The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

One of my first times just cruising around on a horse, I went down to the south Faron coast (beautiful) and the pointillistic piano part just kept escalating and escalating until a full repeal of ObamaCare was suddenly upon me

ha, yeah: this game is quite good at letting you know when you've overstepped your boundaries

U mean this one goontie?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_3iE7z3Few

(both the day and night one rule but this one has the OG theme hidden in it and is weirdly melancholy also)

I don't remember, but I only heard it that one time, I think it may have been a night version segueing into a day version or something?

breath of zelda...... language of the mad

have just sneaked my way up to lanryu tower (which shows you the extent of the progress I am making). sneakstrikes are so satisfying.

now hating every minute of trying to get to zoras domain. I don't like this being forced down a route / approach thing at all. hopefully there isn't much more of this.

Zora is not the worst part of the game, but it wasn't my favourite. It was more fun humping around the mountains above Zora avoiding guardians iirc

My five favourite experiences in this game were: exploring Hyrule Castle, ascending Mount Lanayru, getting emotional at Akkala Citadel/Fort Hateno because of how successful the designers created an atmosphere of devastation, everything relating to Gorons and Mount Death, faerie sex, the labyrinths.

The shrines are not a satisfying replacement for more dungeons and I hope the next game features ~many~ Hyrule Castle-style environments. Nothing more satisfying than exploring a castle imo

I just downloaded the DLC pass - the first bit of it is out now. Some kind of master sword challenge whereby it permanently switches up the sword? I'm ambivalent about doing this, because despite everyones sooking about the easily-damaged gear, I've got used to that now and having one sword that just Always Works would feel boring at this point.

I havent even gone into the castle yet either! A few people have said when they did, they accidentally triggered the final ganon boss and I'm scared of doing that I guess?

leaving the castle until last. all beasts done, 82 shrines done, all memories done except the castle one. just did the Rito song shrine quest - that one is great!

my favourite moment so far was giving that leaf dude some maracas

I havent even gone into the castle yet either! A few people have said when they did, they accidentally triggered the final ganon boss and I'm scared of doing that I guess?

i wandered in there accidentally a little while back, when i'd only liberated one beast, and i think i managed to almost defeat ganon - i wonder if it's possible to beat him by mistake early on?

It's definitely possible to beat Ganon early on. There was a charity event I watched on Twitch where a speed runner beat the game in a ridiculous time by going straight to Hyrule Castle after completing the mandatory section on the Plateau at the beginning of the game.

What happens once he's done with? Does it ruin any parts of the game one might not have got to yet (shrines/quests)?

not really. just puts a little star next to your name on the loading screen. you can still go back and replay from the moment before you defeated ganon.

okay, important question: Can you eventually make elixirs and cook meals in bulk? This is tedious.

No

I like the guy that looks like broccoli

what's up i'm playing this now it's terrifyingly huge

korok seeds are validating my completionist anxiety to look behind every single corner and it's gonna kill me

Theres like 250 of them so have fun!

i thought there was 900

Got to the 1st boss. I'm getting the timing wrong and getting impaled by his massive weapon instead of iframing out of the way. Super into this game, it really does feel like they took Skyrim and chucked out all the annoying bits and made the combat not terrible. I'll be interested to know when the fight goblin/pick up weapon/fight another goblin loop is gonna get old.

i've put like 80 hours in and it's not worn thin yet

shit yr right qualx bloody heck

Some of the new DLC additions are quite neat. Theres now a tool in the map function that shows you everywhere you've been on the map. I'm over 150 hours in now, so at this point this is *massively* useful to me to go back over areas I've missed, pick up koroks and shrines and etc.

The other is a pocket travelpoint. Can only use it in one spot at a time alas, but for eg at the moment I'm using it to jump to a spot up over Lanryu Promenade, which is a great spot to wait for the Ice dragon to come by in the morning so I can jump out and farm him for parts.

I might also set it at somewhere like the Southern Mine in the Goron area - there's no shrines anywhere near it so it's a pain to get to.

96 shrines down, and only found 110 korok seeds. its INSANE that there are 800 more to find. totally not going to easily find the last 24 shrines so gonna KILL THIS DARN BOSS.

OK now I think I get this game now. I've been spending my time wandering aimlessly across the place only, looking at things, catching horses (Gary, Max, Tracy, Jabroni), avoiding fighting and then allovasudden the fighting starts to make sense and a whole new world of the game has opened up for me. So much so that I finally lit the torches to the hateno tech lab and in the hour since have been strolling about blasting bokoblins hither and yon, giggling away like a loon. I am officially back in love with this game.

no way am I ever going to complete this game tho.

Yeah I avoided fighting the big bosses til I learned thats how you get the really good weapons.

Unforch, now that means I can kinda beat anything pretty easily :/

i would pay money to never have to do a horse (or chocobo) race again in my entire life

omg yes i have at least 3 horse- based quests i haven't done cos fighting on horseback is hard!

i didn't even know there was fighting stuff, i was just talking about the hurdle race

the prize is literally horse cosmetics but by the time i figured that out i had already pumped two hours into the goddamn thing and i wasn't going to lose

going to go ahead and say that game design that asks players to repeat difficult mechanics over and over again until they can do it in less than 75 seconds in inherently bad game design, obsessive repetition should never be encouraged

Obsessive repetition is the foundation of entire genres

those genres should be shot into the sun

I choose to go to the sun and play marble madness there

But I guess the constraints of game memory and the incentive to make arcade-friendly quarter-suckers is the reason that so many foundational games are based on mastery of repetition and memorization

I think qualx just hates video games

Like "obsessive repetition" is pretty foundational, did you have a Nintendo?

obsessive repetition is just another way of saying game

lol otm

Not to pile on qualx who I know likes video games just fine. Obsessive repetition is just one of the things I like most about video games!

no video games generally suck a lot

I did have a nintendo, and obsessive repetition was funner when you're 10 and you don't have anything else to do

but as it's been said that probably wouldn't have been a thing if it weren't for exploitative quarter-munching

you're never gonna convince me that adults repeating the same janky process over and over again for hours until they get it perfect is the result of good game design

make a game that's fun and offers steady progression I could be learning the trumpet or something

Oh the hurdle race! I'd forgot all about that, I did it ages ago. The trick is not to go toooo fast - you cant control the horse too well.

Oh also, make sure your horse is 100% tamed! He wont obey you otherwise.

finally playing this - i've managed to avoid most information about the game despite being late to the party. i'm surprised at how much it just feels like a zelda game despite the wider scope and new combat mechanics - it's just as much of a logical step forward from the previous zelda formula as ocarina was from the 2d zeldas.

so far i'm dumping all my upgrades into hearts since i'm still running into things that one-shot me - is there a point at which i'm going to regret not having extra stamina or can i get by without it until i'm in double digits of hearts?

More stamina lets you climb more and thus be a little more joyfully heedless while exploring, as you are incrementally less likely to run out of stamina while dragging yourself up a cliff.