There are so many things being tracked all the time in the game for puzzles and the power arm. Yet despites literally tracking sunshadows for some puzzle completion for example it runs almost smoothly with (in my 170h) no crashes. On a 6 yo portable console??
Botw was already impressive but I could grasp it with the shaders and also there weren’t that much physics puzzle. Objects were more static, there wasn’t the two other maps, enemy diversity was limited, same for weapons. There was less of everything overall but I thought it was the limit of the console and the possible engineering around it.
Is there any resources on how they managed to pull this off? White papers, behind the scenes, charts, …?
I did play both games. I just really didn’t like totk because after years of development there were zero changes to the parts of the game that bothered me in botw.
Rant incoming: Combat still sucks ass, 90% of the enemy types are still the same (underground just colors them red), There is no point fighting anyone since you don’t get anything for them, even the chests are useless since all weapons are dogshit without the right fusionite. Dungeons felt less inspired than the divine beasts. World didn’t feel as rewarding to explore since many of the locations are the same or just slightly altered or now just floating in the sky. Performance was even worse prior to overclocking.
In the end im happy I spend €20 on a picofly instead of buying the game.
Rant outgoing: Counterpoint, combat is amazing and you’re just used to it because of breath of the wild. They absolutely did change the enemy types, and besides just being red the enemies in the depths permanently break your heart containers with gloom. Figuring out which enemies drop the best fusion materials is an essential part of the game, which I guess you just ignored. How did you not feel like jumping from floating ships in the sky up to a thunderstorm containing the entire wind temple was just not inspired enough? I’m seriously curious to know what temple designs would have satisfied you.
Counter counter rant: Idek what to say if you find the combat amazing, good for you I guess.
For me the main problem is that it’s way too easy/simple once you learn the counter or jump timing (1st fight if you played botw) and except for the bosses there is just 0 reason to engage in it, since the only thing you’ll gain from it is a replacement for the weapons you broke while doing it.
Don’t get me wrong figuring out the best fusionite weapons is cool but I’d rather have it be an addition to a nice weapon instead of everything you find being dogshit and only worth using once it’s upgraded. Btw It’s still weird that only the melee weapons were affected by the degradation and not shields and bows.
Yes there are some different enemies than in botw, but many are reused and I still feel like there’s not enough of them, and 9/10 times you engage them in the same way.
The dungeons don’t feel inspired enough to me since they all have the same premise, walk around for a bit doing a puzzle and have a fight. The devine beasts were 4 unique experiences at least.
The whole sky island shit is boring as hell since except for the first one you get to they are all the same few parts copied around.
Don’t get me wrong it’s not a bad game, its just not different enough from botw after 5 years. It’s just botw 1.5 maybe even 1.25, but definitely not a 2.0 If they had released it as a large dlc at a lower price I wouldn’t feel as strongly about it.
Fair points, and for sure they did recycle a ton of the content. I think really they were just banking on the completely new ultra hand and crafting mechanic to carry the majority of the gameplay. Cheers.
Ultrahand is definitely insanely cool feature to play with, I just hoped they’d flesh out the basics a bit more. That’s one thing I’d be sad to see go in the next zelda installment, although I’m not sure how they would keep it around. Hopefully the switch 2 allows for even more possibilities but I’m not that optimistic about Nintendo made hardware.