Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

@FGPackers Do you know where the Zora's missing wife is? I've been looking for her, couldn't find her. I assume she's around Lake Hylia? On the west side or the east? North or south? If you could give me a little hint, that would be awesome.

@Octane Lake Hylia, left side of the Bridge

EDIT: as @jump said it was way too much precise. Now i edited it with just the side of the lake if you want to read it

^That's not a hint, you should edit it and be more vague like she's in water.

Somewhat of an ending spoiler.

oh my I loved the yiga clan sections. The boss is hilarious and it upgrades the idiots looking for you giving you nice 40 attack weapons in the process

@FGPackers I need to look for more korok seeds... I have a longer playtime than you, but you have almost 100 more seeds than me! (I do have about 76 shrines right now though)
Wonder if the route we took is also a bit of a factor? I've mainly started with the north and covered most of the sections there and I'm slowly moving farther south, exploring both the east and west. I've beaten three Divine Beasts, but I think I'm going to try to do a more thorough search in each region.

I need electric darned tips! I've looked high and low for them, but have had no luck.

@Maxz Riverside Stable, buy em from Beedle.

@BLP_Software Lifesaver. Thank you mega much. I can finally appease the dragonfly girl.

Nah, still plenty of stuff that can be done with Zelda! (not that I'd mind at all having some sort of Zelda-Mario Crossover, even that would be a game I think would actually be quite cool!). But fortunately, I don't even think that Zelda is anywhere near dead as a series in its own right, and in many ways, the fun is only just getting started! While I see where you're coming from that Breath of the Wild being an open world game took so long to make that it begs the question, how long can they realistically keep this up of that's how long Zelda games will take to make now. However, here';s why I don't think we will have this problem...

While this game took a long time to build, they'll be able to re-use alot of the game engine they created for any new titles, so is now just a case of giving it a new story, adding new sprites, etc, but most of the groundwork in terms of the open world mechanics has already been done in terms of the actual physics engine that took so long to build. So for any new game, they wouldn't have to do all that from scratch, as they've already got a good base to work on, and could make totally new games in their own right simply by starting with the base they've got and simply adding enhancements in terms of new mechanics.

This could potentially even make the newer games even BETTER! (as they'd be able to devote much more of their time to the actual story, and creating bigger dungeons, etc, instead of all the time going into making the game's core engine). While I love Breath of the Wild to the ends of the earth, I'd have loved for the shrines to have been proper full on dungeons rather than each one being just one puzzle per shrine. (if you get what I mean). So now they've built the tools, they'll be free to create all this fun stuff with the tools they now have!

@Ryu_Niiyama The beasts are just neat mini-dungeons IMO. And how you have the reward for that which is really great IMO. Plus it just opened tons of sidequests. I just figured that part out last night, I went back to the town for a store, and discovered all these sidequests popping up! The next one is even more fun IMO.

Now you have me wishing I'd got that soundtrack after all! But I got spared the whole misdelivery debacle so I'm still glad I didn't go for it (OT: BTW, my first import from YT isn't going so well....Setsuna physical was in-stock, ordered it, they processed payment last Monday, and I checked today and the order's still "in processing" and Setsuna is out of stock....grrrr....so it will ship someday, maybe, hopefully.)

I can imagine a Zelda with Assassin's Creed's population engine creating a bustling Hyrule and tons of people around. OoT never felt populated to me due to the tech limits. It felt like a world in which 20 people lived MM actually felt more populated. TP had a lot more people but still felt empty. I want the world from ALttP that felt like this actual medieval village, with the wood cutters etc. And the dark world. That in a 3D game would be REALLY interesting.

The most "lived in" Zelda though, to me, is Link's Adventure. Not a great game, but was the biggest Hyrule until now and the most lived in to date.

Or maybe we'll go back in time to the high-tech sheikah. Maybe that's the future of Metroid

Having crowds doesn't really add anything to games. Every single NPC in Breath of the Wild was named — that does. In fact, I think every 3D Zelda NPC is named, save for town guards. Characterizing or giving each of those characters a function is much more important than stressing the GPU with so many bodies to me.

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?