Nintendo E3 – Zelda: Breath of the Wild Heavy Detailed by NeoGaf Members
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had well over 5 hours of streaming, so its hard to pin point everything that was discussed. But thanks to NeoGaf Members MiamiWesker, we now know the game in massive detail. Thank you all on NeoGaf for this massive breakdown on the game and lets all be excited about this upcoming adventure for Link!
Source: NeoGaf
NeoGaf Member MiamiWesker went into detail about why he is so excited about the game with great length. This very detailed post honestly got me very excited.
Aunoma said this is a game based on the original Legend of Zelda, my dream game. A Zelda game that just drops you into a world and lets you go.
This represents everything video games could be to me. Yeah that game was 8-bit sprites but this is what I saw. This promise that one day we can play through a world like that. Aunoma specifically made the start of this game after that image. You go to the edge of a cliff that looks just like that and they added the twin peak mountains in the distance. They made that image a dream come true.
Why are the things I posted so special, because the way Zelda handles things compared to other games, it is exactly what I want from games. Giant open worlds have been done before, we play them all the time. Games with physics and emergent gameplay are all over, none of this is new. There are game worlds far more detailed than the empty plains of this game. Games with better combat. But no game does it all, no game puts all those elements together. No game focuses on the puzzles, the level design, the moment to moment gameplay where its number one concern is WHAT IS THE PLAYER DOING.
Playing Witcher 3 you are going to get a grand story, maybe that is what you want. You open your map and see hundreds of icons, things to do. It tells you exactly where it is. You stroll along fighting random grunts the same way over and over. Reach the point where you see your goal, if you don’t you will hit a button and a giant glowing line will hand hold you to the spot and you just grab what you want. You go into a random cave and its just that a random cave, there wont be anything special, there will be a monster and a treasure that’s it. It will be a series of random hall ways and paths with no real design to it. The player is being pushed and guided every step of the way, no real freedom, no real care as to what the player is doing, its purpose is to get you from one story point to another.
Zelda is mostly the opposite of that. No markers at all in the world, you see something you figure out how to reach it. Sometimes you have to solve a series of puzzles to get it, Sometimes you wont even have the item needed to reach it so you mark it and save it for later. YOU do this., you are the one actively searching, not some glowing line, not a stupid marker, YOU. See a shrine, the equivalent of a cave in most open world games of this kind, well here they give you brand new world altering abilities. The ability to manipulate time, water, metal. These shrines are built with specific puzzles to solve, to use your skills in various ways to get the prize. Each one different from the last each hand crafted for a unique gameplay experience. The world is filled with emergent gameplay possibilities, with all kinds of enemies and different ways to combat them. It isn’t a rigid set of melee attacks and spells, you can roll a boulder from above, set traps with bombs and fire, you can use items in various ways like using water to create pillars of protection or maybe raise you up into the air so you can come down with a sword strike. This is player freedom, the freedom to make the gameplay your story.
Yeah sure it wont have a big story, who cares, I want to have interesting gameplay, that is why I play. I know Zelda is going to have loads of great mini games, it will have all kinds of varied gameplay moments, it will have massive elaborate dungeons, huge epic boss battles, incredible puzzles. It will have all the elements I want in a game mixed in the exact way I want it mixed. This looks like my dream game.
A few things do worry me, the emptiness of parts of the world. It maybe just for e3 but where are all the NPCs that have small quests, the majoras mask like influence you have on the world. Where are all the fun things you can easily find to do in every corner of the old worlds. Where are the heart pieces? Will the difficulty continue to be a huge problem? Will there be enough major dungeons? Will it be paced well? We shall see but in Nintendo I trust. For now this is easily my most anticipated game.
Some elements to the core gameplay were also looked over by MiamiWesker as well and I had to share this; it goes over everything Nintendo showed today with great detail.
World
•Open world, go where you want from the start. Obviously some places you wont be able to reach until you get an item.
•Link can jump, climb on anything, swim, run, all governed by a stamina meter.
•Dynamic weather effects the game, if there is wind you can use it to spread fire. If there is a thunderstorm metal can be struck by lightning. Rain will put out fires.
•Temperature plays a role, link cant go into an area too hot or too cold or he takes damage. Need to get better clothes. Or build a fire to stay warm, or use a torch. Or cook various objects and make a potion that gives certain resistances.
•There are shrines scattered around the world, over 100, each have trails of puzzles or combat. Treasures and sometimes new skills are found within. These are not the full dungeons you will also find.
•There are enemy base camps, some have a treasure chest that only opens when you clear the camp.
•You mark the world map. Its not filled with a ton of stupid markers. If you see something you cant reach yet, leave a treasure marker, or an enemy marker for a tough enemy.
•The E3 demo is only the plateau, a small elevated chunk of land where you can spend hours and hours exploring and its like 2% of the full game.
•There will be towns and NPCs but most have been removed for the demo.
•There are hidden Kuroks all over the place, this is from WW so this is tied to that timeline.
Actions
•Giant physics based playground, everything is governed by physics. See a boulder, roll it down a hill, it may crush enemies. Can cross a chasm but see large trees, chop it down to create a bridge.
•Fire reacts like fire. If you have a wood club put it in fire and now you have a fire club to light up enemies. Need to make a fire, cut trees to gather wood, find flint, put the two on the floor, use a metal object to strike the flint it mixes with the wood now you have a camp fire to cook. See withered grass, set it on fire and let the wind spread the fire.
•You can obtain a hand glider to fly around the massive world. You can use hot air from a fire to make the glider rise.
•One item is the magnet, it allows you to manipulate any metal object in the world. See a metal box, cant break it with normal items, pick it up with the magnet and crush it against something. You can located hidden chests under water and make it rise. You can pick up metal platforms and use it to crush enemies. You can throw your sword on the ground, use the magnet to pick it up and then swing it around using your magnet power.
•One item is called stasis it freezes an object in time. See gears moving some platforms or a bridge, freeze it. See giant metal spikes rolling around, freeze it. See a seesaw bridge that doesn’t let you cross when too much weight is put on one side, freeze it.
•Stasis can be used to freeze any static object then you can hit the object with your sword or another object which transfers kinetic energy to the frozen object so when the stasis wears off that object will explode in the direction you were hitting it. This can be used to launch boulders into the air like a cannon at enemies.
•You get two kinds of bombs, one is round so it can be rolled and one is square so it can stay in one place. You have unlimted bombs, they are on a timer. All bombs are remotely detonated. You can place a bomb, lure an enemy to it and boom. See an enemy hut with explosive barrels, roll a bomb into it and watch it explode to oblivion. you can use bombs to launch objects the same way you do with stasis.
•There is the water ice maker thing. This lets you turn any body of water into a column of ice. See a gate with a puddle of water under it, raise the water up to raise the gate. An enemy is firing lasers at you while you are in water, create cover by making columns of ice. See a freezing body of water that link will die if he goes in, create the ice pillars so he can jump across.
Combat
•Mostly its like WW/TP but with new options. If you dodge at the right time you can do a fury strike which slows things down and allows for a super combo of attacks.
•You can pick up any weapon and use it, they degrade fast so you need to stock up on them. All of it governed by a stats system. Enemies drop weapons too, which you can pick up. Different classes of weapons fight differently like a spear is fast and used for thrust attacks. An axe is slow but powerful. Clubs are big and slow and can be put on fire.
•If you fight a skeleton you can shoot its head off and the body will search for the head, if you destroy one head and anothers body, the one without the body will pick up the head from the other guy and reform. You can also rip off an arm and use the arm as a sword, a sword that is constantly wiggling its hands to reach its body.
•Need to find a shield, killing enemies is best way to find them. Or sneak into their camp as they sleep and steal one.
•You can hop on the shield and use it to sled down mountains.
•Enemies can be scouted with the scope which reveals their health bar, most grunts are easy but the demo had plenty of super hard enemies that link was not ready for.
•Enemies have alert states that are shown with classic MGS ? ! icons. They will investigate sound, which you can keep track of with the sound meter. You can sneak up on enemies and do a stealth kill.
•With the arrow you can do some jump slow motion attack that freezes you in the air to aim and shoot.
•Horse back combat is back and its like TP, you can do combos like jump off horse enter glider then do slow motion arrow attack.
•Need arrows, why not taunt enemies to have them fire arrows at you while you dodge them then pick up those arrows to use against them.
•There was a giant rock monster that did insane damage where link had to climb it to reach its weak point.
•Guardians are all around, not sure what activates them but when they come alive watch out, their laser takes like 8 hearts.
•Red and blue enemies are back just like in Zelda 1. Blue enemies are far harder.
Gathering and cooking
•Tons of stuff to gather around the world. Most of it is food, apples, meat, mushrooms, fish. Use those for health. You will not find hearts around the world.
•If you don’t cook stuff you get a small heart increase. Cook meat and it will heal better. If you cook at a campfire its not a big increase, cook at a cooking pot and you get a big boost.
•At a cooking pot you can mix all kinds of ingredients, throw in plants that give better stamina with some apples and other foods and you may make an elixir that gives you more speed for a certain amount of time.
•All experimental, try countless combinations to get different potions and food items that will aid you.
•One mix gives you 4 extra hearts on top of your 3 that stay with you until you get damaged. Great for fighting tough enemies.
•Lots of ore and other resources that seem to be used to craft but that wasn’t shown. Lots of stuff says it can be traded in for rupees which like hearts do NOT appear in the world.
•You can cut down grass to look for insects. Hunt boar for meat. Different times of days will bring out different animals.
OMG I cant believe that just happened
•Use the wolf amiibo from TP and wolf link appears in your game and is your companion until it dies. It will hunt for you, attack enemies, and so on.
•The scale of the world is insane, they would use the scope to see a tower far in the distance and then open the map to show where it is, its crazy how vast the world is.
•These shrines have great puzzles, one is a gigantic spinning gear with spikes, you need to freeze the gears in time to jump around. Another had a series of rooms with giant boulders which needed to be pushed. At one point you take control of a giant hammer to smack the boulder. You can use all your skills to solve these, no set solution, multiple ways to solve all puzzles.
Lastly, a few NeoGaf Members made great Gifs of a series from clips presented online across today and I wanted to share a few of them.