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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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@Joshwaahh

Bummer to hear that. Planning to sell it? I would suggest you at least get off the Great Plateau story-wise before completely dismissing it. Things certainly open up. Maybe you are already though, I dunno.

@Stephen

Fun list. After 120+ hours I'm amazed at how many I didn't know, and each one I did was a nice memory of that discovery.
03/26/17, 14:34   
@Joshwaahh

My experience was that I got used to the controls and the weapon durability became less prevalent and made more sense after the opening hours of playing. The game gets better as it goes on, if you stick with it.

The story might not be your thing, though. It's very much in the background.
03/26/17, 22:07   
I arrived at the second DB ( bird ) and my god I am just loving the atmosphere and design of it. Took a quick look around just to get a feel, and loved what I briefly saw. Can't wait to dig in.
03/26/17, 22:14   
Yeah i don't know I might give it another go, so far I have just been getting very frustrated while playing, and I don't like giving my time to things that frustrate me.
03/27/17, 00:15   
@Joshwaahh
If you haven't gotten the paraglider yet, I'd advise you try for just a bit longer.

The game opens up exponentially at that point.
03/27/17, 00:31   
@ploot

I haven't gotten the Paraglider yet, I just got the 4th Skill and I'm on my way to Meet the old Man to get it,

The game opening up won't make the controls feel any less awkward,

This game is just not for me, not going to put any more time into it,


as for what ill do with my copy, The main reason I got a WiiU was to get Zelda so I'll play through some other games I have an interest in and then will probably end up selling it as a bundle once I'm done.
03/27/17, 01:17   
Edited: 03/27/17, 01:17
@Joshwaahh
I feel like this is the first Zelda where Link doesn't control like a tank. So strange that the controls feel weird to you!
Please don't take this the wrong way, but you seem like you made your decision before you even began.

Paragliderrrrrrrrrrr!
03/27/17, 02:28   
Spent the weekend just doing straight up exploring. I have only four shrines left to find, and I know where one is, I just don't know how to access it. So three left in the wilderness to go find. 10 side quests left, and I have no clue where those will be since I've talked to all NPCs at all of the population centers. I think. Also have cleared 300 Korok seeds. Fully maxed out my shield and bow inventories. Also bought the Dark Link outfit using my mon; just a bummer that it's not upgradeable, though...I'd be wearing that all the time.

I've gone back to a lot of previous areas that I didn't spent too much time in the first time through, and yup, I'm finding stuff. That's at least where the missing shrines seem to be. So my goal at the moment is to find the remaining shrines and the last Great Fairy. After that, it'll be pure roaming. I'm close to the point where I never even look at the map screen anymore, except for fast-traveling. It's rare for an open-world game where I'm not totally reliant on the map, and it speaks to the strength of the world and level design.

There's been some debate about the weapon degradation mechanic, and I have no issue with it. I like the feeling of constantly improving, where I get something new and great, and drop my worst item (which is typically what I have equipped). Raising the average, so to speak. There is one definite flaw with BotW, though, and it's come up more and more now that I'm just exploring: Treasure chests should always contain something you can use.

There is nothing worse than finding a chest, opening it, and finding a weapon that's way worse than the worst one in your inventory. But your inventory is full. So you can't do anything with it. Can't sell it. Can't convert it into materials. Nada. I can use arrows, or rupees, or gemstones. Crappy weapons? Totally worthless. It's sad that I often drop something so I can retrieve the item from the chest, and then summarily discard it, just so I don't come across that same chest again later on and wonder if there's something good in there. There are some "iffy" design choices in BotW that I think can be argued either way as to whether they help/hurt the game, but this is the one that I think is a clear shortcoming.

In the next game, either:

a. Use an algorithm such that if you find a weapon/shield in a chest, it's always better than the worst one in your inventory currently.
b. Have a mechanic to break down weapons into raw materials.
c. Don't use weapons as a treasure reward. Stick to consumables/sellables/currency.
03/27/17, 03:05   
Edited: 03/27/17, 03:07
@TheBigG753

Totally disagree that there should be an algorithm that checks against your inventory for treasure chests. That seems to go against the spirit of the game - that some rusty old treasure chest would always have something good. It should have what it has and it's up to the player to decide if they can use it. I do agree there should be a 'fast discard' option, though, so the chest isn't just hanging around. Though I like the raw materials idea. I wonder if it would be an economic balance problem if every rusty sword can give you something useful.

----

In general, I'm surprised how many minor complaints I've heard (here and in other places) about how there needs to be better rewards for tasks in this game, to the point where some people view it as a flaw that side quests don't come with more handsome rewards than a few rupees or whatever. Or calls for more clear 'progression'. One guy on the AV Club was very passionate that every task in this game should be beneficial to the player's end goal of defeating Ganon. It makes me wonder what the fuck gamers play games for - the experience or the experience points. Everyone's free to have their own views, of course, but some of the complaints start to suggest that there's at least one view of what games are supposed to do that is just philosophically foreign to me.

I mean, here we have a nearly living Hyrule, open for a million unique experiences, and some guy wants to thread the entire thing through the Defeat Ganon needle, just so he doesn't feel like he's wasting time that one hour he spent shield surfing in the mountains. How silly.
03/27/17, 14:08   
Edited: 03/27/17, 14:23
@kriswright

Yeah, that would probably be the least-preferable of my 3 suggestions for sure. I just don't want to find something totally useless as often as I am. Even just 5 rupees or something is better than a crummy item that I can't even put into my inventory. It doesn't fall into the camp of "something good", but I can at least do something with 5 rupees or 1 arrow or whatever.
03/27/17, 14:40   
@Joshwaahh
You're not even past the tutorial stage of a game you apparently spent hundreds on and you're gonna drop it because the controls take some getting used to? Come on that's a flaccid excuse at best. The controls take MORE getting used to if you HAVE played a lot of Zelda games since they changed everything around (and certain binds are ingrained in Zelda fan's DNA), but that can't be your issue with it if you've barely played since OOT.

What exactly is so frustrating?

@kriswright
This.
03/27/17, 18:30   
@kriswright I'm like 50/50 on agreeing with you.

On the one hand GENERALLY SPEAKING I'd say it's just plain infeasible to make every little thing in an open world game with so much damn stuff in it totally worthwhile, and I think Zelda does about as good of a job as it can without falling into some of the issues of the older games (ending up overpowered quickly with way too many rupees / hearts / etc.)

On the other hand, I can't really disagree with people who want that. Like, in a perfectly balanced open world game (which would probably be revolutionary in design because this is TOUGH) there would be some way to make rewards feel worthwhile without overpowering the player.

It's just tough for me to say "it shouldn't matter what the reward is the gameplay itself is the reward". I mean, sure, I guess? But the only games that I've played which completely stripped out any kind of player conflict / reward situation were kind of... boring? Even something like Animal Crossing still has rewards... do enough stuff, get a bigger house, new stuff to put in it, whatever.

To me it's a very good feeling to struggle against a difficult task and then get something worthwhile in the end. Too much "nothing" becomes like uh... Paper Mario: Sticker Star's battle system, where after awhile you start wondering why you're fighting at all.
03/27/17, 19:14   
@TheBigG753 @kriswright I don't mind finding weak weapons, but yeah the process of dropping my weapon, taking the one out of the chest, throwing it away, and picking up my dropped weapon is a chore.

I had a silly idea for a mechanic to remedy this that would tie into the Hateno sidequest where you spend some serious rupees and buy the house. And that idea is: yard sales! After buying the house, you can warp items from chests to be stored in the shed there, then organize them from there and sell them in yard sales. Folks from Hateno would be regular customers, as would traveling merchants, and every now and then a character from a sidequest or something might pop in.
03/27/17, 19:18   
Edited: 03/27/17, 19:39
@nate38

I like that idea. You find an item and your inventory is full, so you just choose "Send to house." Boom, done. And at that point, yeah, you can get something out of it.

It's not the finding weak weapons that bothers me, it's that I'm finding a treasure and it's literally worthless. And a lot of times it's even the treasure you get for completing a shrine quest. One rupee is a sucky treasure, but at least it's worth one rupee. It's the one thing that I think could have clearly been handled better. It's not something that causes BotW to no longer be the best game I've ever played or anything, lol, but it's just one of a handful of things that I think they could improve upon in the next Zelda game.
03/27/17, 20:24   
Edited: 03/27/17, 20:25
kriswright said:
It makes me wonder what the fuck gamers play games for - the experience or the experience points. Everyone's free to have their own views, of course, but some of the complaints start to suggest that there's at least one view of what games are supposed to do that is just philosophically foreign to me.

Yuuuuup.
03/27/17, 20:32   
I'm actually a little surprised that there isn't some sort of equipment shop where you can buy and sell weapons, bows, and shields. None that I've found anyway, anyone else find one? I don't think selling them should be worth much as to not destroy the economy of the game, but it's better than trashing them. When I find a weak weapon then I just pick it up and hurl it at the nearest enemy, which is fun, though I'd probably rather have 5 rupees. I wish I could throw bows and shields at enemies, that'd be nice to do with weak ones instead of dumping them.

@nate38 I actually like that idea. In fact, I'd probably spend too much time on that, ha ha. Zelda's probably already sick of waiting for my lazy, unfocused tush.

@Joshwaahh I actually didn't really enjoy this game in the beginning either, but it gets way better as it goes. I know it's tough to invest more time into a game that didn't leave a good impression, but you've already invested this much time and money into it that I think it's worth a few more hours at least.
03/27/17, 20:52   
Mop it up said:
When I find a weak weapon then I just pick it up and hurl it at the nearest enemy, which is fun, though I'd probably rather have 5 rupees. I wish I could throw bows and shields at enemies, that'd be nice to do with weak ones instead of dumping them.

Not me. While it's annoying that you can't better manage certain aspects of weapon management, but I wouldn't want to hold on to crap weapons to find a seller for a couple rupees. I'd rather bust it through a Moblin's face.
03/28/17, 00:41   
@DrFinkelstein

An ability to instantly dismantle for rupees would work here. That's how Destiny handles it.

BTW anyone know if there's a second Frost spear in the game? I need one for a sidequest and the one I got is broken.
03/28/17, 01:28   
@DrFinkelstein

I do when my inventory isn't full, which is like, never.
03/28/17, 01:54   
@Shadowlink
I've run into a few of them.
03/28/17, 02:38   
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