I’m astonished we don’t have a thread for this yet, but I cam here to post that we’re getting a 10 minute look at the game tomorrow, so I may as well make a thread.
First, here is the link to tomorrows Direct on the game.
And the trailer from just a month or so ago:
What do we know about TotK as of now? Not a lot, really. It’s a sequel to Breath of the Wild specifically, which (as far as I know?) is a series first. How far past the events at the end of BotW are we? No one knows. From the above trailer it looks like Ganon’s corpse might become Ganondorf, and voiced by Mathew Mercer (of Critical Role fame, but also I guess he voiced Ganondorf in a cartoon some time ago?) and the game’s tone (and art) seem to be darker than the vibrant saturated greens and warm tones of BotW.
From the trailer we can see new weapon types, vehicles, new enemies, and Link appears to have some upgrades coming his way, including a …glowing green arm?
Hopefully after tomorrow’s direct we’ll have some more info - the game is coming out pretty soon, May 12th, for us to have almost no idea what we are in for yet. But, that’s okay wtih me - BotW was my favorite game the year it came out, and I’ve started and completed it all the way through two full times. I can’t wait to learn more!
I think we’re close enough to launch now that there is no way I’m spoilering myself with 10 minutes of game footage, or anything else! I don’t want to know anything. :)
A new power, Recall, will rewind time for a selected object. For example, if you observe a chunk of the above island falling from the sky, you can climb on top of it and use Recall to rewind it’s trajectory back to where it was before it fell, putting you up on the island. I guess there are many ways to get up to this layer to explore, and also many uses for such a powerful ability.
Holy shit. Another new power, Fuse, allows you to combine two (edit: or more) objects to make a new object. I don’t know the limits, but he fused an old branch with a rock and made a make-shift hammer.
Weapons do seem to have durability again, that’s going to disappoint a lot of folks but I was one that appreciated that system to push me to use all sorts of cool weapons and not just settle on the first Ice Sword that comes along. There were a TON of awesome mid- and late-game weapons and I never felt like I didn’t have amazing options - I was often ditching perfectly good, unused cool gear to make room for even better stuff, both times I played the game. But, Fuse allows you to make new items from old and that seems to “reset” their durability and expand the new creations durability.
Fuse a Leaf to an Arrow and then that to Ice and you can make a long range Ice bomb. The possibilities are insane. He fused a long spear with a pitchfork and made a comically long spear/pitchfork thing. He fused a monster eyeball part from his inventory (in the first game monster parts were used to craft elixirs and potions) to an arrow and made a homing arrow that didn’t require him to aim. Jeebus this is going to be huge. He attached a “puffshroom” to his shield, and when the enemy attacks him and he blocked it detonated into a cloud of smoke, letting him sneak around the blinded enemy for a sneak attack. I can’t even, this is going to be just incredible to discover all the combinations. Especially since you can fuse at least three things, not just two.
Now he’s fused several logs together and made a raft, and fused some sort of wind-generating ground objects that push Link straight up with his paraglider to the rear of his raft and pointed them away, to generate thrust, and now he’s sailing across the river with this powered boat he created. LOL. Holy shit. All the vehicles in the previous trailer were cobbled together with the Fuse ability, there aren’t pre-made vehicles. It’s going to get crazy.
Yet another new power now being shown, Ascend allows you to target a ceiling structure above you, and pass through it Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat style to end up on the ceiling, from there you can get higher or to new places. No matter how high up the ceiling is, even in like a cave with a lot of rock above you. Man. What a cool idea. So much easier to get to the top of a mountain, if there is a cave under it. Or if you are stuck in a cage! Just… teleport above it.
Some enemies are equipped with Fused weapons! One enemy on an island area had wide, flat makeshift wooden fan and generated a gust of wind to knock Link off the edge of the island. Thankfully it’s a long fall down but you have a chance to see where you are heading and where to explore next.
What a great look at the game, it’s so much crazier than I thought it might be - I should have known. We don’t know a lot about the game - each time they showed something (presumably from a different save file) Link had new armor and gear on, for example, and there was always crazy shit happening in the background they were just ignoring, hilariously. Like huge dragons drifting around.
Honestly that Pro Controller would have probably done it for me to replace my aging (launch) Pro Controller (it’s still in great shape though, in truth) but I’m not wild about the white leg there. The carrying case looks amazing though, that I might actually pick up.
The OLED model and dock looks incredible, but again, it just seems silly to pick it up. Still, very cool.
I don’t suppose there were any indications about there being more proper dungeons, rather than a near-exclusive open-world and shrine focus? I expected to be disappointed on the weapon durability, but I’ve still got a little hope there. (Though part of me wants to go back in time twenty years to tell myself that Diablo 4, Final Fantasy XVI, and a new main line Zelda game are all coming out inside of six weeks of each other and I’m kind of out on all of them, just to watch my head explode.)
BotW had those four huge dungeons so I assume there will be something similar? All they showed was what I wrote about though - it was fairly short, just 10 minutes. I’m guessing they want to dole this stuff out over the next six weeks leading up to launch.
The presentation was entirely focused on the new mechanics, and didn’t mention anything about general overworld progression. So I don’t think anyone really knows either way yet which direction it might go.
That is fantastic. It’s amazing how my perception of these trailers is now completely different now that I’ve actually played Breath of the Wild. I’d seen a lot of videos for that game too, but it’s completely different once you’ve played it yourself.
Excitement for this has been a slow build for me. BotW was an amazing game I loved, but at first “okay more BotW” didn’t feel that special. But this does look cool, and at this point I am excited for more BotW, even if in the worst case it turns out to be roughly the same structure (limited number of true “dungeons” like divine beasts, plus another hundred shrines) with a few more wacky tools in the sandbox to play with along the way.
Not imo. The DLC is neat but more a collection of additional content and the very challenging master trials. Better to not burn out on the gameplay at this point.
Yeah I really loved the master trials once I looked up a guide online. Knowing what to save what items for took the anxiety out of it and just made it a fun combat challenge. The repeated divine beasts were fine, not bad, not amazing.
For someone who just finished BotW and wanted more, I’d recommend the DLC without reservation.
But if you’ve been away from it for a while I think that would be a tough thing to jump back into, and I agree with Scotch—direct your enthusiasm to the new game.
I didn’t read any of the previews as I’m going in (mostly) blind - except the gameplay they showed back at the end of March, which (coupled especially with my love of Breath of the Wild) was all I needed to see really. I just pre-ordered today, and I’m very hyped.
But, I did see the official Twitter account dropped this cool screengrab - I guess there is a recipe book baked into the game (I assume it’s all recipies you discover), which I thought was super handy as I loved making food/potions in BotW but only stuck to half a dozen favorite/remembered concoctions.
