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

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Zeal543 said:
I still don't understand why this game took 6 years to come to fruition, nothing in the trailers shown has indicated it
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I mean, despite the 182 pages of the thread, we don't know anything about the game really.

They've shown us basically nothing in the what could, at best, be called teaser trailers and at this point, we're going to have to wait for near launch previews or outright launch week reviews to know if they actually did a pretty by the numbers sequel the way ocarina was rehashed for so long, or if there's an actual reason that development took the typical period for a full new Zelda.
 
Dark Cloud said:
I thought the belief was the menu is how it is is because it was made with the Wii U GAMEPAD in mind
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I suspect the whole game was.

Breath of the Wild is a very pause-heavy game by Nintendo standards, and I can't but feel that was a compromise after the gamepad support got removed.
For example, I think you can have a much better experience with breakable weapons if, when one breaks, you just pull another one out from the gamepad in real-time, rather than having to go into a slow horizontal menu while the entire game pauses. It totally breaks the flow.

I haven't watched the video but I'm not going to defend the UI of Breath of the Wild. It absolutely gets in the way. Switching runes, consulting the map, changing outfit, eating food, just pause after pause. The problem is that I can't imagine they have many options in improving it without a second screen. I've advocated for selection wheels with time slow down, but that's still not ideal imo.

I'm really curious to see what they do. I feel they'd need to make fundamental design changes if they want to make the gameplay more fluid and less stop-start.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
I mean, despite the 182 pages of the thread, we don't know anything about the game really.

They've shown us basically nothing in the what could, at best, be called teaser trailers and at this point, we're going to have to wait for near launch previews or outright launch week reviews to know if they actually did a pretty by the numbers sequel the way ocarina was rehashed for so long, or if there's an actual reason that development took the typical period for a full new Zelda.
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Which is wild considering the art book leaked
 
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BY2K said:
Never in my life have I disagreed with someone more about video game stuff than I disagreed with Jake from GameXplain about the Menus in Breath of the Wild.

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That wasn't as bad as I feared. So many of these types of videos over the past few years have been "BOTW is great but also broken trash so we want to TOTK to reverse absolutely every distinctive design choice about BOTW". This wasn't that.

The title is a bit clickbaity as there is really only one bit where their discussion is properly a concern for TOTK, that being the possibly familiar world. The rest is really more of a discussion about BOTW with the question of what TOTK does in that area being more of a tangent. But if they are supportive of Korok seeds (liked hearing that) and even shrines then what exactly was their concern?

The dunking on the story made me sad. It was quite timely while there is a thread ongoing about how "cinematic" is the new "mature" in video games. There was a lot of focus on how story only works when it is scripted and linear and must be able taking the player on a ride. The idea of the player being empowered to tell the story doesn't occur.

famiboards.com

In defence of Breath of the Wild's story

Yes, Breath of the Wild is acclaimed, but it also gets a lot of flack for pretty much all of its aspects including from those who praise it generally. But for me, this game is GOAT, not despite these things, but largely because of them. So I want to talk about why the things people criticise...
famiboards.com famiboards.com
 
Not sure what's the strongest feeling:

Anxiety turning 40 May 10th
Pure excitement on playing TotK May 12th

I both win and lose every day that passes
 
EPD3 have been prototyping for 5 years and then remembered that they have to finish a game. I know a procrastinator when I see one.
 
As I was working out this morning I kept on thinking about TotK and one of the things I think is really going to play a key role in this iteration is the blood moon. I think these nights will be drastically longer this time around and will spawn unique enemies and bosses that need to be taken out during the blood moon night. Defeating these bosses may open new areas that were blocked during the day and stuff like that.
 
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Glom said:
That wasn't as bad as I feared. So many of these types of videos over the past few years have been "BOTW is great but also broken trash so we want to TOTK to reverse absolutely every distinctive design choice about BOTW". This wasn't that.

The title is a bit clickbaity as there is really only one bit where their discussion is properly a concern for TOTK, that being the possibly familiar world. The rest is really more of a discussion about BOTW with the question of what TOTK does in that area being more of a tangent. But if they are supportive of Korok seeds (liked hearing that) and even shrines then what exactly was their concern?

The dunking on the story made me sad. It was quite timely while there is a thread ongoing about how "cinematic" is the new "mature" in video games. There was a lot of focus on how story only works when it is scripted and linear and must be able taking the player on a ride. The idea of the player being empowered to tell the story doesn't occur.

famiboards.com

In defence of Breath of the Wild's story

Yes, Breath of the Wild is acclaimed, but it also gets a lot of flack for pretty much all of its aspects including from those who praise it generally. But for me, this game is GOAT, not despite these things, but largely because of them. So I want to talk about why the things people criticise...
famiboards.com famiboards.com
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I’ve been enjoying this series by Gamexplain, I think it’s because I really like how excited Jake gets sometimes when he comes up with an off the wall, totally implausible idea that I hadn’t thought about. Like his idea of phasing up through the ground and grabbing a Bokoblins legs and pulling him half way down into the ground and then just leaving him there, But he would come back once a week to feed him, lmao. So even tho it’s nuts to think that would happen, it does get me excited to think about all the crazy things we haven’t thought of that will be in this game but just haven’t seen yet.
 
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Zeal543 said:
I still don't understand why this game took 6 years to come to fruition, nothing in the trailers shown has indicated it
Click to expand...
Covid. Japan adhered to quite a stringent stay-at-home rule (stringent compared to a lot of countries anyway), and there were reports that many people didn't have the proper equipment or even internet service at their homes, so they couldn't transition to WFH very quickly. It slowed a ton of development down across many companies for a year or more, and I'm sure this game was no different.
 
One thing I would love to see back tho is a more traditional title screen.

The game can still start in a similar way to how Breath of the Wild started. When you boot the game for the first time, it just goes straight into it. But if you close the game after that and boot it up later, I'd like to be welcomed by an actual old-school Zelda title screen.
 
BY2K said:
One thing I would love to see back tho is a more traditional title screen.

The game can still start in a similar way to how Breath of the Wild started. When you boot the game for the first time, it just goes straight into it. But if you close the game after that and boot it up later, I'd like to be welcomed by an actual old-school Zelda title screen.
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100% we waking up in some bed.

EDIT: I've only seen a few artbook images, but if there's landscape drawings, then I could see those scenes/images in the artbook being used for the title screens.
 
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BY2K said:
One thing I would love to see back tho is a more traditional title screen.

The game can still start in a similar way to how Breath of the Wild started. When you boot the game for the first time, it just goes straight into it. But if you close the game after that and boot it up later, I'd like to be welcomed by an actual old-school Zelda title screen.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the BoTW title screen is just...bland. I'd like something closer to Wind Waker, Twlight Princess or even Skyward Sword.
 
I don't really know what I want for the menus in TotK because the quick menu specifically works that way due to the weapon durability system. If they keep that 1:1 from BotW, there's not many better alternatives there. I think a radial one like this fanmade concept would have been a definite improvement for the runes. With weapons it would probably look somewhat cluttered with 20 slots. So they'd have to lower the max slot count and increase average weapon durability.

irrni1uon7f71.png


I think weapon durability is here to stay in some way but this is one of the main reasons why I'd want a revamp.
 
My main problem with the menu(minimalism aside) are:
Forcing me to interact with the UI everytime a main weapon, bow, shield break. This really interrupts the combat flow and bothered me a lot. If they chose a random weapon or the next in line automatically it would be much better for me.
The other thing is the need of going to the menu to heal yourself, other thing you do a lot. It also takes the emotion of fighting (I mean, you can just open menu and eat dozens of your 999 apples). Next time I'd love if the game had an option where healing yourself doesn't pause the game.
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
I don't really know what I want for the menus in TotK because the quick menu specifically works that way due to the weapon durability system. If they keep that 1:1 from BotW, there's not many better alternatives there. I think a radial one like this fanmade concept would have been a definite improvement for the runes. With weapons it would probably look somewhat cluttered with 20 slots. So they'd have to lower the max slot count and increase average weapon durability.

irrni1uon7f71.png


I think weapon durability is here to stay in some way but this is one of the main reasons why I'd want a revamp.
Click to expand...

Oh hey, my rune concept. I was just about to post it myself lol

The radial menu would make it so the abilities are always in the same place, you wouldn't have to scroll from the current selection. You can just pick one with the flick of a stick. Which might make it easier to pull off combos you see in those wild botw combat videos. I don't see how people do that with the linear menu.

Here's the updated version of the concept in case anyone wants it:

yLyoJBN.png
 
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BY2K said:
Maybe not the trailers, but if you had seen the artbook leak...
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I skimmed through it, I didn't really see anything major tbh except for a few character reveals. I'll try to take a closer look at some point

chocolate_supra said:
Covid. Japan adhered to quite a stringent stay-at-home rule (stringent compared to a lot of countries anyway), and there were reports that many people didn't have the proper equipment or even internet service at their homes, so they couldn't transition to WFH very quickly. It slowed a ton of development down across many companies for a year or more, and I'm sure this game was no different.
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I would understand if it was 4 or 5 years but 6 is a lot, consider xenoblade 3 was less than 4 years
 
Zeal543 said:
I still don't understand why this game took 6 years to come to fruition, nothing in the trailers shown has indicated it
Click to expand...
I mean, take BoTW's world, layer several floating landmasses of fairly significant total size on top, a seemingly sizeable world below, and add free-form crafting of weapons and vehicles?

I imagine the QA alone took a decent chunk of that time. The number of compounding interactions there sounds like a headache to develop and test for

Plus the number of additional elements from the artbook seem to indicate there's a lot of traditional sequel stuff too
Zeal543 said:
I skimmed through it, I didn't really see anything major tbh except for a few character reveals. I'll try to take a closer look at some point


I would understand if it was 4 or 5 years but 6 is a lot, consider xenoblade 3 was less than 4 years
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XC3 feels like it would be a lot simpler of a game to develop honestly
 
TheCongressman said:
Oh hey, my rune concept. I was just about to post it myself lol

The radial menu would make it so the abilities are always in the same place, you wouldn't have to scroll from the current selection. You can just pick one with the flick of a stick. Which might make it easier to pull off combos you see in those wild botw combat videos. I don't see how people do that with the linear menu.
Click to expand...
Hah, that's amazing. I saw this around the time it was posted on Reddit, didn't realize it was made by a fellow Famiboards user.
 
We are getting into 1 month territory soon, hoping for a trailer soon but at this point Im probably good just waiting to jump into the game without knowing any more
 
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Breath of the Wild got its final trailer 52 days before its release. Let's see if history repeats.
 
BY2K said:
Breath of the Wild got its final trailer 52 days before its release. Let's see if history repeats.
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When should we be seeing the OLED announcement, assuming it follows the same pattern as previous ones (eg. Splatoon 3)?
 
Really hope this thread can continue staying free from openly conversing about what's in the art book. I realize some people who've seen it might be eager to assuage hardline skeptics about what the game's going to feature but I imagine a lot of people would rather avoid spillover that divulges too much even with the marketing being what it is right now since art books can be very comprehensive (and on that note no; I do not agree with Kit and Krysta that the leak was a consequence of "lackluster" marketing -- as The Last Of Us 2 proved to everyone, people with forbidden knowledge don't need much incentive to clout chase).
 
Decoyman said:
Really hope this thread can continue staying free from openly conversing about what's in the art book. I realize some people who've seen it might be eager to assuage hardline skeptics about what the game's going to feature but I imagine a lot of people would rather avoid spillover that divulges too much even with the marketing being what it is right now since art books can be very comprehensive (and on that note no; I do not agree with Kit and Krysta that the leak was a consequence of "lackluster" marketing -- as The Last Of Us 2 proved to everyone, people with forbidden knowledge don't need much incentive to clout chase).
Click to expand...
I definitely think it has something to do with bad marketing. We're two months away. The marketing is abysmal. No casual person who bought BOTW knows TOTK is coming. I've never seen an ad anywhere. It's barely even in the News section of Switch. Nobody would've felt the need to leak that for attention if people were already sated. I'm sure it'll be amazing but everyone is vastly overestimating how a 6 year old system with little hype left is going to have a Zelda game "sell itself" to the tune of even 20 million, let alone 30 million. I'm shocked people think the marketing is fine.
 
MeatheadSamus said:
I definitely think it has something to do with bad marketing. We're two months away. The marketing is abysmal. No casual person who bought BOTW knows TOTK is coming. I've never seen an ad anywhere. It's barely even in the News section of Switch. Nobody would've felt the need to leak that for attention if people were already sated. I'm sure it'll be amazing but everyone is vastly overestimating how a 6 year old system with little hype left is going to have a Zelda game "sell itself" to the tune of even 20 million, let alone 30 million. I'm shocked people think the marketing is fine.
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I've seen promoted TOTK ads on literally every video game adjacent website I visit and have seen the Switch feed on occasion been covered with nothing but Zelda.

Clearly I'm not alone on this considering it's been on top of Amazon charts for a while, but regardless, the argument that someone leaked it only because marketing is perceived as a failure doesn't wash given the history of significant game leaks.
 
Jencks said:
this shit comes out in 2 months wtf????? idk man, ive got a bad feeling about this game
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What’s the mindset behind this??

Genuinely wondering. Like what’s the logic. The marketing is lowkey because Nintendo isn’t confident in the game? despite literally always having insane quality control for Zelda games? They would just delay the game again if that was the case lol.

Mind you, “marketing being lowkey” includes… ending all of the last three directs on it.

I guess I just really don’t understand how anyone could have a “bad feeling”
 
Phendrift said:
What’s the mindset behind this??

Genuinely wondering. Like what’s the logic. The marketing is lowkey because Nintendo isn’t confident in the game? despite literally always having insane quality control for Zelda games? They would just delay the game again if that was the case lol.

Mind you, “marketing being lowkey” includes… ending all of the last three directs on it.

I guess I just really don’t understand how anyone could have a “bad feeling”
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Because I don't think it looks that good and none of the trailers have been particularly exciting. "Insane quality control" doesn't always weed out fundamentally bad design decisions. I've yet to be convinced about the world reuse.
 
Decoyman said:
I've seen promoted TOTK ads on literally every video game adjacent website I visit and have seen the Switch feed on occasion been covered with nothing but Zelda.

Clearly I'm not alone on this considering it's been on top of Amazon charts for a while, but regardless, the argument that someone leaked it only because marketing is perceived as a failure doesn't wash given the history of significant game leaks.
Click to expand...
Dead honest--I have seen minimum 10x more ads for Metroid Prime than Zelda. I have never seen one on Youtube and watch Youtube for hours every day at work. Never seen one plastered on a website, or even in the top left corner of Youtube on the home page. Given how much I talk about Metroid Prime, makes it a little creepy that my ads are 90% MPR...
 
I do find it amusing how many Nintendo titles got the same treatment like “why isn’t Nintendo marketing this” that people seem to forget about during a highly anticipated game that’s near release.

And then there’s the one that got too much marketing that people complained about lol.

I’ll worry if it’s a week or two before launch and previews hadn’t even happen yet. I’ve seen this cycle too many times.
 
Jencks said:
Nice attempt at a gotcha but I stand by both of these statements. I’m not even sure what you’re trying to say
Click to expand...

It’s cool, I think I’m just going to wait a bit longer before I decide whether I’m truly excited for this game or not personally. A lack of information is certainly frustrating at times, but it hasn’t dampened my spirits nor has it made me have any bad feelings about the game. We’ll get information soon, until then I just like to discuss (without spoilers) what we do know.

Feel free to fret, but I also think you should’ve explained why you have a bad feeling about the game in your post I quoted, although I see now that you’ve elaborated. Fair points! But I just don’t feel the same way about your points.
 
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After Nintendo releases a new trailer in the next few weeks and TotK ends up selling over 20 Million units, I hope I never have to hear about how “bad” Nintendo is at marketing their flagship games.

…who am I kidding, we had the same shit with Animal Crossing, Bowser’s Fury, Pokémon Legends Arceus, Splatoon 3, and Fire Emblem Engage (Plus most recent PlayStation first party games). Nintendo fans are still stuck in 2010 when it made more sense for companies to advertise games heavily many months or even years in advance.
 
If the next trailer sucks again then yeah I’ll complain that the marketing is bad. If there isn’t a next trailer then yeah I’ll complain that the marketing is bad. How can they fix this? Make a good trailer or show something interesting from the game.
 
Jbone916 said:
After Nintendo releases a new trailer in the next few weeks and TotK ends up selling over 20 Million units, I hope I never have to hear about how “bad” Nintendo is at marketing their flagship games.

…who am I kidding, we had the same shit with Animal Crossing, Bowser’s Fury, Pokémon Legends Arceus, Splatoon 3, and Fire Emblem Engage (Plus most recent PlayStation first party games). Nintendo fans are still stuck in 2010 when it made more sense for companies to advertise games heavily many months or even years in advance.
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Most giant games can be advertised as the company pleases, but Nintendo has to make sure they maximize sales of every game they make. Yeah, hopefully there’s something around PAX. Marketing has definitely been weird to say the least, the last trailer buried the “game will be delayed watch” talks, hopefully the next trailer solidifies a sequel was chosen over a brand new world. It’ll sell like crazy, we all know that, I’d say 20M is definitely possible, but the next trailer will decide how quickly that milestone is reached.
 
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Jencks said:
If the next trailer sucks again then yeah I’ll complain that the marketing is bad. If there isn’t a next trailer then yeah I’ll complain that the marketing is bad. How can they fix this? Make a good trailer or show something interesting from the game.
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You will be able to explore a vast sky and the lands below... what more do you want? ;)
 
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Jencks said:
If the next trailer sucks again then yeah I’ll complain that the marketing is bad. If there isn’t a next trailer then yeah I’ll complain that the marketing is bad. How can they fix this? Make a good trailer or show something interesting from the game.
Click to expand...

What should be shown in the next Trailer, that would make the Marketin for Zelda TotK better?
 
I wouldn't bank on PAX having anything regarding TOTK, at least not from a user perspective. Cutting a demo build is a massive amount of work and a lot of things can go wrong during those demonstrations, especially for a game as expansive as this is going to be. I think they'll just be comfortable sticking to a Direct and with press-controlled previews to very selective outlets.
 
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Lintendo said:
What should be shown in the next Trailer, that would make the Marketin for Zelda TotK better?
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central mechanic, confirmation of dungeons, indication of general gameplay loop, new towns, new characters, more new enemies

Confirmation of literally anything mostly so we don’t have to play guesswork to see if this game will address the basic shortcomings of the last one
 
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Please note that this thread is completely spoiler-free, and that includes tagged spoilers. If you want to discuss spoilers, we refer to the spoiler thread.
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