The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I'm hoping they've moved onto breath of majora now instead of working on further DLC

Yeah Breath of the Wild is all done. The gaming forum leak squad has ppl chattering about a sequel in 2020.

I finished this yesterday and feel a little bereft

I did Eventide really late in the game, which made it super fun, like the game gave me a little nostalgia trip right when I was getting ready to finish it up.

I definitely wouldn't pick this back up just to find the memories.

I'm a little bummed that I found 117 shrines and the only one of the remaining three I have a clue about is that ball in Impa's house (which I looked up after beating Ganon and the solution is positively byzantine)

I would personally recommend breaking out the FAQ and getting the memories
Also, seriously? the Master Sword DLC quest thing is really difficult and very rewarding when you manage to win it

I couldn't finish eventide! Try again tho

Will my weapons keep breaking in this? Is that a thing? That's kind of annoying. But it is fun to just kind of elf grunt around and find stuff to fight or pick or kill or run away from. I faced what may be my first boss, or mini-boss, that rock that throws rocks, and I think I know how to take it down, but the game seems to be hinting I should wait until I have more than, like, second hand sticks as weapons. Anyway, I cooked a spicy fish meat dish and got a winter coat, so maybe there will be something cool for me to fight with in the next temple up in Chillyville.

it is a thing for sure, though it gets less annoying as time goes on imo

yep - the weapons breaking thing is annoying at first but becomes less of a big deal as you progress. and also there are some positive gameplay things that come out of it - you're forced to try out lots of different kinds of weapons rather than just relying on your go-to favorite weapon for dozens of hours. also you'll sometimes find yourself attacking enemies with weaker weapons (or, even better, using environmental objects in a creative way) just to "save" your better weapons for more difficult weapons, which sometimes makes typical encounters with low-level enemies more interesting and complicated.

xp
With the advantage of hindsight, I think the idea behind weapon fragility is it's the game's way of nudging you to use your rune powers in combat. For me that meant a lot of sneaking around and bombing enemies from above in the earlier hours of the game, but I've seen more dexterous players use some of the other powers in really creative ways.

yeah, watching youtubes of people who rely on the skills and environmental effects is really eye-opening. there really is an entirely different way of playing the game that looks like so much fun. i relied mainly on weapons, but if i ever do another runthrough i'm going to try to be as creative as i can with the other options.

Once you get out of the plateau there’s tons of weapons everywhere

xp to KM
ha yeah you posted a tweet upthread (where Link pushes a horse off a cliff 1 min. in) and that dude's account was filled with genuinely hilarious and elaborate Buster Keaton-style set-ups that made me realize how much more exploitable the physics engine was than I'd ever imagined. He was hacking the game really, but even just like using stasis on charging lynels didn't occur to me in my usually slightly panicked encounters with them. I didn't successfully kill a low-level monster with magnesis until hyrule castle ffs. Another thing I wondered about later in the game was how on the plateau you have to cut down a tree to cross a chasm, and I literally never ran into a second situation where that seemed necessary

I think it just wants you to be aware that you can cut down trees

lol that does make sense

Ooh I don’t think I ever killed something with magnesis

I did freeze the goblins on horses though

Squashing a lizalfo with a metal shelf was sooo satisfying, I wish I'd put in the effort to master it earlier. I think constantly shattering weapons when using stasis to shift those big black slabs made me kind of hate that ability, and I stupidly never used it in combat.

I looooove bombing stuff. I threw a bomb in a lake and a whole bunch of dead fish floated up, which made it easy to catch them.

oh it was actually ciderpress who posted the tweet I mentioned. Here's the account: https://twitter.com/Juntendo_Sw.

(JF, don't look at that though)

I love bombing things so much that I've blown myself up several times already. my fav move is to put down a bomb, taunt the dummies, then try to run away fast enough to blow them up when they reach the bomb. it's worth it!

bombs are great. I definitely felt like I'd learned the game when I could throw bombs at things nearby but still the right distance to not blow myself up

So I've encountered two of these rock monsters so far. Are they even worth fighting? They seem like a pain in the ass.

not really unless you want to

the game's open ended for a reason, do the things you enjoy and ignore the pains in the asses

they're eventually quite fun to fight (except the icy versions)

early on they're probably not worth it for weapon breaking reasons alone

awww, i think rock monsters are fun, just equip a hammer-type weapon and hold down the button while pounding on them

i also love picking up the little rock monsters and throwing them

Theres been a hilarious running meme on reddit where people are taking one of those metal moveable bookcases from Hyrule castle and putting them in all kinds of ridiculous places.

And a guy doing the whole game *without using the paraglider* which is fucking insane.

that is insane!

i wonder how possible it is to play without using melee or range weapons, using only the abilities?

how do you get off the plateau without taking fall damage? that seems like the only place where you Need the glider

I guess you could climb down if you had enough stamina boosters?

why would you want to? it's like the guy who does YouTube videos of how long it takes to walk or sail over vast video game environments. takes hours and hours and hours.

finally DL'd this after replacing my switch. i don't think i was THAT far into it before, having only taking down one of the...big things? slightly annoyed to be starting from scratch, but also it's nice to feel like i know what i'm doing and can move a lot more quickly. like, i think i spent a LOT of time on the plateau the first time around and this time i was outta there asap

OK, got myself a horse, got myself some inventory expansion, been fighting and/or avoiding some stuff, been doing some shrines. My takeaway so far is ... it's kind of boring, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Which is to say, it seems impeccably designed to be exactly as boring as it is. It's a very specific kind of boring that, I should stress, I am enjoying. But it's like a kid version of Dark Souls, I guess.

It’s the right level of boring for me, i.e. it’s challenging but doesn’t make me feel twitchy and exhausted.

It’s such a beautiful world, just exploring it for the first time, or finding new corners when you think you’ve seen everything - that’s the opposite of boring for me. It can be peaceful, but I’ve never found it dull. It really hits a sweet spot in “doing what I like about games and not doing what I don’t like” in a way no other game has (or will, probably).

I did get a bit bored after completing 100+ shrines and all the beasts, just farting around till I saw Ganon. But I think that boredom was more like anxiety and melancholy that I’d seen more of the game than it had left to show me.

yeah the world is like a warm bath for me

at first I thought it was too empty but the expanses really underscore the majesty of the various towns, encounters and set pieces dotted round the world

Oh, there's tons of stuff to see and do. But I'm kind of bored at the way you have to do it. Climbing, walking, jogging for like 3 seconds at a time, even gliding and horse riding. I know I'll build up my stamina and inventory and whatnot, but right now it all takes forever. And then talking with everyone and interacting with everything, that's kind of exhausting as well, since I don't want to miss something or someone important. OK, need to talk to this guy! Oh, he's just selling meat. Alright, gonna talk to this person! Oh, just complaining about the weather. Etc. Again, perfectly designed world, but a bit of cognitive dissonance balancing the broader apocalyptic OMG you have to save me quest and everyone and everything just chilling. I kind of wish there was a bit more pressure to hurry up! Even the monsters are often singing and dancing or sleeping. Their AI is pretty generous with letting you get away, too. I suppose this makes it fun to play in short bursts, but at that rate it would take months to finish.

So is the Witcher 3 kind of like this?

I was a bit slow to realise you could make your own fires to sleep through the night, and didn't have to find a pre-existing fireplace. If you're not doing that, it might help?

I also, er, didn't realise for ages that climbing up the towers unlocked the map. So I found my way to the Rito divine beast just by winging it, and the journey felt really epic.

But there's a midpoint (somewhere between the first and third shrines) when you still die a lot but you don't feel overpowered. After my 4th beast I was basically invincible.

xp Witcher 3 is a completely different type of game, it's no more similar to this game than spider-man is

Oh, I thought it was another open world wander/ride around on a big quest while mixing potions and helping people on side quests sort of thing. Maybe that's all games of this ilk.

I think I knew you could make your own fire in Breath, but I think I only have one flint, and so far it hasn't been hard to find fires (or survive the night), and besides, everything fucking breaks after three uses! Like, I got a sledgehammer so thought, cool, I can use it to smash clearly meant to be smashed rocks, and yeah, there was a gem or something inside, but then my hammer broke and now I don't have a hammer.

What do you mean, climbing the towers unlocks the map? You mean if you spy something from a high vantage it automatically gets added to the map? I haven't gotten to a beast yet because I think I've still been goofing around with the basics. I just got to that first village.

you can bomb those rocks, btw

when you climb a tower and put your slate on the dais thing, it fills in that area of the map for you all at once (there is no other way to open the map)

oh, I am thinking of different towers, just the ones with a treasure chest on top.

have been reading this thread, nodding my head excitedly, saying "HE'S DOING IT. HE's ACTUALLY DOING IT." like Joe Lo Truglio in Wet Hot American Summer

Map towers = sheikah towers ie:
https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/zelda_gamepedia_en/thumb/2/27/BotW_Great_Plateau_Tower.png/1200px-BotW_Great_Plateau_Tower.png

There are dozens of them and some are quite hard to get up! And if you think the games a bit dull/easy I'm thinking you havent yet encountered any Guardians or Lynels, heh you're in for a treat there.

It’s the right level of boring for me, i.e. it’s challenging but doesn’t make me feel twitchy and exhausted.

I realised the same when I went back and got a long way into WW the last few weeks. It was making me really stressed out!

yeah - lynels are genuinely tough, even into the late game due to the scaling of the various different lynel types (red/ blue/ white/ silver)

still can't reliably beat them

guardians are a nice fair challenge. so satisfying parrying their eye beam back at them

I wouldn't lose to lynels if I ate some 3x defense food, but boy would those fights be sloppy. If I ever play this again I plan to master using stasis on those assholes

I agree w arlo (!) re weapon durability
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCMDG51cf5w

I never said it was too easy, just a bit dull how much time is spent traveling and climbing and doing mundane stuff, like cooking and foraging. Because the handful of bigger enemies I've encountered early on have already been a massive pain in the ass. Rock monster: had to run away after doing minimal damage that destroyed all my weapons. Training robot spider in the shrine near the first town: destroyed all my weapons after doing minimum damage. Bigger monsters, the first biped foes I've encountered after the Bogpins or whatever: super fast and take a lot of damage. And Now I have little but a bunch of clubs and rakes and shit to fight with (plus bombs and bows) so just have to avoid everything. I hope coming across weapons starts becoming more common, because so far they are few and far between, and nothing has been tough enough to survive more than a couple of modest fights. I figure eventually the battle system will become second nature, but I'm hoping that comes sooner rather than later. I also hope I stop encountering people who trigger epic monologues about who I am and where I cam from and what I'm supposed to be doing. I get it, dude. I'm here to rescue the princess and save the kingdom.

the monologues with their voice acting are the worst part of the game. you are actually there to wander around before dying in new, embarrassing ways.