You must be new to BotW threads, they are usually all about pointing out all the stuff people don't like about the game. The people who loved the game has mostly moved on to new stuff to enjoy.
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Jonathan Blow plays Breath of the Wild
- Thread starter AuthenticM
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You must be new to BotW threads, they are usually all about pointing out all the stuff people don't like about the game. The people who loved the game has mostly moved on to new stuff to enjoy.
So don't do them? It's a non-linear sandbox game and you should absolutely be taking advantage of that to play it in a way that's fun for you. Don't torture yourself with optional content you're not enjoying.
I have a theory that a lot of people who don't like this game see shackles and restraints everywhere in the game not realizing there are none.
Modern open world games have hit people with the stick of "do everything" rather than "choose what you want to do" for years now so you have to at least understand the mindset of these people.
I'm not saying he has to agree on EVERYTHING, just that I've actually never heard him speak about any game that isn't his in a positive manner. And considering how there's no shortage of good games, that's pretty pretentious/whiny.
It's like a music snob shitting on pop music. Sure, all pop music isn't deep, but that doesn't mean it's all shit either. Searching for some deeper meaning within everything instead of taking time to just enjoy things is exhausting/depressing and no one wants to be around that.
Well, yeah? Silent films are a product of their time, so is Old English literature or classical music. Not sure what your point is.
Bioshock inspired a lot of games and a lot of them improved upon the concept, the controls, the storytelling etc. That doesn't happen to every game the same way. It's really not that hard to understand.
He does that all the time, though.
it's all a bit reminiscent of that story about monkeys and a ladder enforcing a rule on themselves long after they had any reason to
semiconscious
Member
jonathan blow: people shouldn't play games that they don't enjoy 
...
it's not always about what's 'good' or 'bad'. sometimes it's just about what one considers to be fun...
...it's not always about what's 'good' or 'bad'. sometimes it's just about what one considers to be fun...
Council Pop
Member
Sorry, but this just isn't true. From reviews and people talking about the game, it seems that most people have completed about 90 shrines (out of 120) by the end of the game. I'm about 35 shrines down and it's rare to find one which takes more than 10 minutes.
So, assuming that all the shrines are 10 minutes long (many of them are much shorter):
10 x 90 = 900 minutes = 15 hours.
How Long To Beat says that the majority of people take about 85 hours until they're done with the game.
So, 15 is what percent of 85?
Answer: 17.65%
So, 17.65% of the game consists of shrines. Maybe make that 20% if you want to include the Divine Beasts and towers. The other 80% of the players time is spent doing non-shrine stuff.
Chainsawkitten
Member
Here's a PAX presentation where he talks about some games he loves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBl7Rnkt78
RadixNegative2
Member
He's spoken positively of 1001 Spikes, Doom 2016, Dead Cells, and quite a few other games that he's streamed in the past.
start with this video then, lots of praise for games not made by him.
it's not like he is forcing his opinions down your throat.
Boss Man
Member
Not to cherrypick you here but man, what? The shrines are so good. I was amazed, all the way to 120 shrines completed, that they were still able to consistently surprise me.
I was always disappointed when I went into one that was a combat trial instead of a puzzle though. That must have been what, 10-20 of them?
It's not for everyone. I thought it was a great experience. Still waiting for the dlc.
You mean they moved on to complain about other games.
Adam_Roman
Member
I love Blow's work, Braid and The Witness were two of my favorite games in the respective years they released. That said, holy shit I can't stand watching this. Seeing him flail around in the menus and complain that the A and B buttons are switched is super annoying and hard to watch.
I really dislike when people do stuff like this where they purposely try to show "X is getting praised for good design but it's REALLY backwards and awful and let me show you why" and their reasoning for showing why it's actually bad design in their head takes infinitely longer than if you gave the controller to an average person who would play the game.
I really dislike when people do stuff like this where they purposely try to show "X is getting praised for good design but it's REALLY backwards and awful and let me show you why" and their reasoning for showing why it's actually bad design in their head takes infinitely longer than if you gave the controller to an average person who would play the game.
Blow calls healing items lemons. Just a quirk
Well a person reading a book in 200 BC and 2017 is largely the same. You read the words on a page. As for movies, going back to watch movies in the 40s-50s is fine since by that point a lot of the foundations of cinematography had been laid down. Playing NES games would be more comparable to watching movies from the 20s before they really had things nailed down.
Then, the fact that games are interactive adds another challenge. Simply compare the amount of buttons on an NES controller vs a modern controller. The amount of complexity you can have in a modern game vs an old game is way different. That inevitably makes older games feel more primitive. Add in technological advances and it becomes harder to compare. And for old books and movies, it's all about the story and action, while games need to keep their audience engaged with the gameplay. And since gameplay builds on the foundations of the past, older games become less impressive. Consider the fact that a lot of the early 3D platformers felt novel simply because you were moving around in 3D. That wouldn't be enough nowadays, as seen by the reaction to Yooka-Laylee trying to recreate that era. Ultimately this is a very disjointed answer so I apologize, I'd need several pages to adequately explain my position, but I don't think you can compare games to other media when it comes to going back and visiting earlier entries.
That's because talking about the specific things in BotW is all spoiler stuff since the joy of the game comes from discovering its secrets on your own. I could post several stories about how unique the game was and what made it so good, but it would just be a big block of spoiler bars
boiled goose
good with gravy
Who has said it has no faults? :/
The critical consensus is that it does some things amazingly well, but there are many areas of potential improvement...
You are excluding the amount of time it takes to get to the shrines. Also shrines that have additional requirements to unlock etc.
It's like 80% of the game. You might as well tell people to go straight to Gan and beat the game on the opposite end of the spectrum. My issue is not the amount of shrines but the lack of good ones. There's some I thoroughly enjoy, there are some good puzzles and genuine ah ha moments. Then there are many that look incomplete, plain uninspired, or no puzzle at all (walk in>chest>talk to npc). My issue is have less shrines but that are well thought out or keep them all but make them memorable I'd rather have the latter as I love puzzles.
Your on gaf just scroll through this thread.
Messofanego
Banned
I'm surprised no one has provided a summary of his criticisms. AuthenticM (OP) or others, can you provide one?
So because some people accused him of it I googled "Jon Blow Twitter Zelda" and found that he un-ironically used the "Legend of Belda" fallacy despite him having no opinion on the series nor had he played one in years.
jim2point0
Banned
Late to the party, but it went exactly as I expected to and I don't think people should watch it.
Kinda not optional if you want any stamina at all though. Or hearts.
It's so irritating when people complain about a game they haven't played getting loads of praise.
Hey, I didn't say why people should watch it!
kitchenmotors
Banned
Worst post in this entire thread.
This + the way he is so confrontational about the game before he even starts should give plenty of context to the way he talks about the game.
The thread got ugly because a lot of people shit on him/ are overly protective of the game but I'd argue that this video does him no favor and he is partly responsible for it.
In this situation he is no better that a troll GAF account that would get banned the minute he brings up the Belda fallacy.
Council Pop
Member
But shrine quests and exploring the environment is part of the exploration elements of the game and has nothing to do with shrines themselves. We're talking about the actual gameplay experience here- any distinction between 'exploring the environment to find treasure chests' and 'exploring the environment to find shrines' is completely arbitrary.
It's a combination of the actual flaws of the game (weapon durability, UI issues, inventory management, combat, etc.), him not grasping some of the basic mechanics, and his personal idea of what makes good design differing from the Zelda team, and he thinks it's bad. And for some reason someone told him to immediately go into Pro Mode, which turns off all of the HUD, and that caused him to be confused and lost at several points in the game. It's a combination of actual issues and it not being Blow's type of game.
But there is an interesting contradiction undercutting everything where he complains about Zelda being super tutorial heavy and handholdy while at the same time wishing the game was more tutorial heavy and handholdy for certain areas. And he seems like he has an idea of how something should work in the game, and when it doesn't he gets mad at it
TwistedFreeze
Member
Yeesh, it's fine to not like it or even think it's overhyped but you can make the "X thing is highly rated because it's by Y developer or because it's X" for pretty much any popular and/or well respected. Thing is, usually, those games are still really good so I never quite understand that point
MisterR
Member
A lot of people here are children, emotionally if not chronologically anyway.
AndrewDean84xX
Banned
That's Trump level tweeting.
Vigilant Gambit
Member
His own fault, IMO. You gotta get used to a game's systems before you start doing shit like that.
AquaWateria
Member
Judging by his twitter comments he was ready to hate the game before he played it.
The Hermit
Member
His first four hours were really similar to my experience, sans the pro problems. I continued to play 20 hours and my issues magnified until I actually returned it to my brother in law. I have never in my entire life played a Zelda game and not beat it. I even beat Phantom Hourglass and that was probably my biggest Zelda disappointment. This was a first, I was crushed. Love the concept of a big open world Zelda, but there are like six major baffling game design decisions that just built off one another to ultimately have me bow out. Still hurts
It's quite interesting the discussion about Breath of the Wild, especially among Zelda fans, because this is the least Zelda of all games.
To me it was something that I wanted for so long, even the so acclaimed Link between Worlds didn't had that Zelda magic for me that I last felt in Wind Waker.
To others it was boring and empty, and the breakable weapons was the final nail in the coffin.
Yea, I agree.
Blow is absolutely talented and deserves his recognition, but his design philosophy is just one of many great ways of making games. The Witness was amazing, but BotW is amazing for different reasons.
Maybe that's because this is a game where that sort of thing varies per person? I can tell you exactly what I did that personally made this game stomp over every zelda in existence, as you can see, you clearly didn't experience what I did. The puzzle design is almost intentionally "poor" as you call it because this is a game where you get out what you put in.
My favorite moment in this game was where I came across a cliff that was way to high to climb with the default stamina that was in the middle of a lake. There was a raft near by for me to use to get to the cliff, but there was still the problem of climbing it. It was too high for revali's Gale to get me up there. You'd think I'd have to leave and get more stamina upgrades right?
WRONG. what I did was use Octo balloons to keep the raft raised into the air, and then used revali's Gale to ascend the the entirety of the cliff. In other Zelda games, I'd be forced to to backtrack and grab the hookshot or some other key item, but BotW allowed me to use my creativity to solve the problem at hand. And before you mention the fact I had to at least beat one dungeon to climb up the cliff, the feat can be done with just octoballons, stasis and at least five campfires on the raft. Stuff like this is why it's my favorite Zelda bar none right now.
I watched this morning and I knew he wasn't going to like it. Really enjoyed watching him antiplay it and I sent my friend some of the highlights:
Blow thoughts:"I hate it when i have a bag of snacks and the bag is hard to open."
"it's still a little crooked." makes it more crooked
"thanks for putting a nintendo switch ad on the startup of this game"
"is this designed by nambla"
he looks 12 and the lines are accenting his butt and crotch
"it's fine, he's a thousand year old elf"
he has the buttons backwards in his head so he keeps accidentally adding stamps
he's like antiplaying this game
he's spent like 10 minutes just dicking around in the little area outside the first cave - hasn't even gone down the hill to the old man
he can't help his ocd and is grabbing every apple and mushroom etc
sings: the legend of the barrel smasher. breath of yo momma
"dark souls this is not"
boko haram club
"alright boko haram, no female genital mutilation"
"you are apparently inherintly evil, that's what this game has taught me""
"why is his boko club bigger than my boko club but then it gets small"
roboscorp roboscorp does whatever a roboscorp can
"did you ever meet anyone who could only sprint for 5 seconds?"
he got to a shrine and can't get in because he hasn't activated the sheikah tower
tries to shoot bow without any arrows
"i guess i don't have that much range, what kind of weaksauce is that"
the chat told him to turn off the minimap which confused him.
he's climbing down the wall
this is his third try
he's confused because the game keeps ripping his arms off
he figured out it just kills him if his Y is below a certain number and it's offending him
he used a savestate
"ah, lemons"
he doesn't know how to drop weapons
Sheika language
"It's like I'm playing Fez"
"you don't just think you found a secret, it plays the music"
"I DIDNT GET THAT CHEST AHHHHHHHHHHHH"
"I DONT WANT TO TALK TO THE GUY I DIDNT GET THAT CHEST"
he was skipping through the old man convo so he's not going to know to teleport to the tower
"hope it was worth it, oh look it's a bow that's way worse than the one i have"
"can i teleport to a pin, that would be ridiculous"
he climbs down the tower without even talking to the old man
gets owned by a guardian
"yeah this game is totally 98 out of 100"
he doesn't know how to switch from bow to sword
"that's racist grass"
he was holding the food then dropped it on an unlit pot
and it fell on the ground
the egg broke on the ground
"that was communist"
"it's a witness puzzle, i can open the door"
he's skipping the cutscenes
main quest: destroy ganon
"i just shot jelly, why didn't i get the arrow back"
He found the flower puzzle and thought it was lemons and left
"Boy they sure did make a big map full of nothing"
"Lizal Minelli spear"
he gets stuck on a rock for a minute on a horse
"this is quality"
he almost falls through the map
Yoshimitsu126
Member
If Arin Hanson can play the Great Plateau in Pro Mode during a live session of Game Grumps and learn the visual cues of the world but you can't, then this game just isn't for you.
Council Pop
Member
Combat and weapon durability are design choices and are not 'actual flaws', as if they were bugs or something. Some people don't like those design choices, some people do. Any thread about BOTW on NeoGAF would show you that there is absolutely no consensus.
Although I do wish people would stop going on about weapon durability- it would basically be a totally different game without it, it's as integral to BOTW as being able to climb.
GlamFM
Banned
Nope, they wait for new Horizon Zero Dawn threads to pop up to discuss Zelda in depth there.
Actually this is the most Zelda a Zelda game has been in forever.
It just follows Zelda 1 & 2 over ALttP.
If anything most Zelda games were more like Adventure of Lolo in the over reliance on easy room-to-room puzzles.
Now whether that's good thing or not depends on the priorities...
Inventory management is the only real agreed flaw I'd say, so many possible QoL changes that can be made.
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