Nintendo has shared images of the fabrics that you can get from the upcoming Zelda and Ganondorf amiibo for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. They are already in the game, so this isn't something new to see, because they had been data-mined months ago. I suppose you can even get them via NFC chips right now, but I haven't bothered to try this.
The amiibo are releasing on November 3rd, as announced in the Nintendo Direct as the only bit of Zelda news.
In today's Nintendo Direct they have revealed one of the new courses in wave 6 of the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Wii Daisy Circuit. And on this course they showcased a total of four new characters with Diddy Kong, Funky Kong, Pauline, and Peachette.
Well, this was unexpected in multiple ways... Nintendo must really follow the predictions, because they deliberately chose a course here that rarely anyone saw coming for the final wave. And yes, there are people out there who have predicted Wii Daisy Circuit to make it, but this comes after we already had a surprise course from Mario Kart Wii and GCN Daisy Cruiser in wave 5, so this seemed unlikely for multiple reasons. (Update: Actually, with Wii Daisy Circuit there is now a circuit track from every mainline Mario Kart game present in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. So, there was a pattern here.)
I suppose that this will replace GCN Mushroom Bridge in the end. It could also be that Wii Rainbow Road won't make it into the final wave, but this would soft-confirm a second Booster Course Pass for me, because there is no way that they are not ending things with that particular course. And if we're not getting two more GameCube courses any longer, then this will allow us to re-arrange the remaining courses a bit more meaningfully:
This way we'd have a Bowser Castle and a Raindow Road at the very end, which would be great.
As for the characters, they got the three most popular candidates with Diddy Kong, Funky Kong, and Pauline, all at once. That's worthy of a celebration and most people should be very happy about this. But why they opted for Peachette instead of Dixie Kong, who is also in Mario Kart Tour, is beyond me. This could have been the perfect Donkey Kong wave, character-wise...
And we already have Baby Peach, Cat Peach, and Pink Gold Peach for more than enough Peach variants. Though, technically this is a variant of Toadette, but she looks like Peach anyway. It seems a bit like a waste, especially when you have characters in Tour like Dixie Kong, Nabbit, or even Captain Toad.
Of course it wouldn't matter that much if this wasn't the end of the DLC. And maybe it isn't the end after all...?
I'm curious to see how the character select screen now looks like. There is only space for two more characters at the moment, where some people are suggesting that Peachette and Funky Kong are alt characters. But why would they have to be alts, while Cat Peach or Dry Bowser aren't? It would be disrespectful to these drivers and not make much sense in the overall picture.
Maybe they have put other characters together (like the villagers, who used to be one slot on the Wii U) to make space, where the most popular candidates are Tanooki Mario and Cat Peach. It was observed that ever since wave 2 you won't get Mario, Tanooki Mario and Metal Mario in the same CPU match together. Same with Peach, Cat Peach and Pink Gold Peach. This could imply that they are internally handled as alts already and not as their own characters any longer.
Or maybe they simply added another row or column. But this would mean that there is now space for four or five more characters, where this would be hinting at more DLC coming. Well, let's see how the sixth wave is going to look in full, but maybe they will already have announced Booster Course Pass Vol. 2 by the time. There are enough courses and characters left in Mario Kart Tour to keep this going in 2024 with three more waves.
The Super Mario Direct just came to end. You could already make the same joke the last time, where the year 2023 has a gigantic focus on the Mario franchise, following the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie. (Which was very entertaining, I loved it!)
My favorite part was the Princess Peach Showtime! game, which surprised me quite a lot. While the different costumes are similar to Kirby's copy abilities, it has a lot more style and I love what they are doing with the character here. So, I'm willing to give this a try. Otherwise there was the quite surprising wave 6 announcement for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but I will talk about this separately.
The rumored F-Zero title turned out to be F-Zero 99, which must feel like a huge slap in the faces of the fans right now. But it could also be a first step into bringing the franchise back. Since it's "free", I might check it out, but I personally thought that this is a dumb idea. But dumb can be fun.
Oh, and the Splatoon 3 DLC is really stylish. I never really got into the franchise, because it always looked like something that appeals more to the generation Fortnite, but if it had been more like Side Order from the beginning, I probably would be a big fan today. This looks fresh.
No news about Zelda at all (except for the release date of the upcoming amiibo), which was expected, and no news about Metroid either, which is a shame, but not all too shocking. Maybe next time.
Well, I will go back to playing Tears of the Kingdom now... It's almost like nothing has changed in the last three months.
Here we go, the obligatory September Direct was just announced two and a half hours ago and will air tomorrow at the same time, so let's see where we're at. There have been a variety of rumors, like a potential remaster of F-Zero GX, but most of it won't be relevant to this blog. So, let's just go through my hot topics...
It has already been confirmed last week that we won't be getting any expansions for the game (see here), so that's off the table. But there is still the chance that they might do something to celebrate the game's success, where for example they could add the missing Master Mode via a free update. But I personally don't expect anything at this point.
I'm also not expecting any other Zelda announcements right now, because it's a bit early for that, but ports of The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD are always a possibility in between and they could announce those for early 2024.
Another possibility, which could closely follow Tears of the Kingdom, is a "Shrine Maker". This is something that I already wanted out of Breath of the Wild and I will talk about my new ideas in more detail later, given that Nintendo won't already make this a huge topic tomorrow.
The last three Nintendo Directs all teased the next wave of the Booster Course Pass and this one won't be any different. Again, I expect them to show us one of the new courses again, probably Piranha Plant Cove or the pipe track with the severe naming issues, and the two last characters. Oh, and maybe we will get some additional courses for Battle Mode with wave 6. This would be a nice ending and also something they would show in the Direct...
The characters will reveal a lot about the future of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, whether there could be more waves coming in a second volume of the Booster Course Pass or nothing at all. Everyone wants Diddy Kong and Pauline, where the absence of one of them could be an indication of more DLC coming. Especially Diddy Kong, because people will riot if he still didn't make it into Mario Kart 8 after nine whole years...
So, I'm going to predict Chargin' Chuck and Nabbit, just because I want to see that extra DLC coming and get the majority of missing courses from Mario Kart Tour ported over.
Earlier this week we've learned that they are wrapping up development of the mobile title, where the Booster Course Pass will come to an end at the same time and will ultimately include all the new courses from Tour. So, it doesn't look too well, but I'm still a little hopeful.
Now, that Tears of the Kingdom has been released, the last big already-announced game for Nintendo Switch that everyone is waiting for is Metroid Prime 4. They technically never announced it for Nintendo Switch, though, so it could become one of the first titles for the successor console, but people would love to get a first teaser in any case. If it's for the next console, they won't show us any ingame footage, however.
And they might want to keep going with those remasters of the Metroid Prime Trilogy, where I wouldn't mind another shadow-drop of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Remastered.
There has been an extensive interview by Famitsu with Aonuma and Fujibayashi, the producer and director of Tears of the Kingdom, which goes into various topics, like the creation of the Depths, the new abilities, the story ideas, and even the timeline placement. But probably the biggest takeaway comes at the end, where Aonuma confirms that they are done. They have moved on and have no plans for additional content, so we won't be getting any DLC for Tears of the Kingdom.
And this wouldn't be all too surprising if it weren't for the missing Master Mode. Otherwise this game feels truly complete and it's only natural that the Zelda team wanted to move on after developing on the same engine and world for over ten years. They should be focused on the next Zelda installment for Nintendo's upcoming hardware and all the possibilities that come with it.
Now, selling the same type of DLC again would also be lame, where many of the features from the Expansion Pass for Breath of the Wild are already included in Tears of the Kingdom. For example, all of the DLC armor pieces are there (or almost all of them, because I haven't found the Nintendo Switch Shirt yet), the Hero's Path Mode is there, as well as the Travel Medallion. And arguably some of these things never should have been paid DLC in the first place.
So, if they still were to add a Master Mode, there is a chance that they would do this as a free update and not as part of a paid Expansion Pass, which apparently won't be happening anyway. They may have even prepared such a mode a while ago and are simply waiting for the right timing to release it, to create some more buzz around the game and to get people back into the game who have already finished it. So, it's a possibility, despite these news. I'm not holding my breath, however...
The reason why there is no Master Mode could also lie in some design challenges, because they can't just simply repeat what they did in Breath of the Wild:
The main issue here are the new horns that have grown on the enemies with three or more tiers, which are dependent on the tier. On the one hand the horns can be used as a fusing material, where generally this would create a much better balance than the Master Mode in Breath of the Wild did, because defeating stronger enemies will always provide you with materials for creating equally stronger weapons. On the other hand they are also required for enhancing armor, where Nintendo would have to make sure that you can still find enough of the basic horns in Master Mode. Having a single red Bokoblin somewhere in the Gerudo Highlands won't cut it this time.
This can be solved by only upgrading some of the enemies, but not all of them. Adding stronger enemies in addition to what's there is also always an option, like that infamous White-Maned Lynel on the Great Plateau. Golden enemies may even work better as special encounters, similar to how they used to be in Oracle of Seasons and The Minish Cap.
Part of the reason is that they would also need golden horns that look even more threatening than the stuff on the silver enemies. And these new horns wouldn't be required for any armor enhancements, unless they add some new items exclusive to Master Mode, so in the end they wouldn't be as valuable as their silver counterparts – they would purely be there for the strong fusion attack power. This isn't necessarily a problem and may even be true for some of the existing horns already (I wasn't able to check it all yet), but it adds to the idea that the golden enemies shouldn't be all too common in the end.
Keep in mind that they didn't bother with adding the golden enemies to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity either, where they might follow the example here and not care as much about them as some of the fans, like myself, do. Of course these are completely different projects, but both teams had been working closely together for the new Hyrule Warriors and there may have been an influence on this topic.
Another trait of enemies in Master Mode was the regeneration, where this wouldn't work with bosses that want you to destroy a number of weakspots, first and foremost Colgera. But this was already an issue with Dark Beast Ganon in Breath of the Wild, where it simply didn't regenerate and the same solution could apply here: just make exceptions.
Otherwise, adding floating platforms probably wouldn't add much value to a game world that was already enhanced vertically. It also wouldn't hurt and with the Zonai devices there are many new possibilities for this than there were in Breath of the Wild.
In fact, with a Master Mode they have countless of possibilities to make the game harder. For example, there could be more places where you have to face Gloom Spawns and they could also appear more often. But this could potentially make the game more annoying than harder...
There is also the question of the connectivity to Breath of the Wild, where it transfers your horses and the Picture of the Champions. Ideally, it would check for a Master Mode save file there, but fall back to a Normal Mode save file if there isn't one. But it technically should work like that already, because people who have exclusively played Master Mode in the previous title have been missing out with this.
So, overall it's not as simple as changing some enemy values and Nintendo may not have any interest in implementing this mode again, because it means too much effort. But if they are going to add more features to the game via updates, then Master Mode should be on the top of the list. As polished and complete as the game is otherwise, it's just not something that we should expect to happen.
This is just going to be another small update, before I proceed with the main story. I've been mostly just wandering along paths where I either haven't been yet or haven't been in a long time, picking off from my last adventures around the Faron region, slowly moving towards the northwest of the map, where the last sage is waiting. This normally wouldn't warrant its own post, but I've achieved two major milestones along the way and want to talk about them now, or else the next entry might become too large again.
One habit I've kept from Breath of the Wild is marking bosses on the map, where I use the sword icon for the ones that still need to be defeated, which then gets changed into either an ore for Taluses or a skull for everyone else. It would be awesome if the game(s) did something like this automatically, but that's not the case...
And the areas where I've been very early, like West Necluda, were still riddled with sword icons, so I had some cleaning up to do. I'm not sure whether the medals for beating all bosses have returned or not, but I'm still being thorough and I got one step closer to finding out, because the trail of bosses led me ultimately to that infamous Flame Gleeok on the Bridge of Hylia, which was shown in the trailers.
Same strategy as with the Thunder Gleeok in Faron, so I was mostly relying on Mineru to get close and land my shots. But this is a fantastic setting for one of the coolest boss fights in the series, where this certainly won't be the last time that I've fought this particular Gleeok.
Anyway, now I only need to find a Flux Construct above the Hebra region and then I will have completed all the side quests around bringing down specific overworld bosses. My theory is that the guy at Lookout Landing will let you earn the medals afterwards...
From Lake Hylia I then was cruising towards the Tabantha Frontier and using the hoverbike to cross Hyrule is such a breeze. As much as I love the Master Cycle Zero in Breath of the Wild, it can't hold a candle to this thing when it comes to speed and the possibilities. You can go pretty much everywhere with it. And with over 2400 Zonaite in my inventory from my adventures in the Depths, it's also as convenient to summon by now. The only inconvenience is that you often need to upend the hoverbike after a landing...
The best example of how much faster exploration in Tears of the Kingdom can be is probably the Tamio River. In Breath of the Wild you need to use a raft and there are lots of treasure chests waiting to be picked up there, so it can take a while to make your way through this area. Luckily, Tears of the Kingdom doesn't needlessly spam treasure chests and you can just use something like the hoverbike to quickly fly above the river and check for anything interesting, so the whole thing can be explored within minutes.
The game makes up for it with all its other additions, like the caves, where the one at the end of the Tamio River features another Gloom Spawn that doesn't go away. It's also wet inside, where you can't climb walls so easily, which caused a bit of a problem for me there...
Also, I didn't notice this before, but in its glowing state the Master Sword still makes the "bam!" sounds, like it did in Breath of the Wild. It's just that it rarely ever enters this glowing state, even though it often looks like it with things fused to it. But in Breath of the Wild every enemy taken over by Malice would cause this effect, mostly the Guardians, and you also could make it permanent via the Trial of the Sword, so you would experience it a lot more often. The enemies covered in Gloom in the Depths won't do the same for you, but the Gloom Spawn and what comes out of it will.
At the west edge of the map I couldn't resist the urge to try and reach the giant landmass in the distance, but the game blocks your path right before you could land on it. This was most certainly the same already in Breath of the Wild, but with the new vehicles it's easier than ever to truly test your boundaries.
I've been to the Tabantha Frontier before, but I hadn't fully explored it until now, where the Lightroots in the Depths certainly helped with finding at least one of the hidden shrines here. And that shrine where you have to get a crystal from a hole in one of the craters was a neat idea.
In the end I've just used a spring from my inventory to do the trick. This worked really well, unlike the shrine where you have to giant metal balls in the right way to activate switches. For the last puzzle there I simply shot a Bomb Arrow at the switch, after I grew impatient trying to do it the "right" way.
There are many ways to cheese puzzles, but the first time I'd really like to go for the intended solution, whatever that may be. Best example is probably Addison, where I usually try to make use of whatever is in the proximity to support his signs. But theoretically you could just use a hover stone to solve most of the sigh situations easily and even keep it perfectly straight while doing so. Well, I like the charm of the slightly slanted signs everywhere, but if I'm ever going to replay this beast of a game (e.g. in a theoretical Master Mode), then I will probably just rely on the hover stones to be quicker.
It was time for a pit stop in Korok Forest, because I've collected enough Korok Seeds to upgrade all my stashes. It takes 20 less seeds than in Breath of the Wild to do so, for a total of 421.
Like always, I've completed the shield stash last, where the required numbers were a bit weird. In Breath of the Wild only the last shield upgrade costs 20 Korok Seeds, but here several of the last upgrades cost 20, except for the second-to-last one, which for some reason goes back down to 15 again.
And I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't go further with this. The menus make it look like there might be a fifth line for each stash, but it's the same amount as in Breath of the Wild. Bows also have the same amount, even though the last row with the different arrow types is now gone entirely. Well, technically, it's one more slot, because you don't need to reserve a spot for the Bow of Light anymore, but they still could have let the player pump some more Korok Seeds into additional expansions there and maybe in all three categories.
Well, I don't need a reward for collecting Korok Seeds, as I have proven several times in the past, but it does feel more overwhelming here in Tears of the Kingdom than it did in Breath of the Wild. After my recent tours through the Depths I came back to the surface and realized that this is also still a thing and I'm not even halfway done yet... There is simply too much to achieve in this game, it's exhausting. At least the combination of the hoverbike with the Korok Mask should speed up looking for the last Korok Seeds significantly.
Rito Village is a place that I have been avoiding successfully since the beginning of the game. I've been at its doorsteps early on, so I could talk to Tracey at the former stable, but I had no interest in going any further. The changed setting, where the whole village got covered in snow, is quite impressive, however, even though they already had done the same in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. I also like the frozen ponds of water, where you can break the ice. That's new.
Anyway, I haven't spoken to any Rito yet, because the first person I found was someone from the Depths exploration team, who actually exist to my surprise, because almost everyone down in the Depths turns out to be a Yiga in disguise. Well, he's pointing you right towards the chasm that leads to the last bit of the Depths where I haven't been yet, so I was in for one last detour.
This is the first thing that I have fully completed in the game, even before activating all the Skyview Towers. But they should follow shortly after, together with the rest of the Shrines of Light.
With all the lights turned on, a familiar face was already waiting, meditating at a temple in the middle of the abandoned Rito Village Mine. The Master Kohga battles all have been quite creative so far, where the last one may be an exception:
He's getting his own ARMS Construct, same as Mineru's, where you are basically re-enacting the Seized Construct boss fight. But I personally like this ring fight with Kohga so much more, where this is a fantastic finale for the character, and I still wish that they had something else with the Spirit Temple.
Like in Breath of the Wild, Kohga then takes himself out and afterwards you will get randomly spawning Yigas everywhere, hunting for revenge. Unlike Breath of the Wild, however, there was nothing really to gain here, just a diamond and 100 crystallized charges, as well a schema stone from the mine. It's not exactly worth the trouble and probably something where you just want to wait until the very end of the game to save yourself from the annoyance of even more enemies spawning out of nowhere...
It would have been awesome if you could have gotten Kohga's mask and have everyone in the Yiga Clan react to you as their new master. That would have made the whole chase after Kohga a worthwhile effort. Or at least something that can't be gotten elsewhere.
Anyway, other than some bosses and probably the Cap of Time, I should be finished with the Depths. Next time I will really go for the Rito and finally finish all pieces of the story.
Starting with the third wave of the Booster Course Pass for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we got more than what was originally advertised for the DLC. The first addition was the new custom item selection and while technically this came with the free updates, this was still done as part of the work on the Booster Course Pass. The fourth wave then surprised us with the addition of new characters, where the first one was Birdo. Then we got three characters at once in wave 5, where two more characters are left to be revealed.
With waves 2, 4 and 5 they also showed us certain new courses for the very first time – Sky-High Sundae, Yoshi's Island, and Squeaky Clean Sprint – before they got added to Mario Kart Tour. This won't be possible with the last wave, because all remaining city and nitro courses for Mario Kart Tour have already been revealed...
And this makes you wonder if they have something else planned for the final wave in the Booster Course Pass, as a final surprise addition. One thing that came to mind from the very beginning are new Battle Mode Courses, where there currently are five of them in Mario Kart Tour:
Assets for another one have been data-mined with Wii Block Plaza, where this may make it into the mobile game in one of the upcoming tours that are still left.
The Battle Mode in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe comes with eight stages currently, where the menu lists them in two lines of four courses. So, if the Battle Mode were to get extended, they probably would add four more to make it look nice, where two of the above courses wouldn't make the cut. But which ones...?
The first that may come to mind are Paris Promenade and New York Minute, simply because it may be a bit weird to get battle courses based on actual race courses again, since that is exactly what they wanted to avoid with the new Battle Mode for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But the battle variants of these two city tracks feel quite different, because you're not getting directed any longer, so can just freely drive around the roads, kind of like in 3DS Wuhu Town. They are a lot more suited as battle mode courses than what we got in Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U.
And since both Paris Promenade and New York Minute are already part of the Booster Course Pass, it would make a lot of sense to add their battle variants as another free addition to the pass, instead of including them in some separate DLC.
As for the retro courses, GCN Cookie Land is way too small for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and GBA Battle Course 1 is too similar to the existing SNES Battle Course 1, where they are the likeliest to not make it. DS Twilight House also shares its theme with GCN Luigi's Mansion, but it's still quite different, since you're driving outside in a spooky castle, and it's arguably the best battle course that Mario Kart Tour has to offer at the moment. If nothing else, they could give us just this single course by re-arranging the battle courses to a 3x3 grid.
Should Wii Block Plaza truly make it into Mario Kart Tour as well, this would be a no-brainer, because there are none of these "block courses" (like N64 Block Fort or GCN Block City) in the current Battle Mode yet, where this has been a classic theme. It's also large enough for the 12 player total. This could even be this wave's course that makes it into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe before Mario Kart Tour.
They will need to add spots for the cages in Renegade Roundup, but overall it shouldn't be much of an issue to port these Battle Mode courses over, given that there will be at least one more nice fit.
Battle Mode was the big new thing in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, maybe even the selling point over Mario Kart 8 for some, where it's a shame that this hasn't seen any attention in the DLC so far. But maybe they will get back to it for the finale, where we should learn more about the last wave of the Booster Course Pass later this month.
