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Pre-Release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Pre-Release Discussion Thread

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No. Doing it this way then would be the same as having indestructible weapons but with extra annoying steps.

I don't even know why games have degradation systems in place if you're always able to repair the weapons with incredibly common items. It's just an annoyance.

Weapons getting destroyed is a good thing because it forces you to use all weapons, unlike every other Adventure/RPG game where there are 200 weapons but you only end up using the 5 most powerful ones.
And unlike other games, in BotW you can ALWAYS get the same powerful weapon over and over again, so weapon breaking is a non-issue for me.

It came a point in the game where I WANTED weapons to break so I could use the rest of my arsenal. I had way too many weapons.

Spot on. Use a weapon, break a weapon, explore and find another. If BOTW Remaster adds a smithies in response to the clamour, I'll totally become like one of those Majora's Mask fans complaining that the Zora swimming changes ruined the game.

My current playthrough has made me appreciate the weapon durability even more. You have not lived until you have faced a silver bokoblin, fretted about how much of inventory it will take to get through that sponge, and instead grabbed a nearby giant metal block with magnesis and swung it into the mook one-shotting it. That. Was. AWESOME!
 
You are not gaining any FOV in the bottom image, it's just Link at a farther distance from the camera. You are seeing as much as background in both images.
Ehhh, I think it should stay the way that it is. Link looks way too far away from the camera on the lower shot
It's not the best crop (or example). There is more of the foreground visible.

I include the foreground in my desire to see more of the immediate environment and architecture around Link, as it helps frame the scene and create an illusion of scale.

The game already does a good job with really far perspectives i.e. the horizontal distance, as seeing beautiful horizons is a focus of this game.

5c6f6e8d04e9d.webp

5c6f6e92d9b39.webp

5c6f6e9e1fef8.webp


The middle here is a sweet spot.

The point is dynamic or adjustable cameras at specific moments or places to contrast Link's size with scenery, a structure, or a character, like the game already does for the sake of visibility (or you can force to do if the camera is in the way). I especially want this for vertical scale which I think TotK will emphasize.

1139884671.jpg

MV5BZDg1MjZlYTctMTg0MC00NDFmLWJiZTEtMDBmYzNmZTZjNzg3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzg4MjI1MDU@._V1_.jpg

zelda___eventide_island_screenshot_2017_08_17_18_37_49.png


There's a time and place to pull back the camera.
 
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Durability would work better for me if it was only for melee weapons, and the weapons were just a part of the world and never became part of your inventory. Having a core set of sword, shield, and bow that you could upgrade and customize the cosmetics of throughout the game, then having enemy weapons in the world you could steal and use until they break (which would generally be in a single fight), but they never clutter up your inventory, would make a world of difference for me.
 
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Spot on. Use a weapon, break a weapon, explore and find another. If BOTW Remaster adds a smithies in response to the clamour, I'll totally become like one of those Majora's Mask fans complaining that the Zora swimming changes ruined the game.
The biggest issue withe The Zora swim change was it was forced and not necessary in the least. If there was smith's in botw at least they could be ignored?
 
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Weapon breaking would be more impactful if weapons differed from each other more significantly. Breaking a 50 damage sword so you can switch to a 46 damage sword that handles in the exact same way isn't exactly rivetting.
 
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I was doing fine in my initial play through just having my weapons break and finding new ones, UNTIL I came across that boy in Hateno “The weapons connoisseur quest:” Since I’m a completionist per se, it made me so mad because I had already had And subsequently broken several of the weapons he wanted me to show him. So I reverted back to my old habits of hoarding weapons and not using them because I didn’t know what he was going to ask to see next. It wasn’t until much later in the game that I figured out a lot of the weapons would respawn again, so knowing that now, it really doesn’t matter if your weapon breaks, you’ll most likely find it again and it’s not like there aren‘t plenty of weapons to use at all times.
 
I was doing fine in my initial play through just having my weapons break and finding new ones, UNTIL I came across that boy in Hateno “The weapons connoisseur quest:” Since I’m a completionist per se, it made me so mad because I had already had And subsequently broken several of the weapons he wanted me to show him. So I reverted back to my old habits of hoarding weapons and not using them because I didn’t know what he was going to ask to see next. It wasn’t until much later in the game that I figured out a lot of the weapons would respawn again, so knowing that now, it really doesn’t matter if your weapon breaks, you’ll most likely find it again and it’s not like there aren‘t plenty of weapons to use at all times.
After the weapons connoisseur quest, I felt like they should've allowed us to store a couple weapons with that korok or inside the Deku Tree by the bed, because the room inside the Deku Tree were made for Link after all.
 
After the weapons connoisseur quest, I felt like they should've allowed us to store a couple weapons with that korok or inside the Deku Tree by the bed, because the room inside the Deku Tree were made for Link after all.
Agreed, I would have also felt better if after you broke a significant weapon they had the “Mail man” or an NPC show up and say “You have just broken your first weapon, don’t cry over it, there will be plenty more of those in the future.” Or maybe taken the over world map a step further and be able to scroll through it by where you found weapons, items or other significant items rather than just showing Koroks found.
 
I haven't looked at the patent so I don't know if it's relevant or not, but just as a fun fact on the topic of transparency rendering with this engine, I do know from my analysis of BOTW that materials rendered behind transparent surfaces (like objects that can be seen behind water or glass) do not reflect local light sources. The screen space refraction algorithm samples textures from a rendering stage that occurs before the local lighting pass, so when you look through a refracting transparent material, you will see objects unlit by local light sources, even though the transparent surfaces themselves can be lit by local light sources.

At least from earlier teaser footage of Tears of the Kingdom, that still appears to be the case:

Screenshot2023012619.png
 
Agreed, I would have also felt better if after you broke a significant weapon they had the “Mail man” or an NPC show up and say “You have just broken your first weapon, don’t cry over it, there will be plenty more of those in the future.” Or maybe taken the over world map a step further and be able to scroll through it by where you found weapons, items or other significant items rather than just showing Koroks found.

You can already do that through the Compendium.
 
Forgot about this quote from Zelda's diary:

Wonder if they'll retcon this to be:

Zonai-Figure-001.png
Blupee Person Identity Baseless Speculation Time!

My guess: this is goddess Hylia (or a high priest[ess]). She's looking a bit like a Blupee / The Lord of the Mountain to me, both of which are blue - the colour of Wisdom in Zelda. Also, someone recently pointed out that the Goddess Statues don't have hair, but feathers on their head:

SS_Statue_of_the_Goddess_Model.png


Maybe we'll also see the Courage counterpart to this person - maybe a Dragon god? - and maybe even the deity related to Power - probably Boar-related. Would be cool to finally bring balance to the Triforce by bringing these three together.

Could also be a cool thematic framing to the gameworld: "Wisdom" in the Sky, "Courage" on Hyrule, and "Power" underground.

Thanks for listening, don't forget to ring the bell and subscribe!
 
Blupee Person Identity Baseless Speculation Time!

My guess: this is goddess Hylia (or a high priest[ess]). She's looking a bit like a Blupee / The Lord of the Mountain to me, both of which are blue - the colour of Wisdom in Zelda. Also, someone recently pointed out that the Goddess Statues don't have hair, but feathers on their head:

SS_Statue_of_the_Goddess_Model.png


Maybe we'll also see the Courage counterpart to this person - maybe a Dragon god? - and maybe even the deity related to Power - probably Boar-related. Would be cool to finally bring balance to the Triforce by bringing these three together.

Could also be a cool thematic framing to the gameworld: "Wisdom" in the Sky, "Courage" on Hyrule, and "Power" underground.

Thanks for listening, don't forget to ring the bell and subscribe!
The theology of Zelda is a bit convoluted but Hylia stands alone as the main goddess(and interesting from a story perspective, ancestor of The Hylian Royal family and reincarnated as Zelda, so her sacred power isn't just some gift, it's the fact she's a mortal vessel of Hylia).

She doesn't represent wisdom, power and courage, but the three Golden Goddesses, Nayru, Din and Farore, who represent those things in that order.

It could be a form of one of the Golden Goddesses, or of one of the lesser Gods, like the lord of the mountain or horse god (who is himself a gender swapped reincarnation of Malon, maybe?).
 
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Agreed. The issue I have with this type of marketing isn't about it's effect on TotK's sales, it's about my own enjoyment of the prerelease "hype".

If Nintendo decides that they need to show very little of the game in order to sell more copies/save money on marketing, that's good for them. But I'm not financially invested in Nintendo. It doesn't matter to me if TotK sells 3 million copies or 30 million copies, that's for Nintendo to care about. What I enjoy is discussing and theorizing about an upcoming Zelda game, and that simply hasn't been as enjoyable for TotK as it was for the past 3D Zelda releases. I'm sure we will get some big trailer eventually, but by that point the game will be out in 3 months anyway. I got years and years of fun from the prerelease cycle of BotW, but with TotK there just hasn't been much to talk about since the trailers haven't shown a whole lot of interesting new things.

I'm obviously going to buy TotK no matter what happens, as is everyone else who is complaining about the marketing. But as a Zelda fan, I'm just disappointed that I'm missing out on all the fun prerelease discussion that we would normally be having for a new Zelda game.

This really makes me think we need to talk about @kitosan. He has predicted that TOTK will disappoint a section of the audience, because they are expecting something as transformative as BOTW when really what we'll get is what was promised: the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The refrain is that we knew with BOTW what would set that game apart: it was going to be a sprawling open world adventure in contrast to the linear dungeon crawlers of previous entries. That was huge and a cause for excitement. But how much more did we know?

With TOTK, we know what sets it apart from BOTW: it takes the adventure to the sky. But that knowledge is greeted with derision. It's not as transformative as BOTW was.

I think @kitosan is right. People will be disappointed and for the same reason there is angst over the limited marketing. This game will be the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But that's not enough for some. It seems like some people are waiting for a mythic moment of revelation that will never come.
 
I think the new magic blade part of the Master Sword represents a Zonai tower. The weird hooks on the side could represent landings (where you regained stamina when climbing a sheikah tower), and they zig-zag in the way you would expect on a climbable structure, I.e. a Zonai Tower.
 
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This really makes me think we need to talk about @kitosan. He has predicted that TOTK will disappoint a section of the audience, because they are expecting something as transformative as BOTW when really what we'll get is what was promised: the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The refrain is that we knew with BOTW what would set that game apart: it was going to be a sprawling open world adventure in contrast to the linear dungeon crawlers of previous entries. That was huge and a cause for excitement. But how much more did we know?

With TOTK, we know what sets it apart from BOTW: it takes the adventure to the sky. But that knowledge is greeted with derision. It's not as transformative as BOTW was.

I think @kitosan is right. People will be disappointed and for the same reason there is angst over the limited marketing. This game will be the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But that's not enough for some. It seems like some people are waiting for a mythic moment of revelation that will never come.
The sky islands are just one of the new settings for the game, I highly doubt that the whole game is going to be about exploring the sky. If the sky islands were the primary new content for the game, we would have seen much more of them in the screenshots from the 3rd trailer.

When I say that we haven't learned much about the game, I'm talking about how we don't know what the actual gameplay will be like. Will there be traditional dungeons? Will there be replacements for shrines? How will the world be different from the first game? What will we actually do on the sky islands? Will there be time travel? Will there be an underground area? Will Zelda be playable? Will weapon durability return? Will the game as a whole be as open as BotW? Or will it be a bit more linear and constrained?

I don't necessarily think we need definite answers to these questions yet. But the trailers haven't given us enough information to speculate on regarding a lot of these questions. We know a lot of basic things about TotK: there will be new items, new enemies, new locations, a new story, etc. But those are just basic things that you can expect about any sequel. The thing we don't know is how TotK will be unique and special.

And I don't know why you wouldn't expect TotK to be innovative, it is a 3D Zelda game after all. Maybe it won't change the video game industry like BotW did, but it will certainly innovate within the Zelda franchise. Something has gone get wrong if it takes the Zelda team 6 years to make a basic sequel with the same map, graphics, and physics engine as the previous game.
 
I wish this time we can register Bears, the lord of the mountain, skeleton horse and deers on the stables! PLEASE LET US PET DOGS!
GIVE ME AN AMULET OR SOME SHIT THAT KEEPS MY STAHLHORSE “ALIVE” IN THE DAYTIME

Also, reeeeaaaaalllly not bothered that this game is going to be a disappointment in any way.

I mean, MAYBE, but I might also get hit by a bus tomorrow. Since there’s no evidence of either I’m not gonna worry about it.

They don’t have to show us anything until the day before release lol everyone is already chomping at the bit for this game. Especially my imaginary permanent stahlhorse
 
The sky islands are just one of the new settings for the game, I highly doubt that the whole game is going to be about exploring the sky. If the sky islands were the primary new content for the game, we would have seen much more of them in the screenshots from the 3rd trailer.

When I say that we haven't learned much about the game, I'm talking about how we don't know what the actual gameplay will be like. Will there be traditional dungeons? Will there be replacements for shrines? How will the world be different from the first game? What will we actually do on the sky islands? Will there be time travel? Will there be an underground area? Will Zelda be playable? Will weapon durability return? Will the game as a whole be as open as BotW? Or will it be a bit more linear and constrained?

I don't necessarily think we need definite answers to these questions yet. But the trailers haven't given us enough information to speculate on regarding a lot of these questions. We know a lot of basic things about TotK: there will be new items, new enemies, new locations, a new story, etc. But those are just basic things that you can expect about any sequel. The thing we don't know is how TotK will be unique and special.

And I don't know why you wouldn't expect TotK to be innovative, it is a 3D Zelda game after all. Maybe it won't change the video game industry like BotW did, but it will certainly innovate within the Zelda franchise. Something has gone get wrong if it takes the Zelda team 6 years to make a basic sequel with the same map, graphics, and physics engine as the previous game.
You've actually just demonstrated my point.

TOTK will be BOTW in the sky in the same way that The Wind Waker was Ocarina of Time on the ocean. That's what will make it special and unique. But you and many others steadfastly refuse to believe that.

In fact, trying to reconstruct the marketing timeline, I would argue that we knew more about TOTK than BOTW prior to 9 months out. E3 2016 was then a huge info dump with the Treehouse where they showed a lot (way too much). Those questions you asked weren't answered for BOTW until at least E3 2016 so there can't have been conversation much more substantial.

Looking at this thread, plenty of people are having a fine time discussing and speculating on the game's lore, setting, mechanics. There is clearly innovation here. There are multiple patents for new gameplay mechanics. There has been meat that people have engaged with. Your (and many other's) issue isn't that there hasn't been much shown, it's that you haven't liked what you've seen.

I do not think the prevailing response to this game will be disappointment.
No-one said prevailing response. @kitosan's prediction wasn't to do with the quality of the game, but rather fan expectation.

I think what he was saying is that the fan disappointment will be summarised as "I waited 6 years for the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and all I got was the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."

For those of us willing to accept that BOTW in the Sky can be great, we'll probably love it just fine.
 
GIVE ME AN AMULET OR SOME SHIT THAT KEEPS MY STAHLHORSE “ALIVE” IN THE DAYTIME

Also, reeeeaaaaalllly not bothered that this game is going to be a disappointment in any way.

I mean, MAYBE, but I might also get hit by a bus tomorrow. Since there’s no evidence of either I’m not gonna worry about it.

They don’t have to show us anything until the day before release lol everyone is already chomping at the bit for this game. Especially my imaginary permanent stahlhorse
No you go to Kilton and you get a special elixir that you get to pour over the Stalhorse and that keeps it alive and allows you to register it, at the Stables.

Stay away from buses just incase
 
To me, it’s very clear this game’s world is adding a lot more than just the sky. I think underground sections are highly likely. I also think the main ground section will be different in some way that will make it interesting to explore again, even if not the main hook. My money is still on time travel playing an important role. Regardless, Nintendo is hiding a ton of stuff and we are going to find what that “expanded map” comment finally means at the next Direct.
 
You've actually just demonstrated my point.

TOTK will be BOTW in the sky in the same way that The Wind Waker was Ocarina of Time on the ocean. That's what will make it special and unique. But you and many others steadfastly refuse to believe that.

In fact, trying to reconstruct the marketing timeline, I would argue that we knew more about TOTK than BOTW prior to 9 months out. E3 2016 was then a huge info dump with the Treehouse where they showed a lot (way too much). Those questions you asked weren't answered for BOTW until at least E3 2016 so there can't have been conversation much more substantial.

Looking at this thread, plenty of people are having a fine time discussing and speculating on the game's lore, setting, mechanics. There is clearly innovation here. There are multiple patents for new gameplay mechanics. There has been meat that people have engaged with. Your (and many other's) issue isn't that there hasn't been much shown, it's that you haven't liked what you've seen.


No-one said prevailing response. @kitosan's prediction wasn't to do with the quality of the game, but rather fan expectation.

I think what he was saying is that the fan disappointment will be summarised as "I waited 6 years for the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and all I got was the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."

For those of us willing to accept that BOTW in the Sky can be great, we'll probably love it just fine.
If the Zelda devs wanted to make a game that is just a BotW sequel, they would have created a brand new world to explore. After all, exploring the world itself was the main focus of BotW, so a simple sequel should have that same focus. But they haven't done that. Sure, adding some new sky islands or underground areas does give you more new stuff to explore, but you can't ignore the fact that the entire map of BotW is still fully explorable in the game. They aren't just going to stuff all the new content into the sky islands, they have to make the surface is worth re-exploring for people who already played this first game. The reusing of the map is what will make TotK a fundamentally different experience, not just a regular sequel.

Reusing the exact same map in the sequel to an exploration based game is an obviously bad idea. It has almost never been done before in games like the Zelda franchise. But the Zelda devs are well aware of this fact. They are either going to change the map in some substantial way in order to make it exciting to re-explore, or they will find an innovative way to recontextualize the map while keeping it relatively the same as it was in BotW. The problem I have is that the map we've seen so far looks to be pretty identical to the map in BotW, so either the devs are hiding huge changes to the map, or they have figured out a way to make the same map fun to reexplore. Even if it is the latter, we still have absolutely no idea what that could be.

We have been shown lots of new lore, settings, and mechanics, some of which is indeed very interesting and innovative. But none of those things answer the question of what the core gameplay loop of TotK will be. Will the game be like BotW and have a focus on open exploration and lots of small pieces of content? Or will it be focused on larger pieces of content like dungeons and a long main story? Will we be exploring a drastically changed world, or will we be exploring an old world with new context? Will the game have a progression system where you constantly find new items and abilities, or will the game be open ended and give you everything from the start? These are the big questions that me and many others are most interested in, but it's hard to theorize about stuff like this when we know so little about these aspects of the game. It's still at the point where we are projecting our desires onto what we hope the game will be, rather then getting excited for what it actually is.
 
I was going to respond to @Glom post but Nickle covered basically everything I was going to say. Regardless, it seems dumb and premature to worry about the meta discussion around the game. Like it's not really an interesting conversation to have until we see more or it releases.
 
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I go away for a few days and this thread goes on a complete fanxiety spiral. more delays (lol) and disappointed reception aren't even worth discussing.

since when nintento does not include games in their special edition game consoles? what a robbery
close to a decade or so. wind waker hd is the last one I can remember off-hand
 
I was going to respond to @Glom post but Nickle covered basically everything I was going to say. Regardless, it seems dumb and premature to worry about the meta discussion around the game. Like it's not really an interesting conversation to have until we see more or it releases.
Agreed. Also, I have been whining a bit too much about the lack of news, sorry if it has deterred anyone from actually talking about the game in this thread. Hopefully we will get a new trailer or gameplay within the next few weeks so the hype train can return.
 
Agreed. Also, I have been whining a bit too much about the lack of news, sorry if it has deterred anyone from actually talking about the game in this thread. Hopefully we will get a new trailer or gameplay within the next few weeks so the hype train can return.
At times all of us in this thread have probably whined at some point, it’s easy to do since we have such little information and we are all in the same boat of being super excited for something but not knowing exactly what that something really is other than more Zelda. It’s like one day I’m excited, the next day I’m nervous, the following day I’m upset about no information and finally I get more impatient. Then the cycle repeats, its like living in some strange Twilight realm and I’m blaming Demise for this repeated never ending cycle we are living in right now! Thankfully, the curse will be broken in a few short weeks:)
 
I believe TotK will be more than just BotW in the sky, or so I want to, considering it’s taken so long to be developed.

My guess is Nintendo is implementing all those crazy ideas they had for BotW but couldn’t put it because of time.
 
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I believe TotK will be more than just BotW in the sky, or so I want to, considering it’s taken so long to be developed.

My guess is Nintendo is implementing all those crazy ideas they had for BotW but couldn’t put it because of time.
Why are you guessing? That's explicitly what Tears of the Kingdom is.

 
Why are you guessing? That's explicitly what Tears of the Kingdom is.

Well that is explicitly DLC ideas lol. Not the ideas they had for the base game before it released.
 
Well that is explicitly DLC ideas lol. Not the ideas they had for the base game before it released.
I mean, we also know they're doing some of those from comparing those concept artworks against what we've now seen. That's all in the mix, obviously.
 
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I spent some time investigating this recent patent using our good old GPT to translate it, so I can understand what it is about.
Like the news said, it's a method to make rendering of transparent objects lighter. But this applies in very specific cases. It's not an all-purpose solution that could be used to optimize the rendering of transparent objects like clouds, for example.

For the ones not used to rendering techniques. Let's just say that transparent objects have always been heavy to render because they force the engine to sort 3D objects if you want an accurate image (transparent objects have to be rendered after the objects behind them and sorting thousands of objects in real time is expensive).

The method explained in that patent get rid of the need to do any sorting for the case of objects located inside another transparent objects. The example given in the patent was one of some bigger structure with different entrances to it and how you could use that technique to see through its walls to see the shape of the "inside".

JPA%20505011505_i_000012.jpg

It's not actual transparency of the outer walls, but instead the "inside" of the structures are directly baked in its outer texture and some parallax mapping is used to fake a 3D view of the inside.
All in All, it seems fairly close to some stuff we have seen recently in games like Spiderman with InteriorMapping where they are using a single texture and some maths to fake a 3D room despite being a totally flat surface

interior-mapping-idea.jpg

(Image not from the patent)

The idea in that patent is similar. But instead of faking rendering a room through a window, they want the players to be able to see the entrances from all directions of the structure. The patent mentions that it's used in the context of a camera moving around the structure (implied to be a flying camera as well):

JPA%20505011505_i_000005.jpg


One later example given is this image:

JPA%20505011505_i_000021.jpg


We got several of those images from slightly different points of view. They clearly seem to represent a floating rock and how the player will be able to visualize the different entrances even if they are not directly visible from the current angle.


My interpretation:
Because of the gameplay in the sky and the important use of the 3 dimensions, I think the devs wanted to give clear information to the players about the inner structure of those islands, so they can plan their movements around them more easily.
It can be both used as a way to glide to those entrances, or even to phase through the walls and reach those caves. The Switch being the Switch, they couldn't really afford to make the walls of islands truly transparent, so they had to rely on that trick to do so.
 
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No, ToTK is not going to be just BoTW with islands in the sky in any possible universe. We've seen nothing from the game and it's pretty obvious that they are hiding some heavy stuff. But there is no point in discussing this when we are like 2 weeks away from the full blowout.
 
My interpretation:
Because of the gameplay in the sky and the important use of the 3 dimensions, I think the devs wanted to give clear information to the players about the inner structure of those islands, so they can plan their movements around them more easily.
It can be both used as a way to glide to those entrances, or even to phase through the walls and reach those caves. The Switch being the Switch, they couldn't really afford to make the walls of islands truly transparent, so they had to rely on that trick to do so.
so Link's gonna be wearing cool cyber goggles that Purah makes for him, sweet lol
 
This really makes me think we need to talk about @kitosan. He has predicted that TOTK will disappoint a section of the audience, because they are expecting something as transformative as BOTW when really what we'll get is what was promised: the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The refrain is that we knew with BOTW what would set that game apart: it was going to be a sprawling open world adventure in contrast to the linear dungeon crawlers of previous entries. That was huge and a cause for excitement. But how much more did we know?

With TOTK, we know what sets it apart from BOTW: it takes the adventure to the sky. But that knowledge is greeted with derision. It's not as transformative as BOTW was.

I think @kitosan is right. People will be disappointed and for the same reason there is angst over the limited marketing. This game will be the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But that's not enough for some. It seems like some people are waiting for a mythic moment of revelation that will never come.
i...really don't think that.
Nobody expects them to reinvent the series with a direct sequell right after doing so.
What people expect is: take the concept you established and validated with BotW, and se how far you can push and expand it.
Youre reusing the world, the engine, the artstyle, assets... take that as a base, keep what worked, expand and improve what did not.

Thats what people want.
If they really just add some sky islands and have essentially BotW with a handfull of more items, that that would be a really weak performance for the longest zelda development.
I belive to much in the team that i dont expect ITERATION and IMPROVEMENTS. i DONT expect a reinvention/komplet transformation of what BotW was, and i dont think people do.


--------------------------------

Just played it for 30 minutes for a break, the beginning...and honestly:
artstyle and assets are fine (for the most part... some textures just are lo res), but the natural sounds are still amazing, performance is fine.
The sequel would just benefit mountains from a) better texture rendering b) higher draw distance c) higher lod and d) higher resolution or some form of AA to remove some of the flickering on sharp edges.
all of those can be done JUST through better performance, no need on reworking assets, and it would help the look of the game sooo much.
 
My interpretation:
Because of the gameplay in the sky and the important use of the 3 dimensions, I think the devs wanted to give clear information to the players about the inner structure of those islands, so they can plan their movements around them more easily.
It can be both used as a way to glide to those entrances, or even to phase through the walls and reach those caves. The Switch being the Switch, they couldn't really afford to make the walls of islands truly transparent, so they had to rely on that trick to do so.

Yeah after giving it some thought I think this is primarily for a viewing mode for phasing (similar to activating the non-bomb runes in BotW) and the ice surface they mention could be a secondary feature.
I can't see this working the same way on the open structures like the one they demoed it on, but it could be a special case for outside-to-inside of islands.


edit: maybe that would still kind of work actually. I could see them doing multiple samples for different depths so you can get a 3D effect for the direction of the 'tunnel', could even animate it as layers sinking through the rock.
 
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If the team continued with "challenging established conventions for the series" and what Bill Trinen said about the title reveal being, well, revealing, I'd wager Zelda actually dies when falling in the chasm from the trailer. Thus the kingdom mourning their beloved princess and the tears being shed by something having some magical/powerful upside against evil. It probably has already been speculated though.

Edit: well a quick search garnered many results so nothing new with my take today.
 
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