The new legend of Zelda is a toy box of delights | Hacker News Reader

The new legend of Zelda is a toy box of delights

1843magazine.com

271 pointsnoir-york254 comments

I've had so much fun with this game. The game design is on a whole other level.

The fact I can take a regular arrow, walk up to a campfire, light the arrow on fire, shoot the ground and light THAT on fire, create an updraft and ride it with the paraglider and then swing my hammer downwards to kill everything around me is incredible.

Quite possibly one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.

Agreed absolutely every element of this game is fun. They struck the perfect balance between ease of entry and play and a massive and complex world. They avoided pitfalls of many other RPG games that add complexity at the cost of fun. They also learned to not completely hold your hand as many other Nintendo titles have in the past.

They also avoided the pitfall of open world at the cost of bugginess. Not to name names, but many open world games, especially on consoles, have been pretty buggy.

They did something amazing that at least I had never heard of in the game industry. In one of their making-of videos released today they said that every so often everybody would take a week break(at the same time) to play the game. This served as a check-in of sorts to see what everyone else was working on and to get company-wide exposure and feedback on each other's work.

It shows. I played the entire game through use sleep mode on the switch between sessions. Not a single game breaking or fun breaking bug. The consistency throughout is phenomenal... Well, the people work on Death Mountain killed it; looks better than the other areas IMHO.

I also saw the GDC video where they talked about this and it really resonated with me.

Where I work we are constantly reminded to spend time just playing the game and the whole studio (120+ people) regularly gather in the main meeting area, watching as someone plays through a mission.

What was mentioned in this video, however, is on a whole different level and it sounds amazing.

I got the impression from the making-ofs that they jumped into the deep end as far as innovation. Not just from a gameplay and design perspective, but from a process and company culture perspective as well. I get the sense that a lot of process was cultural and stagnant. However, when the opportunity arose to throw more change after good they jumped on it and made some very interesting progress. I can't help but get a strong impression that the experience of developing BOTW has had a transformative effect on Nintendo. I'm also getting those vibes from the Switch and double-down strategy on indie devs and turn-key game engines; if not already certainly over the life cycle of the system.

This particular process seems to have arisen from Nintendo's need to control quality. We've seen this in effect before with many games, but Metroid Prime and Retro Studios comes to mind. With a Warren Buffett like eye for potential Nintendo pulled on Retro to make Prime, and through sure will for quality helped guide their efforts and the final product into the amazeballs results of Metroid Prime. That need for uncompromising quality control, coupled with the challenges of a MASSIVE game(certainly more massive than anything they have undertaken) led them to try out this process that comes with obvious financial downsides. In the end, they are rightly satisfied with the results. Inspiring.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the relative lack of a tutorial and 'front story'. I've gotten games and then sat on them for months because I knew I'd need a good 45 minutes to even start playing the game and just never had the time or patience. This game was just such a great "pick up and play" experience; and it let's you learn a lot of stuff on your own.

The puzzles are amazing because they feel very natural. The game doesn't go out of its way to prevent you from "cheating" or solving the puzzle however you like. But it also doesn't feel like it was intended for there to be more than one solution. The intended solution is usually clear after the fact (even if you've solved it some other way); and it seems like the solution, but any other solution is also accepted. It feels as if I've really stumbled across this puzzle, and even if I can't figure it out, I can figure SOMETHING out, and that's alright.

And yet they kinda manage to still teach you things carefully. It feels like in the past they were afraid of making things to subtle, but if you look at the game with an eye of game design (just create a second user on the Switch and restart it from scratch) it's surprising how they still manage to steer you. The whole plateau is a tutorial, but it doesn't jump into your face as much.

And then there's that one annoying motion controlled puzzle with a way to bypass it that a bunch of journalists mentioned in their reviews, and it's as if it was designed with that trick in mind. So that journalists discover it and write about how this game is different.

Which is interesting. Almost like they thought of how to communicate that this game is different and how to best let people notice, and then they came up with that.

Agreed. You can definitely feel the 'steering' if you're looking out for it, and there are points later in the game where events happen and it gets a little hand-holdy. But compared to games where a character accosts you immediately, tells you exactly what button to press, then tells you exactly which button to press next, ad naseum (and usually tells me so much I don't retain any of it), it feels like it's not even there.

I think the motion control puzzle was a flub, though. The motion controls sucked. I ended up doing it the "right" way, but at no time did it feel like what I was doing to the controller and what was happening on the screen was correct; but I love that it's possible to find other ways.

> You can definitely feel the 'steering' if you're looking out for it

The implicit steering is one of the things that Nintendo is famous for though. At least among game designers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH2wGpEZVgE

What the video doesn't point out is that if you don't run to the right, the timing of the jump to avoid the Goomba makes you hit that first question mark block by accident.

>They also learned to not completely hold your hand as many other Nintendo titles have in the past.

Except for some crucial passages in the game where it suddenly REALLY wants to hold your hand.

I am still loving the game but I would to see it stop shouting at me to shoot an arrow on the big glowing parts of [redacted]. I would have much prefered to figure that on my own.

I felt that this kind of instruction was more related to story than to gameplay. Story-wise it wouldn't make sense that you're not told what to do there. That's kind of a theme for all the "boss" battles.. there's another character who knows more about the boss than you do. It also gives sense that the battle is more of a collaboration rather than you just figuring out some way to kill it.

I don't think they were worried about people not figuring out what to do. In other parts of the battles you have to figure out much harder stuff for yourself.

Maybe. I guess that the main problem I had with this is that the French dialogs and dubs are awful.

Sadly the switch does not let you choose the language of a game the same way that most desktop games do.

The scenario and characterization are not great, but with bad translations and voice acting, it weakens these moments a lot.

I can confirm that the English dubs are pretty bad too.

Yeah, the voices I can live with. But the delivery and emotion (or lack thereof) are really disappointing.

It's super interesting that Nintendo seems to have down the elements of game design really well that actually make a game fun.

Compare that to other games such as Pokemon Go or No Man's Sky, which feel like the designers might have forgotten to add the core game itself. It's also interesting to compare to Witcher 3, which is another great game (but via different means IMHO).

I'm surprised by how much Nintendo nailed this (what features to invest time into to make a game fun). Seems like they might be ahead of others there. And that makes me wish that that part of game design was better understood.

Shigero Miyamoto has been overseeing Nintendo's games for 37 years now. If you read any interviews or histories on Nintendo, Miyamoto providing feedback on a game to make it fun and engaging is very common. Combine his vast experience with the fact he's a genius when it comes to gameplay, and he's tough for other companies to beat.

I guess what surprises me is that we haven't written down mechanics or principles that will make a game fun instead of just addictive. (There seem to be many well established dark patterns for getting people to spend money on freemium games, but I haven't seen much about what makes a video game more fun.)

You can't encapsulate fun to a series of algorithms. The brilliance of the Breath of the Wild is in it's imagination. When a game truly feels like magic, it needs someone to inspire it.

There are numerous attempts at theories of fun out there, but none of them really let you look at a design and know if something will be fun without trying it.

They don't even really give you much of any concrete guidance on how you might change a design to make it more fun if it isn't currently. The best attempts at this tend to be along the lines of looking at certain player profiles and trying to imagine what about your design appeals to those who enjoy that profile.

It's possible that this isn't something we can easily quantify.

If I asked you to write a book about what makes music good, would you be able to do that?

Well, we can quantify things like circle of fifths and all those other weird music things I never seem to understand. Not well enough to automate music making, sure, but enough to teach people how to make good music.

Well, you can automate music making, but the automated systems tend to produce incredibly generic music that's fairly bland and kind of aimless. We still need that creative spark to give it emotional content, direction and to break the rules in just the right ways to keep things interesting whether it's just a slightly unexpected harmonic progression or whether you're blazing an entirely new idea.

Nobody ever got told they were an amazing composer because they followed all the rules. You can be good, but the greats all redefined something about the common practice of their time. However, if you stray too far away, people find your music too alien and tend not to like it at first. History is littered with references to new music from composers we now consider to be truly magnificent, who were at the time considered to be merely mediocre, or whose innovations were not welcomed with open arms.

And of course, computers are still terrible at writing lyrics. That's an entirely different game.

Maybe one day there'll be enough video games and literature that we can formulate a video game theory which is as extensive as our modern understanding of music theory. The thing with music of course is that we've been doing music for a lot longer.

Raph Koster has a good book, "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", which I think does a pretty good job as an easy read intro to the problem.

My main takeaway from it, if I had to boil it down to one point, is your brain finds fun in mastering something (beating a challenge), but not so much afterwards (boring/repetitive) or if it's too difficult (frustrating). The problem is, where that line is for any given challenge can be different for everyone. You can also get more mileage out of something if an aspect of the challenge changes (people will play chess longer than tic tac toe for example, even though the game space is the same each time).

Just ordered this one; thanks for the recommendation and thanks for the takeaway summary as well. :)

There's a couple of efforts. I think this is the most public: http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/

Wow, looks super interesting. Thank you!

This is because it's very easy to break down and formalise what makes a game addictive, but it's very difficult to do the same for fun.

At Ghost we often find ourselves looking at a proposed or newly implemented feature and asking out loud "but, is it fun?". The answer can be very difficult to find, especially since many great features aren't fun until they've received that final layer of polish.

And here's part of what Zelda does so well. You can see how a lot of the great things in Breath of the Wild would be great fun even in a simple prototype. On the flip side, this kind of exhilarating feeling of being able to do so many cool things only works because every single piece of the game is designed with this in mind and all the crazy interactions people come up with are actually supported.

It only works so well because people aren't getting that familiar feeling of "oh. That didn't work." This must have been a massive task and I'm amazed they pulled it off!

I have read [1] that they actually tried large part of the systems (article mentions physics and chemistry) in a simple prototype. I would actually like to play the 2D version :)

[1] http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda...

Yes, they talk about it in the GDC talk[1] and that's what I was referring to: That I can see how even in such a simple prototype the fun seemed evident.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMsF31NdNc

What is fun for one might be torture for another.

I'm a game designer. Something can seem super fun in your head, but until it gets in front of you and you can play with it, there's no guarantee it's actually fun. And almost always, there was one or more flaws in your thinking that will have to be ironed out by playing it over and over again, preferably along with other people and getting their opinions on it as well.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I come up with this clever idea, mock up a bunch of components or start coding a prototype, and go... "oh, damn, this isn't much fun." I've been able to whip a lot of those failed ideas into something fun, but it often takes a lot of experiments with different ideas or borrowing pieces of designs from other games that have worked, a lot of time and rumination on the design (I get a lot of my ideas for new things to try while walking my puppy, commuting in a quiet car, or in the shower), and putting it aside to work on something else and letting my subconscious or things I encounter in life to inspire potential solutions to the problem (and often it'll still take multiple attempts to fix things).

The ones that drive me the most crazy are the ones where you try it for the first time and go 'This isn't that fun with this set of rules, but it's close to fun. If I can just find the right tweak, this can be great.' It can sometimes seem like it takes forever to find that right tweak. I've got some prototypes that I think are almost there, but I've had to put aside because I spent so much time on it and still couldn't figure out the right tweak for them.

There have been attempts to nail down Game Design principles. There are quite a few books you can get on Amazon that have some good insights in them, GDC lectures, Gamasutra articles, academic journals, etc. There's nothing that's totally universal, but the more you learn, the larger your design palette to draw from.

It is truly incredible how a singular person can have such an influence on the world. What would gaming have been like had he never been?

Witcher 3 is very interesting from that perspective. I found the controls to be fairly clunky, the detective vision a bit of a mess, combat as not particularly engaging, Gwent as an objectively bad card game... Yet, the strength of the writing, and the characters carry it.

The characters repelled me, I hated playing as Gruff Brooding Manly Man all the time. I could have dealt with that perhaps, but because the gameplay systems had so many issues I just put it down again and never even had a flicker of interest in going back.

Between us I think we've illustrated the distinction between "good setting" and "good game mechanics" and how they can influence whether somebody wants to play your game or not. But you definitely need at least one of them!

> Gruff Brooding Manly Man

That is the "public" image of witchers in the universe. If you play the games (and especially if you read the books) it becomes quite clear that it is just a facade.

And quite a bit of brooding that is there is "I've seen this shit before" as Geralt by the time of Witcher 3 over 100 years old (the older witcher Vesemir is over 200 years old). The mutations give Witchers long lives (none of them have ever died of old age)

The Witcher 3 did nothing at all to show me this in the time I played it. Admittedly I didn't get very far, but by the time I'd not enjoyed it for a good 15 hours or so I thought it was about time to do something more entertaining.

Also the word "Witcher" set my teeth on edge too. So really the whole world is probably not for me!

I think between the two of you, you've illustrated the subjective nature of both settings and game mechanics. Many, many people think that the Witcher 3 had both good setting and good game mechanics, that's why its one of the most acclaimed game of all time, critically and from consumers.

There's really no winning strategy here. The best creators can do is try to target what they know their existing fanbase will like, or target a fanbase as the audience they want to get. Miyamoto is really good at this. CDProjekt is also really good at this.

Yes. Yes.

What we need in helping us find the games we will love is an understanding that not everyone likes the same things. Some reviewers do acknowledge this, but far from all, and a lot of it boils down to finding individual reviewers you feel you can trust.

Which is not something I've managed to do yet.

I enjoyed gwent, though it wasn't a robust or well balanced card game in witcher 3. Just as an interesting aside, they succumbed to popular demand, and a stand-alone free-to-play gwent game is now in closed beta. Its been revamped from top to bottom, and is actually a pretty solid card game.

No Man's Sky had what 12 staff in total ?

People need to stop comparing it with games from first-tier creators like Nintendo.

Zelda link to the past didn't have a huge team, and much less the technological luxuries we have today. Yet the game is really fun. It's a culture thing.

Even if we assume Zelda had 12 people, does it make it a fairer comparison?

They have huge resources, exactly the experience needed and so on. Hardly comparable.

There are far better indie games with one or two people on the development team and even less of a budget. Some of which do damn well at competing with triple A titles.

No Man's Sky's issues did not purely come down to budget or team size, but skewed priorities. Lots of work went into the tech and procedural generation, while seemingly a lot less went into the actual core gameplay systms that actually give the players something to do in said world.

They put the idea of an unlimited size universe above that of a game that has interesting things to actually do in said universe.

If they decide to charge the same price as other first-tier games, they're asking to be compared to other first-tier games.

I've always loved sandboxy style open world games, stretching back over 20 years now. As time passed my ability to find time to play these sorts of games has drastically waned. I'd pick something up but it'd take so long to figure out how to make it work that I'd just stop playing.

You're spot on. What I love about this game is capture by what you wrote but also that it turns out to be pretty easy to get into. I'll likely never beat the thing, but there's so much cool stuff that my natural explorer tendencies are already coming out. "I wonder if I can do this?" generally winds up being answered with "yes"

Have you attached those little balloony-things to a bomb and sent that down to some moblins yet? Or dropped a leaf on purpose so a moblin uses it as a weapon?

Just out of curiosity, have you experienced any of these problems I keep hearing so much about? The videos from launch have led me to think everyone has scratched their screen and the system barely runs Zelda.

I'm astonished at how much people are mentioning apparent problems, given how great the game is.

I run it with the console both plugged in and handheld. On a TV, I have seen stutters a few (ten?) times in twice as many hours of gameplay. Even then they weren't very bad. My screen is not scratched. I have no dead pixels. The game is the best I have ever played. It is absolutely incredible.

My personal opinion? Bad news sells better than good news; a glowing review is never going to be as "good" (widely shared, viral, etc) a review as one selling problems. (And for websites and Youtube, it is selling: selling their channel).

As an owner of the switch and the game. Nope not any issue you read online. No problem with the joy con, no performance problem (either handheld or TV). No dead pixels.

I bought the carrying box for it, then no scratch on the screen. Battery life is good when used in transport (forget about road trips of more than 3-4h).

The game slow a little down when there is a huge amount of grass, but it doesn't impede the gaming experience.

All in all, I'm really happy with my purchase and I don't get how so many people have so many issues with it.

The game does have performance issues. Anyone telling you they aren't there is either in love with the game (and not seeing it) or is only used to low framerate games

It's not an issue undocked (because it runs at 720) and the game looks fantastic. If you play docked, though, there's lots of performance stutters - look at a certain area, attack a specific enemy and framerate drops to sub-30 and it might stay that way for a few seconds.

That being said, it's a good enough game that you can ignore it and even forget about it, but it's always there. It's my only real issue with the game.

That seems reasonable. I just seen one video in particular where they made it seem like it's impossible not to scratch the screen on the recharging station, and very easy to put the handles on incorrectly and have them stuck, also dead pixels and the game just bugging out completely. I have no plans to buy one, as it's just not my cup of tea, but very interested to hear if this was actually common.

I have played it on the Wii U exclusively on the handheld controller. In fact, my Wii U doesn't even have an HDMI cable in it's port. I've been mostly playing in bed and around the house.

The only time I can recall stutter was at the beginning when I started down the mountain. It was very brief, and I thought there would be much more to come. I'm about 15 hours in and have only made it to the first village. No stuttering or frame drops in this configuration since the very beginning.

I stopped playing video games by the time I started college. I can't recall once specific game or event or thought that spurred the change. Recently, as I near 30 yrs old, I wanted to step back into my childhood and picked up a Switch with Zelda. The game starts with a nice intro, light game mechanics, and then sets you loose. It has been a week and I have been playing 2-3 hours per day, every day. I can't remember the last time, I played a game that teleported me to a new world, feel like a kid, success. Any other games you all recommend from the last decade?

Portal and Portal 2

Also, the Half Life series. Not nearly as explorable as the early zelda games, though.

Antichamber is also a very fun adventure puzzler. It actually gives you tons of leeway even though it does have a linear path that's the easiest. I took maybe 6 hrs on my first play through, but there are speed runs that go under 10 minutes.

I got hooked on one of the newer Civilization games recently. Get nuked by Gandhi!

Stellaris is a great game in a similar genre. Really well done.

Splatoon, a sequel to which should be coming out for the switch, is a different kind of game, but may inspire some of the same feelings.

Well, I think you're after another game which gives you that kind of nostalgia, and honestly, nothing has come close to me like this Zelda has; it's got so much in common with the original, with all the added lore and advanced game play.

But, I'll recommend the Borderlands series; especially Borderlands 2; the game play is a lot of fun, but the dialogue is absolutely amazing: rich and funny, and a little campy without being TOO campy.

Try The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS. If that doesn't take you back, nothing will.

The Talos Principle.

It rewards divergent thinking. Probably has the most easter eggs I've seen in any game. Great story as well.

I believe a sequel is also in the works.

Isn't the talos principle very linear? Or did I just never get beyond the intro?

It's not linear. You progress through different-themed worlds and you are free to play levels in any order. Each level has more-or-less single solution but it sometimes takes quite a bit of creativity to reach it. Great brain exercise.

Journey is a great game. You can "finish" it in one setting. Unfortunately it's a Playstation exclusive. Maybe you have a friend with a Playstation (3 or 4) that you can use for an evening or a weekend?

The studio's newest game, Abzu, is on PC as well and is gorgeous.

Abzu is not a That Game Company game. It is made by Giant Squid, a studio founded by the art director of Journey.

Seconded. I replay Journey all the time. It's great for that 'i just need to unwind' moments. I took a punt originally and bought a second hand PS3 just to play Journey, and I'm SO glad I did.

I've now got a second hand PS4, and the first thing I did was re-download Journey (for free! Thanks Sony!)

One day I will get to be a White traveller...

> I have been playing 2-3 years per day, every day

That's losing track of time on an impressive scale!

I also had a lot of fun playing Super Mario Galaxy. Great soundtrack as well.

The Witcher 3.

Minecraft (with friends).

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

The Witcher 3, definitely. You still need to sit through some intro / explanations, but it's pretty well made. And the story itself is amazing. (As are the books, if you're into fantasy)

I havent gotten through the intro on The Witcher 3 ... I have tried a few times and the PC controls seem pretty weird. Maybe I should try it again.

If you feel overwhelmed by questions / story at the beginning, don't worry. You can mostly ignore the politics and learn about the factions as you go. As with all Witcher stories: everybody's got a point, everybody was hurt in the past, there are no "good" choices and you'll regret them very often. And that's great :-)

I struggled with it in the beginning. For me, it took getting well into one of the major plot-point quest lines a couple hours into the game (bloody baron) before I got hooked.

I'd say 7 days to die(with friends), I'm 33 now and we pour a lot of our free time into it (I'm at over 400 hours in the last 2 years)

I cannot stop playing 7days, so much fun.

I have poured a lot of hours in 7 days but the development feels really directionless and bogged down.

Removing gore blocks might have been defensible perf wise (even though there seem to be many other low hanging fruits), but it means that the bases are now extremely easy to defend.

Everybody (myself included) in the group of friends I play with have lost interest in the game after spending horde nights calmy waiting atop a fortification that nothing can breach.

Minecraft can be good fun.

KOTOR is pretty awesome.

The Witcher 3 I thought was awful. I'd suggest watching some gameplay video from it first and see if you like the setting, because the gameplay's not good enough to overrule that if you don't. Lots of randomly getting stuck on tiny bits of foliage in the landscape.

Some of my favorites (portal 2, mario galaxy, journey) are already mentioned. The most recent game I really enjoyed was Grow Home. It's not the most in depth game, but the mechanics and light, but wonderful, exploration make it one of my favorite games.

The Mass Effect series is absolutely worth checking out, especially if you're a sci-fi buff. :)

Dark Souls.

skyrim

Mass Effect, Last of Us, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid, God of War, Portal, Metroid Prime, Super Mario Galaxy.

Mass Effect 1-3 is one of the greatest space epics of all time. Seriously, amazing.

The Last of Us is just perfect storytelling, a true last hurrah to that generation.

Uncharted is straight up living the life of Indiana Jones in modern day, in the most AMAZING set pieces ever.

Metal Gear Solid, I don't even know how to begin. From the first game to the last, the vision, the scope, the insane story, the even more insane characters. It's the alpha and the omega in storytelling, and presentation.

God of War has the most insane boss battles.

Portal is just the most unique IP, totally different than anything else.

Metroid Prime brings Metroid into 3D PERFECTLY.

Mario Galaxy, is just charming.

I've been so disappointed by mass effet. After finishing fallout 2 recently, I looked up for some quality material, and people oversold it to me so I bought it on steam.

Yes, having a SF + FPS + RPG is an nice innovation. And the atmosphere is really well done. All in all it's a decent game, with several endings, and a finely crafted epic touch.

But it's nowhere close to the hype it got.

The dialogues are terrible. Star wars episode 2 level.

The environments are incredibly dull. Empty. Repetitive. "Illusion of openness" but really just closed connected corridors except on the empty planets. What saves the game is the space exploration system making you feel you are really bad ass.

The combat system is a mess. I never could tell when I was winning because of my skill or some chance. Does my new equipment works ? Was this spell used right ? No idea. I just powered through the last 2 levels because it was just more efficient. Like in any modern game, healing is so easy anyway.

The UI Is terrible. Your bag is full, but you can't mass manipulate things to sell them. Reading an item description takes a split second, which cumulatively makes choosing gear a torture.

The game is buggy. FPS drops (it's an old game on a recent graphic card, damn it), characters stuck in walls, camera not moving... I was ok with that... on the PS1.

The writing isn't close to any classical RPG (fallout, baldur's gate, final fantasy 7, tale of fantasia, chrono trigger...). The motivation of characters are underwhelming: you feel no passion, anger or driving emotion of any kind, nor intellectual master plans. Everything seems a reason and a shortcut to get going. The person you are playing has the charisma of an oyster. The backstories are the only thing not messed up, and each of your comrade have a cool unique personality.

And god, half of the game time is spent on those awful planet exploration transitions with the mako. Not to mention moving anywhere is slow and clunky while being a good part of the game. And those unskipable animations (docking, mako droping, elevators, mass relays...), really what were they thinking ? The game is basically unplayable without using the apparently famous "bind game acceleration to middle click" hack so you can just speed up time and not become crazy. Having to cheat in a game not to win but to be able to enjoy it is not good design.

Mass Effect series was a weird one for me. Each game had its flaws, and each game fixed some of those flaws, but then introduced a ton of new ones.

There's an excellent breakdown for each on gamedesignreviews.com

Great write up !

Well, Mass Effect never put itself in the category of those CRPG's, ever. It's absolutely inline with Star Wars, as that is what it was HIGHLY influenced by.

If we're talking crummy UI, and buggy gameplay. ANYTHING in the Fallout series isn't exactly something I would hold up in high regards :)

Mass Effect is supposed to be a space opera, not an open world like you were looking for. It's very much a story driven, go to x y z story line. With some branching.

If you've only played the first one, I can see why you'd have these reactions, it's A LOT rougher than the sequels. Which are far more polished.

I don't understand why you have been downvoted, since your reply makes sense. HN is a weird place, so many intelligent people and so many emotional reactions.

> ANYTHING in the Fallout series isn't exactly something I would hold up in high regards :)

Yes, it's the only one in the list though. Plus Fallout 1 and 2 (the goods ones) are more complex and old than mass effect.

I didn't play KOTOR so I couldn't compare to it. The space opera part is definitely a success, so I didn't hate the game. I quite enjoyed it. It's just not on my "must play" list, which contrast with everything I heard or read about the game, some even stating it was the best game of their life. I got too high expectations.

Wasn't so much the gameplay for me, but the 100+ hours of story, and the universe that was created. If it wasn't for that god damn ME3 ending, it would have been a perfect trilogy for me.

> Metal Gear Solid

I bought a PS4 just to play the latest MGS. That series of games is so amazing and the latest one is superb. Characters, cut scenes, missions, etc. are all extremely well designed.

I "beat" the game - it took me about 160hrs over 6 months (the game is fucking hard, and I'm very much a casual gamer who isn't very good at playing through games fast).

I'm only at about 60% completion of all the accomplishments you can get in the game (though I did complete the main story).

Highly recommended (if you're into sneaker games even just a little bit).

> God of War

The first game. The sequels are much worse.

Enjoyed the all honestly, tough to pick a favorite at this point.

> Last of Us

I basically stopped playing games during college due to the heavy CS workload. After graduation, I decided to pick up a PS4 and start reliving these exciting childhood memories, and Last of Us was one of those games that changed my life. I can't get Ellie off my mind for several weeks after finishing the game. Last of Us Part 2 is going to be another feel trip.

Yes top 5 games of my life, for sure.

Mario Galaxy was felt weird and a little forced for the first couple of levels. But quickly you get converted into believing the weird at first glance level design is really a masterstroke of genius.

This is a bit outside your 10-year window, but Ico (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005) are both very good.

I definitely agree with the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus recommendations.

Another game which hasn't been mentioned yet:

Xenoblade Chronicles X on the WiiU.

It is a game, very much in the same caliber that the current Zelda is - open world of the same level, great story, much to explore, the soundtrack is pure gold. If you have the chance, get it.

I spent (not wasted!) around 280 hours in it, almost completing it fully (i'm at around 96 or 98%, can't recall). AFAIK Nintendo even bought out the studio which created it...

Nintendo bought them 10 years ago, before they created Xenoblade Chronicles which was the most impressive game on the Wii. Xenoblade Chronicles X is the sequel on the Wii U. The things they managed to put on screen with that hardware invoke memories of the demoscene.

As soon as I saw the first footage of the new Zelda game, I thought for sure they were building it using Monolith's engine, because their engine is something special. Even the biggest open world games just don't feel that large compared to Xenoblade Chronicles.

In real life when you look off and see a mountain in the distance, that's the feeling I get from it that I simply haven't gotten in any other open world game. Those ARE big, but just don't feel big.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_Soft

mario maker https://youtu.be/6xiVcScNQUE

Damn, that's hard.

Hyper Light Drifter might be a good fit (one game I often recommend).

It takes a lot of inspiration from 'Zelda, a link to the past' and other old games and makes its own thing with them.

It drops you in an unknown world and trust you to discover it yourself.

- Skyrim

- Mass Effect 2

I'm nearing 30 and had almost given up on gaming.

Overwatch has got me playing more games than I had for years, though it's very different from the kind of game you're talking about. Playing it with friends and voicechat in particular is immensely fun, because it somehow feels more meaningful than any other multiplayer shooter - maybe it's the characters, maybe just the general tone, but either way it feels like I'm learning and achieving things.

Life is Strange does the transporting-to-a-world thing very nicely, though it's almost not a game (and many of the more game-ey elements detract from it IMO). Very cinematic, and a work of art in terms of storytelling - though I'm still not quite sure I'd call it fun.

Kerbal Space Program is fantastic in terms of giving you a sense of achievement, of building something through your own skill. My first successful moon mission was probably the best feeling I've ever got from a videogame.

Child of Light is a very cute hand-drawn, fairytale-themed, final-fantasy-esque adventure. Again maybe less a game as such, but a beautiful world to explore, though it's locked in the horrible dark dungeon of UbiSoft DRM. (Also be aware that it's full of doggerel, in keeping with the theme)

> though it's locked in the horrible dark dungeon of UbiSoft DRM.

Damn, I was hoping to play this game some day, because I really like reading Brie Code's essays. I hope her new indie studio manages to sell without DRM.

Heh, I disliked the focus of her popular essays, but I liked the game a lot (for reasons that I think were often the opposite of what she argued for). It was just a pain to have to wait a minute for uPlay to sort itself out whenever I wanted to play it, particularly when it's such a nice and sweet game that I played to get away from everything.

I might regret asking, but... what did you dislike about her essays? I'm all for playing different kinds of video games made by and for different kinds of people. That's what her focus seems to be. What did you get out of it?

I disliked the attacks on games that work well as games and are enjoyed by many players, or on attention to graphics (when for me the graphics were one of the big things that made Child of Light so fun to play). Games are a visual, interactive, skill-based medium; people who are less interested in these things will be better off with other media and that's fine.

By all means explore new possibilities for the medium, putting the focus in different places. But don't throw away what makes games great, especially to please an audience that was never interested in games in the first place. Games are a wonderful thing already, and dismissing the current state of gaming as "boring" or "murder simulators" is as mean-spirited as it is trite. (And the claim that games that appeal to non-gamers could be being made if only it weren't for diversity issues in the industry is not one to throw around lightly).

I found her whole focus on diversity inconsistent and unclear - at times she talks about the importance of having distinct perspectives on games and gaming, yet at other times she talks about having diverse teams develop games, which run rather contrary to each other. What made Child of Light great was that it mines this rich cultural seam of European fairy tales, playing with the (ugh) tropes of the genre. That kind of backdrop is even more important for a game than for a book or film, because culture is harder to convey in a game; the player has a lot of freedom so there's less chance to show them important details, instead you need to be able to pull out motifs that you can rely on the player to understand. The king, the sword, the jesters, the knightly mouse, the sisters, the golem - the game works because all these things are dripping in cultural connotations and every element of the game - the writing, the music, the gameplay - is embedded in that cultural context. It's the kind of work that only a culturally homogenous team (not necessarily by birth culture perhaps, but people with years of living in the same shared culture) could produce.

I'd be very happy to see games from other perspectives - but I think that perspective needs to be shared across the team. There are times where her essays read like she wants to insist on within-team diversity, which I think would destroy the ability to make a game like Child of Light - particularly given that the culture in question is an inherently European one with traditional concepts of nobility, gender roles and the like (which the game is acknowledging and buying into even as it plays around with some of them).

> Games are a visual, interactive, skill-based medium; people who are less interested in these things will be better off with other media and that's fine.

I have a bit of a problem with this, because the most obvious group of people excluded from games is women (who mostly only play mobile games, which are interactive, visual, skill-based), and yet you seem to be implying that there is something "natural" about their aversion towards a visual, interactive, skill-based medium. I really want to fight against this argument of naturality, because it's been used countless times historically to exclude women from everything from politics to medicine and programming.

Surely if most "real gamers", for want of a better term, are not women, then that's the fault of the games, not the women? I think that's what Brie Code is fundamentally arguing about.

> who mostly only play mobile games, which are interactive, visual, skill-based

Markedly less all of those, in my experience - and fundamentally less good as games. I definitely don't want to see "real" (your term) games become more like mobile games. And that seems to be what Brie Code is arguing for - removing the possibility of failure, turning down the skill aspects, putting less emphasis on the graphics. If she can bring a different cultural vision to a game that remains a "real game" in terms of being visual, interactive and skill-based then I'm all for that.

> Surely if most "real gamers", for want of a better term, are not women, then that's the fault of the games, not the women? I think that's what Brie Code is fundamentally arguing about.

I don't think an activity appealing more or less to one sex or another is a "fault" in either. Just as not every person likes the same things, not every demographic does either; why would we ever expect any different?

I can't shake the feeling that you're trying to say in the most adult and eloquent way possible that you just want to make sure that girls don't come into your sandbox and put frilly pink dresses on your toys, that they have their own (mobile) toys, away and separate from yours, and that's the way it should stay. :-)

Well I happen to like dresses. But I don't want all my toys taken away because girls don't like them.

Fundamentally I care about video games in their current form. They've brought me a lot of joy during some of the worst parts of my life. Of course I'm bothered if someone thinks they're broken and wants to remove some of my favourite parts.

Does it have to be like this? Can't there be room for more than one kind of game? I don't think Code is saying that we need to get rid of one kind of game to make room for another kind of game. I think she's just saying that she wishes that there were some interesting games with depth that she could share with people other than white males. She says how much she likes games and what kind of experiences she got from them, but then she can't share those experiences with many close friends in her life.

Surely there's room for more than one kind of toy in the sandlot?

> I don't think Code is saying that we need to get rid of one kind of game to make room for another kind of game.

The sense I got from some of her posts was that she did want to do that. And fundamentally there's always an opportunity cost - there are only so many creators and so many studios. She implies she wishes Child of Light had involved less swords and dragons, and had more accessible controls; I think all of those changes would have made it a worse game (for me but I think also for most other people). And I really enjoyed that game, and so I'd like to see more games like it made.

If I thought she was actually going to succeed in making games that other people enjoyed then I could probably support that, even if I'd be sad to see her stop making games that I enjoy. The reason I find her so frustrating to read is that I think she's got it wrong. (And yes a certain amount of experimentation and willingness to make mistakes is a great thing, and possibly necessary to being a great artist. But I don't think what she's doing is that). I think the things she's doing differently aren't going to help other people enjoy her games more, they're just going to make people who do enjoy games enjoy hers less. And if she ends up making games that hardly anyone enjoys that will be a horrible waste of talent. If she never created anything else for the rest of her life I would still be grateful to her, so maybe it's unfair to expect anything more. But it's still frustrating to see.

Must play: Bioshock Infinite

Also, the original Bioshock is fantastic, but its a bit dated now.

These are two of the greatest games ever made, IMHO

I see a lot of comments about game suggestions on things you may have missed out on. I think there is another common thread lurking of giving up gaming at some point, not consciously either, it just happens less and less.

I felt this and then in the last few years I rediscovered my love for gaming. Is life calming down? Career stable, kids are growing and enjoying games too.

Is that feeling of reliving things you loved from your childhood a thing that happens more regularly in 30's or 40's? Any studies on this that anyone is aware of?

Never played Zelda before. First Nintendo device was a Wii but did not buy Zelda. My daughters loved the Wii (sports,resort) but last year it finally went down (green tint screen). I thought about the WiiU but knew the Switch was on track and decided to wait it out.

The game has taken up our free time. I let my daughter drive but "we" played - as Zelda newbies we were helping each other out with ideas. Took about 2 days, but we finished the plateau with just one internet cheat [stasis shrine]. We are still getting a hang of the controls/camera and fighting. The game is so clean, scenic, responsive, detailed, responsible and well thought out. An immersive alternate reality. Kid friendly to boot.

I still know so little since we do not have prior Zelda history. Is there a trick to getting Rupees? Where to find arrows... how do we get powerful tools like swords and bows? Can I sell a horse that I trained? Better clothing? What do you buy vs find? In spite of all that we managed to finish the plateau and when we flew down in the paraglider, it actually felt like we accomplished something. And thats key... we were always making progress or when stuck went and did something else before coming back.

Side note: So what made me buy Zelda given that I had no history with it? Well, it was really the only real game that the system launched with (not counting 1-2 Switch as it is a demo). Lucked into it.

I am not sure how Nintendo did it. Perhaps I did not understand who Nintendo was (via the Wii). This game seems to expose their true capability and soul. Maybe there are other non Nintendo games as fluid as this; I just don't know.

Switch Negatives: Just an opinion... Wii Sports is better than 1-2 Switch.

> I still know so little since we do not have prior Zelda history.

It doesn't help, BotW is very different to all the previous games. Finding better swords and bows gets a lot better in time (probably another dozen hours), eventually you don't have to worry about stuff breaking so much (my biggest gripe early on).

But yes, you do have a misconception about nintendo, they are usually on the cutting edge of what can be done. That bit with the paraglider for instance, that's what stepping out into Hyrule field for the first time felt like 20 years ago.

> that's what stepping out into Hyrule field for the first time felt like 20 years ago.

Or what taking the boat out onto sea in Wind Waker felt like.

They really have got feel right. Though I think some of the atmosphere isn't there in this Zelda.

I miss the music that plays at dawn in Wind Waker and also in Twilight Princess (and probably others). A very nice melody that doesn't seem to be in this game.

There's a bit of music that occasionally appears which seems to reference the dawn theme, but a lot of standard Zelda musical cues are mostly absent, and almost none of the ones that are there go where you'd expect. The approach to music in this game is so much more minimal, and they deliberately twisted it all slightly, probably to reinforce how BOTW is different to its predecessors while sharing some of the same ideas.

You're better off having not played previous Zeldas IMO

I just finished the game and finally went online and realized I missed a ton of the new fun because I was playing like an old Zelda. I didn't realize the extent to which it's a sandbox.

To give 2 ideas that hopefully are not spoilers. You can throw things at enemies and theyll pick them up. So throw them something useless.

Another is you can for example attach and octo balloon to pretty much anything and then use a leaf to blow it somewhere.

I dont know if those are good examples I just know I really didn't look for all the creative ways to combind the things you can do

I can see how the first tip can come in handy! I have not got an octo balloon yet, so it is something to think about. We just threw away our leaf but reading this thread I just realized where we could have used it.

Maybe playing this game slowly is ok. I do not see any downsides to going slow - that has required a change in my thinking. As you, flukus, and others have said it is a different game requiring some rethinking from old and new players alike.

I only peripherally pay attention to games, but is my impression right that Nintendo is just a brilliantly innovative company, light years ahead of any other (major) gaming developer?

Off the top of my head, I see the Wii, Pokemon Go, and now this.

In addition to being innovative, they seem focused on artistry, creativity, and positive experiences for their customers. Wii in many ways encouraged collaboration and activity, playing with others (i.e., rather than alone with pizza all night long); it focused on that over flashy graphics and shock-and-gore. Pokemon Go got people out on their feet, interacting, exploring and engaging with their towns, creatively rather than garishly introduced them to the possibilities of new tech (AR), and was fun but not violent.

Perhaps that's already Nintendo's reputation; I don't know. But they don't get enough attention and praise IMHO. They seem to me to be like the Pixar or Apple of games, or better.

Totally agree! However, Pokemon Go is not Nintendo.

I'm surprised by how similar and non-gamy Pokemon Go feels (feels more like a grind / freemium mobile game). I was also surprised by how much the core mechanics have a vibe very similar to Ingress.

I think it'd be interesting to see a Pokemon Go designed by Nintendo / Game Freak themselves.

> I was also surprised by how much the core mechanics have a vibe very similar to Ingress.

It was made by the same developers—and the pokestops and gyms when the game launches were all ingress sites.

> it focused on that over flashy graphics and shock-and-gore > They seem to me to be like the Pixar or Apple of games, or better.

I think that what both Apple and Nintendo have in common is that they don't just try to put hardware components into a box and sell them to you for cheap (e.g. Dell).

They have a chance of higher profit margins by taking themselves out of that race via trying to find creative ways to add value instead of optimizing raw performance / sale price.

No, they just overcharge you for old or gimmicky hardware instead. :p

They aren't afraid to take chances but not all of their chances are so great. The Wii U was a bit of a disaster.

Exactly this! If you think Apple and their profit margins there's a big parallel. And both Apple as well as Nintendo have gone for gimmicks that weren't obvious big hits (the Wii U, 3D touch).

(On the subject of the Wii U, in a lot of ways it seems like the Switch might be the second iteration for being hip and also making a tablet, where the Wii U was the first one.)

Not sure if it's still true that all other console makers are subsidizing theirs.

> They aren't afraid to take chances but not all of their chances are so great.

Isn't that the nature of taking chances? If there weren't failures, it wouldn't be called 'taking risks'.

The first Wii was pretty amazing IMHO.

Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime have the best controls of any FPS I've ever played on console. It was just so natural, I could get head shots in RE4 by just pointing my arm at the TV and pulling the trigger.

Then they released the Wii U ...

> The Wii U was a bit of a disaster.

Its library was smaller than I would have liked, but it definitely had a number of really great games.

Pokemon Go was not Ninetendo, just Nintendo IP. There was an interesting market reaction once people realized this:

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/25/12270074/pokemon-go-nintend...

That's not to say that Nintendo did anything to mislead the public, they didn't, it was just a widespread misconception.

As a gamer, Nintendo is somewhat "brilliantly innovative" but they also appear to be somewhat disconnected from their market. Pokemon Go is actually a good example. The Nintendo fan base is positively starving for content and Nintendo seems to consistently underestimate demand.

Or as you suggest, perhaps they are more interested in being innovative rather than servicing their fan base.

So while I think they should be praised for being innovative I would also say two things:

* Pokemon Go is not at all their innovation

* They definitely have problems

Thanks for the clarification. Do they at least get credit for backing and popularizing Pokemon Go? Where would it be without Nintendo?

(Real questions; I'm not advocating for Nintendo.)

Well, that would just be Ingress:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)

As I understand it, not really. Niantic took their Ingress platform and modified it slightly to work with Pokemon IP with a minigame (casting poke-balls) inside. The original PokeStops were actually Ingress points of interest :)

EDIT: Per Wikipedia, the idea for the game came from a Pokemon Company employee (owned 33% by Nintendo [0]), inspired by Ingress, and the game was developed at the Pokemon Company. Another link says "The Pokémon Company... and Nintendo jointly developed the app". Where does the story that it was all Niantic come from?

Per Wikipedia:

* Ingress: It was downloaded 8 million times "as of" 2015, about a year after its release, and claimed 7 million players in 2015.

* Pokemon Go: 130 million downloads in its first month, 650 million within 8 months. PG was "the most active mobile game in the United States ever with 21 million active users" within a week of its launch; note that is in only one country.

From a software development perspective Nintendo might not have done anything, but who had the vision to invest in bringing this to such a huge market? That also is an investment in creativity and innovation. (That's not meant to be a rhetorical question; I don't know the answer.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Go

As shown, the developer and publisher is Niantic which is also the developer of Ingress.

Perhaps you are referring to this snippet:

> The concept for the game was conceived in 2014 by Satoru Iwata of Nintendo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokémon Company as an April Fools' Day collaboration with Google, called the Google Maps: Pokémon Challenge.[21] Ishihara was a fan of developer Niantic's previous transreality game, Ingress, and saw the game's concept as a perfect match for the Pokémon series.[22] Niantic used the crowdsourced[23] data from Ingress to populate the locations for PokéStops and gyms within Pokémon Go, and data from Google Maps to spawn specific Pokémon on certain terrain or environment.[24][25]

So for background, The Pokémon Company is more or less a licensing body for handling licensing of the Pokémon IP and franchise. They collaborated with Niantic to meld an Ingress inspired augmented reality game with the Pokémon IP.

Yes The Pokémon Company is a subsidiary of Nintendo so in a way Nintendo had a hand in the collaboration...but I would probably classify it as a 2nd or even 3rd order relationship. But that is a personal judgement call I suppose.

In my mind, the augmented reality game design was wholly pioneered and executed by Niantic (not once but twice). The idea for melding said design with Pokémon IP came from the franchise licensing entity of The Pokémon Company which is a joint subsidiary of Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures who were the three businesses holding copyright on Pokémon at the time of its founding [1].

But again, somewhat of a personal view point.

To me, I wouldn't necessarily attribute much related to Pokémon Go to Nintendo.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pok%C3%A9mon_Company

I bet Nintendo is just waiting until they can make a true Pokemon game the way it deserves. It was such a magical experience that anything less than that would be a disappointment.

I wonder if they really underestimate the demand, or just are happy to keep people hungry. Compare this to Mario that I hate, because he's absolutely everywhere. Why is he racing or fighting anyone outside of Mario land? It's a cash cow and nothing is safe from those characters.

I think they fully realize that the fan base is starving for that content, but they have no real reason to dilute their IPs with games on mobile. They have a giant war chest, and 2 portable consoles out right now. Mario Run was an interesting, polished foray into mobile, but I'm also getting it's as far as full content from them will go on mobile.

The form factor isn't ideal for their games the gameplay model (short bite sized bursts) isn't ideal, even the pricing isn't ideal (look at the outcry over paying for Mario Run, I've heard people dismiss Mario Run immediately over the fact it wasn't 99 cents).

What are your thoughts on Fire Emblem: Heroes?

I don't know it well, but at the surface it seems to follow the formula Mario Run did, present the IP in a polished but pared down experience that won't compete with the main content. The pricing is more traditional, but the IP is also not as sensitive as mario imo, I don't think Nintendo would involve Mario in that type of FTP structure

That article is essentially wrong. The run up in Nintendo stock was not based on a misconception about the ownership of Pokemon Go, and the fall was not a "realization". Contrary to what journalists would have you think, investors are not usually stupid.

The run up in Nintendo stock happened because investors have been after Nintendo for years to start making mobile game versions of their crown jewel IPs, believing (rightfully I would point out) that this would be an absolute gold mine. When Pokemon Go became an unprecedented blockbuster success, investors reasoned that it would convince Nintendo to change course and make more mobile games.

The fall in Nintendo stock happened after their earnings call. On the call, Nintendo said that despite the success of Pokemon Go they were not changing their plans to increase their investment in mobile games. That's why their stock fell (to "only" a 60% gain).

Nintendo is an odd company. They are extremely conservative in some ways, but game design isn't one of them. At the same time, nothing in Zelda is really that innovative, it's just put together very very well.

They didn't develop pokemon go.

> But they don't get enough attention and praise IMHO

It's because they pull constant bullshit.

Everything is a shortage. NES classic, amiibos, etc...

Their online systems are years behind.

They try to get people to pay again and again for the same ancient games. You can't transfer games bought on the virutal console between different consoles, why? Fuck you that's why.

They are at times more concerned with being "innovative" then just providing a good core experience. You praise the wii but it wound being filled with shovelware and the motion controls are still just meh.

They are extremely hostile towards their own community. They zealously "protect" their IP (as is their right) from people doing lets plays and reviews and such on youtube.

I love nintendo the game maker, but they are not the best company around.

I love Nintendo and I also agree with everything you say :P

I really never understood why Nintendo so stringently protects their IP to the point of essentially not allowing youtube videos. I understand why they require always on for Mario run but I just feel like their choices aren't the best. If 10,000 people pirated Mario run, how many of those would have purchased it in the first place? I can't imagine more than 5-10% of them.

And the whole purchase on every single damn system made me stop buying their digital content.

I love and hate both Nintendo and Apple for pretty much the reasons you describe.

There's a maddening idiosyncrasy (I feel there's a better word I can use... eccentricity?) to both companies where they do enough things right that I feel a kind of loyalty that I rarely feel for a company, but then they do plenty of things so spectacularly wrong that I feel a bit stockholm-syndromed for 'loving' them.

I would say your impression is wrong. They do have their strong points that they capitalize on, around an equally large graveyard of failure.

They aren't exceptional in the idea that none of the big game developers are really experimenting. Games today are very similar to the games 15 years ago in mechanics, and let alone title.

Even with Nintendo in the mix pushing for collaboration and positive experience you still have to turn to the indie developers willing to take the risk on a new IP with innovative gameplay. When done right is better than any flagship title since they are all the same.

I would say that they are like Apple in that opinions on them are often highly polarized.

Honestly, I don't think they're particularly innovative. Plenty of people had been working with accelerometers before Nintendo put them in a Wii controller. I had some circuit boards on my desk at work. The difference seems to be that the executive team is less risk adverse than you would imagine a 100+ year old family owned business to be.

If anything, I figure that Nintendo's brand stable allows them to take on bigger hardware risks than others. Sony and Microsoft both have motion control technology, but Nintendo was the only one to ship it to customers by default. Third party publishers were absolutely not on board with that -- they more or less treat consoles as underpowered PCs-- leaving Nintendo more or less standing alone. I don't think Wii ever really had top tier 3rd party support, because they're focus is on publishing a consistent experience across a variety of device types (well, that and Sony / MS using their capital to buy up IP).

tl;dr: Nintendo engineers are just as creative as anyone else's, but their management team is comfortable encouraging and placing large bets on them.

I think it's fair to say that innovating a play style is on the whole innovative. Sure, the fact that they're not that risk-averse is true, but they do put a solid effort in redefining how we traditionally think of game systems.

I think it's really interesting that you have this impression, as an mostly outsider. If you look at real discussions between fans and gamers these days, ignoring the die-hard 'Nintendo can do no wrong' people, they're not doing so hot in the reputation department.

- Wii was more than a decade ago, and is widely considered one of last things they did right.

- Pokemon Go has nothing to do with Nintendo outside of their stake in the IP. Additionally, it's not remembered fondly by most people above the age of 13.

- Wii U was a massive failure, and has been buried by Nintendo

- The Switch was bungled pretty heavily, it's been nothing but criticized as far as I can tell. I haven't heard a single good thing about it, except that it has Zelda.

As far as innovation goes, they haven't innovated in years. They've introduced gimmicks that get ignored or ridiculed, not remembered.

This video is an excellent demonstration of creative ways to play with the engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EvbqxBUG_c

It has some swearing and some very minor spoilers if you are just starting the game.

I came here to post the same link. Dunkey is by far my favourite YouTuber.

https://www.youtube.com/user/videogamedunkey

The dog spinning with him was hilarious

The game play is great, but I think this one has the weakest story telling of all the big Zelda games I've played. And the English voice acting is very terrible. The voices are annoying and badly done, from my perspective. I couldn't tell the difference between the voice of Zelda and the Mipha character, probably the same actor. My wife has to leave the room when a voice acted snippet comes on, and my kids make fun of it.

But me and the kids have been playing it non-stop. The actual game play is great.

The world is huge but maybe not as massive as I thought initially. Certainly the map is Skyrim-ish sized, but it doesn't have the same depth of dungeons and quests and items as Skyrim does. The focus really is still on the main quest.

So I suspect after I'm done the main quest I probably won't play it much. There's not really a character-building item-collecting aspect to it, despite the large open game world and adaptable mechanics, etc. the focus really is a typical Zelda game: rescue the princess and defeat Ganon.

I would love to play it, but I can't find a Nintendo Switch. That is, I absolutely refuse to reward scalper behavior (which Nintendo encourages via their artificial shortages).

It's available on the Wii-U as well.

True, but I don't own a Wii-U, and the Wii-U is 5-year old technology, whose production has officially ended as of January (http://kotaku.com/wii-u-production-has-officially-ended-for-...).

Scalpers are lowlifes, IMO.

> Scalpers are lowlifes, IMO.

If the two alternatives are a world where no new Switches are available for anyone to buy, and a world where some new Switches are available for a high price, then surely the latter is strictly better than the former. Your sentiment places the scalpers in an unfair position of "ethical entanglement": if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame. Other examples at http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

How are scalpers trying to make the situation better? They don't increase the supply, as in your erroneous hypothetical.

There's an argument for scalpers, but it's more subtle. Companies want immediate sales and to be able to say they sold out. Scalpers let them do that by taking on some of the risks themselves. And it ostensibly allows people to make a time/money tradeoff between waiting in line or for later supplies versus paying more.

Unlike concert tickets, if the Switch bombed, scalpers would probably return their devices for a full refund. So, in that sense, they aren't taking on any risk.

I understand why a concert venue would be happy to get guaranteed income from scalpers, but this does not hold for consumer devices.

> And it ostensibly allows people to make a time/money tradeoff between waiting in line or for later supplies versus paying more.

See my reply to vkou. This is exactly how scalpers make the situation better, by creating the availability of the choice to make a trade-off, where before there was no choice but to compete on latency or luck (which is fine for many consumers, but consumers vary in their ability to compete on latency and in their valuation of the trade-off).

Giving people 'choices' in how goods are distributed doesn't always make the situation better.

Consider rationing when there's a food shortage. We can either feed everyone (At reduced rations), or we can let some people pay more, to get more food, at the expense of letting others starve.

Isn't it great to give people the choice between destitution and starvation? (Or, in the case of the poor, between starvation, and starvation.)

There's a reason rationing is common in times of hunger.

Why consider this example, though, when a Switch, or a concert ticket or iPhone or whatever, is not necessary for survival?

Video games are obviously not life-saving food.

I was using this example to demonstrate that optimizing for [choice/wealth] does not always result in better outcomes. Just as the parent post posits that optimizing for first come-first serve does not always result in better outcomes.

The analogy of that to your link is... tenuous at best. Your idea of helping people out is taking it from people willing to wait in line for it to people willing to pay for it. I don't view this as an atrocity like some would, but to even begin to question someone's ethical consistency based off that is suspect. It's clearly a trade-off and not actually a "small but positive change that gets demonized because it's incomplete". It gets demonized because some people don't think it's positive.

Without scalpers then a shortage means the switches are actually in the hands of gamers who got them for a reasonable price, without some shithead sticking themselves in the middle.

Currently it's a bunch of people who want to play, but aren't willing to be gouged by a bunch of fucking assholes.

> Without scalpers then a shortage means the switches are actually in the hands of gamers who got them for a reasonable price[...]

A reasonable dollar price, but an unreasonable requirement of speed and/or luck.

But with scalpers you make the initial rush a much harder battle (you compete with scalpers now too) so more customers are losers at that stage, and then losers again if they have to be gouged by scalpers.

Scalpers don't 'partially fix the problem'. They don't create new Switches.

They have two effects.

1. They change the distribution of a good from a lottery, to a 'whomever pays more gets it' auction.

2. Depending on how they acquire the good, they may or may not have a positive impact on the original vendor.

Because of #1, depending on your personal values, you can make a very compelling argument that lottery-based distribution of scarce goods is fair, and that turning it into an auction-based distribution (While pocketing the difference) is immoral.

#2 is applicable for things like concert tickets (Where scalpers take on risk, and provide guaranteed, but bounded revenue for the artists/venue), but is probably less applicable for video games/devices (Where unsold scalper inventory will likely be returned for a refund - at no risk to the scalper.)

> 1. They change the distribution of a good from a lottery, to a 'whomever pays more gets it' auction.

The original distribution was hardly a lottery, it was a competition on latency (i.e. competition to be first in line). They change the distribution of some of the supply from a competition on latency to a competition on price. Consumers vary in their ability and preference to compete on latency, and in their valuation of the time/pleasure trade-off. Assuming a fixed supply of switches (in the short term), scalpers add value for those consumers whose preferences are such that they would in this instance prefer to compete on price rather than latency, and are willing to pay the going premium for not having to compete on latency. Without the scalpers, these consumers would have no option but to wait for new supply. There's really nothing unfair going on.

Side note, high frequency trading is kind of an interesting example of the converse situation, where inability to compete on price forces everyone to compete on latency. Because the exchange has a minimum "tick size" for changes in price (a penny or tenth of a penny, or whatever, depending on the exchange), there comes a point where it is no longer possible for buyers and sellers to compete with each other further on price, and so the only thing left to compete on is latency.

First in line, lottery, whomever waits longest in line... In many value systems, these are all more 'democratic' or 'fair' methods of distribution, then 'person with the most money.'

It's one optimization function, but not necessarily the best one. Especially when the original vendor does not see a penny of the scalper windfall.

The same number of consumers have no option but to wait for new supply, with or without scalper involvement.

The only thing that changes is the demographic of those consumers.

HFT arguably reduces spreads, and carries entirely different costs. It's not really comparable.

Nintendo's already sold 1.5 million units in its first week. The Xbox one sold 3 million in its first month. Arguably, Nintendo on purpose let out fewer units than it needed to supply demand. They seem to use shortages as a marketing ploy from past releases. So the interested gamer has these two factors going against him/her: 1. the supplier cuts supply to gin up free marketing and 2. scalpers making an already hard to find item even more difficult to find. I think that's double the 'unfair' and thus not cool, bro.

>If the two alternatives are a world where no new Switches are available for anyone to buy, and a world where some new Switches are available for a high price

And if that high price is too high for you to afford, then you are strictly worse off in a world with scalpers.

>if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame.

Explain how scalpers are trying to make the problem slightly better. I understand that you may think that they are making the problem slightly better for certain subset of people, but that most certainly isn't their goal.

Scalpers are trying to make money, that is their only motive. The end result is to allow people with a surplus of money to acquire items, at the expense of people who have a surplus of time.

Since people who have a surplus of money tend towards the poorer end of the spectrum, overall scalpers benefit the comparatively wealthy at the expense of the poor.

So get a used one for cheap from goodwill/eBay? That's my plan at least.

Once the sellers twigged that the new Zelda was also available for the Wii-U they've all bumped their prices up on eBay.

Also, most of the Wii-Us on eBay don't have the screen controller, making them useless (you can't set up a Wii-U without the screen controller).

You could buy the Wii U version to run it on CEMU in true 1080p (provided you have good hardware)?

I hadn't been following CEMU's progress, but it looks like it has come a long way in the past year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Au_XrDKQ0

I preordered one of the 2nd round of bundles from GameStop a week ago with guaranteed delivery by Easter. My shipment is showing up tomorrow.

I'm annoyed by the scalpers/shortage thing, too. Nintendo does this knowingly and it's frustrating. Apple doesn't do this stuff. I got my iPhone SE by preorder and the preorder window was open wide. There was no "oh you weren't near a computer for the one hour window they were on sale so you're 100% out of luck".

Maybe Apple doesn't purposely do it, but if you wanted a Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus and weren't awake at 3am when pre-orders opened, you were not getting one before December.

I know even GameStop got into the scalping it seems... I just want to go to a store and buy it semi-impulsively. The guy at a GameStop said we have them in our warehouse and I can sell you one for $600.

Ok nope I'll wait and there's only one game to play and none schedule to come out for months minus re-hashes of Wii U games.

On a different note..I bought the Wii U for my niece and nephew and MARIO Chase alone is tons of fun; money well spent.

You mean its apart of a $600 bundle. You are getting items which add up to $600 so it not scalping in that sense.

Items whose list price add up to $600 but no one would actually buy at that price.

You are forced to get items which add up to $600, when you only wanted part of the bundle. That feels like taking advantage of people. They did that to me when I went to buy the first xbox.

If the things you want aren't worth the price, you don't buy it. no one is taking advantage of you; no one has a gun to your head.

They were the only ones who still had them in stock, because of their deal. I was a sucker because I couldn't be bothered to wait, and a learned a valuable lesson.

> Anything liquid can be frozen. Anything metal can be magnetised. Anything flammable can be set alight.

Graphical NetHack? (Disclaimer: I played NetHack only once, a long time ago, and know it mostly by reputation.)

In their GDC talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMsF31NdNc) one of the core concepts they present is "multiplicative gameplay", which sounds a lot like what NetHack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup aim for as well.

It's a surprising amount of fun to have multiple ways to solve puzzles and try to come up with one that was or was not intended to solve it.

Here's a direct link to the timestamp where they talk about this, and show off an internal 2D prototype of their "chemistry engine":

https://youtu.be/QyMsF31NdNc?t=1067

Not particular to the genre, but I think this is one of the characteristics that had made games like NetHack and Dwarf Fortress so engaging to some. The right combination of mechanics and systems, alongside interesting or surprising placement to create scenarios that the brain interprets as a narrative.

More modern example is Rimworld, it really gets the design right. Each game item has multiple uses in different contexts, and randomly-generated events actually add up to meaningful story. It's also great example on how to build complex world while still allowing players to have good insights into mechanics and game state.

Does anybody subscribe to this magazine (1843)? I subscribe to the parent magazine The Economist, and this sounds appealing, but $50 for 6 issues seems steep (and no online subscription).

They send me a lot of issues with my normal Economist subscription, but you're definitely right that it's not cheap.

It might be worth pointing out that if you're having trouble finding a console to play this on, refurbished Wii-Us are still an option for $200.

https://store.nintendo.com/

I bought one since I wanted some party games and didn't have any Nintendo console anymore. It was more than worth it. Mind you this was before end of life so the calculus might be a bit different now.

I can second this, in particular if 1) you like Nintendo games, and 2) you haven't played all the Wii and Wii U titles (or perhaps even GameCube).

I bought the Wii U even though I could've bought the Switch. It's my first Nintendo console since the Gameboy Advance (SP) and GameCube, and I'm very happy with my decision (giddy, even).

Here's a few arguments in favor of getting a Wii U:

- you can play all the WiiU and (most?) Wii titles. Even just the first-party ones are worth it: Metroid Prime Trilogy, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wind Waker HD, Mario 3D World, Mario Galaxy (1 and 2), Mario Kart, Wii Sports, and so on, along with and admittedly small selection of great third-party titles. - through the Virtual Console you can also play a pretty decent selection of N64, NES, SNES, Gameboy Advance, and DS games. This gives you access to many if not most of Nintendo's Zelda, Mario, Paper Mario and Metroid titles, among others, as well as tons of games that at the very least have high nostalgia value (although the first party ones are generally highly acclaimed too). - there's a decent amount of 'indie' titles available, although I suspect that to be quickly eclipsed by the Switch. - based on (ridiculously extensive) googling around before making the decision, it seems that Breath of the Wild is just as good on the WiiU as it is on the switch, with the one big (but to me unimportant) exception of resolution (900p on Switch, 720p on WiiU). Plus, for now at least it's better than the 900p docked version for Switch, performance wise. But that might be fixed with a firmware update.

Basically, the Wii U is at this moment the ultimate Nintendo console. And even if (or when, really) they start offering these games for the Switch, I consider it unlikely that they'll support Wii games on account of having to support the Wii controls (remote + nunchuck).

All that said, obviously the Switch is far superior when looking forward (WiiU is discontinued, even) and for mobile play. If those things don't matter too much, I'd say get a WiiU even if you can get a Switch, and sell it once Mario Odyssey or some other new game you want comes out. The WiiU will probably retain much of its value, even as your 'retro-gaming machine' to handle all the weird control schemes Nintendo has been going through lately.

I wonder whether future Zelda games will be more like this title, or more like its predecessors. I have had great experiences with both, and Ocarina of Time now contends with Breath of the Wild as my favorite game. Even I don't know what I would prefer.

I wonder whether now that they have a functioning engine and tools for large open worlds it might take less effort to create another open world like this — and then allow them to spend that time on also having the more traditional big dungeons in there. That'd be neat at least.

I think getting some longer more traditional dungeons as DLC would be amazing.

There are two DLC packs coming later in the year. Hopefully they do just that.

I'd like to see them succeed with episodic game play.

I'm not sure if anyone really ever did that. I know that Valve wanted to do it with Half Life 2 and then just stopped after two episodes.

It sounds like Witcher 3 had two great extensions, but that's it pretty much.

It sounds like one of my favorite childhood games had that in mind, but then others figured out how to create content, and they let the community create new content instead.

Is anyone actually doing episodic game content successfully? I guess MMORPGs like WoW do, but is anyone successfully doing episodic content for games outside that genre?

If Nintendo follows their pattern you won't see another major Zelda title for 5-6 years at least, maybe even more. There will be smaller Zelda-themed titles that have other gameplay mechanics but with a Zelda theme, like what they did with Four Swords, etc.

But we'll maybe see a similar engine with something else from their franchise. I'm really hoping they do Metroid with this engine!

Maybe we'll see another game with the same engine and systems but some different characters and a new game mechanic at its core. Like how Ocarina of Time's engine got reused in Majora's Mask, along with most of its resources.

Agreed. I've always wanted a useful house in a Zelda game. Now I have one. And the game just keeps getting better (albeit a little too easy so far)

What use did you find for a house? I bought one, upgraded everything and the only use was the bed.

It allows you to store extra swords, shields, and bows AFAIK. Also has a couple of tools (hammer, others) conveniently available nearby.

I liked the weapon storage for keeping certain useful/powerful weapons, especially since it took me forever to find Hestu's second location, and the bed is nice to have as well. Mainly just a fun thing to have, and I'm hoping they pop something house-related into the DLC.

Wow! I totally missed that was even a possibility. I thought it was just a dialog tree conversation not an actual feature.

There's so much stuff like that in the game! My brother comes by regularly to play on a separate account and while we try to go to different areas there's still quite a bit of overlap. It's incredibly how much stuff is in all those areas that he visits that I haven't even seen, but it's even more incredible how much stuff one of us missed in the areas we both explored.

And considering that we're both pretty serious gamers and compulsive 'find everything' personalities, I suspect more casual games could replay the game from the start multiple times and still discover new stuff that is 'significant' (as opposed to 'minor' stuff like new items, korok seeds, or shrines).

> Chop wood or light fires in the glacial wastes of “Skyrim”? No chance.

You can chop wood even in vanilla Skyrim, and with mods you can light fires, ride dragons or do whatever you want.

>and with mods you can light fires, ride dragons or do whatever you want.

Not to pick on you directly, but this rebuttal seems to come out every time an unfavorable comparison is drawn to Skyrim lately, and it honestly makes no sense to me.

If the comparison is to the base game, which everyone experiences regardless of platform, why would anyone ever consider mods in that comparison? Of course you can do things that aren't in the game if you change the game. I can also add custom reticles to any game I want, provided I have plastic wrap, tape and a marker, but that doesn't imply they're part of the game.

Caveat being the only consoles that can play it are either impossible to find or at the very end of its lifecycle.

How does that affect the quality of the game?

Availability is an issue - I can't get the game.

Nintendo needs to improve this - I wanted the Wii back in 2006/2007 and finally gave up trying to get one retail, and never bought the console.

I'm not a serious gamer, I game casually when I do, but that's a lost sale.

We are well on our way into 2017 and you still can't find the NES classic. I wish Nintendo were a bit more Apple in that respect.

They're notorious for spiking demand by creating limited availability. They do it with their amiibo launches all the time. It's kinda sad really. They claim more classics are on the way though after the switch is stocked regularly.

Past the end of lifecycle, I think. It's quite difficult to find WiiUs as well, at least from an actual store.

> at the very end of its lifecycle

This might not be a bad thing. Plenty of quality software already released that you can obtain cheaply. I skipped the Wii U, but am going to pick one up so that I can actually play Zelda, as well as explore the other games I missed.

I bought the Wii U primarily for this game, back before all the delays happened. Things worked out magically for me, just a couple of years after the fact :)

It's not a bad little machine for a few games. You could keep yourself busy and totally immersed in Legend of Zelda just playing BoTW, the HD re-issue of Wind Waker (_highly_ recommended), the re-issue of Twilight Princess, the Wii copy of Skyward Sword (weakest of the bunch imho, but there) and Minish Cap in virtual console. Worth the buy just to play those.

Same goes for Mario. Super Mario Wii U is great. Super Mario 3d World is great. Super Mario Galaxy series for Wii runs great on it.

And Mario Maker! Hours of fun.

I hear great things about Spatoon. The Pikmin games are great.

But my kids mainly use it for Minecraft and Mario Maker.

A highly underrated system, imho. Nintendo released some great titles for it.

How can you leave out Metroid Prime Trilogy! The first installment is probably the first in a list of less than fives games that I've finished multiple times.

Other than that I agree with what you said.

Sure, but Metroid Prime is a GC series that they haven't updated :-( To play it these days you're actually just better off playing it in Dolphin, which I recently did. It looks great you can even get texture packs to upgrade it.

True, I'm really hoping we'll get a new Metroid game on Switch. That said, for many people the control scheme of the original put them off, so being able to play it using the (easier) Wii controls, higher resolution, and getting the whole trilogy for about 20 bucks is a pretty nice plus of having a WiiU.

Unless you hate these types of backtracking games, of course :).

I bought most of my consoles at the end of their lifecycles.

The way I see it, buying a console already means that you get 'last-gen' or 'lesser-gen' compared to PC. So why not go one generation lower and benefit from tons of titles (reviewed and re-reviewed after things cool down), very cheap prices, (oxford comma!) and not dealing with early-adopter issues.

Current status: Watching the memories I got so far in different languages. French is excellent.

Is it just me or does it seem like there's something wrong that these 30-year-old game franchises are continually being milked? Is it really that hard to come up with something new these days? Back when these things were new, there were no other, much older franchises to draw from. Metroid, Zelda, etc. were all brand-new and came out at about the same time.

They aren't mutually exclusive. Splatoon received critical acclaim, for example.

This is also true for every other media -- we relentlessly rebuild, recycle, and remix old work to create new content. It's a part of being human.

>we relentlessly rebuild, recycle, and remix old work to create new content. It's a part of being human.

I addressed that before: this simply isn't true for Nintendo games circa 1985-6. At that time, these characters and games were all-new, except perhaps for Mario, and he came from Donkey Kong which only came out a few years earlier. So why were they able to come up with so many original characters all in such a short span of time, which have lasted this long, but they haven't created anything original in the last 10-20 years that even remotely compare? Personally I think it points to some change in our society.

As posters above have mentioned, all "sequels" in a Nintendo franchise tend to be completely independent with basically the character models swapped in later in development to make it part of a series. There's no shortage of ideas for new characters and stories, but if you don't put a recognizable name on the box, you immediately sacrifice half your sales.

Movies are the same, so maybe you're right there's something different about society's taste these days.

I think it reflects on a severe amount of risk-averseness on the part of the corporate producers these days. Decades ago, they were willing to take risks on new ideas, both in movies and in video games. Now they're not; they only want stuff that's basically guaranteed a profit, even if it's not that large. So we get a lot of "safe" stuff, like ever-more installments in some comic-book movie franchise, or video games that reuse the same characters over and over, instead of truly all-new concepts. You can't have truly new stories if you're using the same characters; that limits you.

Honestly I find it pretty lame, but I'm just not a huge fan of Nintendo's franchises. If you love them (and there are a lot that do), then it's heaven. It's what Nintendo does.

That being said while they recycle the same old franchises year after year, they've constantly got new good franchises (Pikmin, someone else mentioned Splatoon) and interesting mechanics like Mario Galaxy.

Can't hate them too much for finding a niche and sticking to it.

As long as the gameplay changes, there is little to be gained in creating a new franchise. The story of most Nintendo games is banal to begin with, they merely exist as a vessel for gameplay.

Nintendo games are pretty much unlike games like Assasins Creed, COD or Fifa, where new games offer minor tech and feature bumps.

It's not like these games are the same. Super Mario 3D World is completely different than Super Mario Galaxy which is completely different than New Super Mario Bros, even though all of them are in the "Mario" franchise.

Zelda is a bit more similar game-to-game, but even then there's massive changes, and Breath of the Wild is pretty unlike any other Zelda game before it.

So if only the characters and some of the core mechanics (like hearts in Zelda) are the same, then is it really milking the franchise to release different games?

As another commenter pointed out, it's not like FIFA/NBA/NHL or CoD where each release is a minor change over the previous.

In many other facets of entertainment I would completely agree about that lack of new narrative in modern IP; but on this point I think it's just you.

In defense of OP, sequels tend to be derivative across the board (film, games, music).

Nintendo is just the odd one out. I don't know if this is maybe also a cultural difference, but in the case of Nintendo innovation is more focused on gameplay than on characters, universes/world-building, and storyline.

In the light of gameplay innovation, every (major) Mario or Zelda title, among others, is completely different and arguably quite innovative.

Basically, if Halo were a Nintendo title, it would've had a minimal story, repeated over and over, but cross and invent gameplay genres instead of fundamentally remaining a typical (but excellent!) FPS.

It's not just you, but I think this is a pretty silly gripe. The vast majority of games that see release are essentially the same. Year after year, they tell the same stories with the same characters with the same quick time events and overpriced DLC (atop an already overpriced base title). Reusing the same characters is comparatively a non issue, particularly when the experiences tend to be of such high quality.

A way to look at it is with the fan-theory that all the games of nintendo are played by "actors" (ie: Mario is a actor that play "Mario Kart" and "Mario Bross" etc).

With this, you can say that all characters, Zelda included, loosely play a cliche but each story is a new one.

This is how Link also fight in Smash!...

> Is it really that hard to come up with something new these days?

legitimately "new"? sure, for the most part.

however, "something new" isn't always the ends of game development.

There is giveaway going on for it - https://gethealthpack.com/giveaways/the-legend-of-zelda-brea...

It's a shame the game is only available on the two most underpowered gaming devices. Can you imagine this game on a PS4, or a PC. I cry thinking about it.

If Nintendo just became an elite third party triple a developer for the big boy consoles, I think they would make a killing. They can also make their little gimmicky peripherals for said console. That will satisfy their need to reinvent the user interface every time, and then abandon it shortly after. Without screwing over an entire console generation.

> Can you imagine this game on a PS4, or a PC

Yes, It'd be nearly identical. The only thing that more horse power could noticeably improve would be the draw distance.

...and a higher, steady framerate, higher resolution, better anti aliasing. Just about everything. I'm not asking for changing the look of the game, I'm asking for it to render properly on modern hardware.

> ...and a higher, steady framerate, higher resolution, better anti aliasing.

That won't make it anymore fun.

I didn't say anything about more fun. But <=20fps drops is NOT fun.

That's not something I've experienced, it certainly happens rarely. It also doesn't affect fun. Games were fun back when 25 FPS was the best you could hope for, even games that dip down to 1 or 2 at times (Goldeneye) could be fun.

I guess you're one in a million then. Because it's the biggest issue in every Zelda discussion since day one.

Ocarina of Time is running at 20 FPS on NTSC, 17 FPS on PAL, and is still fun. We started worrying about FPS when competitive online gaming became a thing (Quake 3, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament) and marketers associated high computer performance with high player performance (more fps you have, more good you will play).

For Nintendo, graphics serve the gameplay. For most AAA developers, it's the other way around. I'd argue that if Nintendo were trying to compete graphically, the resource strain would greatly reduce the quality of the games they produce.

They don't need to compete graphically, they have their own style, and that's awesome. What they need is the power to show it. Sub 20 fps dips in 2017 is unacceptable. The game barely runs 900p at 30fps. That's insane.

I kind of agree, but at the same time, it hasn't stopped me from having a great time. Maybe it really just doesn't matter? Sort of like worrying about the 0-60 time for a Prius or something like that. Just the wrong metric. 30fps 900p seems to be enough.

But it does matter, this is their big game for the system, and it already runs poorly. My fear is that this is as good as we'll get in terms of power. When Nintendo themselves can't even get their flagship running optimally.

It's great you're having a good time, so don't let anyone say otherwise. I just expect more out of a brand new game console at this point. Especially for $300 + $70 pro controller + $70 games + crummy dock screen scratching issues + desyncing controllers.

>It's a shame the game is only available on the two most underpowered gaming devices.

The Switch is handheld gaming device.

Then I guess an alternate way to phrase it is that it's a shame Nintendo doesn't and won't have a current-gen normal TV console. Bizarre choice because they were already leading by far the mobile space among console developers.

Which touts as being a console as well, hence the name Switch. If they are calling it a console as well, I'm going to compare it to one.

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