Gaming New Zelda WiiU Gameplay from The Game Awards 2014

[WiiCube_2013]

the world isn't as empty as we thought either. if you look closely you can see

a house near the mountain, a dock? desert off in the distance. a cart in the middle of the field.

Traveling is either via the horse or through the air but neither are really too fast to get over those far destinations. I'd get pretty bored if I had to travel so far without anything on the background to admire or do.

It'd almost as bad as a long loading screen.

 

[Wisenheimer]

I have to say I'm with Guild on this one.

That Nintendo is optimizing the game for the system means nothing, zero, nil. It's a hard fact that the Wii U isn't a powerhouse of a console, which I'm very fine with. The games I've played thus far (Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros., Pikmin 3) have been amazing, just short of breathtaking experiences. However...

...we are talking about the next flagship game from Nintendo, so they have to compromise on something to deliver the promise of a huge open world. They can't keep high quality textures all around with high polygon counts and a big draw distance. It's technically impossible. To follow your example, GTA V on PS3 looks like JPEG compressed vomit. GTA V on PS4 is far better. The only kinds of games where raw performance and processing power is required are open world games. You just can't create a game with the graphical level of e.g. The Last of Us on PS4, have a huge draw distance, lots of polygons, and high quality textures on a Wii U. You can't. It doesn't matter who is making the game, even Nintendo can't pull that off. My evidence to support this claim? For one, they went with cartoonish graphics again and not realistic graphics. It doesn't matter how Nintendo washes down this by saying it fits the "art style" or whatever bullcrap. It's by function and that is to ensure the Wii U won't explode while loading up the game. And secondly, what we've seen is pretty much a dead town. Who cares about a huge open world if there's nothing to do?

Optimization, in many cases, is actually much more important than anything else. The PS3 version of many ports was by far the worst (even though the Xbox 360 had much less computing power overall) because games were not optimized for it. Games that were optimized for the PS3 (like The Last of Us) looked absolutely incredible on the hardware.

The ability to make a visually stunning game is not engendered by the speed of math. It is created by the artistry of the programmers, the level designers, and the artists. The number-crunching is just the canvas.

Also, your "evidence" shows a complete lack of understanding of the mathematics behind game development. "Realistic" graphics often require less computation than "cartoony" graphics. For instance, cell-shading is a common technique used to emulate a hand-drawn appearance that requires quite a bit of extra processing power.

Also, your claim that Nintendo did not choose to use a more realistic art style because of lack of processing power is not supported by the evidence. Nintendo rarely chooses this sort of style for its games for primarily artistic reasons and when it does choose a more realistic artstyle, it manages to make it look pretty good (for instance Other M and Fatal Frame 4 for the Wii).

In any case, games like Skyrim ran fine on last generation consoles with their massive worlds and "realistic" artstyle, so there is no question that a game like Zelda for the Wii U, which has access to a faster GPU, more (and faster) RAM, and a myriad of optimizations for the platform that Skyrim lacked, could run just fine and look great on the Wii U in any artstyle that Nintendo chooses.

At the end of the day, games are about the painting, not the canvas. If you care about canvases so much, buy a 4K TV, a $5000 GPU set, and pretend like the hackneyed mutliport AAA titles you are playing are somehow better than games like Zelda because they have better draw distances.

The first open world game was Ultima ya dingus. The first Zelda is roughly open world, you'd look more towards Wasteland or other Ultima game as early open world examples.

Nintendo certainly didn't "invent" the genre. Even then, Nintendo may have brought forth many innovations 30 years ago but it means jack shit today. Just because they made a great game 30 years ago doesn't mean they'll make one today. That's pretty damn evident if you've played some of the half-assed crap they put out in recent years.

I'm not sure how my statement that, " Nintendo actually invented the open-world game on home consoles with the release of The Legend of Zelda in the 1980's, which was one of the first open-world graphical games ever," is contradicted by the fact that Ultima came before it.

What I do know is that you might want to devote more time to understanding what your read and less time to criticizing others.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Optimization, in many cases, is actually much more important than anything else. The PS3 version of many ports was by far the worst (even though the Xbox 360 had much less computing power overall) because games were not optimized for it. Games that were optimized for the PS3 (like The Last of Us) looked absolutely incredible on the hardware.

The ability to make a visually stunning game is not engendered by the speed of math. It is created by the artistry of the programmers, the level designers, and the artists. The number-crunching is just the canvas.

Also, your "evidence" shows a complete lack of understanding of the mathematics behind game development. "Realistic" graphics often require less computation than "cartoony" graphics. For instance, cell-shading is a common technique used to emulate a hand-drawn appearance that requires quite a bit of extra processing power.

Also, your claim that Nintendo did not choose to use a more realistic art style because of lack of processing power is not supported by the evidence. Nintendo rarely chooses this sort of style for its games for primarily artistic reasons and when it does choose a more realistic artstyle, it manages to make it look pretty good (for instance Other M and Fatal Frame 4 for the Wii).

In any case, games like Skyrim ran fine on last generation consoles with their massive worlds and "realistic" artstyle, so there is no question that a game like Zelda for the Wii U, which has access to a faster GPU, more (and faster) RAM, and a myriad of optimizations for the platform that Skyrim lacked, could run just fine and look great on the Wii U in any artstyle that Nintendo chooses.

At the end of the day, games are about the painting, not the canvas. If you care about canvases so much, buy a 4K TV, a $5000 GPU set, and pretend like the hackneyed mutliport AAA titles you are playing are somehow better than games like Zelda because they have better draw distances.

The Last of Us was developed after Naughty Dog had a decade of optimization. The Legend of Zelda has had what, 3 years maybe to be made for it?

Also that's just a shit metaphor. The canvas here does matter when it makes the game run smoother, look better, and gives it the ability to be more.

 

[mightymuffy]

Wow lads, think a few of you (on both sides of the coin) need to slow the fcuk down a bit here - it's not out until next year, probably around this time next year (and I'm half expecting a 'delay' announced around Aug/Sept too) ....and this is only the second time we've seen it! Don't forget the build we're seeing here could also be quite old in itself, a demo of what to expect.... Shall some of us slag off Uncharted 4 coz we've only seen a few screens worth of gameplay? "omg look how small the game iz!!" ....or the part of the video where the player died and bugged into a bit of the ground on it? "omg Naughty Dog are fukkin slacking there - dis iz terrible!" ....maybe comment on the comparitively poorer visuals compared to the e3 video?? - - of course not: let's all take a breather and wait for a more complete demo at, say, next years e3, THEN voice our concerns....

Game shows promise if you ask me, but like I say, it's clearly still very early days. Not sold on the blue-ish outfit, or the apparent focus on bow & arrow, or the fact he still looks like a chav!

 

[Wisenheimer]

The Last of Us was developed after Naughty Dog had a decade of optimization. The Legend of Zelda has had what, 3 years maybe to be made for it?

Also that's just a shit metaphor. The canvas here does matter when it makes the game run smoother, look better, and gives it the ability to be more.

The PS3 was also a very complicated system (architecture wise) and very different than the PS2 and PS1 in those regards, so developers for the system were basically starting from scratch and trying to figure out how to do fairly difficult optimization tasks (like offloading GPU rendering from the GPU to the FPU cores of the CPU).

By contrast, the Wii U is a very simple design (games get 100% usage of a 3-core PPC CPU and AMD GPU) for which Nintendo has been developing games for 15 years. The GPU API is very similar to openGL and an extension of the system that has been used going back to the late 1990's, when Nintendo started developing games for the soon-to-be released gamecube.

So really, you're comparing apples to oranges here. The PS2 and PS3 had very complicated and very different architectures. The Wii U is just an upgrade from a simple architecture (PPC CPU+AMD GPU+custom Nintendo version of OpenGL) that Nintendo has been developing for the better part of two decades. Also, even early Sony-published games designed for the PS3 looked pretty good. It was mostly the multi-console ports that stank, since those tend to have the fewest optimizations and were rarely designed from the ground up for the Sony platform.

 

[aofelix]

I hope this open world concept doesn't make fans and reviewers start expecting a Skyrim or Dragon Age experience...

i want a ZELDA game first and foremost. quality not quantity nintendo. i personally don't care how big the map is!

 

[shinkodachi]

At the end of the day, games are about the painting, not the canvas. If you care about canvases so much, buy a 4K TV, a $5000 GPU set, and pretend like the hackneyed mutliport AAA titles you are playing are somehow better than games like Zelda because they have better draw distances.

I think you read me wrong there. By quite a bit! I love the Wii U for its games and I currently pretty much only play on my Wii U. You're applying a stereotype that's just not me in any possible way.

I'm simply expressing my concern that Nintendo has promised too much and the early gameplay reflects this. Nintendo does not have the habit of showing gameplay before they genuinely believe it's close to the end product. This to me, a through and through Nintendo fan, rings alarm bells that something isn't going to be right. This is and has all along been my point in this thread.

You're trying to write off the technical limitations of the Wii U with a metaphor of a painting. That doesn't sound right. As a Wii U owner who loves the system, I find it important that I know what my Wii U is capable of. Acknowledging a product for what it is vs. what it could be is crucial in my opinion.

What I do know is that you might want to devote more time to understanding what your read and less time to criticizing others.

I'm criticizing who/what exactly? Cel-shading has existed from even before the PS2. Anime-like games have been created for decades already. Nintendo has made a Zelda game with realistic graphics and did you already forget about this?


If there's no Iwata Asks soon after the launch of the game describing how they transitioned from the demo and decided on the cartoonish graphics to "capture the essence" of a colorful world, then I really don't know what to believe in anymore. The fact stands that with the limited memory that the Wii U has, it's just not possible to make a huge open world with high quality textures, high polygon counts, and big draw distance running smoothly. Nintendo is promising that we can travel to where the eye can see in the next Zelda game, again I'm expressing my concern, at what cost? So we can play in a dead town? Or it'll look like an upscaled Wii game? I'm going to buy this game either way, I just wish to know if Nintendo is trying to make something just for the sake of proving a point because the gameplay I saw pretty much depicted a dead world. I wouldn't care much to play another Shadow of the Colossus kind of game with a vast, useless world with nothing.

 

[Wisenheimer]

I think you read me wrong there. By quite a bit! I love the Wii U for its games and I currently pretty much only play on my Wii U. You're applying a stereotype that's just not me in any possible way.

I'm simply expressing my concern that Nintendo has promised too much and the early gameplay reflects this. Nintendo does not have the habit of showing gameplay before they genuinely believe it's close to the end product. This to me, a through and through Nintendo fan, rings alarm bells that something isn't going to be right. This is and has all along been my point in this thread.

You're trying to write off the technical limitations of the Wii U with a metaphor of a painting. That doesn't sound right. As a Wii U owner who loves the system, I find it important that I know what my Wii U is capable of. Acknowledging a product for what it is vs. what it could be is crucial in my opinion.
I'm criticizing who/what exactly? Cel-shading has existed from even before the PS2. Anime-like games have been created for decades already. Nintendo has made a Zelda game with realistic graphics and did you already forget about this?


If there's no Iwata Asks soon after the launch of the game describing how they transitioned from the demo and decided on the cartoonish graphics to "capture the essence" of a colorful world, then I really don't know what to believe in anymore. The fact stands that with the limited memory that the Wii U has, it's just not possible to make a huge open world with high quality textures, high polygon counts, and big draw distance running smoothly. Nintendo is promising that we can travel to where the eye can see in the next Zelda game, again I'm expressing my concern, at what cost? So we can play in a dead town? Or it'll look like an upscaled Wii game? I'm going to buy this game either way, I just wish to know if Nintendo is trying to make something just for the sake of proving a point because the gameplay I saw pretty much depicted a dead world. I wouldn't care much to play another Shadow of the Colossus kind of game with a vast, useless world with nothing.

Like I said, it is demo footage. You're basically picking a random page out of a manuscript and trying to extrapolate to a 700 page novel. All hardware has limitations, none of which have much to do with the choice of art style. If you remember, the "realistic" Zelda on the gamecube took much less power to draw than a similarly complicated scene from the cell-shaded Zelda (which is why TP was more detailed than WW) and the "next generation" hardware decided on a impressionist-inspired design instead of just upping the fidelity on the TP engine.

I'm not worried at all. What makes a good video game is:

1) Art style
2) Story
3) Gameplay design.

All of which are limited by hardware and budget somewhat (except arguably story in some cases), but none of which stop a good developer from not only making a great game, but pushing boundaries. Better hardware hit the linear portion of the exponential curve about 10 years ago. This generation and the last have seen massive power increases but relatively low returns on it. I don't think sensible gamers have been impressed by things like polygon counts and texture resolutions for over a decade.

 

[shinkodachi]

You make good points Wisenheimer and I hope you're right. That said I'm still concerned and that's because of the SotC-like dead world. WW and SS were a chore to play because of the constant back and forth (sea/sky). That's where I'm coming from.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Shinko @ That looks awesome and makes me wish Nintendo would release it on the eShop as a Demo with unlimited tries or make a limited print.

We won't get a realistic gritty Zelda this gen but there's always a next time.

 

[aofelix]

Meanwhile I can boot up GTA V and have a world full of cars, people, random events, sidequests, and just about a couple things every block in the game.

A house near a mountain, a dock, a desert (aren't deserts just the image people get of barren and empty), and a cart in the middle of the field are far from VIBRANT LIVING WORLD that people want in their open world games. Shadow of the Colossus has random shit everywhere but it doesn't mean anything or serve any purpose. It's just there.

I'm confused. Since when is a Zelda game jam packed with side quests and people like GTA?

Can someone please point me in a Zelda title which does this? I think of OOT, ALBW... I'd say Zelda has always been more SOTC rather than Skyrim/GTA.

 

[shinkodachi]

I'm confused. Since when is a Zelda game jam packed with side quests and people like GTA?

Can someone please point me in a Zelda title which does this? I think of OOT, ALBW... I'd say Zelda has always been more SOTC rather than Skyrim/GTA.

You'd think they'd want to add a bit more of that element, though. I loved the "side quests" in SS where you talked to people and did certain things for them, like clean that dusty house for the woman with the Gust Bellows, etc. They're what make the games unique. Also, in Majora's Mask you pretty much had to talk to a lot of people.

 

[aofelix]

I don't think its a wise decision to "add a bit more of that element". Then again stressing the open world is changing fans expectations of the game into some kind of huge RPG. I'm a fan of their current Zelda formula. Messing with it is asking for trouble. However I do hope we're not just riding a horse to get from place to place. There has to be something in the journey... and there will be.

People comparing Zelda to Skyrim or GTA or whatever other crap are a bit off point. Zelda has never been that game and those games have fatal flaws which are ignored due to their huge depth. I want Zelda to continue being that epic game of boss battles and puzzles with a nice story to tell on the way. Not pointless side quests. Then again, if done well, it could be spectacular but its asking HUGE amounts to make a title with the quality and refinement of Zelda and then throw it into a huge world.



Anyway, I don't feel comfortable replying to your posts as you get upset. I hope you haven't taken offence by anything I've said in this post.

 

[FAST6191]

People comparing Zelda to Skyrim or GTA or whatever other crap are a bit off point. Zelda has never been that game and those games have fatal flaws which are ignored due to their huge depth. I want Zelda to continue being that epic game of boss battles and puzzles with a nice story to tell on the way. Not pointless side quests. Then again, if done well, it could be spectacular but its asking HUGE amounts to make a title with the quality and refinement of Zelda and then throw it into a huge world.

I am not seeing people saying it should be like those games (though I am always happy to have another timesink if they make it interesting), just that it seems to be heading in that direction and has some warning signs of it not being one of the better examples.

 

[shinkodachi]

This generation and the last have seen massive power increases but relatively low returns on it. I don't think sensible gamers have been impressed by things like polygon counts and texture resolutions for over a decade.

Yet it's easy to spot bad quality textures or low polygon counts, because we know what current tech is capable of providing us. Try Smash Bros. for Wii U, play 8-Player Smash and see how pixelized characters will become very frequently just to keep the framerate running. In some stages like Garden of Hope you can see just how compressed and bad that background looks, and it's not just a "bokeh" effect, it looks cheap and low quality. Does that deter from the gameplay experience of an awesome game? No. Does it raise questions of the Wii U's capabilities to perform well when there's lots of polygons and high quality textures? Yes it does.

Spoiler: Uncharted 4 vs Uncharted 3 comparison

I'd say it's obvious how far we've come now with graphics on a game console. Realistic graphics require lots of graphical power and I'd say even as we approach the end of the Wii U's cycle, we won't see graphics like in Uncharted 4 come to the Wii U. That means, the tech demo of that Zelda game we saw previously is probably never coming to Wii U. Is that a bad thing? No! But again, it does raise questions of what the Wii U can deliver. I'd like to mention it once more that Nintendo just isn't in the habit of publicly showing gameplay footage of unfinished games that are seriously in early development. That huge world they're promising us will come at a cost.

I'm still going to buy the game, if only to see what that cost is. Framerate? Texture quality? Draw distance? Polygon/object count? It's going to be something I'm sure of it. And Nintendo will brush it off as an "art style" or "direction" or whatever and the fans will drink the Kool-Aid like no tomorrow. Which is fine because I'm a fan too and will drink lots of that Kool-Aid, lots of it. But saying that the cel shading we've seen in the gameplay footage so far should be impressive... That's like giving Nintendo a free pass like "hey, just do your thing, I don't mind playing a Zelda game that plays like SotC, real cool you have a huge world that's empty". I know that's not really what it is, but I'm just saying.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Shinko @ That.. that PS4 Drake isn't the real Drake what the hell did they do to him?! :-|

He looks younger and more like a son than Drake himself. Agh, some of my hype for Uncharted 4 has died. :-/

 

[shinkodachi]

Shinko @ That.. that PS4 Drake isn't the real Drake what the hell did they do to him?! :-|

He looks younger and more like a son than Drake himself. Agh, some of my hype for Uncharted 4 has died. :-/

Or a brother/cousin, yeah... I'm not 100% sure myself if I'm getting it, because I don't have a lot of time on my hands to play these games. That's why I'm torn between should I wait to see what Xenoblade Chronicles X is like before Zelda U, or get #HYPE for Zelda U now. I just don't know. Tough decisions.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Or a brother/cousin, yeah... I'm not 100% sure myself if I'm getting it, because I don't have a lot of time on my hands to play these games. That's why I'm torn between should I wait to see what Xenoblade Chronicles X is like before Zelda U, or get #HYPE for Zelda U now. I just don't know. Tough decisions.

Uncharted's story mode normally have 26 chapters so that's something to pass by quickly I was surprised I finished Uncharted 3 before I knew it.

I didn't really like Uncharted 3 as much as Uncharted 2. :-/

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I'm confused. Since when is a Zelda game jam packed with side quests and people like GTA?

Can someone please point me in a Zelda title which does this? I think of OOT, ALBW... I'd say Zelda has always been more SOTC rather than Skyrim/GTA.

It's not, but if you make an open world game then it should be.

The purpose of a large open world game is to pursue what you want and give players a lot of options as per what they want. Creating a Zelda game with a large world and absolutely jack shit to do is useless. All you do is inflate the play time by forcing players to traverse long distances for no particular reason.

If you think taking Zelda standards and pasting it into an open world game will work, you're sorely mistaken. This needs to be designed completely differently, it needs to be barely Zelda if it wants to work as an open world game.

 

[aofelix]

I think people are overestimating the open world element. They won't revamp Zelda to fit open world mechanisms. They should't.