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Top Gun
Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4603
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 Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 12:58 am
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| flamemasterelan wrote: | |
Personally, this loose end doesn't bother me so much as...I figured they just repurposed what they could into the current towers and any other tech they're working on in the future, and what remains of the Divine Beasts and Guardians were likely scrapped to assuage the people's fears after the Calamity. |
That would make sense, except no one so much as mentions it even once in the game. You'd think that a change that massive would come up somewhere, especially from Purah. It's a weird vagary that could have easily been resolved with just a bit of dialog. There's also the existence of the Purah Pad: why make something like that when the Sheikah Slate already existed? All of the characters even treat things like the ability to take pictures as a novelty, even though they should have known all about that. And I don't see how the level of tech we see would be enough to dismantle something as massive as the Divine Beasts. Honestly it would have been cool to see their remains down in the Depths, as if they'd been reburied after their jobs were done.
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DRosencraft
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 666
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Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 9:52 am
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DLC will always be problematic. Not necessarily because of anything inherently wrong with it or the game it is in, but because it scratches at that question of "what if". Before DLC became as common as it is now, you bought a game and you assumed that was what the creator/devs wanted to release, or as close to it as you could reasonably get. Anything "missing" was left out intentionally and you waited for a sequel title in hopes of getting it.
In the modern gaming landscape, where there is a perception of unlimited space to expand any game, and a game that doesn't have DLC is likely to be a financial loser, you are invariably left to wonder how much of the DLC is stuff that would have just been added to the game originally otherwise, or was it something that would have forever been left out or left for a sequel? The fact that Zelda of all things couldn't escape this fate tells me no major title ever will.
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Top Gun
Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4603
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Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 3:01 pm
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| DRosencraft wrote: | | DLC will always be problematic. Not necessarily because of anything inherently wrong with it or the game it is in, but because it scratches at that question of "what if". Before DLC became as common as it is now, you bought a game and you assumed that was what the creator/devs wanted to release, or as close to it as you could reasonably get. Anything "missing" was left out intentionally and you waited for a sequel title in hopes of getting it.
In the modern gaming landscape, where there is a perception of unlimited space to expand any game, and a game that doesn't have DLC is likely to be a financial loser, you are invariably left to wonder how much of the DLC is stuff that would have just been added to the game originally otherwise, or was it something that would have forever been left out or left for a sequel? The fact that Zelda of all things couldn't escape this fate tells me no major title ever will. |
See, I'm not so sure about that first point. Even in the best cases, game development always has an element of compromise: there are only so much time and money available, and there are inevitably going to be interesting ideas left on the cutting-room floor because they'd be too much effort to implement under those restrictions. (This is arguably a good thing, because if a game actually had unlimited time and resources, it'd almost certainly turn into a bloated unfocused mess. I see you there, Star Citizen.) The existence of DLC as a release mechanic allows developers to iterate on those ideas and deliver new content that expands their game. I have to think that the Champions' Ballad DLC in BotW started because of a developer conversation: "If Link had his own Divine Beast, what would that be like?" In the days of PC expansion packs they could add entire new campaigns and sets of abilities, as classic Blizzard examples did; a more recent example that stood out to me was Horizon: Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds expansion. And DLC can even serve to breathe new life into games far beyond their creation date....I mean, who could have ever guessed that a Mario Kart game released in 2014 and ported in 2017 would still be getting new tracks added to it in 2023?
I think the reason people (rightfully) were so up in arms over on-disc DLC content in the bad old days is that it was already there on something they'd already paid for, and was clearly finished at the time the game went gold, but they were forced to double-dip if they wanted to pay for it. There have been other infamous examples of what should have been core gameplay features or earnable unlockables being stuck behind DLC paywalls, which usually comes across as exploitative. The outrage over that good ol' Oblivion horse armor feels almost quaint in retrospect, though one could view it as creating a monster.
On the flipside, there are other games that get anemic sequels that could have easily worked as DLC for the prior title (a charge leveled at TotK by some, though its release swiftly shot that down for all but the most closed-minded). An example that instantly comes to mind for me is Splatoon 3. I'm not the hugest fan of the franchise, and other than making money I'm not sure why it exists as its own full-priced retail product, since at least at launch it seemed to mostly be a small iteration of its predecessor on the same exact console. I might have paid $20 or $30 for its content, but up to this point I haven't been able to justify picking it up for full price considering what I'd get out of it.
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flamemasterelan
Joined: 17 Apr 2022
Posts: 457
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Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2023 4:50 pm
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| Top Gun wrote: | | That would make sense, except [spoiler]no one so much as mentions it even once in the game. You'd think that a change that massive would come up somewhere, especially from Purah. It's a weird vagary that could have easily been resolved with just a bit of dialog. |
I think the reason for this is...the fact that there's a 3+ year timeskip between the games, so the major changes aren't really relevant to bring up in story anymore. I'm actually not sure how long the timeskip is between the opening and Link awakening in the tutorial, but there definitely seems to be a few months, possibly even half a year there, and the Sheikah tech seemed to be gone before that happened. But also, TotK is weirdly designed like it's a sequel but also a fresh Hyrule at the same time? It's kinda weird.
| Quote: | |
There's also the existence of the Purah Pad: why make something like that when the Sheikah Slate already existed? All of the characters even treat things like the ability to take pictures as a novelty, even though they should have known all about that. |
Honestly, this is probably the part that makes the most sense to me. The Sheikah slate was recovered technology, and Robbie and Purah researched it but didn't 100% know how it worked. Zelda only knew that it was supposed to activate the shrines for Link, but couldn't figure out how before the 100 year timeskip, and they seemed to not know about the towers at all.
The Purah Pad is Purah and Robbie's attempt to reverse engineer the Sheikah Slate. It's no longer ancient technology, but modern tech built on the same principles. The only character who acts like the camera is a big deal in TotK is Zelda. Robbie even calls it one of the Pad's basic functions, he just momentarily forgot the unlock code for the device. And as far as Zelda's reaction, it's entirely possible we're seeing the Purah Pad 3.0 and the camera was either simplified from a previous version, or brand new to the one Zelda's experimenting with in the opening.
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Greed1914
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4455
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Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 3:56 pm
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It feels like the whole Baldur's Gate 3 setting a new "standard" was a case of people kind of talking past each other. Developers said it would be unrealistic, most likely in reference to how publishers would inevitably demand the next smash-hit, 150+ hour RPG, and ignore that it might not be in the developers' wheelhouse. Players who said it was the "new standard" meant that it should be standard that something be well-crafted and feel complete. I don't think they meant they wanted everything to turn into a massive game that would consume all their time.
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Blue Senpai
Joined: 30 Aug 2023
Posts: 41
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Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 6:16 pm
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| Greed1914 wrote: | | It feels like the whole Baldur's Gate 3 setting a new "standard" was a case of people kind of talking past each other. Developers said it would be unrealistic, most likely in reference to how publishers would inevitably demand the next smash-hit, 150+ hour RPG, and ignore that it might not be in the developers' wheelhouse. Players who said it was the "new standard" meant that it should be standard that something be well-crafted and feel complete. I don't think they meant they wanted everything to turn into a massive game that would consume all their time. |
Haven't played BG3 yet myself, and frankly most of the discussion I've seen are just people being horny and the game itself is probably lost on them since I rarely see anyone talk about combat mechanics or any kind of gameplay but That's what I took from the comments: a complete game with nice graphics, mechanically sound, no tacked on DLC or other nonsense, and generally polished. No surprise other game devs are worried and upset that gamers might actually start having standards and no longer accept mediocrity, but I think the naysayers are overestimating people's attention spans and standards. AAA games will always sell and do well regardless of their quality and insistence on selling you battle passes and dlc and people will move on to the next one after a month.
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