The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii-U, Switch) 2017

[JaidynReiman]

1 hour ago, Shaddy the guy said:

To be honest, I hate the split timeline thing so fucking much, I really just wish this game was retconning everything into a new universe.

Hell, do it Stone Ocean style and have every prior plot point flow into this universe, blow the whole thing up at the end, and move on to a different one.

I keep thinking that maybe someone was so fed up with all the shit that happened to create the timeline split, they did just that, which resulted in the appearance of "Calamity Ganon." After defeating Calamity Ganon the timeline is restored into one single timeline.

 

But that's only speculation right now obviously.

 

I'd really like to see Ganondorf appear as a young version (separate from Ganon) who is the ruler of the Gerudo as a major side story in the desert region. Ganondorf is still evil and wishes to take over Hyrule, but also wants to destroy Calamity Ganon (as it will destroy the world otherwise, which Ganondorf doesn't want).

Although tbh, I just want everyone. All major characters (who fit in the context of this game; namely, Fi wouldn't work and Midna would be iffy), and even quite a few minor ones.

[Wraith]

3 hours ago, Shaddy the guy said:

To be honest, I hate the split timeline thing so fucking much, I really just wish this game was retconning everything into a new universe.

Hell, do it Stone Ocean style and have every prior plot point flow into this universe, blow the whole thing up at the end, and move on to a different one.

The timeline is such an afterthought that you wouldn't be losing anything by just not considering it part of the canon at all and going with your own interpretation. Most of the games don't rely on eachother's plots at all.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

All the more reason not to have it in the first place. What does it add, really? It stops fan theories as to how the games are supposed to be connected, I suppose, but is that something that was really ever a big problem?

[Wraith]

2 minutes ago, Shaddy the guy said:

All the more reason not to have it in the first place. What does it add, really? It stops fan theories as to how the games are supposed to be connected, I suppose, but is that something that was really ever a big problem?

It's probably not something they would have even done if people didn't keep asking them about it, to be honest.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Yeah but it would both have saved money/time and solved problems more easily if they'd said every game that isn't stated to be a sequel was just independent, right? 

Whatever. THIS game looks good, and that's all I need. I suppose my real problem is that the individual games have never had plots that really felt endearing to me. Wind Waker had a cool ending, I liked Groose for his fuck-your-plans attitude, Majora tripped balls, but I want something that feels like it's, y'know, a story with characters. Nobody ever seems to feel like their personalities affect their actions nor do they seem to hold a lot of situations with a ton of weight "because destiny" (again, maaaaaybe not Wind Waker, but that's iffy), and if they're going to be that way I'd much rather see them do the Mario RPG thing and get incredibly meta and just make fun of all the repeating tropes. 

Heck, really as long as you have fun characters and new subversions, you can work with repeating tropes. I mean, basically every JoJo part is

Spoiler

-Main character in some sort of trouble

-A-DWOAH? They have some trick up their sleeve

-get introduced to side character that basically just commentates fights

-fight a bunch of minor villains

-eventually meet a couple of other side characters all at the same time

-fight a bunch more major villains and foreshadow something

-play a rigged game of gambling somehow

-get introduced to the villain

-the heroes keep trying to get to them but fail somehow

-new final side character

-get to villain

-hit low point

-at least one side character dies, maybe more

-someone cries about it but other characters seem weirdly chill about the whole thing

-at least 2 characters survive

-villain is defeated, honor the dead

-show them in the clouds, turn up to the sky

-some melancholy ending stuff

 

but because every part has different characters that make it interesting, I don't see an issue. I'll never forget Polnareff's goofassery, or Fugo's fork-stabbing tendency, or FF not knowing how to control a possessed corpse properly. But Zelda games don't have that. Link is a slab of meat in terms of personality, and there's not any really interesting or relevant main companions. Tatl's tsundere kinda stopped after the first couple hours, Navi was never really anything other than an interrupting data display, Fi was literally an interrupting data display, and so on. You could make a case for Midna, and again, a lot of Wind Waker's characters, but how long does any of that last? It all atrophies in the end to give way to destiny hero bullshit.

I weep not for what wasn't done, but what could have been that refused.

 

Edit: man this post seems whiny looking back

sorry

[Salamander]

3 hours ago, Shaddy the guy said:

All the more reason not to have it in the first place. What does it add, really? It stops fan theories as to how the games are supposed to be connected, I suppose, but is that something that was really ever a big problem?

You're approaching it from the wrong angle.  Fan theories as to how the games were connected was never a "problem," though you might characterise it as a need which there was no reason not to satisfy.  Rather, I would point out that while the timeline isn't of major importance, it wasn't ever of minimal importance, either.  The games have always drawn references between themselves anyway.  You won't find many games in the series that haven't connected or been retroactively connected to specific earlier/later games, even if they don't share connections with all the other games.  Zelda 1 and Zelda 2, Link To The Past and Link's Awakening, Wind Waker to Phantom Hourglass to Spirit Tracks, Minish Cap to Four Swords to Four Swords Adventures, and so on.  If you get rid of the overarching timeline, then you do not, in fact, kill the notion of timelines in the series, but rather end up with a whole bunch of miniature timelines which are canonically undeniable.  The chronology of the series would be even messier without a timeline than it is with it!

But the main function of the timeline is to add ready context so that the games don't have to spend time introducing an entirely new universe repeatedly.  The "retold legend" idea would radically alter games like Wind Waker, for example, which leans heavily on details established by Ocarina Of Time; ditch that connection, and suddenly you have to spend time setting up a fresh backstory which players have no pre-made emotional investment in.  Furthermore, the same connections retroactively add weight to the narratives of previous games, too, with Wind Waker demanding that we revisit the character of OoT's Ganondorf with a little more depth in mind.  I'd wager that Breath Of The Wild will also benefit from links to other games in establishing the nature of its incarnation of Ganon, too.  The "retold legend" idea isn't the more elegant interpretation; rather, it creates redundancies.  Why bother setting up a new version of events when an existing one meets the requirements whilst already being cared about?  Rather than the timeline chaining new games to a limited set of possibilities, it liberates them, offering the possibilities of a wealth of existing material.

I'm aware that this argument won't mean a great deal to some people, though.  How much a person cares about timelines and context seems largely to depend on the individual - which is fine; people aren't obliged to care about the same things.  However, I see no reason to toss the timeline away because some people don't see the necessity for it; the timeline causes them nobody any injury by existing, but its loss would be felt by the people who do care.  That's vandalism, frankly.

9 hours ago, Patticus said:

I don't know if I'd call Ganon the reincarnation of Demise, though. The way I understand it, Demise's all-consuming evil is destined to return time and again, but not necessarily in the same vessel. Ganon just happens to be an immensely evil character from a critical juncture in Hylian history, but that ancient evil could easily pick out a new host to fill up if Ganon lost his appeal.

I'm pretty unclear on how Demise's curse works, but it does seem like every major evil represents on some level an incarnation of Demise, at least so long as it's facing a Link and a Zelda.  Spirit Tracks's Malladus, at least in his final form, is visually a Ganon parallel, and Vaati managed to keep on coming back as well despite blatantly dying in his chronologically earliest appearance.  It just makes sense to me that this bunch are all on some level driven by the same evil force as Ganon rather than Demise just taking a holiday while Link and Zelda face a new guest star.  To me, the significance of Ganon is that Ganondorf kind of hijacked Demise's curse for himself and became the archetype for most of Demise's incarnations, which I guess is what happens when a Demise incarnation gets his hands on the Triforce of Power... but this is all fan speculation, really.  True in essence - for Ganon is indeed the main villain of the series despite Demise's position in the backstory - but not necessarily true by those words in canon.

Which is why it would be interesting to see...

5 hours ago, JaidynReiman said:

I'd really like to see Ganondorf appear as a young version (separate from Ganon) who is the ruler of the Gerudo as a major side story in the desert region. Ganondorf is still evil and wishes to take over Hyrule, but also wants to destroy Calamity Ganon (as it will destroy the world otherwise, which Ganondorf doesn't want).

I'd like a Ganondorf game, too, but with a slightly narrower, more personal scope; pre-OoT, out searching for the power to save his people, but gradually being corrupted by dark forces and his own malign temptations along the way.  That would basically just be the window-dressing to a game with a lot of destructible terrain, though - a different kind of freedom to that offered by Breath Of The Wild, the freedom to eventually become strong enough to ignore keys and puzzles and just knock down walls.

[Patticus]

3 hours ago, FFWF said:

I'm pretty unclear on how Demise's curse works, but it does seem like every major evil represents on some level an incarnation of Demise, at least so long as it's facing a Link and a Zelda.  Spirit Tracks's Malladus, at least in his final form, is visually a Ganon parallel, and Vaati managed to keep on coming back as well despite blatantly dying in his chronologically earliest appearance.  It just makes sense to me that this bunch are all on some level driven by the same evil force as Ganon rather than Demise just taking a holiday while Link and Zelda face a new guest star.  To me, the significance of Ganon is that Ganondorf kind of hijacked Demise's curse for himself and became the archetype for most of Demise's incarnations, which I guess is what happens when a Demise incarnation gets his hands on the Triforce of Power... but this is all fan speculation, really.  True in essence - for Ganon is indeed the main villain of the series despite Demise's position in the backstory - but not necessarily true by those words in canon.

Demise's final (English version) words:

Quote

"My hate... never perishes. It is born anew in a cycle with no end! I will rise again!

Those like you... Those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero... They are eternally bound to this curse.

An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time!"

His hatred is being reborn cyclically, and incarnations of this hatred are destined to follow the bloodlines of Link and Zelda, who are bound by blood to this curse.

So... yeah, it's not necessarily Demise himself being reincarnated, so much as it is the hate he presumably created being reborn as part of this cyclical curse. Ganon is a manifestation, possibly even a victim of this curse, but as we see in other villains, he is not necessarily the sole heir to it.

The "I will rise again!" line could be interpreted as Ganon et al being direct reincarnations of Demise, sure, but much more likely to me, it means that we will face Demise himself again - presumably after the timelines reunite. The Demon King fooled Fi, did not completely dissolve within the Master Sword, and will one day re-emerge in spectacular fashion to wreak his revenge.

[Shade Vortex]

I honestly, for one, do not think the timeline ever will reunite (but I could be wrong), and I do not understand why some people (I've seen this by more people say this kinda thing than just you Patticus, so I'm not intending to specifically call you out) think that it eventually will. The point of how the timeline was set up was so that they could still theoretically place a game before or after any game, and the split timeline only makes that easier/more interesting to do in my mind. You have a game that coincidentally can fill a gap between two games? Place it there. Each timeline has a drastically different version of events after OoT and that serves to make the narrative that follows that path of events more interesting. Everything post-WW is in New Hyrule, so it's the most effected by this, but everything post-ALttP involves a Hyrule which coincidentally to BoTW has seemingly overgrown with wilderness and is in ruins (so it seems like the most likely candidate from a "common sense" approach), although I can't really make an argument for a shared theme in anything post MM, because MM itself barely has effect/relevance on TP or FSA, and FSA and TP have not too much in common either (although FSA does kinda screw with Ganon's badass death in TP).

While I acknowledge that Breath of the Wild seems to share connections with games of all three timelines, I'm pretty sure at the end of the day it's only going to be part of one, and the others could be chalked up to how Hyrule Historia describes the timeline itself. The series fittingly is literally a series of Legends, which have been seemingly retold so many times that things have changed, and this of course creates an excuse for them to ignore inconsistencies and contradictions easily. It's actually the best way for the to treat the timeline too, because it gives them a lot more freedom to change things- so rather than backing themselves further into a corner, they did it in a way that allows them a lot of leeway.

[expansivelovestories]

i didn't know about this before;

http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Miyamoto_Order

especially the idea that Link's Awakening can be interpreted as happening before or after any of the stories mentioned (due to it being entirely in a dream world).  While the set sequence he gives being in question by various people who have looked into the details, the note about Link's Awakening may make it possible to at least pretend/have it as head canon that it is what precedes Breath of the Wild.   

To me Link's Awakening is the perfect complement to Breath of the Wild due to how much life they were able to bring out of the simplest graphical style, music and sound quality, memory limitations, and even screen size.  it still somehow feels like a deeply nuanced, living and breathing world; each step of the story and map design was done just so, allowing the experience overall to become much more than just the sum of its parts! 

 

[Indigo Rush]

I didn't see this posted on here, so here it is, lol

Basically my rsponse to anyone who says Zelda isn't doing anything new

Maybe it's not inventing any new mechanics, but it's putting them all together and making them flow.

[Indigo Rush]

"If you're on your own, feel free to take my axe along with you."

So, basically, "it's dangerous to go alone, take this."

That'll do, Nintendo, but a little conspicuousness wouldn't be remiss.

[Celestia]

I like that they went for a more subtle approach to referencing that famous line. Don't get me wrong, if they had just copied it word for word, or at least closer to it, that would have been fine, but I prefer it this way. XP

[JaidynReiman]

Lol, I didn't catch that part of his statement. That's epic.

[Radiant Hero Ike]

37 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

"If you're on your own, feel free to take my axe along with you."

So, basically, "it's dangerous to go alone, take this."

That'll do, Nintendo, but a little conspicuousness wouldn't be remiss.

Evidently one of the tower thingies, in the new language, says "It's dangerous to go alone" on the side of it, as well.

[Patticus]

3 hours ago, Gambling Idol Luka said:

Evidently one of the tower thingies, in the new language, says "It's dangerous to go alone" on the side of it, as well.

All of which feeds my own personal little theory that perhaps, just perhaps, this game might be a re-imagined Zelda 1, or if not that, then perhaps it is a game taking place in a different timeline at about the same as Zelda 1.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

Crazy thought: What if Midna is in the game as a side character? I mean, assuming we're in another timeline than TP, she(and the Twili) would still be in the twilight realm, and the mirror of twilight would still be intact, although likely hidden(I mean, we don't know for sure where on the timeline it was created, but basically it could be anywhere all the way back to SS, and the Twilight Realm is known as of OoT). Just a theory, and you never know, then again outside of Ganon, Zelda and Link very few characters in the series have ever reappeared.

[Indigo Rush]

Here, have 17 minutes of direct feed gameplay footage:

Zelda's Mysterious girl's voice, though <3

[Shade Vortex]

12 hours ago, Patticus said:

All of which feeds my own personal little theory that perhaps, just perhaps, this game might be a re-imagined Zelda 1, or if not that, then perhaps it is a game taking place in a different timeline at about the same as Zelda 1.

This theory has already been debunked by Shigeru Miyamoto. "SM: The relationship between Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda first comes from the reactions of people who have been able to test the game, we are not trying to recreate the first Zelda. At the time, the latter was created with the idea of freedom of action and a miniature garden in mind. When the series started to evolve, we went to make more and more games with only one path to follow, which pushed us to create larger and more complex dungeons, to imagine enigmas requiring specific items which ended up giving very sequential games. We then decided to go back to the roots of the series and we started developing the game we are showing today."

The references are intentional, I'm sure, but it is definitely not a remake or a re-imagining of the first Zelda. I do think the latter part about it taking place around the same time period is plausible, though I persoanlly think it takes place near the end of the timeline, regardless of which timeline it ends up being from.

[G-Force]

7 hours ago, Indigo Rush said:

Here, have 17 minutes of direct feed gameplay footage:

Zelda's Mysterious girl's voice, though <3

Ok, so, am I the only person who noticed the sound references that the Sheikah tech makes?

When a Sheikah Tower or Shrine is "distilling" information or runes, it makes a subtle melody that resembles this, and when the Sheikah Slate confirms that somethings been added to it, it sounds like this.

I haven't seen anyone on any forums point this out before.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I do like that we're just straight-up calling him Link in main-series titles now. Being able to name the protagonist "ASSFACE69" did take away some of the mysticism

[JaidynReiman]

7 hours ago, Shade Vortex said:

This theory has already been debunked by Shigeru Miyamoto. "SM: The relationship between Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda first comes from the reactions of people who have been able to test the game, we are not trying to recreate the first Zelda. At the time, the latter was created with the idea of freedom of action and a miniature garden in mind. When the series started to evolve, we went to make more and more games with only one path to follow, which pushed us to create larger and more complex dungeons, to imagine enigmas requiring specific items which ended up giving very sequential games. We then decided to go back to the roots of the series and we started developing the game we are showing today."

The references are intentional, I'm sure, but it is definitely not a remake or a re-imagining of the first Zelda. I do think the latter part about it taking place around the same time period is plausible, though I persoanlly think it takes place near the end of the timeline, regardless of which timeline it ends up being from.

Taking place "at about the same time" as Legend of Zelda means its near the end of the timeline.

 

But frankly, I don't think it takes place near the end of the timeline unless the "time crash" theory is true. Disregarding time travel, the only location that makes the most sense is 100 years after OOT... in any timeline, but Downfall makes the most sense by far. The game will be a retelling of the events of the Imprisoning War, or perhaps the tail end of it when Ganondorf is finally fully sealed away into the Sacred Realm. It may even explain how the Downfall Timeline came into existence in the first place, as currently its just a flimsy "what if" (which makes it an alternate universe to the other two timelines and not a true timeline branch).

 

It may look like its in a post-apocalyptic Hyrule, but remember that in Zelda 1/2 there's far less actual locations to visit, while this game has the OOT Temple of Time, and the entire plateau looks like it may have once been Hyrule Castle Town.

[Indigo Rush]

1 hour ago, G-Force said:

Ok, so, am I the only person who noticed the sound references that the Sheikah tech makes?

When a Sheikah Tower or Shrine is "distilling" information or runes, it makes a subtle melody that resembles this, and when the Sheikah Slate confirms that somethings been added to it, it sounds like this.

I haven't seen anyone on any forums point this out before.

I did notice it, and man do I love it! I love the little nods this game has.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I found this stupid thing

Spoiler

 

[shdowhunt60]

Just as I figured, the bulk of Breath of the Wild's visual direction is made to accommodate the Wii U's anemic hardware. The game runs at 720p at 30fps, and doesn't really maintain that all through-out, and it appears the game still struggles with the bordering-non existent textures. By all means, it's technically impressive what Nintendo's managed to extract from the Wii U, but there's just compromises that shouldn't have had to been made. Here's to hoping that the NX version has better performance.

[JaidynReiman]

18 minutes ago, shdowhunt60 said:

Just as I figured, the bulk of Breath of the Wild's visual direction is made to accommodate the Wii U's anemic hardware. The game runs at 720p at 30fps, and doesn't really maintain that all through-out, and it appears the game still struggles with the bordering-non existent textures. By all means, it's technically impressive what Nintendo's managed to extract from the Wii U, but there's just compromises that shouldn't have had to been made. Here's to hoping that the NX version has better performance.

I'm sure the framerate issues will be tightened up before release.