9th March 2017, 12:47 AM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:This game does a great job of giving you pretty clear hints on what to do next. The "sight lines" in any one location are tailor-made so that you see points of interest the developer wanted you to see. The distractions are just that, and you can either book it to the general location you're heading to or take a break and climb an entire mountain because it's there. You never lose sight of your goal (literally) and the layout of the world is such that you never feel truly lost.This part could work, I won't know until I play it.
Quote:This game TRUSTS you. It doesn't burden you with a talking sword or hat or shadow reminding you every 5 seconds of your mission. It doesn't dump a bunch of icons all over the map and say "get all this stuff". It doesn't really even tell you where a place is with a marker most of the time. Most of the time, you get general instructions like "follow the road north past the great rock that looks like a long-neck and past the mountains that burn and you'll find the Great Valley". It's enough, it really is, and the game makes a quick note of that hint before leaving the rest to you. The hints are, at long last, cryptic again as they were in days of yore. I can't tell you what a relief it is for a Zelda game to finally once again trust me, the player, to figure things out without spelling it out 2 or 3 times in a row.This part, however, is where we strongly disagree! Now, having a quest log is a big help here, and if the quests listed there have enough help -- pointers to tell you where to go, specific statements about what you should be doing, and such -- not having a companion character is okay. MM had a basic quest log and it was really helpful there. But Navi, Midna, Fi, and such, they are essential gameplay mechanics, and Midna, at least, is a great character too, the best one in that game by a wide margin. As much as it is occasionally slightly annoying to be told the same thing for the fifth time, I would never want to play any of those games without the helpers, just like how I would never, ever play Metroid Prime with the "you should go here" assist markers turned off. Apart from a game being totally broken, boring, or terrible, not knowing where I should be going in a game is one of the easiest ways to get me to stop playing; either I go look up what to do in a guide or quit playing, pretty much, in such situations. What you say about "vague clues" sounds TERRIBLE if they are not specific enough to make sense! I hate the useless "clues" of way too many games in the '80s to early '90s, that is awful game design as I go over in my LttP thread. I really, really hope that this game is much less vague than that, and that the quest log helps out a lot.
Quote:It is in this spirit that the game's cooking system turns out to be very intuitive without spelling out "okay, this is how you make a steak". The game gives you two general rules: normal cooking ingredients make normal food, and gross stuff makes potions. Generally, you can intuit exactly how to make what you want to make. The game's items all have very clear descriptions, so if it boosts your defense, it'll tell you "this armorshroom boosts defense in a meal". So, as a general rule, just toss three ingredients in a pot and you'll get something edible. The rest is just experimentation. Ever try to develop a new recipe in real life? It's like that, and it's fun. Sure, you'll get the occasional nightmare item that's so disgusting it's blurred out, but that's part of the fun. Heck, you even have the occasional NPC tell you outright how they made their personal specialty. Yes, I would love it if there was some form of recipe book that stored everything you learned, but I would never exchange trial and error this fun for something boring like just picking a recipe off the ground and following the directions every time.Again, I don't understand why someone would actually publish a game like this where you have to make the combination every time with no list saying what works... what? Why would you actually do things that way, that's so dumb... in real life things like "recipes" exist, after all.
Quote:Really though, I agree with you. A lot of the "open world" games out there are nothing but endlessly boring. There's a bunch of checklist collectibles with no real point to them beyond being on a checklist and generally nothing really tying all the myriad side-quests together. Breath of the Wild is NOT like those games. This is an expertly crafted open world experience where everything has a purpose, even the vast empty spaces! This video I think does a good job explaining it:I'm not so sure that that video makes me want to play the game...
Quote:Come ABF, you need to Experience the Challenge of Endless Adventure!When I decided to get a lot of computer parts last month, I knew that there was no way I'd get a Switch (or Wii U) now. I doubt I'd have gotten it anyway, but I spent a lot on a computer, no way can I justify buying a Switch or something on top of that... and besides, it's usually best to wait a while after launch before buying a system, since early systems often have issues. (Maybe I should have gotten a Wii U instead of a PS3 late last year, but the PS3's well worth having too and cost less, so I don't know...)
I'm sure I'll get either a Wii U or a Switch sometime this year, though it's hard to decide which; on the one hand I really do want a Wii U while the games are still easy to find in stores, and want the system because there are games on it I want to play, but on the other hand I want Nintendo's upcoming TV console stuff and not only past ones... not sure which way to go there. Additionally the Switch looks like it won't have a great software library until Christmas considering how thin the release library is until then, and there are some hardware issues I'm seeing mentioned often such as screen scratching and the left Joycon, so it's easy to put that one off for a while, but the Wii U... well, I would need to find a good price for one, no way am I paying what Gamestop wants for those things for instance.