Sunday, April 1, 2018

Breath of the Wild: Kinstone Concept


Kinstones! This was arguably one of the most charming side quests in the series, which was featured in The Minish Cap, where fusing Kinstones with people (and even certain objects in the environment) would lead to something lucky. It might open the door to a cave, it might drop a treasure chest in the environment or spawn a golden enemy, which drops many Rupees.

Overall this is something that would have been an interesting addition to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. At this point we shouldn't expect any more updates or DLC for the game, but in five to ten years they might re-release Breath of the Wild on the next system, where it receives some "Deluxe" or "Definitive Edition" version with all the DLC already included from start and several improvements on top.

One of these improvements could be "Kinstones", which probably wouldn't be actual Kinstones, because this was a product of the Minish, but something as part of the Sheikah technology. These "Sheikah Kinstones" could be broken data chips, where assembling the two pieces would have a positive effect somewhere on the map, like special treasure chests appearing or even new Sheikah Shrines. This should be marked on your map right when you fused the Kinstones, so you know where to look immediately.

They could even use the golden enemies for this, where fusing Kinstones would spawn them somewhere on the map and they drop many Rupees, minerals and Star Fragments (they probably should do this anyway). This could even work in Normal Mode, though this would technically create more chances to miss photos for Hyrule Compendium...

The Kinstones themselves could come in several types again and would be stored in either the materials or the key items inventory tabs, probably the latter. They could also have an inventory tab on their own. You would find them in treasure chests, but they would also be dropped by defeating the various types of Guardian enemies.

And overall this would solve several issues with the game:

  • There's no real incentive to talk to many of the NPCs in the overworld.
  • Treasure chests often contain weapons or materials that you don't really need to a point, where opening treasure chests feels like a chore and isn't really rewarding.
  • All the DLC EX chests with the new armor pieces just got hidden in the world out of nowhere with lots of "EX Side Quests" being spammed into your Adventure Log all at once.

A new version of Breath of the Wild could tie most of the DLC armor pieces into the Kinstone quests. So, only after fusing Kinstones with certain people, the treasure chests with the new armor pieces would appear in the world.

When standing next to any NPC in the game, you would get the option to fuse Kinstones by pressing X or Y instead of A for the talking. This would open a small menu like in The Minish Cap, where you see the Kinstone half of the NPC and your Kinstone collection to chose the right one for a fusion.

There are many NPCs in the game, where you never really have to talk to them, e.g. Benny on a rock at the east border of Hyrule Field. Many of them are adventurers, so it's likely that they might have found some Sheikah artifacts on their way. And adding Kinstone fusions to these characters would turn all these characters into actual points of interest, where it's worthwhile to check everyone out, as Manny would say.

1 comment:

Tim said...

Interesting idea, I like your concept. I personally don't mind the "useless" NPCs because they add to the lore, and I don't like the idea of every single character being relevant. Some just being there for the sake of it makes it more realistic to me. That said, the Kinstone fusion is one of my favourite sidequests in the series, and seeing it return like that would be lovely indeed.

I also like your idea of tying it into the Expansion quests, where I agree with you that them just appearing out of nowhere seems weird. Personally, I thought about maybe including these quests in the old man's diary instead to somehow tie them into the game (with the DLC description hinting at checking there to activate them), but that wouldn't solve the issue of them all appearing at once I'll admit.