Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

@DarthNocturnal A piano sting tends to play when you travel to a new location/venture outside into the wild from a shrine or a city. The creepy one is the one that occurs at night, if I'm not mistaken.

I actually thought the soundtrack was one of the strengths of the game. The first thing I really liked about it was how it was very different to past soundtracks in the series. After a couple of Zelda games I've realized that whilst I love the soundtracks, the fact that can sound very similar with subtle differences here and there make them harder to stand out. I felt that by distancing themselves from past soundtracks with some subtle (and some not so subtle XD) call backs here and there, this game was better at creating it's own identity. I also loved the way the music slowly came into the game rather than constantly having an overworld theme. I felt that this made it feel much more organic and natural, basically far more atmospheric. The fact that there sometimes wouldn't be any music present made each encounter my music more note worthy/significant and they used music as a tool to lead you to points of interests such as the dragons and Kass playing nearby. I just loved it when you were exploring and heard the long broken notes on the piano. This might be my favourite soundtrack in the series (still deciding between twilight princess and this game) and I thought they did a great job of creating a soundtrack that IMO was both memorable and created an amazing atmosphere for the game.

Also that final boss music is just the best! Best Boss Music Eva! XD

I think overall the use of music is well implemented. This world is so big, I would get insane hearing a theme over and over. In Windwaker it was great but it didn't take long to get anywhere.
And you would otherwise also have these morrowind annoyances where the music suddenly stops because enemies appear.

Could it be better though? Ofcourse. Again I like the minimalistic approach, like some said you really hear the sound of nature which a traditional theme would completely destroy. But I guess some of the villages and dungeons could do with a more traditional and overall better score. I did really like the prelude to the Zora dungeon though, what a rush that was!

Minor update because it is 1am and I need to be up in two hours. I fricken love Vah Rudania. Watching it move while standing outside is so cool (and a little nerve racking because I wasn't always sure that I was in a safe spot to not fall to my death). When you first walk in....jeez first time in my 145+ hours of playing where I went: "aww crap...this is creepy". I really enjoyed the music for that one as well. I'm working on sidequests as I wait for my guide to show up so I can do a shrine location run before hitting Vah Naboris...I still have less than two hundred Korok seeds. I think I'm just going to do them as I find them but not shoot for the 900 goal. I will try to beat all the shrines and side quests though.

I also tried a small experiment. I played this weekend using music from various Zelda games... to see if I would like the constant soundtrack as I have with previous Zelda's. Now I am a card carrying member of the Hylia Music Appreciation club and I have OSTs for most of the Zelda games. Yet I didn't enjoy the constant music. I was testing something in Fallout 4 so I played that for a bit and I was reminded that open world games like this don't have persistent soundtracks. I figure since I have stomped around in a number of bethesda worlds for several thousand hours that was part of the reason that a persistent soundtrack felt off to me. Of course I'm using old Zelda music and not something composed for the game, however I think it was a fairly decent little experiment in between yard work and working on my workshop this weekend. I need more days. Ok I'm going back to bed. I'll edit typos when I'm more awake.

I liked the soundtrack in this game. I thought it fit the atmosphere pretty well, and I liked the more subtle music that plays when certain things happen. The music in past games was cool, and it suited those games, but if the game blasted music at you whenever you did anything, it would get kind of irritating IMO. If they played the sailing music from Wind Waker every time you rode a horse, for example, I think I would start losing my mind.

I especially like the music that plays when you come across one of the dragons. The peaceful music and the dragons slow and graceful movement compliment each other very well.

I think I'm with most people on this in that I fully agree with the philosophy behind the sound direction in the game. However, I feel it could have allowed itself to break from that philosophy on a few more occasions to deliver a bit more punch and memorability.

Maybe the inclusion of a live cover band would have been enough to tickle the nostalgia glands. I know we've got Kass, and I love Kass, and hearing the sound of Kass's accordion emerge from the tranquility of the natural soundscape makes for a beautifully organic geopositioning system. But Kass is still only one bird with one instrument, and maybe a couple of songs.

I think if each town had a bar, and each bar had a band, and each band played past Zelda songs suited to that region, then... that'd be nice. Maybe they could stay audible so long as you were within the town, acting as a sort of optional secondary soundtrack. I think it'd be a nice way of allowing for some musical variation (and fan service) without necessarily compromising on the 'soft touch' approach the game takes to sound design throughout.

I also really like the idea of people coming together and creating music in times of hardship. The world has been left all but desolate, and the remaining peoples have been forced into tight communities. Nothing strikes me as a better symbol for people pulling together and creating something from nothing than the image of a band of musicians entertaining the townsfolk from the back of a pub. Music can be a sign of hope and vitality, and the harmony behind it a sign of community and trust. Not once do we see more than one instrument on screen (I think), and in a series with as rich a musical history of Zelda, that seems like a shame.

Also, I'll never get sick of OoT's Gerudo Dessert theme, and if there's any way on Earth it could have made it into BotW, I'd be in heaven.

♪ Doo〜doot-doot〜do-doo〜doot-doot〜do-doo〜doot-doot〜do-doo〜doot-doot...♪

Brilliant!

This game has a way of making you do things you didn't expect to do. I've said for so long I was not ready for the castle. I still don't have any dragon shards or anything, though I'm fairly upgraded armor-wise at this point. So I was heading to the field to hunt some guardians because I need like 13 more cores for my upgrades. And I have 2. So I head to the field looking for a guardian to Slay. Walk into the East side of Castle Town ruins, and can't find guardians....Finally I see one behind buildings, but I realized he's not spotting me this time...I'm just walking along with nothing bothering me...it's unguarded right now...and I see a spot I can inch around the big ancient column in front. I walk around it and suddenly I get the cutscene that I've entered the castle proper....and the music fires up (which is so awesome, btw), well shoot...I mean I'm here....I guess it can't hurt to look around some.... so I start going through the castle exterior.....poke my head into a room with some moblins...nope...I realized I have to be close to the last memory....so...maybe just a little further up screw the guardian turrets and their triple blasts and billion hit points so I went looking and found the memory (and more cool music!) and and the diaries, great back story and figured....well...I'm not ready for the throne area, haven't done Rudania yet, so back down I go....but I stopped to explore everywhere else too....ended up doing the library, getting the recipes, doing the kings study with his diary, and the lockup and the shield, which is awesome to have I probably missed SOMETHING in there, and I've heard there's a shrine in there, unfortunately I missed out on that, have to look later, all from a run I wasn't actually intended to take at all for weeks still but it just happened to be unguarded as I was passing through. It's pretty cool. Smaller than I thought but pretty cool.

OTOH I'm getting worried that my game is in a weird state. I've killed like 20 guardians recently and have not acquired a SINGLE core. It's getting frustrating. I have hordes of springs and screws and shafts and no cores. Also the arrow shop in Kakariko has not resupplied arrows in a week (real world time) or so. Beedle has resupplied ONE bundle of arrows after about 5 real world days, and not again after. Despite many blood moons, no restocks...that's a little odd I think. I've checked one or two other shops and they're not resupplying some things.

Weirder, I'm getting blood moons non-stop. The other day I was exploring the Eldin skeleton area and it was like 6:45AM (game time) and suddenly the pink sparks started flying up, the music rapidly became blood moon music, flashed red, got the blood moon cut scene, then returned back at around 7:00AM. While I was in the castle midnight every night flashed red (but apparently can't play blood moon events in the castle), and then once I left, I got a blood moon at midnight, then again at 4:30AM, then about 2 (real world) minutes later, it happened again, and then briefly after at like 7:00PM (game world minutes).....3 blood moons in a single in-game 24 hour period, no cores from guardians and no arrow restocks. Something's going really weird. I haven't run the .3 patch yet, I'm wondering if .2 messed some things up....

@NEStalgia That IS kind of weird. Aren't these patches updating automatically though, or am I missing something.? Now that I think about it I never did see the update Nintendo released recently.

@Spanjard Patches update automatically when you restart the game, but this is Zelda so I don't restart too often Snake Pass and Setsuna get some play time but I don't think I switched out more than once or twice since the newest patch and I was impatient and skipped the update when it asked.

Though some patches don't seem to be automatic. I think it was either Has-Been Heroes or Bomberman that when a new patch was released it didn't update and I had to manually check for it.

But yeah, the whole no cores, no arrows (unless I have "too many" arrows for a restock to happen?), and the infinite blood moons (especially infinite blood moons) is striking me odd. Broad daylight, suddenly you see pink, the music starts the blood moon buildup (and it seems to go twice as fast as usual like the game is racing to throw one in the middle of nowhere) and the blood moon kicks in.

At least it makes the "under a red moon" quest easy?

@NEStalgia I think you also get a bonus for cooking during the blood moon so have fun with that!

I just did a search on google and it seems you're not the only one with the frequent blood moon thing. Are you playing Switch or Wii U? I guess it's a bug?

@Spanjard Good point, I should stock up before I patch

Interesting, I didn't even think it would be wide spread enough to warrant looking it up since I hadn't heard about it here. I'm playing on Switch.

@DarthNocturnal @Nicolaison
Ah I see, thank you both for the help it will definitely come in handy in the future and also the "rather interesting discoveries" has already been covered in this video and some other videos by the same person.

Final boss spoilers etc.

Has anybody else tried/done this glitch in this video? It's very interesting to explore a pretty much lifeless Hyrule just filled with wild animals, minor enemies and with a blood moon that appears every single night that tries to respawn all the missing enemies but nothing happens instead.

@Pigeon The towns musics are really fantastic, especially Gerudo Town and (the most beautiful in the game) Zora's Domain, like i said in the LoZ music thread.

But all music in the game in general are really awesome. I like it so much that i tend to listen the limited edition CD everyday

@Tsurii I can't speak for the German version, but the the Japanese version lines up pretty well with the English version on the whole. The localisation team have thrown in a few more rock metaphors than were in the original, but the lines are generally consistent in both meaning and tone (with the odd exception). If anything, JP Daruk is even more full of himself than his ENG equivalent. The line about "piloting the machine being fun" in the ENG version actually more like "I, the mighty Daruk, feel some pride as Champion of the Gorons" in the JPN version. Or more literally, "I, Daruk-sama, feel some pride...", which is not the humblest way to refer to oneself.

It seems like GER Daruk is the most modest form by quite some margin. From his tone of voice at least, he doesn't seem nearly as puffed up as either of the others. To me, he seems a little older, wider, and less beefcakey in disposition than his counterparts - if not in composition.

Thats probably the most exciting thing about BotW. It is far from perfect. It got stuck in dev hell, scrapped, started over, had tons of things cut so it can finally see a release, and its still an amazing experience that has captured interest in the same way the original did, the things nintendo forgot over time.

Let me see if I can give you some information that might set those worries at ease.

The hardest thing to do when making a new game, is its foundation. This is a new foundation for Zelda. The last time nintendo did something like this was on the n64, when they modified the mario 64 engine to be used for Oot.

Since then every Zelda game has used an ever more modified version of the mario64 engine, until breath of the wild, which started out on that engine, and then got scrapped (and the game dissapeared completely from all media for over a year, reappearing with 100+ monolithsoft staff on board).

All signs point to botw now using a modified version of the xenoblade engine, and thats a LOT of work, having a team going from an engine and tool set thats been gradually evolving for 20 years, to something completely new and different. On top of that, monolithsoft asked aunoma and the zelda team to go back over the founding design concepts of Zelda and how they changed when the series went 3d, and whether and which of those changes were still necessary. Aunoma found a lot of those stifling zelda tropes were patches made for a lack of power/experience back in the n64 era, and then simply became the traditional 'way of doing things' despite the shortcomings behind those 'rules' no longer existing. Aunoma saw how those 'traditions' were eroding the design philosophy zelda originally pioneered, and so he decided to sit down and examine each one, see if it was necessary, or beneficial, and if not... And I quote, 'Burn it'. And THEN they had to make a working prototype, using the new engine and mechanics into a little play area, so they could pitch this idea, as a reason to scrap a production that had been in production for YEARS, a production of one of the companies most important brands, to the person who created the series!!! Terrified anouma and the new kids at monolithsoft pitched their reason why they wanted to restart the most important game ever... And for twenty minutes the dude didnt say a word or make an expression. He just climbed up and down a tree. Over and over again. Then he found a different tree and climbed it, up and down, up and down. Didnt try any of the other stuff they prepared, just climbed junk. And then he gave the go ahead, Zelda wiiu was scrapped, and zelda botw was born.

This takes a lot of time to do right. Its why you never see anything new besides a coat of paint from western AAAAA studios.

Once that was finished Aunoma, being the seasoned design veteran he is, realized that with the new rule set and design philosophy, they needed a new way to design the game. And man oh MAN did they come up with some seriously ground breaking stuff. From remaking the original 2d loz experience into an intrinsic playground complete with physics, interactive water flow, spreading fire, seeing what people did and then implementing the most useful stuff into the 3d engine...

From tracking peoples run throughs of the game world, seeing where they went, what they looked at and why, and then based on peoples intrinsic agency, designing interesting and sophisticated scene compositions where from practically anywhere you look from in the game you can see interesting land marks you just want to go explore. Back was the INVISIBLE hand of guidance in full glorious non force, using natural intrinsic design to compel the player to go to places pf interest, instead of the iron shackles of handholding forcing you to go to the purple dot on the map.

It worked amazingly, just like you said you felt. You saw this super interesting land mark and just couldnt resist going to check it out, an adventure of your own agency, stuffed with joy and excitement all the way to the point where you get there and---

They ran out of time. The game HAD to come out. The switch was coming out the wii u was being put down, the game just had to come out. Many ideas that wete half implemented, like mini villages and a rune to shrink you to explore them and the world at mini size had to be cut, replaced with korok seeds or shrines or copy paste ruins.

However. Now the foundation is laid. They wont have to go through any of what took up all their time with breath of the wild. Now they will have time for all the stuff they couldnt get to in botw, from dungeons to temples more unique settlements, the whole enchilada.

When Aunoma and his team climbed up to breath of the wild, they didnt climb up to some shining peak or ceiling like the games media is lavishing upon it, not saying the game doesnt deserve praise, but just that the reason its getting that kind of praise is only because of how rotten and stagnant western AAAAAAAA publishers have been able to become after systematically destroying the middle tier, and with japan... Just going whacko last gen. The trope about open world games not being able to have as engaging worlds as linear games just because thats the way it is, is a marketing lie so people dont demand hard to do things that cant be crapped out of an assembly line yearly. It is now parroted by the indoctrinated. There is an entire genre of open world games first made by a certain company for the express purpose of being, and directly marketed as being, that 'impossible' thing, a hybrid, of the immersive open world type games of computer gaming and addictive arcade action and pacing of console gaming experiences. The first of those hybrid games that company released was named Zelda.

BotW is not a new ceiling. It is a new floor. Honestly its somewhere we should have been a long time ago. We are about a generation behind thanks to the top 5 western AAA studios. Thats what Aunoma means when he said it will be the new standard. Not that all zelda games will now be like breath of the wild, but that they will use it as a foundation to build off of.

Now that that very foundation has been laid with breath of the wild. The next one is going to come with everything botw had, AND everything it was missing. Anouma was not even remotely pr bs-ing when he said he strongly feels the next zelda will be much better than botw. He already knows it and cant wait, because the foundation is laid.

Apparently this works now, sorta. I tried the same trick using the arrow to stop the boulder's tumbling (what throws Link off in a damaging way), but haven't been able to replicate it for more than like 20 meters.

Not entirely wholesome link: http://i.imgur.com/rIgNx4U.gifv

@Haru17 I liked the SpongeBob reference.

When this happened to you, was this on the Switch version or the WiiU version? (I'm still playing through my WiiU version mostly, but oddly enough, I've sort of noticed the opposite happen on mine). -I'm sure it's just random, but basically while I had seen many Youtube videos showing frame rate drops, my own personal experience for mine on WiiU had been working flawlessly 100% of the time until recently. (I'm sure it's just random, and depends on how much stuff it's trying to process at the same time, so I reckon that has more to do with it than anything). Most likely I've just been lucky so far and it was able to process everything without glitching, and now I'm more progressed through the game and more stuff is going on simultaneously than before, I reckon that's why I've started to notice the odd screen flickers get more frequent than I was getting before. It's still fairly minimal though for me. So far I've only ever experienced anything noticeable about 3 times in the entire time I've been paying it. and even then, it was very slight.

@Nicolaison There was a Spongebob reference?