Breath of the Wild: No GamePad Dual Screen Usage

This has to be the boldest statement from Aonuma about Breath of the Wild. They rejected the full use of the Wii U GamePad, because it disrupts the gameplay, if you have to look down on the screen?

That's from the same man, who advertised the comfortable inventory management and map browsing of The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD just a few months ago...! Why should it be any different for Breath of the Wild now? Especially with its extensive Adventure Pouch I would prefer the use of the touchscreen. And the whole Sheikah Slate feels like it was developed around the Wii U GamePad to begin with.

Where did the interface from 2014 go? Who suddenly decided that it's the best to play this game without the dual screen usage? If that "distraction" really was a problem, they should have made it optional, but not remove it entirely. You can play the game with a Pro Controller, you can play it entirely on the GamePad, but you also should have the dual screen comforts of the previous Wii U Zelda games as an option...

This excuse is nonsensical and I feel like there's another reason for this decision: the NX version. The NX probably won't feature a similar touchscreen interface anymore and they didn't want the Wii U version to be superior in any way, which is why they removed all touchscreen interface elements from the Wii U version of the game.

I bet, if the NX hadn't any gyro sensor support, they would force you to use the analog stick for aiming again, because it suddenly is more "precise" and "less disruptive". Hypocrites. This needs some serious backlash.

Breath of the Wild: No Female Link?

In an interview with GameSpot, Eiji Aonuma seemingly denied that there's going to be a female Link and he used a rather fishy reason for this. Instead of entertaining the possibility of choosing the gender for Link, they thought about having Zelda playable, much like in the CD-i games, as a "simpler" solution. But then you would have the same issue as in the Animated Series, where you have to ask, what Link is really good for, if Zelda's doing all the work...

And with this very silly reasoning he's supposedly denying the rumors from April, by Emily Rogers. The same rumors stated that the game will be released simultaneously for both Wii U and NX and that the game will have voice acting. And both of this came true.

But I still think that a female Link option might be a possibility here. It's just something that Nintendo didn't want to reveal yet. And when there are embargoes in place, Aonuma won't be able to confirm anything at all. He kept "denying" the development of Majora's Mask 3D for years and it's the same situation. He gets pushed into a corner with a question like this, he can't just say "no", he can't also confirm it and saying "no comment" would be very suspicious. So, he finds a distraction to talk about, which is a very common interview technique. He talks about a playable Princess Zelda instead and anything else gets falsely interpreted by the "journalists".

Now, Link in the game seems to have many customization options. You can change his hair style, you can change all his gear including a variety of clothing. Never before a Zelda game has been closer to a RPG and a gender option for Link would simply be the next step. And if girls get to have fun with playing Link only in his underpants, it's only fair if boys can chose to play with this:

Or as this:

Just picture Samus more as a Linkle type, but this Zero Suit two-piece sportswear would match male Link's Sheikah label underwear pretty nicely.

And I would love that. If I have to look at the same butt for the duration of a long game like this, it might as well be one that I like. In general I prefer playing as female characters and the only reason I would ever play some MMORPG like Tera Online is because I could built myself some eye candy.

(If Nintendo wants to do some more cash grab, they could even make it so that the Zero Suit Samus amiibo makes look female Link really like Samus. But I should stop giving them amiibo ideas...)

The Sound of the Wild

Or lack thereof.

I keep listening to the Breath of the Wild trailer music in a loop and it's absolutely beautiful, especially the part after the 2 minute mark. Now, this kind of makes it disappointing that we're not going to hear much of it during the gameplay.

I do like that they set their focus on ambience. One of the biggest strengths of the Nintendo 64 Zelda games and quite some games from that era (e.g. Unreal) was the amazing use of sound, which basically compensated the early graphics. It wasn't just the music, it was all the ambient sounds. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask at night have a great atmosphere, which still gives me goosebumps today. But as graphics evolved, the audible atmosphere shrank. Breath of the Wild isn't there yet, though it's also not bad.

I hope that the lack of music in Breath of the Wild will make them focus on the audible atmosphere much more than usual, it's basically always night in this game. The piano pieces here and there are nice, but it's not much. However, hearing the same music in a loop for hours can also be annoying. I remember, how my neighbor was irritated, when I played Skyward Sword all day long at its release, because he kept hearing the same music again and again. Not that I care, but there's a point to this: the areas are much, much larger, so the same area music would get repeated longer than usual, which is why Nintendo probably wanted to do something different on the music department.

I just hope that it will bring us more of the beautiful music from the trailer. By the way, some of the tunes kind of remind me of the Song of Storms, in the last segment. This could be intentional together with the imagery, where the ground (and the Guardians) get struck by lightning.

Grezzo's New Game: Ever Oasis

Tri Force Heroes is just half a year old and GREZZO is already showcasing their next game, where they mix Zelda-esque Action RPG gameplay with their StreetPass Garden game: Ever Oasis. Watch the trailer here.

GREZZO has been mostly making Zelda stuff in the last five years: Ocarina of Time 3D, Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Majora's Mask 3D and Tri Force Heroes. And while I would have preferred, if they kept making DLC for the latter, Ever Oasis certainly looks charming. And the dungeon gameplay seems quite reminiscent of Zelda, for example the rolling doors reminded of Twilight Princess and the scorpion boss of Skyward Sword. Or the puzzle design seems to have some Zelda and Metroid ideas in them. (Morphball, anyone?)

During the gameplay I kept thinking that this may as well could have been a Zelda spin-off, where the little guy could be a representative of the long forgotten Zuna tribe and where you get to play as different races from the Zelda series, e.g. a Goron, a Tokay or a Liandri Mining Robot, but it's probably best kept as its own new IP. However, like Dillon's Rolling Western these kind of small new IPs on the 3DS tend to get overlooked easily. I might give it a chance, though.

Metroid Wild

I keep confusing the title of the new Zelda game and I often write "Breath of the World" or "Breath of the Wind", one time even "Breath of Fire". And I'm not the only one with that problem... To avoid this malapropism I call the game "Metroid Wild" in my head instead, because that has a nice ring to it and it's not that far fetched.

I was actually quite disappointed, when we learned that the Wii U wouldn't get a Metroid Prime 4 or even a new Metroid at all. But as I already said in a previous post, Breath of the Wind, errrhh Wild... is basically now Science Fantasy and rents a couple of ideas from the Metroid series.

I'm getting a lot of Metroid vibes from all Sheikah technologies. You enter the Sheikah shrines via an elevator, very similar to the ones in Metroid. The Sheikah Slate lets you scan the environment and acquiring a new Rune actually plays the Zelda "Get Item" jingle in a similar sound style as in the Metroid Prime series. They even put a Mini Thardus in there...

And this doesn't feel wrong to me. Metroid and The Legend of Zelda always shared many similarities in gameplay. They are both Action Adventures with an open world and item based progression, but one was Fantasy and the other Science Fiction. Items like Morphball Bombs, Ice Beam, Grapple Beam and Varia Suit turned out to be technological counterparts of various items from Zelda... Since I love Zelda and Science Fiction, I started to play all the Metroid games in 2008 and even call myself "TourianTourist", despite being primarily a Zelda fan.

Now, Metroid had its peak with the Metroid Prime Trilogy and the franchise doesn't seem to go anywhere right now. While I still would love to see a new Metroid game at some point (especially a side scrolling Metroid on the 3DS would have been awesome), I'm really digging the Science Fantasy direction for Zelda and welcome this new "Metroid Wild" game.

(If the game really had the possibility to play as a female Link, it would be cool, if you could make her look like Samus. You can chose different hairstyles for Link, from what I've heard.)

Breath of the Wild: Fire Rod Havoc

Forget those Treehouse livestreams. All the silly talking and trying to be funny don't do the game justice and you should just let the game speak for itself. There are some direct feed gameplay videos over at GameXplain and Polygon, where I would suggest watching those instead. No commentary, no fuzz, just the pure experience.

Halfway through the Polygon video there is even a neat discovery: the Fire Rod is actually one of the many disposable melee weapons. It's not only the first time that we get to use this item in a 3D Zelda game, it also looks pretty crazy, shooting large fire balls that jump through the area, setting everything on fire.

The Fire and Ice Arrows also look and SOUND very awesome. I love this feeling of powerful weaponry and combined with the slow motion effect combat in this game could become really fun. I'm only disappointed that the Ice Arrows don't seem to freeze water, but maybe that's because the water wasn't deep enough. I know that there's already the Cryo Rune to create ice blocks, but there should be alternative ways for everything.

Seemingly there is no Magic Meter in this game (technology is the new magic) and classic magic items now have turned into resources. You collect Fire and Ice Arrows, Korok Leaves and Fire Rods, but they will get used up eventually. If you're out of stuff, you always will have the Sheikah Slate Runes to help you out, but the environment probably provides you with the necessary tools, whenever they might be useful, e.g. finding an axe in a house near a tree that wants to be a bridge over an abyss.

I would love to see the Whip and Ball+Chain return as additional melee weapons. Especially the Whip seems likely as an alternative way to get to places (Grappling Hook style) and as a melee weapon, but it rips after a while... Hammer and Claymore already can be spotted in the demo, so these type of melee weapons will also return. And if there's a Fire Rod, in the very least an Ice Rod should be there as well. Maybe even Water and Sand Rods as well. Give us all the things to play with!

Don't Starve, Link! - Zelda, the Open World Survival RPG

If you had shown me Breath of the Wild 15 years ago, I would have explored in excitement. This game really has many things that I always wanted from a Zelda game, especially after the Nintendo 64 games.

It starts with the massive open world for you to explore. That's how I always wanted Zelda to be. Not some restricted linear experience, where you follow a certain order of dungeons. But some amazing fantasy world with the notion "if you can see it, you can go there". With the freedom to explore as you like and experience our own adventure. With a story that doesn't get told by a sequence of cutscenes, but by exciting discoveries.

I especially like, how Aonuma said that you can go straight to the final boss. It's possible, but just very hard and probably insane. There are multiple ways to get to your goals, some of them are just somewhat easier. But this also enables an interesting level of personal challenge, where Zelda fans can go crazy with speed and minimal runs. You don't need the Hookshot to get across that gap. The Hookshot just makes it easier...

There are many different way to traverse the world and the demo focused on two of them: gliding and shield snow boarding. It's funny, how ten days ago I thought, how it would be awesome to do more with the shield, after Link used it for flame surfing in the Animated Series. Maybe we will also get to propel ourselves from bombs like he did in Episode 10... That would be so crazy and with the physics engine entirely possible. I didn't like the rafting, though. That looked really lame and I hope that the ocean part of the world will have a boat that works more like in The Wind Waker.

Another thing I always wanted in Zelda were more melee weapons and tools aside from sword and hammer. I always wanted an axe in Zelda to chop down tree or a spear for a melee fighting style with larger range. When Gomess dropped his scythe in the Stone Tower Temple I always wanted to pick it up and use it for myself. But the game wouldn't let me...

The Wind Waker partially then allowed you to use enemy weapons and I loved that feature. But sadly you couldn't keep the weapons in your inventory for later fun. In Breath of the Wild, you can. And I hope it doesn't stop with axes and pitchforks. If after all this time I finally get to swing a scythe as Link, I will be happy. And bring the Ball & Chain back, while you're at it, Nintendo. But since you can actually have a living Stalfos arm as a weapon, I'm positive that they went crazy with the possibilities.

The enemies overall seem very well done with lots of interesting interactions. It's on par and probably even better than what we got in The Wind Waker, which had the most interesting enemies so far in the series. And right now we have mostly only seen some Bokoblins, Stal-Bokoblins, Keese and Chuchus... There certainly will be more interesting stuff, like that Talus guy and the Guardians. And everything seems to drop something. Treasures, weapons, loot...

Now, all this weaponry and junk goes into the Adventure Pouch and seems to be disposable, much like the shields in Skyward Sword. Only the glider and probably the Master Sword seem to be fixed items, while the typical upgrades of your abilities are provided by the Sheikah Slate... And I'm very much intrigued by it. Having technology like this in Zelda feels surprisingly good. Since they slowly approached ideas like this in Skyward Sword with Fi, the Gate of Time and the Lanayru Mining Robots, it doesn't feel completely out of place. And the whole Sheikah technology looks really cool.

Overall it seems like Skyward Sword was in many ways a testing ground for this game. A way to try new things out and expand on them, if fans react positively. Technology, the Adventure Pouch, treasures and insects, the Stamina meter. All of this has been introduced in the last big Zelda game.

The Sheikah Slate itself seems like the Ocarina Prime. It's a multi functional item, but instead of just some songs for teleportation and making it rain, this allows for pretty much any virtual ability. Stuff like Bombs or the Magnetic Gloves got integrated into this system, while it also provides new amazing abilities like the Stasis Lock. How cool is that idea?!

Together with the notion that everything is somewhat optional, it reminds me of the skills in Trine, where you can beat the entire game(s) without unlocking any new skills, but they will make things significantly easier. And for every puzzle and every obstacle there are multiple ways to solve and overcome them. In Breath of the World you may just quickly built a bridge with the right abilities or you have to spent cooking some stamina food, so you can climb to your goal...

The whole looting and cooking also reminded me of Don't Starve, which is a very stylish topdown survival game in a randomized open world. But there you also collect tons of junk from the environment, which you can throw into a crock pot to cook something up that ensures your survival. Or chop down trees and built a fire. Of course in Breath of the Wild this all looks more amazing, but I'm sure that there are other games that have done something similar already.

And this is the big but... there doesn't seem to be anything revolutionary here. It introduces many new elements to the Zelda series and combines them with many good ideas from previous Zelda games, but it's all something that you have seen in some other game before.

You have the junk collecting and cooking from Don't Starve, you get the dog from Fallout, the ability sets and physic puzzles from Trine, the Bullet Time from Max Payne, the radio towers from Far Cry, the extreme winter sports of Steep and the test chambers from Portal as mini dungeons.

The latter essentially confirms my worries about repetitive elements inside an open world. This whole technology stuff makes it look interesting, but with the six shrines that they have shown yesterday I already got bored by those Sheikah Monks... And I have to do this over a hundred times?! It all is a little bit too similar and I wonder, how many Bokoblin camps you can raid, before it gets boring. It certainly didn't feel rewarding with the appearing treasure chests that only gave you arrows most of the time. That's really lame and I hope that there will be some valuable collectible items all over the world, much like the Spirit Gems. At least the Sheikah shrines seem to be really worth the trouble with their new Sheikah Slate abilities, though not all of them seem to have one.

But my hopes with this game really were that Nintendo would find a way to revolutionize the open world genre. After all The Legend of Zelda was one of the first true open world games and Ocarina of Time was a true milestone for 3D gaming. Now it seems like they are just trying to catch up with what the rest of the industry has done over the last ten years. The compilation of all of these things will certainly offer an amazing product, but I was hoping for something more.

Luckily, I haven't really played any of the modern open world games yet, besides Don't Starve and Minecraft, which are very different with their randomized worlds. I also bought Far Cry 3 and Skyrim two years ago on Steam, but I didn't play them yet. And it's probably a good thing that Breath of the Wild will be my first game with a similar open world, so this kind of gameplay will feel fresh enough.

But Nintendo only showed us a small portion of them. According to them the Plateau is less than 2% of the entire experience. There will be villages, very different landscapes and more. Everything that you can see on the horizon, you apparently can go to. But I try to keep my expectations at bay, because if the game really had something revolutionary to offer they would have shown it already at E3.