Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

The design structure used in BotW's overworld for discovery is actually really amazing tbh. I wonder if someone else has made use of a similar strategy in designing an Open World game before.

@rallydefault
Labels. I never let a label damper my excitement for a game.

I don't care if a game has been out for years, ported, sequel... those are some of my favorite games of all time.

Being "new" or "creative" means little to me. Some of the worst games I've ever played have been such. It means nothing. Either a game is good or a game is bad. And if it's a good game, either I've played it or I haven't. And even if I had, if it adds a new way to play (like portability, or virtual reality) I may want it again. And If I haven't played it that just makes it even more exciting.

Judging games based on labels goes against logic to me. What do I care if it's a sequel if it's an amazing game and I love it? Doesn't suddenly make the game unenjoyable.

If I only want a constant influx of "new" and "creative" I'll visit an art show. When it comes to games, I just want something fun. It may be new (ARMS) it may not be (Skyrim Switch) but either way they're incredible games and I love incredible games. If I play too much of certain type of game and tire of it, I'll find something different to play.

I just finished playing the Dragon Quest Heroes I&II demo, and while I enjoyed it, I wonder what it's going to be like playing action heavy games in portable mode.

I felt like I couldn't get a real good grip on the console since it was so long, and can't possibly see how games that utilize the L&ZL and R&ZR frequently play (they're so close together that I can't place my index finger on the L&R button & my middle finger on the ZL&ZR buttons like I can on other controllers). Would the ergonomics feel better if I put the Joy-Con in the grip & played tabletop?

@RR529
Don't think you're meant to put a separate finger on L and ZL or R and ZR. Just one finger which alternates between the two as needed.

Which is also likely why you couldn't properly grip the console. It grips fine when you only use your pointer finger for the shoulder buttons.

Btw I loved that demo but my goodness was the framerate abysmal.

@JaxonH, yeah, that's what I figured (about finger placement), it's just going to take some getting used to since it's not what I'm used to.

About the demo, I actually didn't notice many frame drops. It certainly dropped here and there for brief periods, but mostly ran smooth for me. I'll probably run through it a few more times over the weekend so I'll see how it holds up next time.

@RR529

Maybe they patched it since I played it (which was at launch). When I played it was like a slideshow. I normally don't care about framerate. Like DOOM, I think it plays fantastic despite some complaints about framerate from others. But DQ Heroes demo... dear goodness.

They had to have patched it. Cause if it was in the same state you definitely would have noticed. It was borderline unplayable.

I agree. Sure there's good reason to be a bit tired of some companies making the same game every year with one or two tweaks. But just because that is a legitimate complaint doesn't mean that every game has to re-invent the wheel.

Pretty much all of my favourite albums, movies, games tv shows borrow heavily from things that have come before. Just about everything you see or hear does. But that doesn't make them any less enjoyable. I am a fan of The Avalanches so I would say that.... but I think anyone who has played through the story in Odyssey would also agree

@KirbyTheVampire

BotW's innovations to the open world genre:

• Changing the focus of the player from icons on a map to the landscape itself. There's a lot of stuff to find in BotW, but you have to actually go out, pay attention to your environment, and find the stuff yourself. You can set markers and icons on your map, of course, but these are set up by YOU when YOU find something interesting you want to investigate.
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• The focus on creating an incredibly interactive open world that you have to survive in and manipulate to thrive. Whether you're stripping naked and fleeing from thunderstorms, camping out below a mountain until the rain gives up, creating fires to give yourself a boost on the paraglider, chopping wood to create firewood, making meals out of the animals you've hunted and plants you've scavenged, or manipulating the in-game physics engine to gain the upper hand in a tough battle, you're constantly being forced to grapple with the world itself in your adventures. You're as fully embodied in an environment as I've ever seen a character outside of games that are explicitly about surviving in an environment.
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• The focus on ease of movement and the universal ability to explore wherever you like. One awe-inspiring thing about this game is how fully you can explore its beautiful world. No invisible walls. No restrictive game mechanics that don't allow you to go wherever you like. No warnings about "leaving the game area." The open world genre is full of games that are very restrictive about what you can do and where you have the ability to go. They'll give you interesting things to look at in the distance, but when you actually let your curiosity get the better of you and try to find out what the deal with them is, the game will restrict you. This is a problem for me, as I feel like the appeal of open worlds is being able to fully explore them and let my curiosity and sense of wonder about the world dictate my path within it.
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• The way the game aligns player action with narrative and game design. Most open world games, even though they offer a multitude of side-quests and activities to engage in, still lead you through a series of missions you have to engage in to complete the game. This can often lead to a profound sense of ludonarrative dissonance. Gee, Fallout 4 tells me, your character is sure is broken up about his dead wife and is obsessed with finding his missing child. Why, then, is he spending his days messing around in the wasteland, engaging in odd jobs and looting abandoned buildings filled with raiders when he should be following up on leads he learned about twenty hours ago? Well, that's because, despite what the game likes to tell me, I actually want to mess around the wasteland, but this puts me directly in conflict with the plotline. This applies to almost every open world game I've played: the game is telling me that my character is supposedly fixated on this or that thing, but I'm bumming around the streets playing mini-games, going to strip clubs, whatever. Breath of the Wild fixes this problem: it has "main quest"y locations to visit and memories to relive, of course, but your one and only goal in the game is to kill Ganon. That's it. Everything else I do in the game after the tutorial area is purely optional, and it works on a narrative level, because almost everything you do in this game strengthens your character in some way. There is little to no dissonance involved because the game is all about YOUR adventure as you train to defeat Ganon, what you choose to do, and, no matter how you tackle it, it's a valid way of playing the game. This means that unlike other open world games, which are really linear narratives that allow me to [removed] around when I've gotten bored of doing what I'm supposed to do to move the game along, my experience with BotW is supremely personal and individual in nature.

Those are some of the big aspects of BotW that I consider to be utterly transformative of the genre. I could also talk about its subtle, wonderful sound design, the lovely art direction, the fun combat, and how this all comes together to create an unforgettable experience that reminds me of why I'm a gamer in the first place.

@Ralizah Dang man, you make me want to go play some more Zelda again lol. Well said!!

The feelings I got playing Zelda I've not felt playing any other game. When I first start I spent the first 20 hours doing my own thing and not doing the main story line. I just wanted to climb, hunt, and live off the land. BotW truly made me feel like I was one my own adventure and not on guild posts the whole way through.

@Ralizah 1: Skyrim already did that. You have to go out and find everything yourself for it to show up on the map, save for locations that NPCs tell you about and mark on your map.

2: I agree, most open world games don't bother with too many survival game mechanics.

3: That's not entirely true. IIRC, the ocean had an invisible wall, and there's usually a valley blocking you from continuing forward, which is effectively the same thing as the cliffs or mountains that block you in other open world games. It just looks different. Some open world games are definitely more restrictive than this, true, but games like Skyrim let you go wherever you want too, albeit more awkwardly in certain circumstances due to the lack of a climbing mechanic. Not exactly what I would call innovative, although it did accomplish this a lot more smoothly than most open world games.

4: One could argue that Skyrim (again, lol) is similar in this case. Your goal is ultimately to stop Alduin , and since you start as a seemingly average person with no noteable skills, everything you do is making yourself stronger so that you can accomplish that goal.

Besides, I don't think everything the character does needs to be with the end goal of making yourself stronger. Maybe they would end up in a drinking game at the end of the day or something. Sure, you can generally do stuff in open world games that break any tension in the story, but you can do the same in Breath of the Wild. Even though the end of the world is imminent, maybe you just move into that one house and do nothing but gather mushrooms and hunt creatures, while occasionally doing an odd job or something.

@Spoony_Tech Yeah, it was a special experience. I really like how Nintendo gave a little twist to certain elements that also show up in plenty of other modern games. The post-apocalyptic setting, for example. It felt less like you were navigating the misery and wreckage of a destroyed world and more like you were exploring a world where nature has taken over the reigns again. In this way, it felt very Miyazaki-esque. A lot like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, actually. Or how it opted for environmental interactivity and allowed the player to get lost in the wilderness ala Minecraft (which is, in my opinion, a closer analogue to the BotW experience than lore and quest heavy games like Skyrim).

Sure. Fallout 3 did that before Skyrim. And I can't remember it very well, but Oblivion might very well have done that as well. It's definitely a better approach than a GTA or Far Cry game that seems to come preloaded with millions of icons. But, in the end, the game is still overloading your map with millions of icons once you visit locations. It becomes a nightmare of little symbols everywhere.

Just look at this!

BotW has markers, of course: primarily for fast travel points, like shrines, stables, and, of course, the game tells you where to head to find the divine beasts. But, beyond that, the map is just... a map. A map you can edit to your liking to mark interesting or memorable locations. Your map doesn't become nothing more than a conglomerate of little icons. It preserves the mystery and dignity of the landscape, and keeps the focus on the immediate landscape around you, but also allows you to maintain fast travel locations to make traveling wide distances feasible (because who wants to play giant games like these without some sort of fast travel option?).

You are, of course, perfectly correct that you will run into these barriers and messages if you travel far off enough from the map. Which is an unfortunate limitation. I only encountered these when I actually set out to break the game, though. Perhaps one day Nintendo will give us a perfectly open and interconnected game world where there are no boundaries!

Anyway, this is why I emphasized ease of movement and the ability to explore everywhere. You can probably go most places in Skyrim, but the game sure doesn't help you in this regard. I often feel like I'm fighting the controls and in-game physics engine to satiate my curiosity.

The difference is the main plot stuff (correct me if I'm wrong here) is mandatory if you want to beat Skyrim. At least, outside of glitching into the endgame or something. You're going through a linear sequence of events to get from Point A to Point Z. After the tutorial, all you need to do to beat BotW is defeat Ganon. And, to that end, the path you forge on your way is uniquely your own.

@rallydefault It would be a rehash if they pretended it was a new game. It's a remake, and a very good-looking one too. It's one of my favourite games, so playing it in HD, with modern visuals and improved controls is pretty awesome. And it's a budget title too. I'm not complaining. The amount of remasters and remakes I buy every year are very few, if I even buy them at all, so I'm not too worried about the state of the industry. We got The Last Guardian last year, can't expect Ueda to develop a new game this fast. So the idea that a separate studio worked on a remake in the meantime doesn't bother me in the slightest. And when I look at my wishlist for next year, there are three new IPs (Concrete Genie, Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima), and two sequels/reboots (God of War, Spider-Man).

I would be more worried about EA churning out a new FIFA every year since the beginning of time. It's not a new thing, annual releases, ports, remakes were a thing of the past too.

And to a certain degree we will see less creativity. There are only so many ideas and concepts that work as a video game. I don't believe the possibilities are endless. The first video game ever created was new and creative, everything they made back then was new and creative. Every game that followed was inspired by another in some way, shape or form. And the more games exist, the higher the chance that some mechanic or feature can be traced back to another game.

And this is the reason why the path you forge in BOTW is a lot less interesting and memorable than anything else, be it Skyrim or older Zelda games or any other game with a main plot which is at least decent. You can forge your own path, but all the differences between those different paths will only be in the collectibles you get or other similarly unremarkables things that will never be good enough to replace an entertaining plot conceived by a human mind.

This is also why I love Oblivion so much, because when you put all the focus on well written side quests (many, MANY well written side quests) you are giving the player both interesting and memorable stories and the ability to choose which ones to follow, forging this way his own path but made of interesting and memorable things (when quests are SO MANY and so different from each other players really have the feeling that they are forging their own path even if they are actually only choosing from some predetermined options, it's the best compromise in my opinion)
At this point it doesn't count even the fact that the main quest in Oblivion is so bad that it can be compared to one of the uninteresting paths of Breath of the wild, because the game with the side quests already gave you much more than you could have asked for from a single main quest (a main quest that at this point becomes less than completely useless)

@Octane
I know how they're marketing Colussus - I never questioned that. I'm just shaking my head that we have people labeling this as an "excellent" time in gaming when the majority of top-scoring and top-selling releases are HD upgrades/reskins of old games. Kind of like the movies currently. Most of your big-release movies right now are just remakes.

I don't know if video game ideas are endless. I really don't. On one hand, I kind of side with the people who defend video games as an art form. And if that's the case, ask any artist: Is visual art (painting, sculpture, etc.) limitless? Is writing limitless? Or have all the original ideas been expended? Chances are they're going to tell you that there are always new ideas.

At any rate I do think there's a lot out there to still be tried in video games, if not endless ideas. And if we keep moving on the trajectory the industry is on right now, we very well may never see those new possibilities. We're just going to keep seeing FIFA and DOOM and Mario and Assasin's Creed and Horizon and Last of Us just with slightly tweaked systems. That's all I'm saying.

@JaxonH
Absolutely I agree: a game simply being "new" or "creative" does NOT make it a good game. Plenty of terrible "creative" games out there, like you said. But they DO push gaming in new directions, and that's the crux of my argument. There have been plenty of failed "creative" games that other devs then came along and borrowed certain systems, tweaked, and turned into something very good. Without that terrible "creative" game in the first place, that growth would never occur.

It's like we say about Nintendo and their hardware. Some of it failed. Hard. But most of those hardware failures can then be traced into subsequent systems from Nintendo and other companies, borrowing the bits and pieces that DID work.

Or not. If anything they'll probably argue that there are only a few basic ideas that everything builds on. To use one example here are seven plots that every story can fit into:

1. Defeating the Monster (good vs evil)
2. Rags to Riches (Have nothing, win big, lose it all, earn it back)
3. Quest (get the thing)
4. Voyage (go somewhere, come back changed)
5. Comedy (an absurd scenario works out in the end)
6. Tragedy (a flaw/mistake is their undoing)
7. Rebirth (main character changes their ways)

In the same way styles of gameplay would fit into several broad categories. Styles of music fit into several broad categories. Styles of painting fit into several broad categories. Even when someone "invents" a new genre/style it's borrowed heavily from stuff that came before, consciously or not. Nothing "new" is really ever created it's just the same thing with variations in tone/quality/style re-mixed over and over again.

@rallydefault I actually think you make a very good point. One of the main reasons that I'm ever more drawn to the indie scene is that it seems to be the most reliable (arguably only) place where you can pick up something truly imaginative or creative.

Now for me, personally, I would rank this year pretty highly on my list of 'great years in gaming' - but there are a few caveats:

• I got a new piece of hardware (Switch) that I really like, which doesn't happen every year
• I didn't have a WiiU, so this year presented the first opportunity to play a game from the award-winning Splatoon series - which otherwise wouldn't have been all that fresh of an experience
• I got to play the latest Mario Kart game (a 'deluxe' port of a WiiU game)
• Having a new Mario and a new Zelda in the same year is pretty rare, so that was nice
• I've been waiting for a Gran Turismo game for several years, so it was pleasing to finally get my hands on it

...when I factor in the indie games I've picked up to supplement my library, I'm left feeling very satisfied - but I can't deny that, when you take a wider view, there's not been all that much at the top end that's been truly different.

Splatoon 2 is a shooter with a twist - a twist that added something new for me - but, for returning players, it was (pretty much) more of the same. The biggest achievement in Zelda, as has been said, is probably the level of polish and consistency in the open world - was there anything all that different though? It could be argued not. Mario is (apparently) marvellous, but I haven't seen anything all that game-changing about it. Assassin's Creed is still Assassin's Creed. Gran Turismo is still Gran Turismo. FIFA is still FIFA. Call of Duty is still Call of Duty. Destiny is still Destiny. Sure, they all have little tweaks and twists here and there - but, underneath it all, they're still the same familiar franchises and formats that we've grown accustomed to.

There's creativity in the indie scene - and with games like PUBG which pop up on Early Access and capture peoples' imaginations - and, as seems to be the modern trend, the best ideas from these types of games will likely get ripped off and shoe-horned in to some of the bigger, more established franchises ..but, in the main, the major releases won't offer too much in the way of fresh, new experiences going forward - the risks are being taken elsewhere. Every now and again we might see something like ARMS crop up - which can go either way (Nintendo do seem more keen to take this type of risk than most other publishers in fairness to them) - but, on the whole, it seems that we're stuck in a cycle of having the same old tried-and-trusted titles re-packaged and re-sold to us time and time again!

As I said before, I've really (really, really) enjoyed my year in gaming - the Switch especially - but, hardware aside, I'm not sure I'll look back on 2017 as one of the most creative years in gaming history...lots of great experiences, but not much that's been all that fresh. I've enjoyed it a lot but, being objective, there have been other years that have 'changed the game' far more than this one - at least in terms of software.

...saying that though, I'll still be getting plenty of value out of Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, Stardew Valley, Overcooked, GT Sport etc long in to 2018 (and hopefully beyond) - and I'm really looking forward to finally picking up Mario Odyssey and DOOM (and perhaps returning to Skyrim and L.A. Noire as well) - so you won't find me complaining! ..I'd just welcome a few more risks here and there - from the bigger publishers especially.

@Ralizah Breath of the wild had markers on the map, too. Granted, it was less cluttered, but I could deal with the clutter in Skyrim, because it meant there was actually a bunch of stuff to find that wasn't just shrines. It's more a testament to the emptiness of BoTW than anything IMO.

As for the story, that is true that you need to do a linear path to beat the game. I think you would be missing the best part of BoTW if you skipped the story, though. It basically becomes a survival game with shrines. But yes, that is something that other games don't generally do.

I don't understand why there's even a desire for new releases to "change the game". For me I'd argue that Overwatch is fairly comfortably my favourite game of the last 5-10 years. What did that game do that was actually new? Probably not a lot. It's just an extremely well polished release. In the same way that Super Mario Odyssey is and Super Mario Galaxy was.

Even Arms and Splatoon which you cited as examples of innovative releases are still heavily borrowing from other games. Arms is not the first 3D fighting game, Splatoon is not the first team based shooter. They've both got reasonably unique mechanics for sure but so does Super Mario Odyssey. So what are we actually talking about when we say "new ideas" here? Are we just talking about the character in the box-art?

Ya I never understood grading games or satisfaction solely on how "new" or "creative" it was.

Creative =/= Satisfaction
Uncreative =/= Dissatisfaction

I never have, and never will, use those labels to define my entertainment experience. I just play good games. Some are new, some are not. Some are sequels, some are ports. Some are creative, some use existing ideas in new ways. But whatever the case, there are only two kinds of games in the world- good games and bad games. That's it.

I don't have to have a completely "new" experience every time I play a game to have fun. Because they all feel new to me. If I haven't played it, then it's new. Open world games have been done to death-still love Skyrim. It's new to me. Still love Zelda. It's new to me. FPS have been done to death. Still love DOOM. It's new to me. Still love Wolfenstein. It's new to me. Even the sequel is new to me. Because it's not the same as the first game. Therefore > new.

This has absolutely been the best year in the history of video games. I'm sure you can run it through a variety of filters and spit out an unfavorable result- oh it's not the most creative year. Ok, sure. Oh it had the least amount of new IP Ok, sure. Oh it was this or that, or wasn't this or that. Ok, sure.

But at the end of the day, there were more great games this year than any year in memory, and of those great games more that sit in my top 20 than any other year, and higher up the list at that.