> Some of them are specific to Link’s latest adventure, including things like Riju’s lightning ability, which lets the player target enemies with a bow and bring down a lighting strike wherever the arrow lands.
To be quite blunt, the sages' abilities are implemented absolutely horribly in this game, doubly so when compared to the similar system in BotW (which was excellent). The only ability that is actually usable (and only really outside of combat) is Tulin's gust of wind; everything else is a struggle to make useful.
You have to walk up to a sage (they keep running around trying to fight enemies; and they all have an identical color palette; so it's super awkward and error-prone), press a button, and only then you get to make use of the ability. The more sages you summon, the bigger the crowd, the bigger the problem. Even the one sage that does not appear as a ghost still has a broadly similar palette (and on top of that, identical to a class of enemies). Compare with BotW, where you also get broadly similar abilities, but using each one was a decision you could execute in a split second using a dedicated key combo/mechanic, and all of them were directly viable in combat.
If Nintendo were to hold a patent on this bullshit and thusly prevent it from being implemented in any other game, they'd do the gamers a favour.
> Who knows if these patents actually go anywhere? But when game design concepts are gatekept like this, it only leads to a loss of innovation for other devs.
True! There's plenty of prior art for the remaining patents, so I sincerely doubt a lot of this would hold up in court. But the fact that this makes news at all is just proof of how rotten the system is; the patent doesn't have to be standing on a firm ground before it can successfully deter from climbing the shoulders of giants, which is foundational to innovation.
Nintendo has always been famous for pushing innovative gameplay, rather than endlessly refining the graphics on yet-another "next-gen" console that has all the same last year's titles in a new package. Whatever patents they can hold, I don't think it would help them: patents only help entrench your current position; Nintendo was always about moving forward.