Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

@rallydefault

It's a mechanic that rubs you the wrong way. That's fine, but it doesn't support your sweeping statements about bad game design and systems that don't make sense.

In a game like Dark Souls where you're meant to experience a sense of claustrophobia, having fast travel from the beginning wouldn't have been effective. In a game like Breath of the Wild, which is all about conquering and exploring the vast land and reactivating the ancient technology buried beneath it, I'm not sure fast travel is as illogical as you're implying.

I really don't think the game wants you to feel "isolated and desperate." Those are strong words for what's actually a mostly relaxing experience, even in Master Mode. You have pockets of danger, sure, and you do feel very underpowered at the beginning. But for the most part you're walking around to soothing, minimalistic music and running into merchants on the road. At times, it's also a quietly melancholy game, as you visit ruins and the remnants of battles past. Outside of some heavily-guarded towers, desperation is never really the order of the day.

@Beaucine
You really think BotW, a game about surviving in the wild by scavenging and collecting and even cooking all sorts of disparate items, doesn't want you to feel alone and isolated? A game with a very particular stamina gauge for everything from running to climbing that puts very specific parameters on where and how you can go. A game that prides itself on exploration of all sorts of environments, many wide-open spaces like tundras and deserts and plains. A game that very specifically has a minimal soundtrack to give you that feeling of being alone in the elements. A game whose most numerous "towns" are far-flung stables with just a smattering of NPCs to talk to, resupply, and gather information for quests. You think instant fast travel is a good fit?

I think we're playing different games.

BotW is "relaxing" in terms of its difficulty and lack of any kind of timer or pace setting - you can do what you want, when you want. But how is that mutually exclusive with the isolated feeling the game very clearly establishes. Isolated does not equal challenging, necessarily. I think you're committing some basic logical flaws.

Imagine BotW without fast travel. When you're way up in the frigid north but need to get down south. Instead of opening my map and just - BOOP - done, I have to trek to the nearest river where I know a fisherman sometimes rents out his boat. But to get there, I know I either have trudge through a moblin-filled valley to my west, or climb up some treacherous terrain to my east, giving me a good paraglider shot to the river. And I better be careful because my heat buff will wear off in a couple minutes, and I don't yet have all the clothing pieces I need to survive forever in the cold.

Or, Kakariko is one of a few large "cities" that has a Sheikah statue I can travel to instantly using the Sheikah technology. But in order to do that, I need to find a similar point of technology. Shrines can provide that foci, but I need to actually travel to a shrine in order to utilize it and get to Kakariko (or a few other locations) instantly. Shrines can take you to the hubs, but not to each other. That would've been a cool system!

Just spitballing, and I haven't even considered what I would do with the towers, but those are some of my ideas rather just opening a map and BOOPing anywhere I want.

@rallydefault There's something to be said for your point. Along a similar line, I was completely drawn into Xenoblade Chronicles X initially. They story itself wasn't grand, but the world was the story. I loved exploring and the trek to get to where I was going, and figuring out how to get to places. Flight kind of ruined that for me. I started losing interest once things were incredibly easy to access and I could go anywhere at any time.
In some games, they'd have to rework their gameplay to lower the warp points. Assassins Creed, for example. I'm playing Origins right now and I explored most of the map by wandering, but the quests sometimes send you all over and it'd be a slog to have to manually travel to do all them and then travel again to turn them in.
I actually played an MMO that is the way you describe. It had no fast travel points at all on a huge open map. You had to walk everywhere yourself (or you could set an auto-path to get you there, but still had to put in the travel time either way). It was certainly an interesting choice and made you think about what you were doing and I actually quite enjoyed it (though I since quit the game due to pay-to-win microtransactions).

Fast travel has been around for so long, I don't see many games dropping it or changing it too much, though. In Zelda, it goes back as far as ALttP when you get the flute and the bird will fly you to certain map points.
I think they have gone overboard with them in many games though. I think there's some middle ground that could work well between none and too many. Like your proposed hub system, or just have 'major' cities/locations as fast travel points (ones that make sense in context to the game, so you have to actually go and hire or hop on some sort of transport to do it. This could vary greatly between games and their respective settings).

@rallydefault

Yes to all your questions, I suppose.

The game systems mean you have to master the terrain before you can explore it. You have to keep your stamina meter and the weather and physics systems in mind before heading out into unknown territory, of which there is a lot. That makes exploration very deliberate. You have to prepare food at stables, consider your clothing, etc. But I wouldn't call that desperate, no.

Fast travel is a good fit in the sense that you don't get it until you've already been there. And being there isn't enough: the towers can be well-guarded, the shrines can be hard to access. Fast travel lets you quickly go to a distant area you've already visited and conquered across the very, very large map. But if you're up in the frigid north and you need to get down south, why, you won't discover what's up in the frigid north. You need to keep going. And since you need to keep going, that hypothetical scenario about the river and the fisherman is, well, exactly what happens in all my Breath of the Wild playthroughs. The map is so large that, even in the late game, if you're serious about finding all the shrines, warping out of harm's way isn't really going to help. There's always a place you need to get to where fast travel won't aid you.

Also, isolation means being cut off from others. Hyrule might be post-apocalyptic and underpopulated, and the subtle music plays into that. But you're still not isolated. Like I said, you have merchants on the roads. You have stables all over the place. You have dudes shield surfing on a random hill or a Goron using up an entire ravine for boulder golf. You have a few settlements, from Kakariko to Hateno Village, Gerudo Town, Rito Village, Zora's Domain, Goron Town, Korok Forest, and Tarrey Town. This isn't Shadow of the Colossus.

You can spend all day coming up with alternative fast travel systems. Some of those may be better than what's in Breath of the Wild, who knows. But we're still going to fundamentally disagree on how much fast travel impacts the Breath of the Wild experience.

@Shadowthrone
Yea, it's definitely not going anywhere. Just a more imaginative and immersive approach is all that I ask for.

I play a lot of MMOs, so travel and fast travel is always a big deal in how the devs approach it. If you make fast travel points everywhere, you've just eliminated the immersive and huge feeling of the world you've created. If you have too few, all but the most dedicated people will feel frustrated at how long it takes to get somewhere.

And I agree. In a lot of games, my favorite moments are usually the early moments when the world is new and needs to be explored on foot. Now, that may have more to do with newness aside from fast traveling and all that, but there's definitely something to be said for immersion when you must interact with the world itself rather than opening a map to just BOOP all over the place.

For BotW, a simple change to the fast travel system would have just been to necessitate interaction with a shrine or tower in order to access fast travel. They could have still let you travel amongst those points instantly however and as much as you wish, but you'd have to actually "physically" be at a shrine or tower in the world instead of just pulling up your map.

@Beaucine
Yea, I think we just disagree on the type of game this is. I think it's a pretty darn lonely game ultimately, and I believe the development choices aid that feeling in lots of ways.

I'm personally perfectly happy with the fast travel system in BOTW, never bothered me an inch. I do agree with the criticism on Ubisoft's systems though, in AC I almost tripped over then repeatedly

Hi - I wonder if you guys could help?

I bought Breath of the Wild on the day of release and have repeatedly tried to get into it over the years. The formula is always the same - get a couple of hours in (at most) get stuck, give up. The “getting stuck” bit varies but usually means dieing in the middle of a hostile landscape and being unable to restart.
Let me explain with my current situation - maybe you can help me out of this tricky situation and also explain that it’s me, not bad design and help me love the game?
So I restarted about 45 minutes of game time ago, and decided to follow the IGN game guide to avoid issues. I am on The Isolated Plateau, headed towards the Shrine Owa Daim which is apparently at the eastern side of Mount Hylia.
I’ve been given several routes - one of which is across a Tundra behind The Temple of Time. I’m told to pick the peppers at the start and eat them to protect me against the cold, so I do and set out on my quest.
I start to lose hearts (even though it’s only -4 degrees, I mean WTF for a start? How can someone DIE in only -4 degrees???????). So I eat the pepper. No effect. It doesn’t protect me. I die.
Now the problem is, an auto save has kicked in at some point and everytime I restart the game I’m in the middle of the tundra and don’t have any peppers left.
I am completely stuck as I restart the game and if I try to get to the shrine, i die. If I try to get out of the tundra back to the temple of time, I die.
SOOOOOO, this is kind of typical of everytime I try to play this game? Surely this is bad design? I mean how can this happen? What if I’d played the game for days and got stuck like this? There seems to be no way out?
Or am I being stupid? Do I have to start the game again? Or is there a way out of this? And also can you recommend a good guide that wont get me into this trouble and will help me appreciate the game?
I want to love it so much. The environment is amazing, the graphics superb. It seems to have potential to be so so good - but I just can’t get into it.
Any help or advice would be appreciated

@norwichred for starters don’t use a guide, it’s not a step by step game.

You should have multiple auto save choices so it doesn’t have to be the very last save file you use.

Find a new way to get back (there’s always more than one path) to get more peppers and cook them so they are more effective. There’s also cold proof clothes to find as well.

@norwichred for starters: after loading your autosave, warp back to the place where you started at the great plateau (you can do so by selecting the map and then go to the blue shiny thing - google is your friend if this isn't enough to get you there). That will get you out of the cold so you can prepare for the tundra again.

As an addition to what @jump is saying: you will only benefit from the elemental protections peppers (or other cooking materials) can give you, if you cook them on a cooking pot. Also: there's enough explanation guides for this out there. Just eating them raw isn't enough and will only restore a small amounts of hearts.

I get that you don't appreciate the game if this is where you're stuck. I'd suggest to try these tips to master the basics or maybe watch a youtube vid covering the great plateau. If you like the graphics and gameplay otherwise, I'm pretty sure there's a lot for you in this game.

(I know I'm taking the risk of feeding the troll here, but better safe than sorry...)

I promise promise promise I’m mot a troll! I’m a 50 year old Nintendo fan since the NES - but I don’t do well with open world games on the whole. My brain doesn’t work well (hence the need for a guide) with them but I so want to appreciate them.

I tend to get stuck a lot on these games which is why I do get frustrated sometimes, but I wish I didn’t. I completed Ocarina of Time, the only Zelda game I completed, with the help of a guide way back on the N64. I got a long long way into twilight Princess before I got stuck. Windwaker I didn’t get as far into but still tried.

I promise I want to love these games (ocarina is a pinnacle to me), amd I love the Zelda mythology (I even have a Zelda man bag) and music and game world. I just get stuck so often.

I think breath of the wild frustrates me because it looks so darned good.

I forgot about the quick travel so I’ll do that. I believe there’s another way to get where I need to go so I might try that instead. Thank you and perhaps you could be there with me virtually as I continue?

@norwichred I recommend you search for a little hut in a birch forest, near the base of the cold mountain you got stuck at. There, the old man will tell you about cooking and ask for a certain dish in exchange for a piece of armor that protects from cold.

I’ll give you this tip: the dish he asks for needs meat, but this can be any kind of meat, including bird or fish meat. A common error for new players is to assume they need to hunt a boar to get red meat, but boars are really hard to hunt this early on.

@norwichred @eel You can also get that armour by climbing to the top of Mount Hylia and talking to the old man there.
Also, I am fairly certain that the shrine is deliberately positioned so that, although difficult, you have just barely enough time to make it back to the warmth if you take an efficient route.
If you don’t have cold resistance, you can brute force your way through by just repeatedly eating to heal.

For a new player, I feel it would be far simpler to just get the armor beforehand.

Makes the hike less stressful.

@norwichred For clarity, I don't see it mentioned above, but you always have access to 6 recent save points. You can disregard this first paragraph if you've seen that by now. To access the six save points, press (+), then R, select LOAD, and you'll see you're six most recent save points. If you're worried about trying something risky, you can hit SAVE to make a save point before wasting a good weaon or trying something crazy 😉 , and re-load the save point if things go bad, if you fall off a cliff and die, lol.

While it was easy to get lost in previous zelda games, the beauty of Breath of the Wild is how forgiving it is. One of the game's best features is the Adventure Log. The Adventure Log keeps a list of your objectives, so you can always go back and look up what you're supposed to be doing.

Every time you get an objective, it get's added to the list: Main Quest, Shrine Quests, Side Quests. You can always see which quests are completed, which are open. Each one has a description: who you talked to, what you're doing, where you're going. And if you hit A on one of those objectives, a glowing gold thumbtack appears. If you open the map, that glowing thumbtack is placed on the map to show you where you're supposed to be going for that objective/quest

That first area of Breath of the Wild, called Great Plateau, it's basically a tutorial sandbox. If my memory is right, you cannot leave there until you've explored the region and completed the shrines. And I think the snowy region was the last part I completed, because the cold kills you. If you follow what the old guy tells you, and visit the shrines, eventually you get a warm shirt/jacket, called a Warm Doublet, which keeps you warm in the snowy region without food.

If you get really tired of weapons breaking, there are ways of dealing with that, feel free to ask.

That stuff about marking where you’re supposed to be going would be so useful. I’ll try that tomorrow, thank you. And loading older save points. I couldn’t understand why you couldn’t do that.

Hi guys just wanted to share that with your help I’m now on my way to Kakariko Village.

Thank you

@norwichred sorry, didn't mean to offend you in my first response or anything, but it would surprise you how many people come to the forums with such questions just to provoke the fans anyway, as you can see a lot of people on the forum here are very eager to join you in your journey. Just tag me (type @ before the user name) or anyone else to notify us if you have a question.

In the meantime, have you been able to make progression with the advice here?

Edit: just read your last comment. Good to hear! I've had my reply open in concept but hadn't been able to finish and post it. Hope you're enjoying the game now!

I played through BotW in normal mode and used fast-travel quite a bit, especially near the end of the game. Then I replayed it in Master mode without using the map and fast-travel. While I haven't finished Master mode yet, due to getting stuck on the Master trials, I definitely enjoyed it very much. It really made me appreciate the world even more and I'm planning to play BotW2 this way as well.

The game does not force fast travel down your throat. At all. I've just had to load up the game to remind myself how to fast travel - having played well over 200 hours and been actively playing it this week - because it's implementation is so low key. Saying you have to 'artificially limit' yourself is a bit odd to me, because while I know the option is there, I have had to make zero effort to ignore it. Just gotten on with my journey and virtually forgotten about it. Doesn't feel an artificial limitation to me.

Some retro games come with the option for scanlines, OG 8-bit graphics etc. But I'm not artificially limiting myself if I don't use them - just enjoying my freedom to choose and being thankful to the developers for implementing those features as an option.

@gcunit
Is a map-based fast travel system in the game? Yes or no.