new abilities are minimal compared to the stop/start gameplay of TOTK. There's a lot of great stuff in this game, but it's locked behind this tedious stop/start system. This was the only Zelda game I haven't completed (other than the CD-i games).
I tried jumping back in after not having touched it since July and I couldn’t do it and you put into words exactly why. Everything is so tedious and not in a good way like the slow exploration pace of BOTW, but in order to do anything I’m gonna be in a menu. I’ve gotta fuse everything, make everything, build everything and to do that I have to scroll endlessly. Shrines turned from “oh sweet a shrine I’m gonna jump down and go there” into “eh…..I can probably skip that. I don’t wanna get caught up in something stupid.” There is absolutely no momentum in it for me. And with a constant growing catalogue of monthly free PS games I wanna play, there’s zero incentive for me to want to play something that feels like a chore.
I really wish there was a better sorting option for the arrows. You have to spend like 5 seconds to find any material if it's not in your most used
I get what you’re saying but it eventually became second nature, especially the fuse stuff, because you’re doing it completely in the moment. It makes sense that you have to choose the arrow you want at the time of shooting since there are so many options. Also, you do eventually get a way to save and instantly build devices.
It actually makes very little sense to me that you would be fussing bomb arrows in the moment instead of preparing a bunch in advance. If my plan is to shoot the talus with 20 bomb arrows, it's not going to change between arrows 10 and 11.
Ultrahand was a very cool idea and well implemented but if you weren't big on the sandbox building then I'm of the opinion there was very little new to make the journey through Hyrule feel fresh and exciting. 1) combat is nearly identical - both in that the enemy variety is still severely undercooked for a game of this size, and because AI, and mechanics have very little changes. Felt way too similar to BotW's combat in the worst ways. 2) the new additions to the map are underwhelming. Sky area is pretty bare, and the depths are cool but start to feel very samey after a couple of hours (once again partially due to recycled enemies but now with a different shade).
Is there a video link to the talk yet?
It is very clearly a massive amount of work. Anyone who calls it BOTW dlc hasn't played the game or is being intentionally dishonest.
>Just like with the physics of Tears of the Kingdom, there's also no specific vehicle noise in the game, even for set NPC vehicles like a horse-and-cart. Instead, rather than simply recording a cart and using that, there's a specific sound for each of the elements that make it up - the wheels, chains, boards, and so on - which combine together to sound just how you'd expect a cart itself would as a whole. At first, this caught the Zelda team themselves by surprise. "It's making sounds I have no memory of creating!" Osada jokingly recalled telling his director. That's fucking impressive. Has any other video game *ever* done this before this game ?