The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Hype Thread (HYPE: AAAAE) (HYPE MET!!!!) (97 on Metacritic)

If you have completed the story, watch this. Don't want this if you haven't

Also watch this. This explains why Link is mute :)

That doesn't explain it. As in that same diary Zelda writes that she finally got Link to speak out. Also in another cutscene Zelda is shown to actually quote Link on how to ride a horse.

Link is mute because Nintendo wants to keep that sense of "Link is the player" aspect of the Game. Although I was disappointed that we weren't rewarded with a Talking Link at the End.

Man do I really need to spoil block that much?

Also that Kass Scene was interesting. Knowing that there was once a Shiekah that loved Zelda, it's interesting to note that there is a Shiekah that loves Link if you read Paya's Journal.

@LegatoSkyheart: I mean they gave it an in game reason. Of course we know why they won't have him talk otherwise, lol.

Although the dialog choices are basically Link talking (and he has a whole lot of sass lol)

@charizard1605: did it need a reason though? We all know the reason and it isnt because Link is the strong silent type

Well that's basically the in game reason :p

I loved this Link. Far better than SS Link.

GREAT PLATEAU REGION - 4

CENTRAL REGION - 8

DUELING PEAKS REGION - 9

HATENO REGION - 7

LAKE REGION - 6

FARON REGION - 8

LANAYRU REGION - 9

ELDIN REGION - 9

AKKALA REGION - 8

WOODLAND REGION - 8

HEBRA REGION - 13

TABANTHA REGION - 6

RIDGELAND REGION - 7

GERUDO REGION - 6

WASTELAND REGION - 12

Doesn't seem right, they don't add up to 120

you know what I realized. Link talks all the time to the NPC's in BotW, you got all the dialogue options

dammit polygon

edit: IGN looks better

That's what I am saying lol.

so whats with the in-game reason lol

Link's lost his memory and personality in the present. We never see his speak in the memories, which is what the diary entry is referring to

@aigis: Dude, I wanted a count, not all the Shrine names and locations.

Like

Great Plateau: 4

Central: 8

Duel Peaks: 9

etc.

@LegatoSkyheart: fixed

ok I get it, thats actually funny

welp, I tried getting all the shrines without look up a guide, but I broke down and looked up a map.

I would have never found it, but I got all 120.

When you get the last shrine The Last Shrine Monk will congratulate you and tell you to go to the Forgotten Temple which there you will find 3 chests that contain the iconic Green Hat, Tunic, and Pants of the Wild.

@LegatoSkyheart: Yeah, I did know that lol

120 shrines is a lot. I've got, what, 60? And I already feel like that's more than enough

Yup.

@jg4xchamp:

Yep. Sooo good too. Kinda seems odd that the series is just now getting here. Scale and general open ended nature aside, it seems we should have been moving onto these ideas in gen 6. I get that OoT was translating the series to 3d and that MM was a damn cool twist on that. All good. Though in hindsight it just seems weird that the series kept to such a rigid nature regarding items/powers all these years later.

Better late than never I suppose.

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Alright dudes, another random question that I'll ask and probably not respond to because I'm a jerk (just really busy). Still, I enjoy reading your responses.

What do you guys want from the hard difficulty mode?

I've really taken a liking to the combat. Particularly with the Lynels, but I'm enjoying these other over-world sub-boss type enemies as well. I suppose my bigger gripe would be that we need more variety. Aside from that, I just feel they aren't frequent enough. Which sure, they want these encounters to feel special, but for a hard mode I just want more lol.

I'd love to see some more big bad ass enemy types introduced, while shifting some enemies down a spot. Like replacing some Bokoblins with Moblins to make room for the new bad ass on the food chain a step above it. Ninja Gaiden style pretty much.

I just hope Nintendo doesn't cheese out on it by simply making enemies spongey and harder hitting. Though I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happens.

@ConanTheStoner: What I'd like is one or more of these things:

• Don't pause while I eat food to recover health (related, let me map up to, say, six food items to D-pad Down)
• After eating, let my health regenerate over time, instead of all at once
• Let food spoil after a certain amount of time, to prevent me from hoarding it
• Have overeating and sickness be possible- if Link eats too much dubious food, he should be sick, and his Hearts/Stamina should be affected, as well as recovery. Similarly, after a certain number of meals have been eaten, it should be impossible to eat more until a cooldown timer has finished counting down

The reason my suggestions are all targeting food and eating is because right now, it's stupidly easy to go into any encounter in the game with three pages of food, and just cheese the enemy by exploiting recovery. That, plus fairies, plus Miipha's Grace (the latter two need to be nerfed for Hard Mode too) can trivialize encounters, which is a shame, because of how well designed they otherwise are.

Interesting, I hadn't even considered the eating system. You know me, action gamer mindset all day lol.

I could see some of those points being divisive. Certainly would add to the difficulty, though some may see it as tedium.

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Your first point I'm totally down with that. D-pad down seems wasted on the whistle for most of the game and having hot-keyed food would be a nice option. Plus using a consumable to recover health in real-time is just durr. Makes sense.

Second point, I'm cool with that too. It's far too easy to be on the edge of death and then max out your hearts with no worries.

Third point might annoy me in practice. Though piggybacking that on to the fourth point, I think it could work.

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Good stuff though, this could mitigate the push-over nature of many encounters without having to go in and make enemies hard hitting sponges. I like it.

And yeah, Mipha's Grace lol. Every time it happens I'm like "Yes, thank you!", but then I feel a hint of scrubby guilt. Even extending the cool-down on that wouldn't help. I think they should just make that a 3 heart recovery. Like hey, she saved your ass, but you're not out of the woods yet either.

@ConanTheStoner: Yeah, for me it was once I completed the game, and I had to think to myself, 'okay, so I suck at games, but I got through this, why?' And then I realized just how much I had relied on food through the game. And yeah, like... map whistle to something else, idk. Is there any unused button in BotW? Maybe have whistle be a Sheikah Slate rune? I may be asking for a big systemic change here, though

As for the potential tedium associated with my final two suggestions- I mean, I agree. It'd be tedious. But a lot of Zelda is, in theory, tedious. If you told me I would spend 70 hours in a game where I have to constantly be scrounging for weapons (because my shit breaks so fast), managing my gear, having to hunt for food then cook it, switching weapons in the middle of battle... I wouldn't have believed you. I guess it comes down to implementation, and after how superlative the rest of the game is, I have no reason to think that spoiling food wouldn't be implemented well. Plus, I mean, it'd be in an optional mode, so I'm not sure too many people would complain.

Health recovery definitely needs to be done over time- I know you don't care much for Witcher 3, but I actually loved hot it handled health recovery. You ate your meals/elixirs, and depending on what you consumed, a timer started. During that time, you would regenerate health slowly. If you got hit, that would be subtracted from what you had regenerated. The idea was to eat food that had long regeneration timers (to reach max health), and to avoid enemy attacks in the meanwhile (meaning I also couldn't move in close to cheese them if I didn't want to die myself).

Mipha's Grace... I mean, I appreciate that it can be turned off, actually, but that's the thing, I don't want to turn it off. I want the 'revival benefit' without the 'here's all your health restored, plus three extra hearts, too!' That's going a bit overboard lol.

What about you? What are some of your suggestions, outside of enemy variety?

Bingo. I was wondering how it would work, because yeah, the button layout is already stacked lol. That would do it. Maybe my play has been different than others, but I rarely needed to whistle for the horse. As a matter of fact, I probably did it more on accident than I did intentionally. I get that the whistle can also be used for purposefully alerting enemies, leading them into an ambush, but meh. I think being relegated to the slate would be fine.

Yeah, for sure. And I do agree. A lot of this games systems sound terrible on paper, but I can't get enough of it.

As for TW3, I exaggerate a lot because hey, SW lol. My beef with that game strictly hinges on the immediate mechanics though. It's the player movement and combat that I couldn't stomach, that's not to say the game didn't approach various other aspects very well.

I'm so damn one note haha. I just want new big bad ass enemies and I'd like to see them more frequently.

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I suppose another thing I'd like to see would be a stronger emphasis on the utility of the various armor types.

For example, Ancient Armor is dope and all, but by the time I got it I was already wrecking Guardians like nothing. Make it to where fighting a Guardian is possible, but also damn near suicidal without it. Same deal with Soldier Armor. You should feel like you need that shit going up against heavy goons instead of it just feeling like a slight defensive bonus. Not by making these armor sets more resistant, but by making you that much weaker without them.

I think they did better with some sets than others. Like the Gerudo set, that shit is super useful, it's a drag to navigate the desert without it. Zora set? Yeah, the water attack is nice, scaling waterfalls is awesome, but the swim speed and stamina bonus? It's cool, but not cool enough to make me want to switch out regularly.

OH AND ON THAT NOTE. Plz allow us to change our armor by set. If the player wants to mix n match, cool, but I'd love to just switch out my entire set on the fly. Nitpick I know, but still. (There's a lot of menu stuff to nitpick, it's not bad, but definitely could be better.)

But yeah, basically I just want the armor sets to feel more rewarding by making the player feel absolutely weak without them. If you overcome a task without the correct set? Great! But if you managed to get the set and level it up, it feels that much more worthwhile.

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Also, this one goes back to my original enemies point. Blood Moons. I get that they're a cool way of serving a very basic function. But I'd like to see a twist. Have the game spawn enemy types that only appear during those phases and have those fuckers hunt you down lol.

@ConanTheStoner: Yeah, I don't use horses much. I did use some a bit more after I caught a certain one I really liked, but in general, I feel the joy of the game is in Link's range of abilities and movement- horses don't give me that at all.

I think one of the reasons they aren't doing the armor thing you want is because of the open endedness of the game. It is actually possible to get any armor very early (or very late) (I got the Ancient Armor like one Divine Beast in), and they don't want to break the curve. Rather than going with specific items based curve (like in previous Zelda games) they've just adopted a more general approach. Not disagreeing with you, though, it's something I'd love to see (it'd be right out of Monster Hunter, which this game already cribs a lot from), just musing on their approach and why they may have gone the way they did.

Also, YES. Let us 'favorite' specific getups (custom or sets), that we can swap into quickly. Having to do it one piece at a time is... torturous.

And dude, that sounds awesome. Have them be like Lynels or Guardians, enemies that relentlessly stalk you until the dawn of the day, but drop killer loot if you kill them (or maybe open access to areas you can't get into otherwise). Make going out at night a higher risk/reward proposition.

@charizard1605:

Admittedly, I haven't thought the armor idea through that much. It's something that I just started thinking about during last nights play session. I don't think I have all the sets, but I do have a lot of them, and I'm finding that I don't need some at all.

It's definitely balanced into the game very well as is, especially so for a broader audience. If I had my way with the game, we'd be getting into niche territory regarding difficulty haha. So yeah, I can't really question Nintendos ideas on this one, I'm just a masochist looking for a reason to have the armor be more useful.

Exactly! All of the above bro, that would be so cool.

Not only a neat thing in its own right, but I think it would feed into what this game does very well. Saying fvck your plans while always rewarding you in the process lol.

The game always has a way of side tracking you, nudging you in directions you never intended to go. Even with something as stupid as rain. Can't climb this obstacle, it's not going to let up for a while, might as well go off in this direction and see what I find.

A Blood Moon could be exactly that. An event that forces you to change your trajectory by escaping or fighting these powerful creatures, and yep, giving you a strong risk/reward scenario.

@ConanTheStoner:

• Add in Darknuts, IronKnuckles, Dodongos and Peahats.
• Link will now get sick unless he's wearing a hood during a storm or wearing winter gear in the snow, will only get better if he sleeps in a bed. Does Half of his Damage output and takes Double Damage from Enemies if Sick. Stamina runs out faster.
• Link will now get Hungry. Same Results as Sickness. Does not get better if he sleeps in a bed, must eat to cure.
• You will need the Tonics regardless of Equipment.
• Weapons are more durable, but there are no more "Easy Enemies". What were Red are now Blue and were Blue are now Silver.
• Blood Moon happens less often. Making it a lot longer wait for those Respawn points of Hinoxs and Stone Golems for Weapon/Stone Farming.
• Reworking of Dungeons and Shrines.

Here's some of my ideas.

For the 1.5 people who cares. lmao the intro with weapon durability

This is fucking fantastic

yeesh, that poor guardian in the end. Almost make you feel sorry it. Almost.

Now I want to see a three battle between a hinox, guardian, and talus!

@silversix_:

@Vaasman said:

@silversix_:

Sorry, my face is tired.

This is great.

What do you guys suppose the new DLC dungeon would be like? Do you think it would be a new Divine Beast (Although that wouldn't make much sense story-wise), or a completely new direction for a dungeon?

What kind of elemental direction would you speculate/hope for? Since they've already done the desert, sky, fire and water - possibly the forest or time?

It's confirmed we are getting a new dungeon, as well as new story content. I suppose it would be another divine beast? Unless they take it a different direction. I would LOVE a themed temple from the old days.

A time or shadow or forest dungeon could be options. I think forest would be my favorite.

I hope we get more side quests or towns too but that might be a stretch.

I am really hoping they do like a certain race focus per patch.

Gerudo, then Zora, Goron etc. The story is actually really well presented if u watch all the memories in order. I really enjoyed it. Hopefully we get some new cut scenes too.

Maybe a new race? If they go the divine beast route, does that mean we will get a new power? I am very excited to see what they do. MK8 had fantastic DLC so i am hyped for this.

I have a feeling it will be playing out the prequel story and the failed battle with Gannon before Link was put in the shrine of ressurection

@smashed_pinata: I would have loved a forest dungeon as well! I could just imagine how cool it would have been to find a Divine Beast stomping down trees in a forest and having to stop it from destroying the entire place. I feel like that could have been a perfect, cohesive setup with the rest of them. I feel like it's a bit late for that, though. The Divine Beasts I'll say is a done deal in the main quest and it wouldn't make sense to add any more.

@Nuck81: I was considering something like that to be very likely as well. In that case I think the temple of time would make the most sense, and the foundations of it are already in the game. It would just matter adding new events to trigger access, and I think that would be really cool with adding a different layer to the game.

has ign's "100 small things in zelda botw that will blow your mind" been posted? some interesting stuffs in thar.

28) Cooking during a blood moon creates “critical success” super-strong foods.

this entire list firmly demonstrates how this game was a labor of love for it's creators.

It would be amazing if the DLC would introduce a more traditional dungeon where the player can retrieve a certain item. Perhaps to destroy a new threat after Ganon has been defeated. I'd rather not have them add another divine beast inbetween the story (as in a fifth one to help take on Ganon) we've already played through. Seems pointless and cheap.

The DLC story needs to be a prequel or sequel to the current time frame.

Only a few of you know.

Because he's a completionist at heart, and judging a game completely isn't exactly misguided.

yeah, I've actually done some things. I solved an electric shrine last night by having the crazy idea of dropping one of my swords (also electrocuted myself in the process, but hey, got the job done...)

Also discovered dropping bombs while paragliding and setting up camp to get past rain by myself as well.

Some of that other stuff though I haven't discovered or heard about before and it is pretty mind-blowing how many details they managed to put into this game.

I would love it if the DLC was a dark world version of Hyrule, where all the shrines are rearanged, and new puzzles for each. Add in a few special environmental changes too like air toxicity in regions, or water that comes alive to attack you, and suddenly they could increase the games size pretty quickly.

70 hours in...its not only GOTY for me thus far easily, it's one of the best games I've ever played.

I'm guessing he isn't going to bother with that. You don't need to collect all 900 Korok seeds to think that 900 Korok seeds might have been a bit overkill.

Hard Mode = Dark World.

I can dig it.