Lockdown 2020: Bradth of the Wild: The Wildening

This game still rocks. Wish I had more time to replay it : (

Yeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh Brad!

hell yeah

I hope this turns into a series.

<3

Awesome. I was just thinking the other day I should break this back out.

I know that I'm like, in the 1% here, but in response to @brad's question of "How can people not like this game?", let me attempt to explain:

I've got ADHD and suffer from OCD/perfectionist tendencies in games (ie, I feel the need to do absolutely everything/hunt trophies to the detriment of the game and my enjoyment). I've always struggled with large, sprawling, open-world games, although the issue has become exacerbated as I've grown older and found myself with less and less time. The Legend of Zelda is my favorite game series and I like the idea of Breath of the Wild *in theory*, but I just... can't play it. I've tried. It's so overwhelming to me. I look at the map and I just get stressed out. I want to experience what the game has to offer, but there's like... a mental block in place that prevents me from doing so. It sucks, but I guess I just need more structure to my gaming experiences. I miss the structure of old Zelda games and I'm worried that I'll never get one again.

I don't like Breath of the Wild because I don't find its combat to be enjoyable, especially once higher level enemies start spawning. Anything silver is just a slog and you're better off just avoiding them. This is exacerbated by the weapon durability issue where any particular enemy encounter isn't really worth doing because in the fight you'll end up breaking the stuff you have so at best you're just breaking even.

I don't like that it's a massive open world mostly full of absolutely nothing. Korok seeds are a mildly amusing distraction but they make up the vast majority of the content in the game. Yes it's worth it to see that mountain and go there and look at the pretty view, but at the top is just a rock I pick up to make a tree spirit appear. The same at the bottom of that ravine, and in that stump with a ball and chain attached, and in that circle of rocks in a field.

The dungeons aren't dungeons and that's ok I guess but there are only four, they aren't very long, and the boss fights at the end are so terrible you're basically doing the dungeons for a reward that is a punishment.

I dunno. To me it is a game that is much less than the sum of its parts.

I played through it again a couple months ago. I used cheats to give myself infinite durability and compared to my first go it was a mostly better experience that I would describe with a shrug and an "it was alright."

I played probably close to 150 hours of this and never did any of the horse stuff. Don't think I ever saw that horse selection menu. Game is so good.

This needs to be called Breadth of the Wild

Maybe my top game of all time. After roughly 30 years of gaming, I never thought I would experience a game that gave me the sense of discovery I had when I was a kid. This game, for me, was a masterpiece.

I didn't like this game and didn't watch this video but wanted to leave a comment to say hey what's up, Brad's cool, and you're cool too!

I was pretty baffled by the rapturous reception this one got. The combat is fun, but the weapon durability system is garbage and, as has been said elsewhere in this thread, something that actively discourages you from engaging with the combat. The sense of exploration is fine, but there really isn't anything exciting narratively to discover about the world (the story is pretty weak generally). It's shrines or korok seeds, and that's about it. The best part of the game are the shrines, which were mostly fantastic.

Man, this game is so incredible. I should really play it again before the sequel gets too close.

I wonder what my biggest missed game shame is. I've never played a Halo for more than a couple hours, but that was just a product of my console choices.

Hunter Thompson's 'Owl Farm' maybe had something to do with the appearance of Owl eyes(?)

I've been popping into BOTW every year for a dozen more hours to clean up more stuff. And each time, it's a wonderful experience. I'm not even a big Zelda guy and I absolutely loved it.

Literally just finished my playthrough as he was starting the stream. The credits started, I look over at my PC, and see the BOTW main menu. Fucking nuts.

I love this game so much, it's possibly my favorite game of the last 10-15 years. It's definitely not perfect, but its exploration feels so much like a modern take on Zelda 1 that its flaws didn't ruin my enjoyment.

I hope they learned their lesson and make the next one fun and not a chore to play.

1. majora
2. breath of the wild
3. pong

@skinkybob: I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one!

I tried so hard to like this game, but just could not wrap my head around it. I felt like it was trying to impede my progress at every turn. That being said, I can totally see the amount of polish and work that the game exudes, along with why people love the game.

I tried this twice for a combined 30 hours and it still never clicked for me.

However I still wonder if I should give it a go.

Man some wrong divisive opinions itt.

I’m playing this for the first time since I hadn’t purchased a switch until a few months ago and I absolutely love it. Sometimes when I boot it up I want to seek out story missions and sometimes I just want to dick about and find new stuff in the environment. I love a game that lets me engage with it on my own terms.

This is quality content!! Wouldn’t mind seeing this turn into a longer-term series!

to get it out of the way since brad brings it up early: this games soundtrack is all time amazing but it got crowded out by persona 5 and nier automata coming out within a month of it, and both of those are so much more bombastic and immediate that botw never had a chance (2017 was also just an all time great year for video game music in general)

I also, as someone who generally is very pragmatic with games, will never understand how people want traditional zelda straight up over this at this point. Do people really want Twilight Princess 2 or Skyward Sword 2 over BotW 2? The...half hearted reception to the Links Awakening remake tells a lot about the state of Zelda imo. This iteration of Zelda has so much more to build on than traditional straight dungeon crawling zelda that I personally cant fathom thinking that they should return to retreading Ocarina/LttP for the umpteenth time. Then again, weapon durability is annoying i guess?

@mightyduck: Yeah, on top of just being overwhelmed by literally every aspect of it, I found a lot of the mechanics to just be... unfriendly? It probably didn't help that I was playing Horizon: Zero Dawn at the same time (which is a similar game with a completely different control scheme), but I never got the hang of the controls (I was also playing on Wii U). I would throw my weapons when I didn't intend to and jump off of towers when that wasn't what I wanted. The amount of times I died for completely silly, unavoidable reasons was infuriating. Additionally, I'm the type of person who is terrified to use limited items in games, so I'd hoard any and all decent weapons and armor while continuing to use the worst the game had to offer because I'm stressed that I'll somehow "waste" something or won't be able to attain it again. I totally get why people love it, but nearly *every* single aspect seemed specifically designed to drive me away.

@juanarturo: I have to imagine that there's some sort of middle ground between "Link's Awakening" and "Breath of the Wild". "Twilight Princess" and "Skyward Sword" are flawed because Nintendo seemed reluctant to update the formula for modern audiences. With "Breath of the Wild", rather than updating the formula, they threw it out entirely. "Breath of the Wild" has more in common with "Red Dead Redemption II" than it does with "Ocarina of Time". You can make a more linear, contained experience that is more palatable to modern audiences. Your options aren't limited to "rigid and outdated" and "absolutely no structure or direction". For instance, take the world of "Breath of the Wild", fill it with fully-fledged dungeons (doesn't necessarily have to be 8) and a more fleshed-out story, and remove the more annoying/frustrating survival elements (or maybe include a separate difficulty that has that stuff). That alone would go a long way towards helping me to enjoy it.

Try it on Master Mode ^_^ So much better!

I want more Brad of the Wild!

Breath of the wild sucked the soul out of the Zelda series and everyone is pysched about the mangled open-world corpse thats stripped back so far its basically a tech demo. Its one of the most boring in the series. Its a solid foundation for a good game but that requires work on Nintendo's part to add back in features they excused as being cut for editorial reasons but just weren't possible in the development scope. Just fishing and real dungeons would have me mostly satisfied (I don't know how you can even consider making an open world Zelda without fishing, some of the game directors seem to have no understanding of the series). I am worried though that they have committed themselves to making bland open world collectathons and will never find the time on future games. The Witcher 3 is a bloated open world mess that is entirely superior to breath of the wild and I don't think Nintendo feel they even have to try to put in the same level of effort at this point.

Also why let me ride bears and deers but not register them. For all this games touted freedom its really insistant that you only use a horse. A cookbook involving photographing your food, better inventory management, and no vast areas of totally dead space are all stuff I'd be looking for.

And why would you not add songs to this? The rain during climbling sucks, and there could have been neat weather puzzles, the series already has a mechanic for dealing with stuff like that that was tossed for no good reason.

Very chill viewing. Thanks for the content Brad :-)

@sirdaemos: Agree 100% This game is phenomenal.

Best Zelda? Best Zelda.

Brad figure out that pushing your horse too hard makes it slow down challenge.

Chat, how could you let Brad down like this? So many small tips that would've been a reminder of helpful things Brad has forgotten.

• He's 20 rupees short of registering a horse, and goes into the grass hoping to find money (this is literally not a thing in this game). Nobody in chat told him that all the money in the game comes from selling random garbage to vendors?
• He takes a horse down the wrong side of a river and has to be constantly nudging it back on course, and nobody in chat told him to keep horses relatively near the minimap roads because horses autofollow them and you won't find yourself at a dead end?
• Nobody tells Brad that if you put down the coloured pins on the map screen they appear on the minimap? Or that he could switch his main quest to "Defeat Ganon" if he wants the yellow marker to point him at the castle?

Aside from that, glad to see Brad have so much fun with the game! I genuinely think Hyrule Castle is the most compelling and rewarding area in the entirety of Breath of the Wild. There are so many approaches to it. You can simply walk up the front walkway through the village market, but you draw a lot of attention from Guardians. You can sneak across the moat and start at the bottom like Brad did. Once you're in the castle, you can stay on the interior for more close quarters fights and opportunities to use the puzzle solving runes. If you stick to the exterior, you have to do a lot more running from cover to cover to avoid Guardians, or shooting Guardians with ancient arrows and possibly fighting Lynels, but you can find some climbing points that let you make huge shortcuts to Ganon.

As much as it had a calm and meditative property, the wilderness of this game lost its lustre for me after a while. I think the game needed more man-made areas like Hyrule Castle that have an interesting tension in their traversal. That tension is sorely lacking in most areas, where the only challenges are "is it raining" and "will my stamina let me climb this cliff in one go."

@bisonhero: I hangglided into Hyrule castle, onto a wall, and climbed in through a window. I literally didn:t have to fight anything on my way to Ganon. This was my first time seeing any of this stuff, I had no idea that the castle was so expansive.

@skinkybob: I had the same issue with the controls. I was throwing things left and right, like you mentioned. I can totally see how it's a great game...it just wasn't for me. I'm starting to think though maybe I'm just not a Zelda guy. I played both Link to the Past and Ocarina at my cousins house a kid, but never played anything else. I guess I just don't have that fondness for the series as others.

Im the same i tried it a few time on Wii U, and it never clicked sadly. I have just come to accept that its not a game that i need to play.

@curiosus:Just curious, what games...do you like. This seems at least fine even if you try your best not to enjoy it. There are way more games that should get this level of disinterest. Witcher 3...bloated...i dont know man...seems like the point of that game was to be bloated. You go to something like doom 2016 for some straight forward fun, why do people still think rpg's should cater to taste that only want some simpler less big games. Open world games are suppose to be open and big. I guess something you might enjoy is a smaller world like pokemon idk. please explain your game interest if your willing. im curious what you consider a 10/10 game.

@brad we need this to be the next Breaking Brad! You playing this until you beat the game with 3 hearts!

fun to see our dear bradley check in on this one!

i put 200hrs into this game- and while it was thrilling at times, much of the experience hasn't stuck with me. conversely i recently finished horizon zero dawn for the first time, and that game resonated deeply.

i'm not sure what contributes to those impressions exactly- but i suppose it's HZD's combat (which i found really satisfying) and compelling narrative- two things BotW kinda lacked IMHO.

i also don't have a latent affection for zelda- i've played many of them, but it's always felt more like a foil for "adventure!" as a concept than a compelling universe.

this game is beautiful though, and i sincerely enjoyed my time. i really am looking forward to the next release in this series- i'm hoping it's as weird as majora's.

@topcyclist: Witcher 3 is one of my favourite games, its still a bloated mess though. Bear in mind I 100% the main map of Witcher (every map item cleared). Having 100% that map though even the quests that are kinda similar, for kinda similar monsters have their own little stories and differences, which is an actual achievement in writing and map building, compared to copy + paste the entire map breath of the wild.

This is a cool game. I hope Brad finds it in himself to play it more.

This game, and it's soundtrack, is amazing. Anyone who says otherwise is not to be trusted and is probably dead.

@bisonhero: As well it seemed the chat did not tell him how to turn off the Shrine locator in the map screen, or that you can change it to detect a handful of other things. He mentioned once or twice that bothering him. Of course, I'd hope he would find certain areas, mechanics, and other sorts of things on his own - that's the special bit of this game.

That being said, I want more Brad of the Wild!

@curiosus: Damn, I'd say Breath of the Wild is the least copy+paste map ever, at least as far as large open world games go. A good but simplistic example in this video is when Brad is approaching the castle and there's an airborne drone doing a patrol. It's searchlight goes directly over one of those basic Korok seed environmental puzzles - that is obviously very intentional. The Korok puzzle and the enemy patterns are not random, but intentionally in-sync. This game corrects so many of the sins of recent Zeldas. For instance, it gives all the potions and crafting a purpose. You've been able to make potions and such in bottle in Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, and even the great Link Between Worlds. In all of those they were completely irrelevant outside of playing on Hero Mode/Master Mode. Not to mention all other sorts of things it makes relevant, like rupees are an actual resource now, not something that becomes background noise after the first 7-10 hours.

Yeah, Witcher 3 is littered with lots of cool, bespoke quests - it does that well and I love the game too. But as far as a sense of exploration and pathfinding, it's nonexistent. The entire world only exists as a set for cutscenes, Witcher investigations and enemy arenas. You don't discover or find anything, and mechanically you do not interact with any of it, outside of like...lighting candles or picking up items/clues. There isn't a giant rock face designed around a puzzle to decipher.
That's not a bad thing, I didn't expect that out of the game. I mean, I wish Breath of the Wild had great Witcher-y quest content, I also wish it had like Stardew Valley levels of creating a house and garden/farm, NPC interaction and so on. Honestly expanding that element of the game and letting you grow crops and have pets and such (and making it a meaningful system that wasn't one or two dimensional) would maybe get me more excited than the dungeons being thoroughly expanded from this game. Maybe.