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gimymblert
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« Reply #614 on: March 29, 2017, 05:58:02 PM » |
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Yes they wanted to keep the player trained, as I have said they didn't back down on the tutorial section, they made bigger and funnier and basically did a bit of "PR speak". Basically they had bet that if they could fool you it wasn't a tutorial section player will not complain about the necessary stuff. So player freedom is very much as much as reason allow, which to be frank, is the only hard limit they imposed with the outer invisible wall (they do have some smaller hard limit like you need the zora tunic (which allow to chokepoint some story there too) to reach the boss of Zora's I think, not there yet).
The freedom is not really important anyway, that's PR, it's really a game about preparation and the freedom is just a tool for that, You start nake then they give you cloth to put on (ie it teach you to prepare yourself), that's also why you start without a weapon and must find some on ground and why they break, that's why the world is stuff with recipe to pick, and cooking, and looking for cloth, and looking for runes, and liberating the beast, and doing the shrines, and looking for korok seed, none of that make you more free or "more powerful", they make you "prepare", it's freedom as in a supermarket to prepare a party, sure you can buy whatever you want, but it will all be for the party. Even the story is about preparation, you slept because you were not prepared, ganon is out beause people where not prepared, zelda's story is all about preparation and reviving the beast was about preparing for the return of ganon. Gta is more about freedom (in system, not story or setting).
And the game is still hand holdy, it just hold your hand in the direction YOU want to go with subtle nudge to make you feel like YOU made it! lol Everything is a puzzle and everything is a careful "stumble". Part of that is to make many thing optional THEREFORE hidden so the player feel smart when they discover it, ie instead of having the game surexploiting the basic move set, you have many sugar fluff that can act as convenience or toys to customize the situation.
I mean they tell you what to do verbatim (go to shrine, go to ganon), but instead of having complex varied objective they multiply the requirement (which allow out of order sequence) and made even more optional so you don't really feel it was important RELATIVELY. Instead of saying go to A, B, and C, the game tell you go to C however you want, then tell you A lead to B and B lead to C, you put 2 and 2 together and you feel smart lol, then it casually toss a also there is B' and then add a hidden (but heavily signposted) B" to let you feel smart when you discover it (all according to keikaku).
Not only it tells you everything mandatory, it tell you that in multiple way at every occasion (for example many recipe have basically the same function and that pop up text is just different flavor of the same thing, and you see that pop up a lot, every time you have a new recipe variant. For example the game don't tell you right away how to shield board, but they are smart they put it all other the marketing to be sure that it is there and that you will look for it lol.
The game pretend it's hard and you are on your own, but it's really like kids on a playground under the watchful eye of an adult, ie in case of problem you can always rely on them to intervene, so you can go reckless, whenever you hurt yourself you can retreat to them and they are there to stuff you with candy and hugs and let you pretend you are big independent boy, but you will never run out of weapon or potion or whatever, it doesn't need dynamic difficulty, it let the player gauge it's own recklessness.
I'm playing the game using a naked run (currently onto gerudo's cold mountain) but I don't find teh game any more difficult that regular zelda, enemy have a diversity of move that's all smoke and mirror, yeah some avoid the bomb or kick it, or do a lot a dancing around, how much of an impact it has on how you defeat them? the base tactic always works let them exhaust themselves then strike when they taunt you, like old zelda game, except they replaced waiting with more role play for the monster to keep you entertained (lynel are fucking poser). If you want to beat enemy use the weapon of the area and he go down with the same amount of hits than in weaker area with weaker weapon.
The key insight was to decouple attack progression and defense progression, with a soft time gate with attack using constant consumable to be sustained, I guess this could work for defense too. Most situation, aside from both are never a real threat, you can just run away, in fact just walking away works, enemy pause when hitting and it's enough to get out of their attack radius, combat only seems hard when you stay in that radius and they one shoot you with their comically long tell (except lazer, but that's shock value, and it's easily counterable by learning only one skill).
That game is god damn genius, it's all prestidigitation, it's literally Oz before you discover the trick. The thing is while other game start with a no fun basic state where you progressively the fun, the game makes his basic core fun and hide the funnier move so you can feel even more amazement when you discover them.
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