Legend of Zelda thread - Lorefags GTFO!

[Never Scored]

4 years is not that much more than the 3 between MM and WW.

Those games were built on totally different engines with totally different graphical assets and maps. It's not just the length of time it's the length of time in addition to the fact it's not all that different from its predecessor. A better comparison would be OOT and MM. MM was a direct sequel and shared a lot of development assets, just like TOTK. Even if TOTK was as different from BOTW as MM was from OOT, I don't think there'd be as many people scratching their heads about how the development time and price are justified. Like, imagine if MM had the mask transformations and time travel mechanic, but had the same game world as OOT with a few new areas appended on and it took twice as long to develop. That's seemingly the case with TOTK.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

It occurs to me none of these games have real plots, for the most part. Instead, they tend to always use a basic plot and some twist.

Aghanim is Ganon!
Ganon freed Vaati!
Zant worships Ganon!
Sheikh is Zelda!

In this light, the particularly stupid plot in this game makes more sense. They needed a twist, and they found one.

 

[huecoffs02]

price are justified

Imo it isn't, NoA was the only to increase the price, was it not? It's just Bowser knowing he could get away with it.

We would have two examples of "it's just an expansion" though, with GOWR and this, for people that are on that boat. I am not really that bothered but it's an interesting discussion.

 

[Nobunaga]

I'd dispute 2017 to 2018 as it being time to work on the DLC, so that leaves us with 2018-2020 for the early work on it, a year of covid delay and we would arrive at about 4 years give or take. You might say it is too long, I don't really care since all I was saying is that it took 2017-2023 hyperbole because at the very least, there are 2 years there that can't be counted.

Monolith did the work on the dlc.....

 

[huecoffs02]

Monolith did the work on the dlc.....

As co-developers of BOTW, they also worked on the base game too. Monolith Soft also worked on TOTK so it would mean shit if Monolith worked alone on the DLC for BOTW since that means they were busy with that and not with TOTK either way, delaying development.

 

[Epoch]

For those technical nerds wondering, graphically its pretty much the same, GI probe is still above links head and updates at half the framerate. The only lighting addition is SSAO (I dont think it was in botw, if it was then its much stronger now). There's new volumetric fog that flows along the floor in caves, it even has what looks like a basic 2d fluid sim when you walk through it, although it could be faked since its never dense enough to really see any fluid dynamics. There is a different volumetric fog used in a few cutscenes that looks ripped straight from Monolith's engine, same noise as in the Xenoblade games. Other than that its graphically identical to botw. I've noticed the toon shader flickering a lot along edges in high contrast lighting, don't know if that happened in botw either. Underground seems to use some sort of non-light lighting, and thats why it breaks on the emulator currently. The placed lights don't actually affect the environment, its more of like the darkness is a mask and the lights unmask it, the actual shading is unaffected and there seems to be a sun light that casts a shadow still and all the shading reflects that.

Monolith did the work on the dlc.....

Must be why the DLC was better than the base game

 

[AskeDead]

the same cope about performance issues were had when pokemon scarlet/violet leaked. "it's running on an emulator, the official release will run smoothly!" and you can see how that panned out. it'll be the same here. nintendo doesn't give a shit anymore; you're going to pay them anyways to get your escapist slop.

 

[Sock-to-Lurk]

Those games were built on totally different engines with totally different graphical assets and maps. It's not just the length of time it's the length of time in addition to the fact it's not all that different from its predecessor. A better comparison would be OOT and MM. MM was a direct sequel and shared a lot of development assets, just like TOTK.

That pretty much is the main issue, the comparasion to MM is brutal
Majora was made by a madman on a mission to make a game based on his idea of the week time limit within a single year deadline as the condition to bring it to life.
TotK had 6 years (3 if you want to be generous and discount covid shit) re-using pretty much everything as majora did and does nothing original with it, it would be like if Majora was just OoT master quests but they added an underground section where you can farm bombs and arrows.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

the same cope about performance issues were had when pokemon scarlet/violet leaked. "it's running on an emulator, the official release will run smoothly!" and you can see how that panned out. it'll be the same here. nintendo doesn't give a shit anymore; you're going to pay them anyways to get your escapist slop.

When I played Metroid Dread, which I've read runs at sixty FPS, I experienced no slowdown at all until my second playthrough, when I was screwing around in an E.M.M.I. zone trying to sequence break for ten or twenty minutes; those zones have special effects, and the slowdown was a few seconds at most. That was, I believe, the only time I experienced slowdown in all the time I've played the game.

Now, personally, I thought it to be unacceptable, since there's no reason it should've had any slowdown, but that's the perfectionist programmer in me thinking, and we see what the competition is. As an aside, I winced when imagining Samus' state machine in that game, and I was right to wince, as it happened they didn't handle every case; there's a sequence break involving passing through solid floors by getting into a complex state they hadn't handled; it's something like crouching with a speed boost held while freely aiming and using the grapple beam, hence the wincing.

A Metroid game must be good to sell, but it gets outsold by Pokemon slop on name alone anyway, so yeah, why give a fuck about quality when that's the case? It's pathetic.

 

[Terror Sandwich]

re-using pretty much everything as majora did and does nothing original with it, it would be like if Majora was just OoT master quests but they added an underground section where you can farm bombs and arrows.

That's being disingenuous. The building, ascend and rewind powers are much more complex than any of the masks or schedules in MM.
I believe adding them to the engine is what caused such a large development time, cause I can't imagine the amount of physics fuckery these abilities could have caused without proper implementation.

Not that I think those dev times were worthwhile, I much prefer to play as Zora-link or Goron-link over building catapults and boats. Ascend I constantly forget it exists, since it's so specific. And rewind is the only one I actually love, though I haven't found it that useful outside of solving puzzles.

 

[Never Scored]

The building, ascend and rewind powers are much more complex than any of the masks or schedules in MM.

This is completely ignoring how difficult 3D development was on N64 vs what is essentially an Android tablet. There are indie titles that contain similar gameplay elements built on pre-existing engines like TOTK that didn't take as long to make or cost as much.

At the time MM came out, the time mechanic was much more novel and complex than those elements in TOTK in 2023. There are a glut of titles on the market with similar features today.

This is like arguing Star Fox is not an impressive feat because the 3D looks like shit compare to today's games.

 

[Epoch]

That's being disingenuous. The building, ascend and rewind powers are much more complex than any of the masks or schedules in MM.
I believe adding them to the engine is what caused such a large development time, cause I can't imagine the amount of physics fuckery these abilities could have caused without proper implementation.

Ascend and rewind are not very complex. Ascend is extremely limiting in what you can do, its just checking the space above you for being flat and within range, no physics going on. Rewind just means they keep track of the locations an object was at for the rewind length, no different than game demos. They even cheat and let you rewind after it's been sitting still for a long time, which means its only tracking when its in motion, saving resources. Building has more complexity, but its pretty modular, each object has authored attachment points, and when its fused it becomes a single object. None of these things are very complex, maybe some of the finer details of the vehicle building, but most of it is just using the existing physics systems in a modular way, maybe setting up the control system when you attach the control station object. The complexity comes from the simple systems interacting, and they already had created the elemental physics system for botw.

It's not a 'simple' thing, but its not as difficult as you are making it out to be. They are using Havok Physics, all the constraint stuff is already built in. The engine was already made, botw had physics constraints, this is just allowing the creation of constraints by the player.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

Rewind just means they keep track of the locations an object was at for the rewind length, no different than game demos. They even cheat and let you rewind after it's been sitting still for a long time, which means its only tracking when its in motion, saving resources.

So tell me, I was under the impression that Rewind wouldn't be usable on enemies, and is generally only usable on objects with known paths. This means, rather than storing each location, they can store a constant size of information instead: a known path and the position on it. Little tricks like this are important for games to avoid what would otherwise be worst-case scenarios, so I'm curious if they did it this way or if there are cases for which they must dynamically track the locations.

 

[Epoch]

So tell me, I was under the impression that Rewind wouldn't be usable on enemies, and is generally only usable on objects with known paths. This means, rather than storing each location, they can store a constant size of information instead: a known path and the position on it. Little tricks like this are important for games to avoid what would otherwise be worst-case scenarios, so I'm curious if they did it this way or if there are cases for which they must dynamically track the locations.

When you pull it out it freezes time and locks your location until you select an item to rewind. I assume they are just storing a curve with the transform of the object and the velocity at each point and interpolating between them, like a networked game, which is why I said like a Demo. I'm not a programmer but I would figure there is a way to dynamically adjust the 'resolution' of the stored points based on the complexity of the movement, so arcs would have a higher resolution, or rolling down a hill, compared to something just falling straight down, which could be just a single point once it reaches terminal velocity.

There are fixed objects that rotate at a constant velocity, which I'm assuming they just reverse that rotation instead of bothering to track physics. No you can't use it on enemies either.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

A few things I just want to point out is that I'm really doubting that TotK had much pre production time at all, considering they flat out said it came about from their DLC ideas for BotW.

So like, yeah, Covid caused some delays but holy shit it's reusing the map and physics engine which was said to have been the bulk of BotWs development...

 

[Epoch]

A few things I just want to point out is that I'm really doubting that TotK had much pre production time at all, considering they flat out said it came about from their DLC ideas for BotW.

So like, yeah, Covid caused some delays but holy shit it's reusing the map and physics engine which was said to have been the bulk of BotWs development...

I guess if I had to describe it, it feels directionless. The main story is clearly them just being obligated to have one, you just go to the 4 villages and help them for no actual reason. For some reason the villages are in turmoil again and that is that. I don't think they had a core idea other than to just add more stuff, none of it really fits together and I don't think there is really a main gameplay loop, they probably want it to be the nuts and bolts stuff. I guess you can compare it to something like star citizen, or yandere simulator (a very extreme example), if it had a finished game to start from. It's just a lot of ideas thrown together and there isn't anything that connects them all together.

 

[Never Scored]

I guess if I had to describe it, it feels directionless. The main story is clearly them just being obligated to have one, you just go to the 4 villages and help them for no actual reason. For some reason the villages are in turmoil again and that is that. I don't think they had a core idea other than to just add more stuff, none of it really fits together and I don't think there is really a main gameplay loop, they probably want it to be the nuts and bolts stuff. I guess you can compare it to something like star citizen, or yandere simulator (a very extreme example), if it had a finished game to start from. It's just a lot of ideas thrown together and there isn't anything that connects them all together.

This is the sort of game younger people like these days. Shit like Minecraft. Most of the games my son plays on his tablet are similarly these open-ended sand boxes with no specific goals. I can hate on them for charging more for a glorified expansion, but I can't hate on them for catering to what kids want to play.

 

[Epoch]

This is the sort of game younger people like these days. Shit like Minecraft. Most of the games my son plays on his tablet are similarly these open-ended sand boxes with no specific goals. I can hate on them for charging more for a glorified expansion, but I can't hate on them for catering to what kids want to play.

I can't really enjoy those types of games because I just see the time I spend making my own fun in them to be time I could just be spending making my own game instead that I could sell and make money from. I'm getting that feeling from this too, which people will like, but I don't.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

Underground has a bit more than I said previously, but it all still just leads in to the vehicle building stuff.

Isn't that a reasonably deep and core part of the game though? It isn't exactly a throwaway aspect of the experience. Though if you dislike it, then I imagine it brings the game down.

This is the sort of game younger people like these days.

Ah yes the youngers that ruined everything.

But you guys are younger to me and you ruined everything first. So now what do we do??

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

This is the sort of game younger people like these days. Shit like Minecraft. Most of the games my son plays on his tablet are similarly these open-ended sand boxes with no specific goals. I can hate on them for charging more for a glorified expansion, but I can't hate on them for catering to what kids want to play.

Yeah, that's why I'm just constantly in a state of "Well, I guess I'm not a kid anymore so *shrug*"

I just wish they could have found a better avenue for this than a mainline Zelda title.