Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

It's something that started with Majora's Mask.

In Ocarina of Time many of the NPCs are simply identified with titles like "cucco girl" or "beggar". However, we tend to think they have names because many of the same characters got them in Majora's Mask.

I'm not sure if Twilight Princess has names for all the NPCs in Hyrule Castle Town either.

This is definitely the first game where every single NPC (minus those that are fakes) has a name though.

Edit: well no, maybe the Wind Waker did it.

@NEStalgia I feel like Zelda II's world had a lot of copy-paste characters, and characters that only randomly generated for that moment. I was happy about the way each town in Breath of the Wild was populated, but it still would have been cool if there were just a few more towns, say maybe a mountain village in Hebra, or something south of the Rito Tribe. I wouldn't say no to a second town in the southern part of the desert. It still beats every other Zelda game, though.

@Haru17 Yeah, I completely agree with this. I've never been a huge fan of artificial crowds. For some reason TWEWY springs to mind, and while it was neat reading people's theoughts at first, you soon realise that they're basically all thinking the same thing and don't serve any real purpose.

Zelda games have usually been pretty good at giving their characters some... character. Even the NPCs who don't advance the story are usually weird enough that they stick in the mind.

That's not to say I don't want a more socially connected, populated game for the next Zelda (that's exactly what I want), but I'd rather that population wasn't just cookie cutter townsfolk who only exist for the sake of 'busyness'.

@yokokazuo After the Plateau i went to Kakariko, then Zora's Domain, Akkala, Death Mountain and zones with Lost Woods and Lake Hylia. I have to say that i'm playing this Zelda really slow, because i want to enjoy every second of it, and i'm really doing it. Just to make an easy example i never used a horse to explore better, and i go for every mountain, every little lake, every river and every explorable thing that there can be. And i'm doing it approaching just one zone at a time. Consider that in 60 hrs i did only 2 Divine Beasts and explored less than half the entire world map

Little update: started the zone right of Lake Hylia and it is quite dispersive, and i found like this only Zora's Domain and Death Mountain because of all the mountains. Here it's a little bit more complicated because of all lakes and ponds. Did 3 Shrines (63), found some other Koroks, should be almost at 250 (something around 230-240) and i also found the legs piece that makes me invulnerable to lightning (i think during storms, finally!). Missing half of this zone to end it and go at the left side of the world map

@NEStalgia YT? Who did you buy from? AC is too big I think because you can't randomly walk up to people and ask them questions. It might be a gameplay mechanic but it makes the people more than pixel statue number 247. AC could do this because the people functioned as a part of your toolset. You used them to alter the environment to perform assassinations. Zelda isn't structured that way. The people are information dumps and quest givers...not tools. People can say what they will about the time mechanic in MM but I feel that putting that sense of urgency forced you to invest in the people in the town as you had focus on specific quests at a time...and if you didn't...they moved on with their lives.

I would love to see that happen for a longer period of time in games. TES tries it but they still have the static NPCs (Plus all the bugs) so they still feel lifeless. Also it isn't just the number of people it is where they show up as well that makes a game organic. The travelers in BotW mean that this is a world where people still have commerce and trade and go on walks (for that one NPC that keeps getting beat up in my game) or on adventures. That is why the yiga can use that disguise to ambush you. I feel like these people have carved out a life even after their grandparents watched their world burn. Or maybe I watched too much ReBoot as a kid to view these npcs as having some slight personality.

One thing I thought skyrim did worse than oblivion was it got rid of many of the set traveling schedules for NPCs. Instead they went with the random encounter thing, which seems cool until you realize they just pop out of thin air; that isn't immersion, that is another combat mechanic. In Zelda and Oblivion (I am assuming Oblivion is more sophisticated with this) NPCs are going about their tasks even if you aren't there to see it. I love that in Zelda the overworld enemies have little tribal groupings and they attack travelers (I mean bad for the travelers but it makes the game feel more realistic) instead of them being zoned off into certain areas. I could do without the Staal zombies though. Also F the woodland octorocks....they FOLLOW you... that is a bit much.

@Nicolai Well Zelda II was limited by the NES. Assets were pretty hard to squeeze on a cartridge let alone store in memory. It still has the most lived in towns out of any NES game or any Zelda game to follow which is pretty amazing! BotW feels like the proper union of Zelda 1's exploration and Zelda II's vision of open world Hyrule that never really saw the light of day.

BotW is sparsely populated but in that game it makes complete sense as it's pretty much post-apocalyptic Hyrule. Fallout: New Hyrule as it were. Who WOULD still be living there in its current state? So story wise it fits. Still, a bustling Hyrule with hundreds of anonymous NPCs could be cool if there were enough real characters around.

@Maxz I think random crowds can add to a game, even if it's not AC level crowds, Oblivion did it ok with random passers by enough to keep things populated. It's really not unlike real life. In any city you're surrounded by hundreds or thousands of people doing their own thing. They're anonymous without names to you, and talking to most of them will yield the same polite "go away" type response. A few mixed in might have a unique conversation with you or lead to any other interaction. If you walk down a busy city street you don't see "Bob, Kenny, and Edith" You see "person-in-suit, person-tying-shoelace, person-waiting-to-cross." All of them nameless. In a game it can give that same sense of a populated place.

I love the way Tokyo Mirage did it. Faceless pastel-colored people-shaped objects made up the crowds and passers by, where the named characters with conversation appeared normally. It showed the populated world and the anonymity of it. They did it that way due to WiiU and budget limitations, but it actually turned out an incredible stylistic choice.

I don't expect to visit "in its heyday" Hyrule and find the "vast Kingdom" consists of 80 people with names that know me personally. I expect it to be a thriving kingdom of thousands each doing their thing, and some of them know me. Not for BotW where it's a lifeless ruin of a former kingdom decayed through the ages, but for future open world zelda games where we might return to a thriving Hyrule.

Hyrule castle has the music that the rest of the game sorely lacks. Skyward sword and twilight Princess have much better soundtracks than this game, which is a real shame.

I don't think it's mandatory every Zelda from now on is open world. In fact, I'd much prefer if they used this engine to create a more focused and linear sequel. Give the open world thing a rest for a game or two. Every developer and their mothers are doing it this generation and it's getting rather bland. Zelda is a great example of how they should be done but please don't make this the future of all Zelda going forward.

What.. WHAT!? @Haru17 I completely understand what you're talking about.. Getting a cool mount and not being able to register it.. Why? What's the point even?

@Ryu_Niiyama Whoops, N-Y. I have no idea where YT came from. I blame Windows.

True enough about AC, but still if we did a game in Hyrule at its prime instead of a relic of a dead kingdom, it would need a LOT more people. And not all of them could (or should) be interacted with. To a degree pixel status are needed to fill that sense of scope. It worked in MM because that was this quaint little medieval well water hamlet. Such places consisted of a few dozen people max in real life. if going for a game set in those kind of villages you don't need a lot of people. But if we're going for the Kingdom of Hyrule, we can assume theirs at least a few thousand people around, probably tens of thousands. Maybe not millions. The CRPG idea of "a few individuals designated as shopkeeps and quest givers standing outside their doors" can be expanded greatly with a background population that's not very interested in the player character. Going back to Zelda II, it's a concept Zelda has played with since long before any of these other games were even imagined, so it's not too weird an idea to bring into Zelda. Yeah AC has unbroken lines of people like it's a WWII refugee exodus, it shouldn't be THAT dense. But heck, the WiiU could run AC3, so there's no technical limitations in bringing the concept to the Switch, just design concepts. I could see that working in the BotW engine. Just replace the grass with people and target 20fps!

MM....I really hated that time mechanic. The IDEA was fantastic. But the limitations of the machine prevented it from working well. The idea that everything you do is constantly reset never allowed exploration, and it was very self-defeating to complete all kinds of things only for it to be undone and waste tons of time. It needed something where you could "change the past" rather than literally resetting the game except for your inventory. Maybe having had the start point be the moment when the moon falls and have you constantly rewind to 3 days ago to keep altering the past rather than starting 3 days before and constantly rewinding to where you started would have contributed a lot. I love time travel stories. But it just didn't mesh with the gameplay to me. I didn't have much fun with it, which makes me sad because I loved the world and the mood. Also the characters on fixed schedules was a neat idea for questing, but playing a copy of Outlook's calendar was also a little off-putting.

LOL, ReBoot was awesome! I have the DVD collection of that somewhere.... I don't think I watched it though. TES does a pretty good job at a living world, if you can ignore Bethesda's bugs. At least Oblivion did....which BotW still reminds me of in that regard. It's a little lifeless but we have to accept that a world with a bunch of unique AI personalities is pretty hard to pull off in any decent way. That's what MMOs are for I guess, though I'm personally not a fan. Bugs and all, TES is the ONLY other game world that really pulls that off decently beyond BotW.

Still haven't played Skyrim enough yet to really get a feel for it. I got to that first podunk villiage, then got to the first place with horse stables, got bored of what felt like a lifeless world unlike oblivion and moved on when I fell through the floor in that city. I'm looking forward to giving it another try on Switch though. I felt bad for missing such an iconic game.

I wish that the random villager attacks MEANT something though. I keep going to these places and seeing the same idiot getting attacked every day. I used to interfere and try to save them, realized there's no benefit and I"m wasting weapons, so now I just let them get attacked. I feel bad, but, whatever, they're attacked daily and still go looking for mushrooms, and somehow survived....deal with it. Saving attacked travelers should be a mechanic of some sort.

The stal attackers are really annoing. I know it's to make the night more dangerous...but I'm tired of wasting weapons, or running from them, and having to dump those silly bone arms.

And my problem with the octoroks is their aim is better than any sniper ever born. They PREDICT where you're going to be and rarely seem to miss! They have freaking magic homing rocks or something.

@Operative2-0 Well, Nintendo is the most likely of any company to do something then turn 180 degrees the next time so you may get your wish. But I'd rather they refine open world to be less empty and more seamless. The Zelda series was open world from the very first game and THEN became linear for 20 years. It's nice going back to open world! But they could blend the concepts into a seamless experience. A world can be open without being aimless wandering. I don't want to end linear adventures, but I think there's a lot to explore in this genre in a way only Nintendo (and to a lesser quality extent, Bethesda) are willing to do. Zelda games tend to come once a console, so if they skip 2 more games we're looking at our next open world Zelda 15 years from now or so....I'd certainly like it before then!

Aonuma said the handheld team was told to think "2D in a 3D way" or something like that. That's a good place for linear adventures.

@yokokazuo - A bit of a delayed reply but still thanks. I found what I needed, thought there'd be a collectable but it looks like I'll have to cook them myself and I'm missing one key ingredient for both recipes... At least I know what I'll need.

I've pretty much explored the entirety of Hyrule Castle's insides. I'm leaving (for real this time!) and going back to exploring the world before I go too far... I see that the Castle is part of the large world map, even though you're stuck with the 3D view when you're in it. I guess that's part of the reason why there are Koroks and even a shrine in the castle. I'm still surprised that they're there though, I was expecting the "final dungeon" to be its own thing but instead, it's still part of the huge world. Pretty cool.

@Octane I don't think a mere stable is equipped to take care of a Kirin/Qilin.

I found certain scales in chests around hyrule castle. Are those the only ones or can you get them from the beasts themselves?

@Operative2-0 You can farm the dragons for more scales.

There seem to be three variants on the dragon pieces; scales, horn shards and... tooth shards? I can't remember, but I think it depends on where you hit them. I'm having rotten luck getting anything from the fire dragon, but I've got about a million pieces from Mr. Electrosnake, because it always hangs out at my favourite haunts.

I've also been poking around Hyrule Castle and it's awesome. The music is fantastic, and I echo the sentiments that it would have been nice to have a few more similarly 'full on' pieces throughout the game. I wouldn't say it's sorely lacking, as I fundamentally agree with the decision to make most of the overworld super-minimal and 'soft-touch', but I'd have liked to see the composers go all out on a few more occasions, especially as music always has played such a big part in the series. Anyway, Hyrule Castle is awesome, and that's A Good Thing, so it seems a shame just to use that as an excuse to complain. There are Mario Galaxy-esque vibes to the epic pomp, although clearly it's not a Mario game.

Anyway, it's really cool. I like how the girl in the Riverside Stable tells you all the different passages, meaning you can sneak in a million different ways. Kind of typifies the game really. A fitting end.

It's not an excuse to complain it's a legitimate critique. Trust me, I don't need excuses to complain, but I at least try to point out the good parts when I do.

I absolutely love the Dragon theme. Exploring the world, then to have them appear are some of the best moments in the game.

Im kinda disappointed with the game. I feel like i played just another Zelda. Really tired after Skyward Sword. I think this game manages it really good to hide the fact that you played the same game again plus mindless koroksemen collecting and mostly meaningless side quests. Weak alibi story and i cant stand how they degraded Princess Zeldas strengh and determination. Shes literally only there to cry on Links shoulders and telling him all the time how weak and useless she is. I dont like those people.

Its a great puzzle Zelda with beautiful artdesign but i just excepted that they would really shake up the formula. Well the story was about once and for all sealing Ganon ( how originell) so maybe the next Zelda will surprise me. ^^

A good game worth the money but in the end it still disappointed.

@Jhena Actually, Zelda is incredibly determined and dedicated in this game. More so than any other Zelda game really. A good chunk of this game's cutscenes are focused mostly on her struggle.

@Octane It's quite galling, isn't it? It just doesn't fit with a game billed for exploration, freedom, and customization. If you want to ride a bear, you should be able to ride a bear.

Mario games have never been open worlds, but rather sandboxes. That distinction is very important, as it's what separates a Lego game from FFXV.

I think the music is great — if you want the classic experience, go listen to the soundtrack on YouTube. The biggest problems I have with the game are the lack of choice and general bad interface of stables, terrible scarcity of meaningful puzzles / characters, and definitely the shoddy enemy variety. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but there are only 78 enemies in the game, counting all reskins, variants, and the divine beast and final bosses. The single horseback enemy and mini boss are fairly rare, marking a step back from Twilight Princess' single horseback combat area, if you can believe it.