The Zelda Thread

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ian
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Re: The Zelda Thread

Post by ian »

Sequel to botw looks ok.
Too much sky not enough flamethrower.

I’m sure you’ll only be able to get to the main menu when you buy the game and to play it you’ll need to buy a one of a kind golden amibo though.
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Re: The Zelda Thread

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Once again Nintendo has released a trailer for a Zelda game that has left me more depressed than excited. Just like when they showed off BotW for the first time, this trailer has me worried. I don't think I told anyone on here, but I spent my pandemic year last year finally, finally pushing those terrible trailers out of my mind and played BotW. And it was...I dunno, it was good but it wasn't Zelda. It was huge and empty, like they spent too much time coming up with crazy mechanics and not enough time putting anything interesting in the world. Or perhaps more likely, they had a great game planned, but couldn't pull it off on Switch hardware. I also did not like how little of the game mechanics were explained. It's like they took the years of complaints about Navi and Fe and all the other annoying characters that held your hand through the game, and then took the most complicated Zelda to date and said 'here you go, fuck off and figure it out yourself!'

The next 3 paragraphs are my experience with BotW. If you only want to read my reaction to the trailer, skip to the end.

I started off my playthrough dying a lot because I had no gear and could not for the life of me figure out how I was supposed to get to the 4th shrine in the cold without freezing to death (I eventually settled on a strategy of hording apples and gorging on them every 30 seconds). Once I got my glider and was allowed to leave the plateau, I did the thing that I assume everyone else did and went straight to Hyrule castle. Armed with a couple swords I found in the castle, the default clothes they give you at the beginning, and no shrines completed for hearts or stamina, I found a safe path up the castle and spent the next 2 hours fighting Ganon. My best was getting through 3 rounds of blights and wondering why the fuck he had so many forms (which I know now was because I didn't beat any Divine Beasts yet). After finally giving up, I flew from the peak of Hyrule Castle to the East and found myself in the woods with a torch puzzle I solved and found the Master Sword. That honestly was probably the best part of the game, because I was all like 'holy shit, I just did a massive sequence break!' Of course, I didn't do a sequence break because I had no extra hearts to take the sword. But I beat the three Korok trials with no gear whatsoever, one of which I literally had to cheat by going out-of-bounds because that shit is hard when everything hits for 3 hearts and you only have 4.

I left the woods, headed north, and wandered around for hours constantly getting murdered by fucking everything in the ugliest and emptiest area in the entire game. Convinced this was the shittiest Zelda game in existence, I stopped playing for a while. When I came back to it, I decided I was going to avoid constantly dying by following a river bed South so I could jump in the water if anything came at me. It was 13 hours of playtime until I found my first human. I stumbled upon a horse stable and was immediately like, 'Holy fuck, there are PEOPLE in this game? And he wants RUPEES? Where the fuck are rupees?' Somehow, inexplicably, I had not come across a single rupee up to that point. 20 hours in I finally came across Kakariko village and from there I had a much easier time of things. But there was still so much stuff that I wish I would have had even the smallest of tutorials about. Like for instance, I never could figure out how to cook anything until around 30 hours in when I finally gave up and Googled how to do it. And the reason I couldn't cook was because I never realized that holding things in the menu would allow me to hold them out of the menu, which also affected my ability to solve a lot of puzzles. Long after I beat the game, I found out that you could deflect laser shots with your shield and do some kind of crazy dodge rush attack that I apparently never triggered.

After somewhere over 100 hours spent in BotW, hitting up every shrine because the puzzle shrines were usually the best part, collecting every Korok seed and getting my shit trophy, and defeating all 4 beasts despite how garbage their dungeons were, I left BotW feeling...mixed. Some mechanics were downright brilliant, the best ones usually dealing with elements or physics. And it's easy to see why so many games copy BotW's climbing and glider mechanics, because the freedom to travel vertically as well as horizontally is a literal game-changer. But I can't help to think if this game didn't have Link in it, it wouldn't have gotten near the praise that it did. There is so much of the world that is so, so empty. I nearly feel like they threw in 900 Korok seeds just as incentive not to constantly fast travel to the interesting parts. As I said at the beginning, I really feel that the Switch hardware prevented them from making a better game.

Now, where was I going with this?

Right, the BotW 2 trailer. This trailer once again makes the new Zelda look bad. Not only does it look like the same empty world from the original game, but they took one of the greatest and most copied mechanics of BotW, climbing, and essentially removed it's relevance it by making half of the map hover in the air. Gone are the days of 'go anywhere' because you can't climb a mountain if the peak is floating. I wanted to be excited because it was giving me Skyward Sword feels, but when I saw Link teleport into the bottom of a floating land, I realized this game is going to force you to find warp points to these floating lands rather than give you means of air travel. I wonder if the floating areas are just the new shrines, only accessible via an entry point? At any rate, I'm going to remain skeptical until we get some more info on how this all works.

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Re: The Zelda Thread

Post by ian »

That was a great write up.
One of my friends had similar thoughts to you and called it the worst game he’s played in a decade.

But I found the world in breath of the wild to be amazing fun to explore, and on my 4th play through. I was still finding stuff.
I think they could have called the game “John’s boring survival adventure” and I’d have loved it just the same.

It’s no secret I’m not a fan of most Zelda games. I certainly can’t see why people have been sucking the series dick for 30 years.

But I love breath of the wild for all the reasons you hated it.

I love that you start out with not a clue what to do. I love that it took me getting my ass handed to me many, many times to learn the way around the game. I love that you can’t go fishing but can drop from the sky with a paraglider bombing the fish.
It took me so many hours to learn about cooking.
And I adore that the game lets you decide what, where who and when. and the only puzzles I hated with a fucking passion is where you have to tilt the switch. they almost ruined the whole game.

First play through I Needed all the best shit and 20 minutes to take out red lynel… now I can destroy any lynel with a stick, no armour and a shield in about 40 seconds and not take a single hit.
Some 2000+ hours of gameplay later (At least 2000 easy) and I still haven’t found every korok seed. (I’m about 13 short) and I sometimes just like to dick around and go hunting.

I think the problem is people have access to the internet, so the first time they don’t understand something they look it up.
Oh I’m frustrated with this bit that’s too hard. I’ll just watch someone else do it rather than be challenged. And most people are going into the game expecting something.
I went in knowing nothing about the game (other than ganon always bad) or the lore or the play style and low expectations.. and I mean LOOOW EXPECTATIONS. I’ve played I think nearly every single Zelda game, and never gotten more than 5 hours in except for Links Awakening, most I don’t even get 2 hours in before I’m so bored I would rather be laying in a dark room staring at the ceiling…
And because I just wanted to play a game for fun, it’s one of the best games in ages.
I’ve nearly 100% done the game (including DLC) and just missing a few korok seeds… The last game I liked playing so much to 100 percent it was Vice City (that’s a lie, I did every single thing except 1 hidden package) so there’s very few games that keep me interested to 100% and beyond.

So I can certainly see why people who love Zelda hate botw.
People who play Zelda want a linear path to beat ganon. All the other stuff is a complete waste of time.. FUN?!? NO THANK YOU, I HAVE TO BEAT GANON!

It’s no links awakening though. That is still the most fun Zelda game.

If this new one isn’t as fun because it’s too much like the first. Or is too different just to keep the fan base happy, I’ll be sure to let you all know about it.

If it’s another FUN game I’m sure I’ll love it, but for a whole new $90 it’s not going to get a pass just for being sequel to botw

I don’t like the teleporting aspect in the trailer or the first game either.
But when I can’t take my horse in the desert, I am glad it was there.
I also hoped by getting the DLC motorbike IT would be able to go in the desert, but I got ripped off… you can’t use that here. WHY FUCKING NOT?
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Re: The Zelda Thread

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Re: The Zelda Thread

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Zelda 64 has been fully decompiled, potentially opening the door for mods and ports

After nearly two years, a fan group fully reproduced the N64 classic in C code this week

A fan group has successfully reverse-engineered 100% of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s game code, VGC has been told.

The community-led Zelda Reverse Engineering Team (ZRET) has been working for nearly two years to reverse engineer the N64 classic into parsable C code, which can be read by modern computers, similar to how fans were able to fully convert Super Mario 64 in 2019, after a two-year effort.

The achievement marks a huge milestone for the preservation of the classic Nintendo 64 game, and opens the door to modding, hacks and potentially even ports to other platforms such as PC (though it’s worth stressing, none of this is within the remit of ZRET).

The kind of reverse engineering ZRET do is made legal because the fans involved did not use any leaked content. Instead, they painstakingly recreated the game from scratch using modern coding languages. The project also does not use any of Nintendo’s original copyrighted assets such as graphics or sound.

ZRET told VGC: “It’s been a wild ride. We’ve been able to create c code that, when compiled, reproduces the original game. We call this ‘matching’ decompilation.

“Last night, Fig, who is a notable community member as well as a project lead, matched the last-remaining function in the project. This means that all compiled code in the game has been turned into human-readable C code.

“We thought for a time that we may never be able to match every function completely, so this is an incredibly exciting accomplishment. Dozens of people helped work on this project, and together we were able to achieve something amazing.”

ZRET said that the final part of its progress is currently on a development branch.

Before the Ocarina of Time work is solidified, the project lead will need to submit his work via what’s known as a “pull request”, it told VGC. After that, the work needs to be thoroughly reviewed. Once that’s done, it will merge this pull request, and the ZRET website’s graph will show 100%.

But even though the game’s code has been fully decompiled, there’s still a lot of remaining work for the ZRET team including creating documentation, re-naming and re-organisation of code and definitions, and support for asset-handling so viewing or modifying on modern computers is easier.

The group also plans to decompile other versions of Ocarina of Time in order to support the project. The core of ZRET’s work was based on the Nintendo GameCube Master Quest version of the game, since it features some debug commands to help with its work.

“We have been working on decompiling the Master Quest Debug version of the game. However, Ocarina of Time has over a dozen other versions, which we plan to also decompile and support in the project,” it said.

However, many consumers will be interested if – or more likely, when – the decompilation will lead to a fully functioning PC port of Zelda, like it did with Super Mario 64 last year.

ZRET’s Ocarina of Time decomp is not a port and it’s adamant that it will not be involved in any potential work to adapt the game’s code to new platforms.

However, in the case of Super Mario 64’s decompilation efforts, the project led to another group creating a fully functioning PC port of the N64 game within nine months, which is able to scale to any screen resolution and be easily modded by the community with new graphics and modern effects such as ray-tracing.

Eventually, fans even ported that game to many other platforms including Nintendo DSi, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch.

Outside of potential PC ports, the Zelda: Ocarina of Time decompilation project could have huge implications for hacks, as well as historical preservation and the discovery of new bugs which could be utilised by the speedrunning community.

In news unrelated to the reverse engineering project, Earlier this year, a group of video game preservationists discovered and released a partial beta version of Ocarina of Time, allowing fans to recover a significant amount of new information about the pre-release version including new areas, redesigned items and other elements that never made it into the final build.

Content from the beta version was eventually used by fans to recreate an early Space World demo from 1997, which was released this month and runs via emulator.

Source: VGC

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Re: The Zelda Thread

Post by ian »

Stop beating me to all the posts!
Looks like I have to buy another switch next year.
I can wait 8 months.

Could this be the elusive 3rd good Zelda game?
I can't wait to find out.
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Re: The Zelda Thread

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ian wrote: Wed Sep 14, 2022 1:18 am Stop beating me to all the posts!
Looks like I have to buy another switch next year.
I can wait 8 months.

Could this be the elusive 3rd good Zelda game?
I can't wait to find out.
Name a bad one not on the CDI or the DS.

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Re: The Zelda Thread

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Re: The Zelda Thread

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OrangeRibbon wrote: Wed Sep 14, 2022 7:37 am
ian wrote: Wed Sep 14, 2022 1:18 am Stop beating me to all the posts!
Looks like I have to buy another switch next year.
I can wait 8 months.

Could this be the elusive 3rd good Zelda game?
I can't wait to find out.
Name a bad one not on the CDI or the DS.
Take the list of Every Zelda game ever, and subtract Links Awakening and Breath of the Wild and you have the bad ones.

Now to be entirely fair, there's a few on GBA and DS I have NEVER even tried, but I have the gist of the series from all ones I have tried. They're not something I typically enjoy, hence them being bad.

If you'd like, I could try the few I've never even given a shot. And who knows, maybe the Minish cap or links crossbow training could be my favourite game I've ever played! But after I've played it for 2 hours and am not having fun, it will be put in a pile of shit along with pretty much all of the main games outside of Link's awakening and Botw.

I don't care if shit is popular or critically acclaimed... If I'm not enjoying it, it's bad.

And I will try this new one, If I have fun I'll be sure to let everyone know. If it's bad, I will be particularly salty because I liked BOTW so much, and was hoping for as much fun again.
I find Zelda games have no middle ground for me. I'm either having fun once in a blue moon. Or I am not. There's no pretty fun but could be better or could be worse.
Even if Tears of the Kingdom is an average game, and I play quite a bit of it, it will be remarkable because no Zelda game has ever made me feel that way before.

I remember after I'd played a million hours of Link's awakening as a kid, and then I tried Ocarina of Time when I rented it as a new release.
It looked beautiful and sounded beautiful (aside from fucking Navi, but we won't go into that) and it had technical aspects worlds ahead of most games I'd ever seen... And it was praised as the coming of fucking Jesus in video game form.
It was fucking boring as shit.

I hope this new game doesn't let me down. We will find out soon enough.
Because even if I wasn't going to try it, I'm sure any person who's ever held a controller would be telling me it's a perfect game and sucking its dick, JUST like they did with the boring as all fuck Ocarina... and the more refined but even more tedious Majora's mask... And pretty much every single game since.

I hope it's a Links Awakening or Links Awakening DX and not a Links Awakening switch... Urghh!! :puke:
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Re: The Zelda Thread

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If you are saying the original LoZ is a bad game I will fight you.

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Re: The Zelda Thread

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ian wrote: Fri Sep 16, 2022 2:19 am Take the list of Every Zelda game ever, and subtract Links Awakening and Breath of the Wild and you have the bad ones.
Those ones aren't even the top 2 Zelda games.

1/ A Link To The Past
2/ Ocarina Of Time
3/ Link's Awakening
4/ BOTW
5/ Wind Waker
6/ Majora's Mask
7/ LoZ
8/ Oracle of Ages/Seasons
9/ TP
10/ Zelda 2

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Re: The Zelda Thread

Post by melancholy »

My list would be:

1. Skyward Sword
2. Wind Waker
3. Ocarina of Time
4. Twilight Princess
5. Breath of the Wild
6. Majora’s Mask
7. Any of the 2D Zelda games (I don’t really like the overhead Zelda games much)



100. The garbage that came out on the DS.

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Re: The Zelda Thread

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Dr. Zoidberg wrote: Fri Sep 16, 2022 3:04 pm 5/ Wind Waker
The only Zelda game I've ever played. I loved it :olol:

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Re: The Zelda Thread

Post by Dr. Zoidberg »

WInd Waker was good. Probably my fave Gamecube game.

I forgot to mention that I haven't played the Switch or 3DS Zeldas (even though I own them and will play them eventually) or Skyward Sword.

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Re: The Zelda Thread

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Zelda: A Link to the Past can now be compiled on Windows and Nintendo Switch

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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the most beloved video games of all time, and for many it’s their favorite in the franchise. Now, thanks to a programmer on Github who goes by ]xander-haj, the game has been reverse-engineered, opening up the possibility of Link to the Past on other platforms, like Sega's 32X or the Sony Playstation. This reimplementation of Link to the Past is written in C and contains an astonishing 80,000 lines of code.

This version is also content complete, with all the same levels, enemies, and puzzles that fans of the original game will remember. In its current state, the game requires the PPU and DSP libraries from LakeSNES, a fast SNES emulator with a number of speed optimizations that make the game run faster and smoother than ever before. Breaking from the LakeSNES dependency, which allows for compatibility on modern operating systems, would allow the code to be built for retro hardware. It also offers one of the craziest features I have seen in a long time; the game can run the original machine code alongside the reverse-engineered C implementation. This works by creating a save-state on both versions of the game after every frame of gameplay, comparing their state and proving that the reimplementation works.

The project would not be possible without Zelda 3 JP disassembly, a project that dumps the rom into raw assembly code, and other sources that documented function names and variables. Unfortunately we were unable to find a homepage for the disassembly project. However, with this head start, xander-haj was able to get a better understanding of how the original game was put together, and to make sure that the reimplementation is as accurate as possible. Of course, creating a clone of such a complex game is no small feat, and xander-haj now works alongside 19 other contributors.

Despite the immense amount of work that went into this project, the result is brilliant. Not only does the game play just like the original, it also includes a number of new features that were not present in the original. For example, the game now supports pixel shaders, which allow for even more stunning visuals. It also supports widescreen aspect-ratios, giving players a wider field of view, making the game even more immersive on modern displays.

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Another new feature of this reimplementation is the higher quality world map. The new map is much more detailed and gives players a better sense of the world they are exploring. The game also gains a secondary item slot accessed with the 'X' button, allowing players to switch items more quickly and easily. And, with the ability to switch current items using the L/R, you don't have to waste time flipping back and forth to your inventory screen. Additionally, the game supports MSU audio tracks, where the DSP chip in the SNES is replaced by a modern synthesizer. You can hear the enhanced soundtrack below.



This reverse engineered clone of A Link to the Past is a masterpiece and the amount of time, effort, and talent that went into creating this is simply astonishing. Not only does the game play just like the original, but it also includes a number of new features that make it even more enjoyable to play. Currently, the code supports building on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Nintendo Switch, but there's nothing stopping a savvy coder from getting this to run in places where it never belonged. How about an enhanced Atari Jaguar CD port? A Sega Genesis demake? A "definitive edition" for the Sega CD/32X? It's a real possibility now.

Source: Neowin

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