Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Lol, I think I finally pushed my Wii U to its limits. ^^ After playing nonstop for ~15 hours (although my Wii U says 13 hours), it just shut off and the red power LED started blinking. I assume it just overheated, the room had gotten pretty warm and the Wii U was sitting in a rather narrow shelf... I was actually wondering if that might happen. Just letting it cool down for a few minutes and unplugging the power cable for 10 seconds did the trick. But I dusted the fan holes off, just to be sure.

Wow... just wow. After ~21 hours of playtime, I've already lived through so much, learned so many things, did some side quests, even defeated some Guardians (hint: you have to find some ruins that break the Guardian's line of sight and then go hide behind the ruins after every single hit). Despite wandering around and getting distracted from sub-task to spontaneous sub-sub-task and then forgetting what the original task was, I feel like I've seen a lot of story elements. Most NPC's have something to say about the events of the past and how it fits in with their current life.
I think I have uncovered 5 sections of the map now - two of those in a relatively short amount of time, just at the end of my session today, before I regained my first memory. Most of the time I spent exploring and especially climbing - I thought XCX was a vertical game, but MAN, you can climb so high in this game! I think part of why the game's world feels so big is because the world is not just wide but also tall and they've obviously put a lot of detailed work into that.

Oh so that's what they're called? I encountered one at the end of my session when I was looking for a memory - based on your description, I think it was in a different area than your encounter - and he took all but half of a heart from me several times - I had to eat after every single hit - but eventually he got me. Not far away there was actually another foe who was really huge, but luckily he was sleeping. Not even my bombs could wake him up.

@blaisedinsd: Every Wii U user has 7-8 (IIRC) save slots.

Yeah, happens to me all the time. It's not a problem of not remembering though, it's just that - I don't know if it's because of previous Zelda or other open world games - the buttons layout feels wrong. I want to dash with A and jump/climb with X. Every time I'm on a horse and want to attack an enemy, I accidentially hit X and jump of the horse. Every time I want to jump off the horse, I hit the horse. Don't ask me why.
I don't understand why we can't change the controls the way we want...

That's interesting, finally some post-launch comparison! I thought those slowdowns were supposed to occur in the Switch version too? Guess I'll have to get my hands on the Switch version at a retailer, because yesterday I cancelled my Switch order.

Couldn't agree more! Some people just never learned how to use a Wiimote.

You don't. It's not supported. How about just playing the game with your Gamepad? Since your Pro Controller seems to be broken or something... did you even pair it with the Wii U?

I don't know, but you can just dye your clothes in any color you want .

Actually, it's not at all like in XCX or any other open world game on the other systems. The world doesn't scale regaring the enemies. With the proper equipment AND tactic, you can beat anything. The first thing I did after every of those one-shot-kill-situations was assesing what I did wrong and trying it with a different tactic and/or some food or elixir I had cooked up.
And that brings me to:

I haven't played Dark Souls but - despite the the many many deaths - I wouldn't call BotW 'hard', but rather 'challenging'. As you mentioned, you have to come up with a reasoned approach, you can't just storm into enemies and expect to defeat them all. And that's what I came to love about it in these first two days.

By the way, regarding those deaths, did anyone else notice that the color of the 'Game Over' text varies depending on how you died?

Ok so pretty great so far. Love the gameplay, the shrine puzzles, how much variety the world has.
So far it's just a kind of 8.5/10 game for me though. I'm not seeing this 9.8/10 yet (at about 6 hours in). But I've heard quite a few people say it does keep getting better and better as you continue, so I hope that's the case.

The main negatives so far are that this is one of the most visually inconsistent games I've ever played. It goes from looking absolutely stunning, where you don't remember how limited the hardware is because they've just worked that Nintendo magic, to areas where the Nintendo visual magic randomly disappears and it looks like a mid-tier PS2 game.

Also the frame drops. Why, oh why, did they have to be in the villages? Kakariko is just annoying as hell on the Wii U for me. Didn't even wanna explore it. That's really something that shouldn't exist. In a set location like that, you can tailor and optimise the scenery until it works. C'mon Nintendo, just remove some of the grass and give me 30fps please! For someone who loves towns and villages to explore in open world games, that seriously annoyed me.
Frame rate has been completely fine outside of that though. I get 30fps in about 98% of the wilderness so far.

If you manage to attack it, it drops rupees.

I think I just found a Korok that has spend the last 100 years doing nothing but eating...

I agree, it can be pretty inconsistent. Frame rate has been all over the place for me. Weather effects and a handful of enemies are guaranteed to drop them to 20-25 fps.

There are so many things I'd like to talk about - e.g. what I'm saving my money for right now - but I don't want to spoil anything, so... did anyone buy a house?

Really? Kakariko works fine for me. I had maybe one or to drops but they weren't so bad and it was when there were a lot of NPCs running around, so it's understandable (their AI is probably the most demanding thing for the CPU). The villages are exactly where I would expect the drops. And I don't think you can optimise that, unless you delete some of the NPCs and other objects.
But it was hardly noticeable in Kakariko, there were definitely worse situations, like when five or more relatively big foes attacked me and the framerate went noticeably down. Or once, there was even just one(!) enemy and for 2 seconds the game was unplayable (I'd say something around 2-5 fps).

But don't get me wrong, of course there are frame drops, no doubt about that. Maybe they're just not occuring consistently (regarding the location) from user to user? I think the weather plays a big part in this, so that could be another explanation why it's not always exactly reproducible.

It's probably not the cause for that, but how much free internal memory does your Wii U have?

So as expected, barely any difference, apart from slightly higher resolution.

I love how every part of this game is designed to encourage and reward exploration. The game saves so often that death, while not meaningless, is never big deal, which means you don't have to freak out if you experiment and things go horribly wrong. Having 100+ shrines in lieu of more large dungeons means that you're constantly pushing out into the world and finding new things. Also, the minimalist narrative really works for this game, as it does, more than any other Zelda, feel like you're on an epic quest to save an entire world.

While the game's performance limitations are apparent if you focus on every dropped frame or stare at rock textures, it still is the most enchanting experience I've probably ever played. Something about the combination of swirling clouds, swaying grass, and the gentle, unobtrusive music that plays as I push into the hills creates a magical mood for me.

Only thing I will say I am disappointed by is the limited memory in this game world. I remember setting up a trap with three explosive barrels and luring some enemies back to it. Only, by the time I got back to where I had positioned the barrels, two of them were gone. There have been a few moments where the game's apparent inability to remember changes the player makes to its world has destroyed my immersion. Worst aspect of the game by far, and, as far as I am concerned, a very unfortunate limitation. Nothing gamebreaking, though.

Yet again the rest of the world seems obsessed with frame rate... and I haven't noticed a single drop.

I like how you can load a save that's not the most recent one. Although I haven't had to use it there was this time when I was playing a Splinter Cell game, the game reached a checkpoint moments before I got killed so restarting the last checkpoint was literally watching myself get killed over and over again hence having to restart the whole mission. Something like that won't ever happen in BotW because you can reload any of the past 10 autosaves.

You just answered your own question! Of course you can optimise it. Remove 2 or 3 people from the village. Remove one of the houses. Cut the amount of grass by 50%.
Any of those would be acceptable to me for the sake of consistent 30fps. As for you not noticing it in Kakariko, are you the Switch? As that video points out, the frame drops are in completely different places on the Wii U and Switch versions.

Also, I just noticed, there's realtime ambient occlusion running at all times! 1 line of code could turn that off during areas where they know there's predictable framedrops. That would give you 30fps easily.

On the hard drive? It's nearly full. Why would that affect anything?

I have the Switch version and I've played for about 10 hours. I believe I only had about two notable frame rate drops that lasted for a second or two. So my experience has been pretty minimal with it.

Anyways, I'm having a blast with the game. Has anyone managed to defeat the coliseum monster?

Unbelievable stuff.It's been giving me goosebumps at parts and this (hard to explain) feeling inside me that I don't think I've felt since playing Shenmue on the Dreamcast.I could probably count on one hand the amount of games that has given me this yet it feels strangely familiar at the same time.

Wish I could explain it better but I can't think how to.

Anyway,just got my paraglider and I'm about to head off the plateau for the first time.More goosebumps and that funny feeling on the way

I'm impressed by the NPCs, they walk around and it seems like they're genuinely going somewhere, or doing something. Even the NPCs in the villages, sometimes they're off and doing something else. It really adds to the immersion I think, makes the place a lot more believable than when the NPCs are just standing around.

@Octane It really does feel, weirdly enough, like a living world. This attention to world building and NPCs is part of the reason I loved Majora's Mask as much as I did.

The game is a thing of beauty, but I agree with all the people saying that that frame drops in the villages are atrocious. Yesterday I hit the Calbarico Village (no idea how you call that in english) and I had to get out ASAP because it looked choppy as hell. Today I reached the Zora Village and things seemed a bit better but still disappointing. Villages are the areas where you want to relax and take you time, but as it is, they are the most frustrating parts to explore. I don't know much about framerates and usually don't care, but it's very noticeable. I mean, it's obvious even to my untrained eye, so people don't noticing it just make me think I got a faulty copy or something.

It's a very very good game don't get me wrong, but there are things here and there that make me wish Nintendo focused only on doing one version extremely well instead of doing two versions okay. I really miss the map on the GamePad, for example. It's nothing that makes the game less beautiful or impressive than it is, but I can feel there are little things that would make it better.

That's strange, the long memory of the game was actually one of the things that stood out to me as a positive. E.g. whenever I left my horse somewhere far away, it still was waiting there when I came back hours later. Maybe it depends which objects are affected exactly. I can imagine that the barrels get repositioned when the enemies respawn after the red moon appears.
It's still better than what I've been used to from other open world games. In GTA or Far Cry 3 and 4 or Watchdogs 1 and 2, you could always count on the game forgetting cars or blockades you put there in a matter of minutes (after you've left the area).

Oh, I thought that was self-explanatory: no, that's not optimizing, that's destroying the game! I couldn't accept that. If they took out 2 or 3 people and a few houses, the village would appear empty (it's not like they have a million inhabitants) and everyone would be criticizing the game for its emptiness. And I feel they alread cut the amount of grass by at least 75% in villages, compared to other parts of the world. If you take even more away there's nothing left! No, that would be terrible and the same goes for removing ambient occlusion in certain parts. Not only would the game be less beautiful but the looks would also be very inconsistent.
I'd take rare dips to 25fps any time over an empty, ugly game world. 98% of the time the game seems to run at 30fps (I had maybe 5-6 framerate dips in total during 21 hours of gameplay). And I'm playing it on Wii U, digital copy (also worth mentioning I suppose, since discs are probably slower).

But as the most recent NL article says, the framerate drops aren't occuring consistently at the same locations - not even on the same system:

What's interesting on the Digital Foundry video is the demonstration that frame drops aren't in consistent places, showing how the running of the engine prompts stutters at different points regardless of hardware. Both entries suffer from this

So the lack of consistency doesn't refer to Switch<>Wii U but to the same location on the same system on different copies of the game. That's why you get more frequent, heavy frame drops in Kakariko and I don't (but instead I got a very awful non-playable drop while fighting one enemy). We don't know why (my money is on the weather and all the other variables that are different in every savegame: positions of characters, the status of certain objects etc), but maybe Nintendo can patch it out.

Oh and regarding the memory: No, I meant the Wii U's internal memory (no matter where you installed the game). This is nothing new, but I've discovered a few years ago that whenever there's little free internal memory left, the whole console becomes slower - even just in the Wii U menu, without playing any game.
So a few weeks ago I bought a 256GB flash drive and put everything there so that there's nothing stored on the internal memory (except for my Splatoon and MK8 backup).

Yup, love the way they handle shops too. You can see the items and you can even see the amount they have up for sale and as you purchase them, they disappear one by one. Don't think I've ever seen that in a game.

Well I guess we define it differently relative to what we care about the game doing.
There are a lot of ways you could do it though. Instead of removing 2 or 3 people, just have fewer with AI so only a few are walking around while more are standing still, and in their houses.
Or look at the shrine in the middle of the village. There are 4 torches around it (and it's one of the main parts that kills the framerate). Replace those 4 torches with 1 bigger torch that produces the same amount of light but has 1/4 as many particles on screen.
Lots of ways to do that sort of thing without just killing the game design.

Its a pretty tricky game, at least in the battle/survival area. For example SPOILER: When I found a bow, it didn't even come with arrows. And when I had arrows and wanted to pick off the Steppe tallus, I failed miserably. Other tactics didn't work either. I'll beat him later, when I am stronger END OF SPOILER

makes it to the first village
....Now the music is making me think of Okami. xD

I reached the shrine in the second village... Hateno Village, the windmill village. I managed to cheat my way through the shrine. It has a giant motion controlled ball maze-puzzle-game-thingy. Forget about that maze, just turn the board upside down and you have a neat flat surface, that's brilliant!