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[KungFucius]

Look at those 360p resolution textures, generic cliffs and volcanoes. Even vanilla WoW has better textures than that holy fuck. Zelda might be one of the best in gameplay/mechanics but technically and visually its a piece of shit. Only blind fans would say otherwise.

There is a difference between art style and graphical quality. If Nintendo's hardware was not shit, a higher resolution version of TotK's art style would be great. It was slightly amusing playing the game at first. I was like, this looks so blurry and meh at first, but an hour or so in and I didn't care anymore. I do think Nintendo did the team a great disservice by giving them all such a weal system to work on. Think about how gimped this thing looks compared to their vision.

 

[Sethbacca]

you cute, I can't imagine a new console to be worse than the last console... I know PS5 and Series are getting problems about developing games or so. But taking the same concept of a Tablet Console, but with 3x or 4x more power, better joy con, better screen, and the same good NINTENDO franchise, is the recipe to success again.
NINTNENDO always prepare something big for the launching consoles, and we're not wondering what old franchise will be ressurected this time. Donkey Kong?
Well, I feel more confortable wondering what NINTENDO will do, than using my imagination about SONY and MICROSOFT...
Like, more power, more games, old franchise again, new dashboard, meybe some Gamerscore System, like Playstation and Xbox. Maybe more multiplataform games, cause with more power they will put some regular industry games.
I can't imagine something bad for next NINTENDO console, but if they change the hybird Switch concept to a regular Table Console like PS5, well... That wouldn't be a good idea

If they can even avoid the every other console curse they’ve had going for a while now, that will be a miracle in the first place. If they’re smart they’ll just do a Super Switch or Switch 2, but I suspect they’ll do something asinine that requires you to rebuy everything again so they can sell you the same games for the next decade.

 

[Trilobit]

I love cel shading. I'd love something like high quality Studio Ghibli art:

I'd even go for Wind Waker 2 with that crispy clean art style, just even more refined and polished:

 

[hussar16]

you may call me crazy, but sure! I can imagine ZELDA looking like KENA for PS5, but running at a lower resolution, but using DLSS of Fidelity FX, to make it look like 4K...

I mean, ZELDA Tears of The Kingdom is not exacly a cell shading graphic, but a kind of cartoon visual, far from what Ratchet Clank look. But if you consider the density of KENA's forests, and all those green filters, you may imagine how next ZELDA will look like.

What's your opinion about next ZELDA?? Maybe more realistic like Twilight Princess?? maybe in the middle, like Ocarina?? Or even the same Breath of The Wild style, but with more polygon, textures, lighting??

let's talk my friends!!

After the downgrade to run on consoles kena don't look tht impressed

 

[K2D]

That's closer to what they already did in SS. Of course it could be done better on more powerful hardware, but nah, the current style is much better.

Skywards sword doesn't have a painterly style.

Another good direction would be Majora's Mask fan cgi/Kena (like mentioned before).

Honestly I really like the current artstyle, but I want them to change it up, and I definetly don't want another remix of the current Hyrule.

 

[fran.fernandez]

Nah. Playing Zelda on 4K tv gave me eye cancer . Best they will do is fullhd

 

[Buggy Loop]

I mean, BOTW/TOTK in 4K with better geometry for terrain is pretty much all I need. Ghibli art style, you’ll pull that out of my cold dead hands. Would look like shit in KENA art style.

 

[hemo memo]

I would rather BotW/TotK or SS style.

 

[E-Cat]

Nintendo will release PS3.5 looking games (in 4K this time) for the next 10 years and their fans will eat it up.

This is my genuine expectation.

 

[E-Cat]

I'm hoping for a colorful, but realistic style coupled with advanced physics simulation akin to this Ocarina of Time demo done on Unreal Engine 5 (ofc w/ good art instead of this fan crap).



Well, perhaps "hope" is not the right word. It would take a PS5 Pro level of hardware, which only a sane company releasing a console with normal hw specs for its time would do.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I would hope not. Kena was a nice looking game (although environments were limited), but it’s not an art style I’d want to see a next gen Zelda use.

 

[E-Cat]

Remember this bizarre SS CG trailer? That could be an interesting art style.

 

[Kataploom]

Thats how it was with most anime, the background was hand painted, while characters were cell shaded.

Yeah, I argued the same in a thread last year I guess, I'm currently doing my own zelda-like using that style, it's just too good as long as you keep background relatively stylized balancing with character colors/design

 

[cireza]

yeah dude! they are so beautiful !
but I hope for some WiiU tech demo, as a full game.
Is there any possibility ?

There are more dungeons in that Tech Demo than in the entirety of BotW.

 

[Kataploom]

If you live in the Nintendo bubble this would be insane looking graphics yeah

I have a PC more powerful than current consoles and think Zelda TOTK graphics are impressive, BOTW needed more internal and textures resolution, now TOTK fixed that, it would just need more internal resolution for 4K TVs

 

[Kataploom]

You are spot on. It's so obvious to me that Kena looks and play like a modern Zelda Ocarina of time. So odd that very few reviewers (or none) made the connection. Some made the connection to PS2 gaming, I mean why, not one game looks and play like Kena on PS2. Kena first source of inspiration is Zelda OOT.

Hey, you convinced me to get it sooner rather than later

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Look at those 360p resolution textures, generic cliffs and volcanoes. Even vanilla WoW has better textures than that holy fuck. Zelda might be one of the best in gameplay/mechanics but technically and visually its a piece of shit. Only blind fans would say otherwise.

Even just visually, BOTW/TOTK are among the best looking games of the generation.

If you get out of the niche gamer mindset of counting pixels and textures, you'll see that the level of animation fluidity and movement across every aspect of the game is so far beyond even the top technical games of this generation that it makes almost everything else look like a flash game compared to a Disney cartoon.

It's amazing how little artistry most gamers can actually see, because they've spent so long looking at GPU specs and graphics settings that they don't actually know the difference between top-tier animators and illustrators versus by-the-numbers dumping of assets into some predictable Unreal scene.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Even just visually, BOTW/TOTK are among the best looking games of the generation.

Nothing you said in that post was accurate. Even animation wise, it has nothing against last-gen Sony games such as Uncharted. Some of you hardcore fans are hilarious and I'm not even a Sony fan, I'm a PC gamer first and foremost. Gameplay mechanics are not the same as visuals and animations. Also if you rly wanna talk about gameplay mechanics I can name you a ton of survival games that have better mechanics than Zelda ever did, when it comes to crafting and building random shit. You delusional fans are the reason why gaming does not evolve, and I'm not talking about just Nintendo here, Sony, MS, etc. You people blindly praise something as if its the second coming of Jesus. You need to accept your favorite games are very much flawed, and when you do that, developers and corporations might improve the games instead of making the same thing every 5 years.

 

[Jboemios]

why? I have always heard Nintendo users that graphics are not important and that Zelda looks excelent

 

[LordOfChaos]

Bro Nintendo will get there in 2035, not the next Zelda

Switch is barely past 7th gen + Wii U level. 236 GFLOPS undocked, near 400 docked, and yes there are architectural differences but just looking at big ballparks. Next gen with DLSS upscaling might get to XBO-PS4 at best.

They stuck with an underclocked 8 year old Tegra X1 for this long...

 

[Justin9mm]

All I know is, putting the Nintendo games aside, the Switch hardware wise is an underpowered piece of shit. And the fact they still charge virtually the same price for it in 2023 is despicable. I blame the consumer for allowing Nintendo to get away with it.

 

[justonething]

Some like this but with the LTTP aesthetic

 

[K2D]

Some like this but with the LTTP aesthetic

Ack!

My eyes!

That is 5 steps backwards from BotW/TotK. The saturation, lack of color and sharp outlines..

 

[Fake]

Actually it is cell shaded, if you look at games like Xenoblade 3 and Tales of Arise, those games are not cell shaded but they mostly going for ”painted” look.

Cell-shaded

Painted

I do love Ni No Kuni cell shade implementation.

 

[justonething]

Ack!

My eyes!

That is 5 steps backwards from BotW/TotK. The saturation, lack of color and sharp outlines..

It could be refined, but as it is it looks a million times better than anything the Pokemon company has come up with.

This shit looks so ugly. Everything looks fake and sterile. No personality or soul at all.

Compare that ot this

Zelda BOTW/TOTK has a similar problem of looking sterile, generic, flat and lacking personality.
And I think I didn't communicate clearly. I don't want the new Zelda game to look like this Pokemon game, I just want what this fan did with the Pokemon games - which is turn the artwork from the original games into an actual game, to be done with Zelda with the original Link to the Past artwork.

 

[Brigandier]

Nothing you said in that post was accurate. Even animation wise, it has nothing against last-gen Sony games such as Uncharted. Some of you hardcore fans are hilarious and I'm not even a Sony fan, I'm a PC gamer first and foremost. Gameplay mechanics are not the same as visuals and animations. Also if you rly wanna talk about gameplay mechanics I can name you a ton of survival games that have better mechanics than Zelda ever did, when it comes to crafting and building random shit. You delusional fans are the reason why gaming does not evolve, and I'm not talking about just Nintendo here, Sony, MS, etc. You people blindly praise something as if its the second coming of Jesus. You need to accept your favorite games are very much flawed, and when you do that, developers and corporations might improve the games instead of making the same thing every 5 years.

Fanboys who say dumb shit like "it's fine as it is just give me 60fps and better textures" are the fucking worst... They're happy to pay out $70 for the same game with better frame rates on a new $300-400 console....

People's standards and expectations are far too easy to meet and please, Sony Nintendo MS and any gaming publisher know this and take advantage of it.

People need to aim higher and have better expectations no wonder the industry has been so stagnant.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

Also if you rly wanna talk about gameplay mechanics I can name you a ton of survival games that have better mechanics than Zelda ever did, when it comes to crafting and building random shit.

Really no need to respond to you on animation quality when you make comments like this.

It characterizes your whole reasoning process when you try to line up previous survival / sandbox games against TOTK on a per-feature bullet point basis (read: purely techie, zero design knowledge), without being able to grasp why TOTK's integration of systems is rightly seen as a revolutionary new standard by the entire industry.

 

[The Cockatrice]

rightly seen as a revolutionary new standard by the entire industry.

 

[justiceiro]

may call me crazy

You're crazy

 

[GymWolf]

Some delightful hot takes in this topic

 

[Gojiira]

I understand wanting more full-fledged dungeons rather than shrines, but that would mean a very empty world, because they probably can't do both. The great thing about BOTW and TOTK is that there's stuff to find pretty much everywhere. And I don't think they're going back to much smaller worlds after the enormous success of the last two games.

Sorry but simple solution is to just make the world smaller so you dont have to fill it with pointless ‘content’..Instead focus on making actually UNIQUE content. Stuff to find everywhere is indeed good but there is a limit before repetition sinks in.
And tbh ‘empty’ doesnt inherently mean unrewarding, Shadow of the Colossus’ game world is centred entirely on the Colossi and exploration and is fantastic because of it, environmental storytelling, atmosphere etc can go a long way. Im not saying this is the only solution, but yeah hundreds of boring shrines is worse than just about any other solution.

 

[Sleepwalker]

Kena is extremely mid so nah, I'm good. Let Nintendo do their own thing.

 

[Dorago]

Zelda always innovates, and they have a huge problem if they make a third game the same. Namely EVERY damn company is making or has made a BotW type game. How will Zelda stand out, with it's inevitably shitty graphics on 'withered tech' hardware? Plus Nintendo's blue ocean strategy means they aren't going to produce a game that follows trends. Granted they haven't been a trend setter since the N64 days but Nintendo games die on the vine if they try to copy.

 

[RoadHazard]

Sorry but simple solution is to just make the world smaller so you dont have to fill it with pointless ‘content’..Instead focus on making actually UNIQUE content. Stuff to find everywhere is indeed good but there is a limit before repetition sinks in.
And tbh ‘empty’ doesnt inherently mean unrewarding, Shadow of the Colossus’ game world is centred entirely on the Colossi and exploration and is fantastic because of it, environmental storytelling, atmosphere etc can go a long way. Im not saying this is the only solution, but yeah hundreds of boring shrines is worse than just about any other solution.

I love having a large world to explore. I would be very disappointed if they were to go back to small worlds that just herd you from A to B to C with little or no room for exploration, like SS and to a lesser extent TP.

And I don't find it repetitive. The shrines are pretty varied (so far they've been better in TOTK than they were in BOTW), and there are NPCs with side quests all over the place.

 

[RoadHazard]

Zelda always innovates, and they have a huge problem if they make a third game the same. Namely EVERY damn company is making or has made a BotW type game. How will Zelda stand out, with it's inevitably shitty graphics on 'withered tech' hardware? Plus Nintendo's blue ocean strategy means they aren't going to produce a game that follows trends. Granted they haven't been a trend setter since the N64 days but Nintendo games die on the vine if they try to copy.

Who has made a BOTW type game? There's From with Elden Ring, and I guess Genshin Impact (only superficially though, it feels nothing like BOTW to play). What else? There are surprisingly few games that feel anything like it.

 

[Kataploom]

why? I have always heard Nintendo users that graphics are not important and that Zelda looks excelent

Art >>>>>>>>>> Tech.

It's not that "Nintendo fans don't about graphics", it's that Nintendo fans care about graphics in a different way. A game with great art direction will look amazing even with tech limitations. Oc having both would be perfect but life isn't, so I'll pick Art before rendering tech all day every day.

Bro Nintendo will get there in 2035, not the next Zelda

Switch is barely past 7th gen + Wii U level. 236 GFLOPS undocked, near 400 docked, and yes there are architectural differences but just looking at big ballparks. Next gen with DLSS upscaling might get to XBO-PS4 at best.

They stuck with an underclocked 8 year old Tegra X1 for this long...

I mean, what TOTK do with rendering is far beyond what PS3/360 ever did. Don't let yourself fool by cell shaded characters, they aren't lower detailed in terms of polygon count than the most graphically complex PS360 games. It also has:
- Full PBR pipeline/materials
- Dynamic lighting (full day/night cycle)
- Global illumination
- Volumetric lighting
- Lots of particles effects even being effected by other game elements
- All of that running in a vast open world with basically infinite view distance with complex physics that can be manipulated in different ways by the player.
- AI is actually very good sometimes, enemies and NPC can react to random events or items around them (like that Moblin running to that puddle when I burned him... Hell, wish companions were half as smart, goddamn)
- etc, etc.

No 7th gen game comes close to what BOTW does, let alone TOTK. Some can do some of the stuff they do, none does all of that let alone at 900p-1080p.

It could be refined, but as it is it looks a million times better than anything the Pokemon company has come up with.

This shit looks so ugly. Everything looks fake and sterile. No personality or soul at all.

Compare that ot this

Zelda BOTW/TOTK has a similar problem of looking sterile, generic, flat and lacking personality.
And I think I didn't communicate clearly. I don't want the new Zelda game to look like this Pokemon game, I just want what this fan did with the Pokemon games - which is turn the artwork from the original games into an actual game, to be done with Zelda with the original Link to the Past artwork.

Yeah, a matter of tastes, can't see that myself. Seems like some people can't stand when screen is not screaming at you with lots of details 100% of the time with barely any balance at all... You must love asian web sites design I guess.

Nothing you said in that post was accurate. Even animation wise, it has nothing against last-gen Sony games such as Uncharted. Some of you hardcore fans are hilarious and I'm not even a Sony fan, I'm a PC gamer first and foremost. Gameplay mechanics are not the same as visuals and animations. Also if you rly wanna talk about gameplay mechanics I can name you a ton of survival games that have better mechanics than Zelda ever did, when it comes to crafting and building random shit. You delusional fans are the reason why gaming does not evolve, and I'm not talking about just Nintendo here, Sony, MS, etc. You people blindly praise something as if its the second coming of Jesus. You need to accept your favorite games are very much flawed, and when you do that, developers and corporations might improve the games instead of making the same thing every 5 years.

See second quoted reply in this post. But you're just hating on the games without any reasoning so I don't care about you.

 

[MrMephistoX]

Once Nintendo gets up to PS4 (3.5) level it’s kind of diminishing returns and I’d be willing to be they’re able to push the hardware hard enough at that point where you won’t even notice it’s a gen behind. Let’s be honest with mobile and Indy most games aren’t even taking full advantage of the PS5 hardware and most Japanese developers are just coding to PS4 as the baseline and it just runs better on PS5 so with nintendos art direction things could look great next gen…if they don’t do something stupid like not including enough ram to save money.

 

[justonething]

Yeah, a matter of tastes, can't see that myself. Seems like some people can't stand when screen is not screaming at you with lots of details 100% of the time with barely any balance at all... You must love asian web sites design I guess.

Would love to know how you took away that I "can't stand when screen is not screaming at you" especially with the examples I gave.

 

[Mossybrew]

I've wondered more than once playing totk how the game could look on modern hardware. Yeah I get it gameplay over graphics yadda yadda but this game just looks so awful it's a constant distraction.

 

[LordOfChaos]

I mean, what TOTK do with rendering is far beyond what PS3/360 ever did. Don't let yourself fool by cell shaded characters, they aren't lower detailed in terms of polygon count than the most graphically complex PS360 games. It also has:
- Full PBR pipeline/materials
- Dynamic lighting (full day/night cycle)
- Global illumination
- Volumetric lighting
- Lots of particles effects even being effected by other game elements
- All of that running in a vast open world with basically infinite view distance with complex physics that can be manipulated in different ways by the player.
- AI is actually very good sometimes, enemies and NPC can react to random events or items around them (like that Moblin running to that puddle when I burned him... Hell, wish companions were half as smart, goddamn)
- etc, etc.

No 7th gen game comes close to what BOTW does, let alone TOTK. Some can do some of the stuff they do, none does all of that let alone at 900p-1080p.

It uses more advanced techniques from modern times for sure, but, it also looks nearly the same as it did on the Wii U 6 years ago, albeit at a higher resolution only when docked. Not dramatically higher.

Just power wise, it's only somewhat ahead of the 7th gen, the extra RAM helps of course. It's not even near base 8th gen consoles. So in terms of expectations for Nintendo next gen, I'd set my expectations between XBO-PS4, not PS5. Which makes sense as the chips available to it might be around 1Tflop. Def not 10+. DLSS will also help.

This isn't shitting on it at all, that's my realistic take on the world and what's likely from them next if they continue with portable Switch compatibility in next gen.

 

[The Infectious Paradox]

Yeah right lol. They don't have to so why would they? Nintendo knows they can do gang busters at 480p

 

[penguininthesun]

Well it shouldn’t be hard to imagine, considering Ember Lab made this before Kena:

 

[Juras]

Please get that cheaps artstyle away from Zelda

Sometimes I have dilemma if post like your, claiming unimaginable art style with scenery screenshot on level tier available in probably most open world fantasy rpgs, are serious or troll.

 

[buenoblue]

It obviously really doesn't matter 2hat it looks like. People will eat it anyway so why bother.

 

[daveonezero]

I’d rather they max out draw distance, higher resolution textures, get rid of LOF.

Basically take best emulation if the switch games and do that.

Nothing else needed.

Sometimes I have dilemma if post like your, claiming unimaginable art style with scenery screenshot on level tier available in probably most open world fantasy rpgs, are serious or troll.

Can you visit those places in the images?

Every screenshot of Switch Zelda’s have interesting places you can actually go. That’s why it is impressive.

Zelda always innovates, and they have a huge problem if they make a third game the same. Namely EVERY damn company is making or has made a BotW type game. How will Zelda stand out, with it's inevitably shitty graphics on 'withered tech' hardware? Plus Nintendo's blue ocean strategy means they aren't going to produce a game that follows trends. Granted they haven't been a trend setter since the N64 days but Nintendo games die on the vine if they try to copy.

It has been 6 years and 2 games and no one has even come close.

 

[CGNoire]

Nah it will look like this and run at 1080p

whats that from?

 

[EverydayBeast]

I enjoyed Kena but it’s something from the ps2 era and sure the nature in it is beautiful but I cannot let someone compare it to TEARS OF THE KINGDOM.

 

[scydrex]

The OP talks about Kena graphics and some of you saying it dosen't compare to TOTK. Sure is a mid game or AA game released for $40 not 70.

 

[Muffdraul]

Maybe I should play Kena again. It was one of the first PS5 games I bought, in fact I think I bought it before I even had the console. It looked beautiful and fun. But it turned out to be such a basic bitch of a game, I pissed my pants out of pure boredom after about three hours and never went back to it. But that was right after I finally got my PS5, like a year late. Could have been because I had a lot of other new unplayed games I wanted to get to.

That said, I love Zelda's current look on Switch and don't particularly want it to look like Kena or anything else.

 

[Spukc]

Look at those 360p resolution textures, generic cliffs and volcanoes. Even vanilla WoW has better textures than that holy fuck. Zelda might be one of the best in gameplay/mechanics but technically and visually its a piece of shit. Only blind fans would say otherwise.

Some of you guys on gaf wouldn’t know what art-direction means in a game even if it hit you in the face straight for 24 hours.

Botw and totk lack things in modern console space- mainly resolution and fps.

But chasing photo realism is the last fucking thing we need from ninty