Sunday, December 24, 2017

Breath of the Wild: E3 2014 Location?

Do you remember, when Breath of the Wild was first announced in 2014? Back then Aonuma showed an impressive demo at E3 2014 in June and then showed some gameplay together with Miyamoto during the Game Awards in December. This was three years ago and the scenery that was shown back then is barely recognizable in today's game. GameXplain did a nice analysis of the Game Awards footage, where they were able to place it at Hateno Village and the Faron Woods. And much has changed since then! They couldn't identify a part, which was probably around Lake Kolomo, but otherwise they did a good job at placing all of the shown areas.

But what about the original E3 footage? The one from the demo? You know the amazing view of Hyrule, where Link stands on a hill, before a Guardian comes out of nowhere and starts to destroy everything in its path:


Well, I can only make an educated guess, but it does seem to cover the exact same spot as in the Game Awards footage. It's right at Hateno Village:


If you look closely, you can see the similar landmarks. There's the Dueling Peaks in the distance to the left and the Peak of Awakening on the right side. It's just that the landscape originally shown was much vaster and there was a greater distance between those areas. Death Mountain could also be seen to the left of the Peak of Awakening, while now it would be to the right. So a lot has changed since then, but it's still similar. With the above view you even stand above Link's house:


It's funny to imagine that the rustic, little house that can be seen to the left on the original footage was also supposed to be Link's house at the time. Who would have guessed? You can see bits and pieces of a village there, but it looks more like Kakariko than Hateno. It also looked more medieval in general.

Anyway, you have to keep in mind that while the original trailer used a real time engine everything still was made explicitly for this demo footage (source). So, the shown footage wasn't the actual game, which is why everything looked a lot more impressive than it did later on. The mid-air slow motion bow action was even added to the game afterwards, inspired by the trailer.


Apropos, the scene, where the Guardian chases Link through the forest would also be in Faron Woods, at the Zonai Ruins to be exact. You can even find the little wooden bridge there, but it still looks quite different and you can't destroy it, sadly. And it certainly would be quite a task to get a Guardian to chase you right to this point. The closest one would be up next to Tobio's Hollow, but from there it would need to chase you down a hill and through the jungle, which won't be happening... They are a lot less aggressive that they were supposed to be originally.

But it's interesting, how seemingly both the E3 2014 footage and Game Awards 2014 footage take place in the same areas, around Hateno Village and Faron Woods. And it's interesting, how much of their original vision was actually implemented in the meantime and how much it all has involved in over two years.

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