
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review - Tomte
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/2/14787082/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-review
======
alphonsegaston
I'm really hoping that Zelda/Switch are successful enough to push game
aesthetics in a better direction. This headlong plunge into the uncanny valley
is just gonna lead us to the same dead end that art found itself at the end of
the 19th century. No one cares about the bad aesthetics of Orientalist
painting any more, and this era of hyperreal titilation is gonna meet the same
fate in retrospect.

~~~
_ph_
As I have grown up with all kinds of animated cartoons on the TV, I always
wanted a computer game which sported that level of graphics. It turns out,
that from the raw hardware capability, computers long ago exceeded this
ability, yet there is a big scarcity of real animated games. Windwaker (HD) is
a really nice exception from that. It looks like an animate comic movie. From
this point of view, I am actually happy that Nintendo did not try to make the
next best rendering machine, and I hope that the games do benefit from that in
an aesthetically sense. Of course I would not mind if Zelda ran at 60FPS, but
the visuals look just great.

~~~
alphonsegaston
I think all kids growing up in this period had fantasies about games matching
up with their imaginations of them through some technical revolution.

What modern game dev misses is that it's the space to imagine things within a
more abstract visual framework that creates that sense of wonder and
possibility. Game aesthetics have to have "space" for their players'
imaginations to fill in order to have the same impact as those from earlier
eras.

~~~
nihonde
I still have fond memories of Jet Set Radio on Dreamcast because it captured
that cell rendered feel so beautifully.

~~~
michaelbuddy
Lots of cell shaded games. Attack on Titan is pretty awesome for looking like
the actual show while playing. Japanese games are huge with this. There's a
big push for non photo realistic rendering 3D now in Blender, we're going to
see more of this direction in big budget and indie games. The world is still
waiting on the release of cuphead, although a little different than NPR 3D.

------
RubenSandwich
One thing that is really interesting to me is that they are going back to the
roots of the original Zelda: with exploration and discovery being a key part
of the game. So much so that they made prototypes in the original Zelda style:
[http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-
zelda...](http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-
of-the-wild-2d-prototype-gdc-2017). This to me seems like a great strategy of
helping communicate the 'soul' of something to team members by imitating the
original before building the spiritual successor.

~~~
joeax
Yep. I remember back in the day you could go into the dungeons out of order,
even with a wooden sword (which made the game magnitudes of order more
difficult). Looking forward to tomorrow.

~~~
Sukotto

       you could go into the dungeons out of order, even with a wooden sword
    

Or without one if you want. You can play almost the whole game without a sword
(You just need it to beat Gannon):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2_gJjrKio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2_gJjrKio)

------
yestoallthat
> Link gets more health and stamina as you progress, and you can acquire
> stronger weapons and armor, but he never gets stronger himself. He doesn’t
> learn to swing a sword or shoot a bow any better. But you do.

If this is true, that's wonderful, and if more games became more like that
again, I'd be interested in them again. Even just the fact that the reviewer
mentioned this as a good thing made me smile.

~~~
phamilton
Isn't this true of all games in the Zelda series?

~~~
Domenic_S
In Zelda II you learn the down-thrust and up-thrust techniques as the game
progresses; Link _does_ become better at swordplay over time.

~~~
ursus_bonum
That game would have only been improved had down-thrust been available from
the beginning.

------
ihuman
Breath of the Wild is getting fantastic reviews from critics right now. It
currently has a 98/100 on Metacritic [1], an aggregator for video game
reviews. This makes is the #4 highest rated game of all time on their site [2]

[1] [http://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/the-legend-of-zelda-
br...](http://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-
the-wild/critic-reviews)

[2]
[http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/a...](http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/all/filtered?sort=desc)

~~~
croon
I wonder if those reviews are more Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. In
fear of upsetting die-hard Nintendo fans I won't specify what I mean by that
:)

But time will tell.

Either way, I look forward to it, will give me an excuse to dust off my old
WiiU.

~~~
tdb7893
Do people not like Twilight Princess? I really enjoyed the feel of the game,
my only complaint was that the pacing felt a tad slow and the combat was
spammy

~~~
croon
I believe a lot of people really like it, but it was more an issue that game
reviewers got A LOT of flak if they didn't give the game a 9+/10 (at a time
when point reviews were more of a thing than now).

I don't think many people thought it was bad, only that it wasn't THAT good,
and that seemed to upset some hardcore Zelda fans at the time, and in various
parts of the internet, possibly still.

You can google for "Twilight Princess Jeff Gerstmann review" for example. He
gave the game "only" an 8.8.

~~~
TheGRS
I was thinking about this when I read about the perfect scores from GameSpot
and Giant Bomb today. That review basically created Giant Bomb...or at least
helped him leave GameSpot later on.

~~~
croon
Yeah, and at least to a small extent I think it opened up for more against the
grain reviews. Grading games on aggregate scores of graphics, sound, story,
etc was kind of pointless (pun intended).

On the topic of that new review, it was written by Dan Ryckert. Even if he has
integrity, that guy even loves Yoshi Island and thinks Taco Bell is the
greatest restaurant in the world, so clearly there's something wrong with him.
:) He's basically wrong about everything other than movies.

But that's kind of the point with reviews IMO. Scores (even if looking at
metacritic which is better) only works when you know who graded it, since it
obviously ultimately is a subjective thing.

------
robert_tweed
There's a reviews megathread on Reddit here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5x2lph/the_legend_of...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5x2lph/the_legend_of_zelda_breath_of_the_wild_review/)

Many, many perfect scores. Even acounting for hype, it's doing surprisingly
well. Having watched about 6 hours of gameplay so far, I'm on the fence about
how deserved that is. It seems like such a huge game that it won't be possible
to judge it fairly without playing at least 40 hours, probably more. It's
clearly an exceptionally good game, but whether it is truly a masterpiece
remains to be seen.

~~~
grillvogel
>It seems like such a huge game that it won't be possible to judge it fairly
without playing at least 40 hours

this is a rather absurd statement

~~~
badlucklottery
>this is a rather absurd statement

For something like a buy/skip recommendation, sure. But open-world systems-
based games take a lot of time to dig into.

Like if you asked me if Skyrim was an above average game in the first few
hours, I'd say 'sure' but as time went on the broken systems kept becoming
more and more obvious and painful. My opinion turned to 'just average' after
30 hours or so.

------
minimaxir
It's unfortunate that Zelda was released against Horizon: Zero Dawn (which is
_beyond amazing_ on a PS4 Pro), as there is now a lot of competition over the
past couple months for good games out now (and such limited time to play!);
something which hasn't happened to this degree this generation of consoles.

~~~
komali2
My understanding is neither the switch nor Zelda are available to the public
yet. Am I confused about your comment maybe?

~~~
minimaxir
Horizon was released on Tuesday and, like Zelda, is a 30+ hour game.

~~~
komali2
I don't understand then, from my perspective the release dates are far enough
apart to not be a Titanfall situation.

~~~
minimaxir
The Titanfall situation was a different case, as that was a competition
between multiplayer player basesizes being split, and as a result the game hit
a death spiral prematurely. Both Horizon and Zelda are single-player games.

------
yunolisten
I can see myself buying a Switch just for this, once the bugs (such as left
controller disconnect issue) with the console are fixed.

~~~
rmccoy6435
The rumor circulating is that the new patch that was released to the console
fixes that disconnect issue.

~~~
yunolisten
thank you, I hadn't read that anywhere.

~~~
gambiting
It apparently hasn't fixed anything:

[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-switch...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-switch-
joy-cons-tested-are-there-really-de-sync-issues)

~~~
NetOpWibby
Actually it has. The Joy-Con have to connected when rebooting to resolve the
issue.

~~~
knodi123
Actually it has not.

> UPDATE 2/3/17 4:00pm: The Nintendo Switch's day one system update has
> launched, and there are reports online that installing the patch with the
> Joy-Cons attached updates the firmware on the controllers, resolving the de-
> sync issues. Is this really the case? __Unfortunately not. __We 've updated
> our console with controllers attached and re-run the battery of tests
> detailed below. In all cases, the range and consistency of the connection of
> each Joy-Con remains the same, and the left controller still has
> demonstrably weaker range than the right. Eurogamer has contacted Nintendo
> several times now concerning this issue, and we still await a reply.

------
justifier
> This lack of direction can be disorienting at first... But it very quickly
> turned into a liberating sensation.

Tevis Thompson needs more credit for identifying with astute precision the
ills inherent in the direction Zeldas were going

would we have breath of the wild without this essay:
[http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/](http://tevisthompson.com/saving-
zelda/) ; I honestly wonder

~~~
mercer
It's amazing how his suggestions are pretty much exactly what they changed
with Breath of the Wild!

------
hulahoof
Anecdotally I picked up my switch / Zelda combo around 7.5 hours ago at the
midnight launch for my region, I only got an hour of play in before sleep
butso far it is both reminiscent of early Zelda games with an elder scrolls
feeling open world (very limited gameplay time) - big fan of combat so far
also! Can take on some pretty strong enemies with a series of branches and
dodges =)

------
vlunkr
I don't think one game is enough to save the Switch, but maybe this will get
enough systems out there to get the ball rolling. I'm sure some people will
pick up the Wii U version if they already have one, but I can't imagine buying
a console that has been basically declared dead for one game now.

EDIT: I'm saying the Wii U is dead, not the switch. IIRC production has
stopped, and there are few games still coming to it.

EDIT: I should be more clear. "Save the switch" isn't the right way to say it
since, as other are pointing at, it hasn't launched yet. It's difficult to
make a successful console, it's sort of a chicken and egg problem, you need to
have successful games to attract more successful games. The Wii U had some
hits, but they were too few and too late. Coming out of the gate with this is
great for Nintendo.

~~~
Kroniker
"Declared dead"? Maybe we've just seen different bubbles, but I've seen
nothing but excitement for the switch. They have something like 100 titles
from 75 different dev studios lined up for the first year. Obviously the Wii U
died on the vine, but that was due to some terrible limitations and lack of
3rd party support, or so I am lead to believe. What makes you think the switch
needs saving? It isn't even out yet...

~~~
kimolas
It sounds like they're referring to the Wii U; they're suggesting (correctly,
arguably) that the Wii U is essentially dead now, and that no one will buy the
Wii U just for Zelda. If anything, people will instead buy the Switch, hence
their point about Zelda "saving the Switch" (although from what, I'm not sure,
since it does have over a hundred games confirmed).

~~~
slantyyz
>> no one will buy the Wii U just for Zelda.

If people are willing to buy a Switch just for Zelda, I'm sure people who
don't have enough money for a Switch would be willing to buy a used or refurb
Wii U on the cheap to be able to play Zelda.

~~~
photojosh
New console release is a great opportunity to pick up the old one plus a ton
of games on the über-cheap. I've been waiting for the Switch release for that
reason, and now I get to play Zelda now instead of when the Switch 2 comes
out. ;)

------
porker
If only it was available for more platforms. #want

~~~
croon
You can probably get a used Wii U for cheap. It doesn't have a lot of
interesting games, but for a low price, it's likely worth it for the Mario
games and Zelda, and a few more.

~~~
mpg33
can be hard to find though...I mean Nintendo effectively discontinued it so it
isn't on any retailer shelves now.

~~~
gambiting
Don't know where you live, but here in UK both Game and CEX(sort of like
Gamestop in US) are full of second hand WiiUs, I guess a lot of people traded
them in before the switch launch.

------
sebringj
This seems more organic and will better the gaming industry as a whole. I'm
very excited.

------
monochromatic
What is with this website? You can't select text?

~~~
oftenwrong
They are using CSS to make the background colour of your selection invisible.
You can still select the text; it just looks like you can't.

    
    
        ::selection {
            background: auto
        }
        ::-moz-selection {
            background: auto
        }
    
    

See [https://css-tricks.com/almanac/selectors/s/selection/](https://css-
tricks.com/almanac/selectors/s/selection/)

~~~
monochromatic
Oh weird. You're right.

------
Arkaad
I'm surprised to see a video game review on Hackernews...

------
classybull
Why are we constantly pushing for larger and larger open worlds? When I was a
kid, the idea of such a gigantic open world where I could spend endless hours
exploring would have been amazing. However, now, as an adult with
responsibilities, when I usually play video games its for 30 or 45 minutes
once or twice a week when I have just a bit of down time. Gigantic open worlds
have become a hinderance to me rather than a feature, because it means I will
never fully be able to explore all of it.

I know that my experience doesn't reflect every gamer's experience, and many
people do have the time and energy for them, but I also know quite a few
people in this "prime", aging game demographic that are turned off by these
large games and tend to focus on smaller, more compact experiences. I wouldn't
be so upset if it weren't for the fact that the games that seem to get the
most attention and development effort are these giant ones, with small
experience games generally an afterthought or published as indie.

~~~
derstander
Honestly, I feel like you do a lot of the time about a lot of things: not just
games. But I'm trying more to enjoy the act/process of doing something rather
than the end goal that I may or may not ever achieve. This is taking that
philosophy to the extreme, but when I reach old age I want to be able to say
something like "I _really_ saw a lot of the world (real or digital) -- not
just superficially -- and I learned and experienced a lot so my time was well-
spent", rather than "I didn't see _everything_ so I spent all of that time in
vain exploring something I never completed".

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's healthier to just enjoy as
you go, rather than having to reach some state of completeness before you
allow yourself joy. I don't inherently think like that and I think my mood has
suffered a lot for it over the years. But I'm definitely trying to move in
that direction.

