Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

And that very criticism will be critical for many new criticisers to become critically acclaimed critics.

Tbf The Order is getting a ton of crap for other reasons than it's visuals.

In my opinion, if a game makes good use of emptiness, it can translate to vastness, which, depending on the game, is actually a good thing. Besides, has anyone ever seen grasslands in real life? Anyway, I'm not complaining, I'm looking forward to next year.

I haven't heard that before to be honest. The gameplay trailer reminded me of SotC, because of how Epona moved. Very similar to Agro, your horse in SotC. Also, the vast open grasslands of the new Zelda game are somewhat similar to those of SotC. I've also seen a lot of comparisons with Skyrim, but I haven't played that game, so I wouldn't know how it's alike to Zelda.

Here is fullscreen footage from the Game Awards
http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/12/09/the-legend-of-zelda-wii-...

GameXplain and others have also done the same processing a couple of days ago. Please keep in mind that this is still nothing like what the player would see on a full screen (which I personally believe is exactly what Nintendo wants as a "reveal" right now). The resulting resolution of all the stretch and skew operations being made here is worse than the Wii output.

I can't believe there are people complaining about the "emptiness" of the world, when we haven't seen anything! We got a video of a few minutes, which was clearly and obviously edited to leave out parts in the middle. It was a simple demonstration of the game, and people are acting like that's all there is to the game. Ridiculous. This game will likely not come out until Fall/Winter 2015, so it's not even close to finished. Can't we just enjoy the sneak peak for what it is?

No, it's our duty to critique, whine, and complain. After all, we are on the internet aren't we, this is for real right?

It's a fairly obvious comparison, I mean sword, bow, horse, giant bosses? That's basically a Zelda game minus the items.

About the Witcher I haven't seen a downgrade, it's supposed to be 1080 on PS4 so I can't complain there (unless the frame rate is really atrocious). Literally everything I see about the game makes it look better to me; the same way I feel about Zelda.

Actually, if I do have one worry about Zelda it's the story. We haven't seen any of it yet and I wonder if Nintendo can pull off a good open world story with the nonlinear dungeon order.

I'd like to know this as well. What are people referencing? What do they want to fill the world?

Is it because we didn't see a village that was logically habitable? Or a dungeon to trudge through? Or are they actually wanting random encounters, pointless NPCS, buildings and rooms to go in that yield you nothing, and copy pasta hideouts the developers desperately want us to call dungeons?

I like Skyrim. I really like finding ruins important to quest lines, full villages, troll camps, scripted events that get set off, and the occasional inn/tavern in the wilderness. I really could do with out the mud crab and wolf battles every 30 seconds, the NPCs that provide nothing to the game, copy and pasted hideouts that have no relevance or unique gameplay, and especially the thousands of doors and rooms I can go into and get nothing for.

So what is it that people want to fill the world? In 5 minutes of Zelda U we saw enemies, a village, a camp, a tower, a castle, a clue to a dungeon, wild horses, and fauna. I'm sure we will have tons of things to find like heart pieces, fairies, goddess wells, walls that can be bombed through, plateaus and mountain peeks that require items to get to, we know we are in for at least 8 dungeons, and I'm hoping even if it's not a major mechanic there will be some ocarina songs to find.

I'm not holding my breath on 8 dungeons. Wouldn't be surprised with how big the world is they cut back to 6 and maybe 2 to 4 mini ones with yet more smaller ones throughout.

Reddit is already trying to calculate the map size based on what was seen in the game awards footage.

hope it will be bundled with new redesigned wii u

That's completely missing the point. Far Cry 4's world is huge, but I don't want to go to half of it because it's just more of the same. The world's size doesn't matter, it's the world's content that is of concern.

Speaking of that, I think we'll get 6-9 dungeons, there hasn't been less in a 3D game since Majora's Mask (which had a lot more sidequests and replayability to balance that out).

I'm quite excited to see if we can have dungeons that are partly outside in the open world. Maybe something about reflecting light at night with the mirror shield and fire arrows. Something like that could be really cool if it utilized the game's dynamic lighting and day/night cycle (seriously, how cool could that be!?!)

The world's size absolutely matters when it's done right. Having a larger world means there is more space to hide secrets, creating a bigger sense of discovery. The thing is, big worlds are hard to do right. They require quite a few things. Atmospheric diversity such that the player doesn't feel like they are constantly doing the same thing, and secrets worth looking for, such that they player has a reason to explore the world (this isn't an exhaustive list, they are just at the top of my head)

Like I said, they are completely missing the point. World size matters insofar as not being constrained to linear hallways, but when you get to the difference between Skyrim, Far Cry 3, and Shadow of Mordor the exact size matters way less than the actual content. For instance Shadow of Mordor has the smallest world of those 3, but I liked it a lot more than Far Cry because there was a lot more intractable objects; structures to climb, caged animals to loose, and fires to make explode, than there was in the larger Far Cry world. The exact square kilometer measurement doesn't matter so much compared to that.

The 'content' I'm talking about encompasses both the atmospheric and geological diversity you're talking about and all the different gameplay features within the world. My point is that the Zelda U world is obviously already big enough, regardless of the actual dimensions.

My only as-of-yet unrequited hopes for Zelda U's Hyrule are more biome diversity; snowy forests & mountains, densely wooded areas, and maybe a desert.

I think it's very possible we'll see enough content. They did say that they chose this particular art style because it's easier to program, so that should give them plenty of time to fill a world that size to justify it.

Maybe I have a much different view of what makes a Zelda game, then. The items, the puzzles, the dungeons, the odd-looking bosses, and ridiculous yet 1-dimensional characters are a few key characteristics. Also, one of the most standing-out quality in Zelda is that Link has been shaped to be a character that is the easiest to relate to. I look at some of the SotC characters as exaggerated other-worldly beings, which I can't see as myself.

I don't bother with projecting myself onto characters in game, it just seems futile and inherently egotistical. To me Link, Joel, and Jodie Holmes (Ellen Page in Beyond 2 Souls) are all just characters whose shoes I put on while playing. The key aspect of that metaphor being that I put the character's shoes on and relate to them, but there's always that critical distance there. The only characters I have ever seen as 'me' are customizable characters, and on that my version of Commander Sheppard doesn't even count, as she was a character of her own at that point.

I don't think it's fair to say that the way I play video games is egotistical. After all, I AM the one competing the actions, even if games these days are more balanced so that I am more likely to complete them. I've always played games to experience things myself, as opposed to books or movies, where the main character is just part of his own sequence of events. In video games, If my character gets hurt, I'm likely to say "Ow!" If someone makes me pay for their damaged door, I'll say "O s##t, well, I deserve that, don't I?

I should be clear that I tend to do this more with games like Zelda, or Child of Light, and not games like Assassin's Creed, where you play an inherently bad person, and it's impossible to go through the games without the character senselessly killing most other human beings. Slaying monsters and breaking pots is one thing.

Saying that projecting yourself onto a character is inherently egotistical isn't a dig at you so much as it is an examination of the nature of that practice. I mean, you are painting yourself into an artistic work using a bland character like Link as a canvas, that certainly involves the ego. The ego being any acknowledgment of 'the self' or personal identity at all.

That makes sense. The word egotistical, to me sounded like you thought it was foolish of me to take responsibility for Link's (or other character's) heroism, and to consider myself a hero purely by playing a video game. Of course, I'm nowhere close. If I was holding a sword and was confronted by a stalfos in real life, I'm pretty sure I'd run screaming. But, when you put it like that, it doesn't sound at all like a bad thing.