Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Well, I based my guesses off of how the game is going so far. Of all the conventions present, keys seems the least essential. Grappling hooks feel redundant with climbing. Slingshots and boomerangs seem like a waste of time with bows everywhere. The lantern seems useless when you can just light a torch (or a wooden shield, for that matter). The Lens of Truth seems like a goddamn nightmare in an open world game, as it would require meticulous combing of a oversized map.

I didn't spell it all out because then we would have some boring argument about "well, actually..." instead of actually talking about what we want to see in the game and how that might work.

@Haru17 The boomerrang always had its use with or without arrows. The question will be will we be able to lock onto multiple targets like in the past.

@Spoony_Tech: You gotta wonder, though, now that Zelda is going for a more realistic physics engine now, they could be doing away with the boomerang simply because of how preposterous the way it's used in Zelda games is, like, for example, its ability to carry items back to you. If they're paying special attention to the way rocks fall down hills and fire burns grass, then a realistic boomerang is probably going to lack a lot of features anyhow.

Come to think about it, the same can be said about the hookshot as well. I suppose I don't really know for sure how seriously they're taking the realism approach.

@Nicolai Link can spawn fire and ice from magic sticks, I don't think realism is what they're going for.

@Haru17 I agree with most of that, except (to an extent) that redundancy is a reason to remove something in this game, and that the lens of truth is a nightmare because the world is too big.

We’ve already seen a ton of redundant items such as multiple items and weapons of similar types and multiple ingredients, foods, recipes, and elixirs that do the same thing. But that redundancy is actually a feature of this game. The point is getting something new won’t always do something new, but sometimes just be better at doing something that you were already capable of doing, or give you a new way of doing something you could already accomplish. By your logic, the Master Sword is redundant because we can already find and upgrade other swords in the game. We’ve got multiple ways of lighting flammable things on fire. Again, by your logic, the fire arrow largely renders the fire rod redundant.

So I don’t think hookshots, grappling hooks, boomerangs, and lanterns are necessarily redundant enough to exclude from the game. I don’t see how these items, especially the Hookshot and boomerang, would be more redundant than things we’ve already seen like the multiple swords including the Master Sword, the multiple bows, the multiple the multiple ways of just getting from point A to B. I agree when one item does exactly what another does, such as real bombs to the bomb rune, but thats not true of all these items. The Hookshot could be way faster than any climbing method we’ve seen. The boomerang could be capable of retrieving items and hitting multiple targets. The lantern could be a torch that lasts a lot longer or never goes out. These are abilities we haven’t seen in the game yet.

As for the Lens of Truth, two thoughts come to mind. 1) The point of this game is to be large. Aonuma has said no one on the development team has even seen all the items in the game, so hidden Lens of Truth stuff everywhere is possible. 2) They could limit the mechanic to predictable surfaces and environments, for example, only Sheikah areas/surfaces, and bomb-able/breakable surfaces. If I had to bet though, I’d bet against a Lens of Truth like mechanic being implemented outside of what we’ve already seen with things like the magnesis rune.

@Nicolai I’m not so sure. It’s possible, but this game only has elements of realism. The combat movement and character animations have eccentric flairs, for example. With that, there are still some workarounds if the realistic physics are taken that seriously. The boomerang could be a breakable replaceable item and respond to physics as well, tasking the player to use it more carefully than in past games. It’s just so unlike Nintendo, even in this game, to sacrifice a game mechanic to realism.

Except it is going for realism. You don't get a game where you can walk across plains, hunt and forage for food, and be affected by weather and climate, otherwise. The mechanics of the game, however, are angled more towards entertainment than verisimilitude. If we got a boomerang—and I don't know why we would—it would likely be the gale boomerang as a weapon.

@Haru17 Cutting ropes, stunning enemies, multiple targets? Just doing what the boomerang always did, don't see how that cannot work in this game.

Well, for one, the bow already cuts ropes like it did in Twilight Princess. Point is, the boomerang has never been there for combat; in The Wind Waker and before it was used for puzzles. I honestly don't expect too many vine-cutting puzzles (What else was the boomerang ever good for? Messing around with fish innards?).

Anyway, how long do we have to wait before this gets memed? "Most interesting man in Hyrule," much?

In many games, mostly 2d ones, the boomerang is extremely versatile and useful.

It's only in the big 3d entries that it becomes a puzzle piece.

Mostly because the added necessity of aiming and selecting a target is slower than just pressing a button and watching it go.

Well, this game happens to exist in 3—maybe 4—dimensions, sooo...

Still, having the ability to stun enemies and collecting small items from a distance is a nice convenience.

It doesn't need to be a permanent magical item, it could be a random reward like the bows and other stuff.

Perhaps. That still sounds strictly worse than a hookshot or dual clawshot, though.

How would climbing work in a place like City in the Sky?

Climb up one wall, glider over to the other, climb up that one, gilder some more... rinse and repeat.

In both the DS games, it was one of the most important items!

Where did you find another dimension?

Within, Dezzy, within.

Anyway, one REALLY cool thing I've seen this game do is CLOUD COVER. When was the last game that, when a cloud rolled over, cast real time shadows down, darkening the ground? Never! It's never been done! That's why I scoff so haughtily at people who claim Breath to be unrealistic. Not only is it realistic, but it embodies such a profound realism that it's zeroed in on an aspect of the natural world I've never seen replicated in games before.

In the DS games it is downright possessed by some unholy being.

As if being able to target multiple objects at once and have it bounce around wasn't enough

That's definitely been done before. I'm sure it's been done quite a lot but the recent example I can remember is in Uncharted 4 at the point where you're up at the Volcano in Madagascar:

I doubt that's actually real time shadows though. And I doubt it is in Zelda either. Much more likely they fake it with a premade cloud map that they scroll across all of the model's textures by taking the (x,z) position as a texture coordinate. That'd be really expensive to run otherwise. Can't imagine it being possible on the Wii U.
(I do this stuff a lot, just not in games)

A good way you could test to see if this is true is to look and try and find any especially irregular cloud formations in Zelda. Like if there's 1 really weird shape cloud that fills the whole sky and then a completely empty sky for 10 minutes after. If the shadows matched up with something like that, then they're not using the method I'm guessing.

Well, in any case, I think it's extra impactful to have it actually shade the area in and around the player as they're moving through the world. Even if it's done more processing-efficiently by some trick: Like I said, illusions are good. I played Uncharted 4, loved it, and never really noticed that detail in the Mt. Ubisoft skybox.

In any case, this game is beautiful. It's already my favorite lighting system I've seen in a game. I just hope they further harness the Wind Waker-style pastel lighting that painted objects bright red, yellow, etc. You see this effect in Breath when Link stands near a firefly at night, but it's still not quite as bold as it was in Wind Waker. Anyway, eye candy: