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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Discussion (Nintendo Switch) [game]
 
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Switch
9.62/10 from 40 user ratings

Welcome to the official discussion thread for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Switch!

To start, please add this game to your log, add it to your collection (if applicable), and (when you are ready) rate it using the link above!

The wait is nearly over. The game is being detailed left and right by the media,… the amiibo have been announced,… and the Nintendo Switch is imminent… The Legend of Zelda series has been a special one for Nintendo fans since it began and the next chapter starts on March 3rd, 2017.

A hero's tale begins anew.
Open your eyes and see what is true.

Fun Facts:
Vast open world where you could go find the end of the game within 15 minutes… but you won't survive it.
Weapons have stats and durability.
Climb pretty much anything you want.
Eat and cook to regain health.
Full voice-acting for all except Link

Lets use this thread to discuss the game on the Nintendo Switch. To help hold the tide of the wait, here are some beautiful screenshots and links for your perusal.





Negative World Threads:
The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild for SWITCH and Wii U
BotW Sounds Pretty Expansive (Amount of Content Spoilers)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at launch, comes with Special and Master Editions

News:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - More Dungeon Details
Game Informer Interview - Getting away from traditions and making dying fun

YouTube Videos of Interest
Nintendo Switch - Legend of Zelda 2017 Presentation Trailer
Nintendo E3 2016 Legend of Zelda BotW Trailer
Nintendo Switch Super Bowl LI Ad (2017)
Nintendo Switch Extended Superbowl LI Ad (2017)
The Legend of Zelda Art & Artifacts Book Tour – Nintendo Minute
Fan-Made Old-School Zelda Breath of the Wild Commercial

URL to share (right click and copy)
01/29/17, 18:20    Edited: 02/12/17, 21:42
 
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@Mop it up

By getting more hearts, some things won't kill you in one hit, or two, or three. By your thought process, sticking to 3 hearts ensures just a 2-hit kill for Link only. I see your point about it taking longer to heal but it's not that hard to find random apples or fish that'll get you cleaned up right. I've never had a lack of health items since the beginning of the game. And if you cook a little bit, you can make simple ingredients pack a powerful punch.

Fairies are useful and since they don't get kept in a bottle, I suppose it's endless if you can find enough to hold on to.
03/05/17, 21:25   
As a big fan of level design, dungeons have always been the best part of Zelda for me.

@Zero
@Hero_Of_Hyrule Did you guys not see this post? @Mop it up

@DrFinkelstein There's nothing to stop you from immediately pausing the game and eating food to return to the full three hearts, once again being safe from a one-hit kill. Sure, it means having to pause the game every time Link takes a hit, but, a lot of enemies deal so much damage that it's usually best to play it safe and pause after every hit to eat anyway.
03/05/17, 21:40   
@kriswright Yeah but I love the dungeons.

Zelda games are interesting in that they do so much, so there are various things to love about them. I think Zelda dungeons tend to have some of the best environmental puzzles in video gaming, and I love that. The trial shrine thingys look like they are going to have some great puzzles, so that itch will be scratched, but I don't think there will be much to compare to the deep, focused environmental puzzle experience of a great Zelda dungeon (topped off by an awesome boss fight.)

Ah well. Zelda is a lot like the ocean, it gives and it takes away. It's growing on me though. Very fresh, and at the moment feels like one of the best games I've played in a long time.

@Mop it up Well that explains that.
03/05/17, 21:41   
Edited: 03/05/17, 21:43
This is the REAL DEAL. What's the opposite of a slow burn? They should call it a Zelda. The more I play BotW, the more I appreciate it. I can't believe how much content there is to explore in this game, and all of it is fun and rewarding to experience. My cup runneth over...
03/05/17, 22:05   
Edited: 03/05/17, 22:59
@TriforceBun

I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of the game and I've played it so much since launch. Holy crap is there so much stuff in this.
03/05/17, 22:49   
After about 10-12 hours so far, I think this is a serious contender for my new favorite game ever. I just love getting sidetracked on crazy runs into places I have no business going yet and having it pay off with stuff that's far better than what I had. I get killed a lot, but it always ends up being worth it.
03/05/17, 23:01   
I may have to cave and give this game its 10 already.

I was up til 6:30am and I don't care even a little bit. It needed to be done. I'd have played MORE if it wasn't an ungodly hour and I began to get really tired.
03/06/17, 00:51   
@TriforceBun

Does going in early mess anything up in terms of a satisfying progression of the story? Can you put the reward in spoilers so I can decide for myself if I want to go in?
03/06/17, 00:55   
@TriforceBun

I am tempted to try this. You just tried waltzing into the front door or did you take a specific route that was teased to me by a gossiping passerby?

@kriswright

So far I'm thinking I'm quite okay with the lack of traditional dungeons but then again, I haven't gone to one of those handful of key objectives yet either. Maybe there's some there. Who knows.
03/06/17, 01:04   
kriswright said:

Oh and I'm letting my daughter name the horses. My first one is named Bouncy.

How long until you are riding Machamp?
03/06/17, 01:12   
Good question, SL. I'll let you know.

She named the second one Boo.
03/06/17, 02:04   
Okay, after three days of doing nothing but playing Zelda, I've completed my first actual dungeon (so you know which one I'm talking about before highlighting or not highlighting the spoilers below, it's the one most directly-East of the Great Plateau.)

If that's too vague, then spoiler for the actual name of the town it's near, before I really talk about it: Zora's Domain

Okay, holy shit. This was pretty much my entire day, starting at the Riverside Stables and making my way East across Lanayru, over to Zora's Domain. It was cool to see the game shifting a bit towards a more linear, guided progression towards an end goal (although you can still totally go off the path anyways). But since they gave both a story and gameplay reason to mostly stay on point, that's what I did.

It took a while to get there, but it was worth the wait. Next-generation Zora's Domain is just as massive as everything else in the game thus far, and really puts Twilight Princess' version to shame. It's really some of the most gorgeous scenery I've ever witnessed in a game.

Anyways, I thought using ice blocks to climb waterfalls was cool -- and it still is -- but swimming up them is even cooler! From Zora's Domain, the whole lead-up to the dungeon was awesome. Swim up waterfalls to the top of the mountain, where I had an epic mini-boss battle which was also part of a side quest. Some amazing views of the entirety of Zora's Domain from above, before diving off the mountain(!) into the water below.

This next part was a real surprise for me. I had a feeling that I would go inside the divine beast and it would be a dungeon, but I wasn't expecting to first have a boss-fight of sorts, against the dungeon. That's pretty much how it played out, though, and it was awesome. And then the dungeon itself. I don't know if this is representative of the rest of the ones in the game, but they've really shaken things up a ton. It was unlike any previous Zelda dungeon and I'm not sure I've seen anything quite like it in any game, Zelda or otherwise. Length-wise, it was short compared to a traditional dungeon but I don't feel like that detracted from it at all.

It's really brilliant how it all sets up. You've got a series of puzzles that make use of all of the abilities you've gained up until this point, plus knowledge learned through various Shrines. Oh, and you can manipulate the level design of the dungeon itself! It really encourages you to think a lot about how to solve each puzzle, and the dungeon at large. I made a lot of mistakes in terms of what I *thought* I had to do to solve some puzzles, but through failure I figured out the right solutions eventually. For example, I thought the water spouting from the elephant trunk would count as a waterfall that I could swim up, but alas, it did not -- that would have been cool! The actual solution was cool too, though. Just...different.

Also, there was something just mindblowing about being on this huge structure that was still technically part of the huge open world, being able to climb outside it and glide around it, all the while being able to manipulate parts of it. The whole concept of "what makes a Zelda dungeon?" seems to have been rebuilt from the ground up, and I think it's definitely for the better.

Dungeon boss fights absolutely seem to have taken a cue from Dark Souls, at least this one did. It wasn't super hard (though I have so many buffs in my inventory making things a bit easier!) but it had that same formula of a big health bar, and a shift in direction at the midway point. No more "attack the weak point [X] # of times". The best thing I can say about it is that are probably tons of other ways to defeat it other than the way that I did. There never seemed to be any indication of "you have to do this, you have to do that".

So now, I've got some sweet new rewards for completing that part of the main quest, and tons of side quests around Zora's Domain just opened up as well. So much to do, where to go next?

I probably won't get this detailed about anything the rest of the way, but I really needed to write about this! Everything about the lead-up through its conclusion felt totally fresh, while still being undeniably Zelda at its core. I could not be more impressed by everything this game has had to offer thus far.

The question right now is not whether it's going to surpass Ocarina of Time for me, but by how much.
03/06/17, 02:50   
Edited: 03/06/17, 03:03
@DrFinkelstein

The latter! Well, the former first (and it did not end well, let me tell you). I would highly recommend taking at least one stab at it, unless you want to save the final area for the end of the game--which is understandable, but you can do that in ANY Zelda! I say since this one lets you jump there, go ahead and try it! The penalty for death isn't particularly harsh anyway. PACK STRONG MEALS, PARTICULARLY ONES THAT GIVE YOU EXTRA DEFENSE AND YELLOW HEARTS. And some elemental arrows won't hurt either.

@TheBigG753

Tempted to highlight, but I'll come back and read this once I finish this section.
03/06/17, 04:04   
Edited: 03/06/17, 04:05
@TheBigG753

That is the first dungeon I've been lead to by NPCs and I think soon I'll go try to check it out officially. Been tinkering on the coastlines lately. I'll want to tackle that dungeon soon just to see what you wrote!

@TriforceBun

You've got me hella intrigued.
03/06/17, 05:12   
@TriforceBun

I've tried to head to the castle multiple times but the guardians just make quick work of me every time. Looks like that's a plan for another day.

I might have a tip on how to get a great horse, though: I knocked a bokogoblin off of one and then when I mounted him, we already had a max kinship, I presume because I saved him from that awful goblin. Haven't tested it again, but if you see a mounted goblin, maybe he's a good target.
03/06/17, 05:22   
@kriswright

Yeah, it took me a couple attempts too. I tried approaching from a few different places though since some areas are more heavily guarded than others. The Guardians are absolutely brutal to deal with.

I'm glad to hear that you're really enjoying the game because I feel that we have similar tastes in several Zeldas--particularly that we both love the exploration in Zelda 1 and The Wind Waker. I'm thrilled that Nintendo has pulled some heavy inspiration from both games (besides the obvious, I appreciate the more subtle Wind Waker inclusions like the stylized cel-shading, enemy weapon stealing and physics-based gameplay/combat).
03/06/17, 05:29   
@Mop it up
So, without spoiling much, you don't need to restart the game in order to go for stamina only. That's all I will say.
You shall seeeee.
03/06/17, 05:30   
This game is great. It's really making me feel like A Link to the Past was the last complete Zelda game until BotW arrived. Every other game now feels like it's missing stuff that this one has or brought back and that says nothing of the wealth of new stuff BotW puts on the table. I don't think I could go back to Ocarina anymore and sweet Jesus is Wind Waker ever going to feel empty after this.

What's really interesting is how much BotW is cribbing from other, recent Japanese series. Monster Hunter, the Souls games, Xenoblade... they're all in here. Yet the game remains distinctly Zelda, and it is greater than the sum of those parts.

This is really a tremendous accomplishment.
03/06/17, 06:59   
@ploot

If you wanted to, i wonder if you could ever cash in all your orbs JUST for stamina or would you max out and then have to just not use orbs…?
03/06/17, 07:02   
I'm not reading any of these posts. In fact, I'm abstaining from the main site and Discord indefinitely for the immediate future. I also may have to temporarily block some of you on Twitter, no offense. Just too many things being spoiled for me on accident. Catch you guys when I beat the game.
03/06/17, 07:06   
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