Your browser is holding you back. Level up here: operagx.gg/DarylTalksGames3 Thanks to Opera GX for sponsoring! What's been your favorite "cheat" you've pulled off in TOTK?
I really want to play games the intended way, that is the way developers intended. I don't enjoy cheap cheeses and even if I see opportunity to do them I refuse to. I just think it's common sense that you trust developers of the games to know how to bring you best experience. If you alter it there is too much third wall breaking and I don't like that. I like immersion way more over feeling like "smart person".
'MimIc TeAr Is ChEaTiNG' uses giant crusher with royal knights resolve ash of war with 16 buffs slamming the boss for 46000 damage per swing and calls it skill
@@matrixfull are you really playing 'as they intend' if you refuse to use over 50% of the mechanics and items they hand deliver to you? i.e. both in totk and any souls series naked with only sticks is not the intended way no matter how much the community tries to force feed you that b/s
@@matrixfullcheck the video at 17:42 Aonuma himself says you’re meant to “cheat” although cheat isn’t necessarily the best word for it. Think of it as creative solutions rather than cheating. All within the realms of what is allowed in game by the developers because otherwise they wouldn’t have added it. Cheating would be something like whistle running in BOTW. That was not intended by the devs that’s a glitch that breaks the games mechanics. THATS cheating. Whereas every creative solution your mind can fathom no matter how much it feels like cheating in Tears is just that. A creative solution thought up by you and provided by the devs.
if you think about the rocket jump shrine, it teaches you MULTIPLE shield things. It's actively showing you that there are lots of options for fusing stuff to shields that aren't just "more durability"
And its subtitle is something along the lines of "more than defense", which tells you right when you walk in that the lesson is about the versatility of shields.
My feeling has always been that the developers were watching how speed runners were breaking breath of the wild, and decided to make a game that was designed to be exploited like that
Inspired by, maybe. But I can't imagine myself being excited to see a speedrun until they find some way to clip through a wall that sends them half-way across the world. Part of what made exploits fun was that it was some absurd solution that seemingly appeared from thin air. Here, they're just handing you toys and telling you the experience they built isn't worth your time.
The speed runners in BotW were “cheating” in quite lame ways outside of the ‘rules’ of the game. Basically finding glitches. Like the whistle running and whatever that ‘bullet bounce’ is called (I’ve forgotten all the corny glitch names). All the creative solutions Ive seen in TotK are way better. Though I haven’t seen speed running videos and assume they’re packed with lame stuff.
@@leeshapon I’ve seen tons of speed runs. I found most of the ones involving glitches to be boring as it wasn’t someone beating the game quickly as I view beating the game. It would be like if someone found a random sequence of key presses that instantly teleport you to Gannon where you can then 1 shot and the process took 20 seconds To me that’s not “beating the game quickly”
Since the beginning, I've felt like this game's shrines are intended as sparks of inspiration for the player. In the shrines, they teach general concepts. I definitely figured out a few awesome tricks thanks to the foundation that they formed for me
That's why i like those proving grounds shrines so much, they make you rely on experimenting with the mechanics the game gives for you, like that shield rocket boost, and teach you a lot about the deeper mechanics in a controlled envrionment. The shrines in this game are a lot better for experimentation in general tbh
I think it's interesting that when I find an obviously unintended solution, I *always* have a moment where I question "...wait, am I sure that wasn't intended" no matter how farfetched it was
Yeah…. Almost any shrine with movable objects you can ascend through after time warping and get into broken places. Or attach rockets to your shield before entering, etc. like the shrines are really fun but it’s so easy to cheese so so many of them
the shrine for ascend it surrounded by ice and ice is unclimbable naturally, so the obvious thing to do is make a tree wall and climb it to the shrine, i did that the first time i played through but on a new playthrough i wondered 'was that not the intended way?' and so i continued to circle the mountain and you have a short drop down with your way back up covered in unclimbable ice which led to me having to make a 45 minute treck back to the temple of time and all the way past every other shrine a second time because the closed loop cannot be backtracked with no glider no bombs no zonai materials they *intend* for you to build things its kind of the point of the game not *cheese*. you might think something isn't intended but it is, if its not youll painfully know as you make an hour long walk back or get a game over screen
@@Spyziy Can confirm. I've completed shrines that were CLEARLY intended to be completed AFTER getting the glider. Without the glider. Hell, I've mapped sky islands without the glider. That's how damn broken this game is, and I love it. It was a pain in the ass, but I did it lol.
@@thunderborn3231 My point isnt that they dont want you to build in creative ways to solve problems, it's that combining multiple abilties can completely bypass the entire shrine. By lifting up a plank you're supposed to put a ball on and fly across a massive ravine in a shrine in the right position, freezing it with time stop, then ascending through it, you can completely climb over the shrines walls and get straight to the blessing.
It's the TOTK variation of the Xanatos gambit. Gamer: Hah, I beat it in a way the devs thought couldn't or shouldn't be done. TOTK Devs: Yes, it's performing as designed. We won.
I've also seen a lot of people treating the platform recall trick "cheating" as well, but several shrines demand that you know about it. There's one with a sagging bridge you have to ultrahand into place and then recall it back up so you can reach the other end. The devs know, and they want you to know too.
I'd honestly never thought of it until seeing it in this video. There was a backpack korok that would have gone WAAAAYYY faster if I'd though of that. instead I had to build some horrible stepladder bridge. XD
Boy did I feel smart when I discovered it. For me it was the very first shrine on the surface. It expected me to have the paraglider but because I had run off in the other direction than the game told me to, I didn't have it yet. There was the box that I was obviously supposed to shoot in the air, jump off and glide over the gap. And there was me glider-less and still pretty clueless about all the mechanics and stuff. Of course, you can leave shrines any time so I thought that was the safetly measure left by the devs if you come here when you can't complete it yet. And then the thought struck me: what if I float the cube over the gap, climb on and rewind? And obviously it worked! So personally, I felt like I worked for that trick and deserve to use it now.
Ascend ability was originally a cheat code during development for devs to get around quickly untill they realized how annoying getting out of caves is without it so they just made it a real thing 😂
I think a lot of the time when the “cheating” feels bad is just when the cheese is kinda trivial and lame. Like just happening to have a rocket shield and skipping the whole shrine incidentally feels kinda lame cause you basically didn’t do it at all. Whereas solving it with some random bullshit that just so happens to work out feels very fun
I agre, true cheese is when the correct way is easier than the cheese way, but you didn’t bother doing it the correct way so you chose the harder cheesy way
This is defintely how I feel. No amount on weird contraptions I build to make solutions make me feel bad for completing a shrine, because I applied creativity to use it. But if there is a complex puzzle in front of me for a chest, and I simply abuse recall, then it just feels like I robbed myself of doing something cool.
@@maxminton7861 Exactly. I think in some cases alternative solutions can be good puzzle design, in some others not so much. Like building your 1st makeshift bridge to skip something, using rockets to gain height, or bomb flowering a pressure pad is fun the 1st time, but when this solution can be repeated so many times I don't care that it's ''uNiNtEnDeD, omg so many solutions = good design'' at this point it's a non puzzle. And even the intended solutions are sometimes too easy because most of the shrines are not really all that hard. They usually introduce a concept, then make it a little bit more difficult, then they end the shrine abruptly before the can expand on the concept because they have to keep things bitesized. Doesn't help that in an open world everything has to be level 1 because they never know where you can go, so you're left with many disappointing shrines and alternative solutions are not really all that fun most of the time.
@@awayekevin3397 I agree with this 100%. I don't understand how people can say that the shrines have obtuse solutions. Even the "intended" way is super easy 90% of the time. I really miss the difficult puzzles in other Zelda's, but I don't think we'll ever get them back because of how much more widespread the series has gotten, and it must appeal to a wider audience that hasn't been playing Zelda for 20 years.
I’ve finished all the shrines by now, and since I always just carry rocket shields, there’s been a good number of them where I’ve seen the possibility for an easy cheese and chosen to do the intended puzzle anyway, because the puzzles are fun to solve and the cheese being there just gives me a safety net. The few times I’ve just used the cheese, it’s because I’ve been standing there like ‘ok, I know how to solve this, it seems annoying and tedious to get it exactly right, so I won’t bother’. Gets me the fun part of solving the puzzle without having to go through the actual work of executing the solution
The puzzles aren't engaging enough to make me do them by choice. Having some puzzles literally just raise a platform in a game where any number of banal things can shoot you upward is bad design.
I didn't use rocket shields much, but I did use my fair share of Recall Elevators and Bomb-Flower-Shields. It's just really rewarding to cheese yourself through a puzzle
The multitude of options for cheese also helps keep the open world more open. There are a lot of games where you can access more challenging areas early, but the expected response after getting eaten by a dinosaur or something is to backtrack and come back later. In BotW/TotK, you're encouraged to give it another try and think of something clever.
One of the best parts about totk in my opinion, is that if you find yourself losing you can quite literally just burn through materials to fuck up whatever you're fighting. Find yourself dying over and over again against an enemy camp? Welp, time to load that lynel bow with rubies to nuke the shit out of them
@@gabusdeux Or get good, like I had to do when I first played BotW and got trapped by the Zora's domain lynel, without knowing I could go back to an earlier save. Anyway, I died a few hundred times, but I managed to beat it!
@@idiotically-everythingI love the game gives you options tho!! I absolutely adore it, esp bc I’m not a gamer-gamer who’s got like, less than twenty game experiences under my belt. My brother (who I shit you not, has like 4 solid years by now of game time on Destiny/Destiny 2) was like “oh yeah all the bosses are super easy lol” and I’m like, thank god for that a little bit, bc it keeps me going through em… Those are necessary experiences that are made accessible so everyone, from pros to little 10-year old Timmy (I do find it hilarious tho bc it’s intended that way but in Australia at least, BOTW and TOTK are both rated M) can enjoy and complete the game. The optional enemies are what sell me though. Lynels, and I haven’t tried yet but Gleeoks? Genuinely difficult and skill requiring! Yes you could cheese them, but aside from duplicating (my game updated beyond it) it’ll drain your resources real quick I’d imagine. So esp if you wanna farm their parts for upgrades… it’s time to learn those mechanics a bit, cook some dishes that temporarily let you fight god, and nail your flurry time rushes in time with their attacks. I’ve done that for Lynels now, and breezed the Red variety so will be taking on blue and whites now. Hoping to fight a Gleeok soon once I restock on arrows LMAO. I should also give a big shoutout to the Fuse ability which MASSIVELY improves upon BOTW’s weapon system, just… literally game changing. Nothing beats the Hudson Shield! 😤
@@idiotically-everything lol, it sounds like you just got used to it's fighting patterns. That's fine and all, but you could have probably beaten it easier if you had a shit ton of materials y'know? Besides though, I was more referencing things like massive monster groups
I was absolutely mind bogged when I first played the game and learned all the new abilities the game gives you and it instantly made me think Nintendo has incredible faith in their level design, and I felt respected as a player to be trusted with the absolute amount of freedom
Honestly every single hour with Totk I have spent so far has felt like i was cheating the game even if it's something as simple as fusing 2 strong weapons together to make something that even a lynel would fear or using reversal on a piece of metal i dropped from the air to give me height to jump and paraglide to the end of the shrine. However more often than not, I found myself being more proud of my efforts when they went against the designed structure of the game which is why it's really cool in my opinion that the devs have that "it's your game. Do something creative if you want" kind of attitude.
the game urges you to do that tho, hows that cheating? its like ppl like you assume that because you did something different, or saw a different solution its not "intended" but riddle me this, if it wasnt intended why is it allowed? cheating would be the dupe glitch, or hacking/modding the game, thats cheating, but thinking you cheated cuz the game allowed you to use a different solution to the puzzle is about the worst kind of gatekeeping ive seen gamers utter.
@@Aqsticgod "If it wasn't intended, why is it allowed?" That's not really how that works. In pretty much any game, even without glitches, there are ways to do things the game allows even though they aren't intended. It's a big part of why glitchless speedruns are just as entertaining as the glitch ones. TOTK and BOTW were likely built with each puzzle having at least one solution, maybe even a few, in mind, but the game still wants you to be able to find solutions they didn't consider. Plenty of solutions absolutely can be described as "cheating the puzzle," but it's not a bad thing to cheat them. I don't think anyone is gatekeeping this except the people actively against the cheese.
I love how they fully embraced open puzzle design. Finding creative ways around a puzzle is often just as fun as solving it. Plus it means you’re basically never stuck in the game, if you think hard enough there’s always a way forward
When I cheese a puzzle that appears to have an intended solution, I don’t always feel clever. I don’t feel like I cheated the game to win, or like I cheated myself out of the satisfaction of solving it “right”, instead I feel like the game won against me because I’m too poopoo brain to figure out the solution so I had to activate rocket shield easy mode.
I think the puzzles are the easy way out actually. I imagine if there's an absolute uncreative person that only wants to play by the rules enters a puzzle room, they can certainly find all the tools to solve it, like in the older games. But I fell like that's more of a failsave. If you're not creative enough to "cheese" your way through, you can go the old-fashioned way.
@@luka_8 Depends on the shrine. Bomb-shield-bouncing over the entire puzzle is unsatisfying. Fusing the stupid ball to a random stick you have, throwing it, missing, recalling it to yourself, throwing it at the target again, only to realize that you now have to jump 2 stories to get to the exit door, probably using the mechanic you already couldn't figure out when trying to solve the puzzle correctly. So, you check your inventory and don't have any bomb shields but do have a board shield (a shield with a 4x8 sheet of wood attached), so you drop it, ultrahand it up where you need to be, tilt it so you can make it all the way, bring it back, and hop on and recall. (anyone who's done this shrine probably knows which this is) That's satisfying.
If you’re not playing online competitively, do anything the game will allow you to have fun. The best part about both BOTW and TOTK is finding out how other people did the same puzzle/obstacle that you did. I am always amazing, entertained, laughing when people will better or dumber ways to do things.
This video was recommended to me right around when it came out, and just seeing the title helped make my tine with the game since a bit more fun. Just remembering when i wanted ro use a neat trick "maybe they didnt intend this, but they definitely intended players to do what they didnt intend" and specifically remember this video existing. I didnt even watch it until right now
I would say the ONE exception I’ve seen to this thus far is bomb arrows being able to activate those big shrine pressure plates. That feels like you can dodge the lessons they want to teach you on occasion
I found another way to cheese it, I hover the balls with ultrahand to big plates and then use recall 💀 I thought this was intended before I cheesed 3 or so shrines and was like yep. I'm cheesing
I remember talking with a friend about the shrine where you learn about stablizers. At the end of it there's a massive pit you need to get over somehow. He has a clip of him managing to piece together a long chain of grates, use a stablizer to prop them upright at a 45° angle, then walk up it and glide the rest of the way across the pit. And by pure chance that was actually one of the shrines I *_also_* had saved a clip of me completing it, and I used the stablizer to create a catapult to shoot me across the pit.
My favorite story about this was in the shrine where you have to put the balls in specific holes as a sort of combination lock. I couldn't figure out how to get the bonus chest room to open up, so I decided to carefully use a bomb jump to get over the wall. It was then that I realized that the door wouldn't be opening behind me, trapping me inside the room. It was a perfect example of the game allowing an action but not endorsing it
As always I'm super impressed with the Zelda team. For a game so open-ended. I'm surprised that there are no major issues or bugs with it. I remember reading about how Shigeru Miyamoto would have nightmares that people would find bugs or cheats in the games, and it's cool that now everyone is like "fuck it" and "the point is to BS and cheat". It feels like it's both liberating to both the player and the game devs. Also, I used to be one of those people that needed everything to be done perfectly and to have collected everything when it comes to games. And now with big games like BOTW and TOTK, they've shown me that I don't need to have a perfect run through and I don't need to collect everything. It's shown me that I am more imaginative and creative than I thought I was and that it's okay to make mistakes and miss some things. That way, I always have something to look forward to no matter how many hours I've put into the game! If this is the start of a new era in Zelda games (and an already phenomenal start at that), can't wait to see what the future has in store!
The problem of those non-linear but open (sandbox-like) world games is sometimes the chaos which can unfold itself, especially with enemy spawns. Example from BotW as I am not too much into TOTK yet: Nighttime, kees swarm coming for you, Yiga Officer spawns and attacks, while stal-enemies spawn next to you to attack - everyone knows that situation if you've been to the late game. I am taking a great relief in knowing that I am always able to choose my fights - in linear games they are forced most of the times, especially in dungeons. If I had to drop into an enemy camp because I ran out of stamina while paragliding, it is good to know that you can always teleport yourself somewhere else, especially if there are really strong enemies presents. Same with your example: If you are low on weapons or most of your weapons are about to break, its good to have a hot air balloon at hand to just skip the fights you would have to do if you ascended the perceived intended way. In exchange you will miss out on loot and also some combat training. This is also part of the freedom which was advertised with Breath of the Wild and is even more prevalent with Tears of the Kingdom. Sometimes when I solve a shrine it feels cheap for me too. Usually I will go back and look for the "intended" solution - thats also fun for me, to toss aside my "obvious" "cheaty" solution and go for an alternative.
Crystals are set to respawn back at starting location if you drop of lose them. The game assumed you dropped it and so if respawn at the starting point.
Small spoilers ahead: I’m glad that you can have janky solutions to puzzles because I still don’t know what the “intended methods” were for like half of Mineru’s shrine, both the lava corridor and the rail that kept blocking you I had to brute force my way through
I figured out the Lava corridor, but that electric rail, though.... I eventually just glued all the available wheels into a line on the part box and stood it against the opposite wall, climbed the ladder, and pulled the box back up to me. I'm really curious to know the actual intended way to solve that.
Here's the biggest thing I've learned about how interestingly and *differently* this game is designed, in my time. First, with the exception of shrines and the temples - and even half of those, honestly - fighting *constructs* is entirely optional. That enemy you were looking at as you took what was very clearly a built-in bypass? A construct. This was actually taught to me in the tutorial of the game, that initial sky island. See, there's nothing stopping you from going to the snowy part of the island second, after doing that first shrine and getting the Ultrahand. It even puts a bunch of spicy berries and a cooking pot right by the entranceway to the area from where you meet Rauru. With the exception of maybe one or two enemies on the way to that Ultrahand shrine, though (and even them you could probably bypass if you bothered to sneak), every enemy on that island is optional. Going to the snowy shrine this way, you encounter zero enemies on the actual route, and while the set of wings and the building there that lets them lift off smoothly is probably mainly to get you back to the gate to talk to Rauru again, it's also the perfect height to let you circle around and land at the foot of the shrine even without attaching any fans. Second, the game is very actively aware, if sometimes only vaguely, of how you can cheat. It doesn't particularly care, it just makes sure you always know. Those shrine tricks? You entirely know it's cheating. Sure. Only because you can see that it's giving you tools, though, and you're refusing to use them. And it's largely fine with this. This game was very clearly meant to enable you to use your brain to deal with challenges - and specifically, threats - that you don't have the skill to deal with. That's why there's so many specifically combat-based Zonai devices. Hell, the monsters will even respond to them. There's an entire shrine, I think with the title The Great Hunt, that revolves around the fact that not only do they react to and even try to fight Zonai devices, but also the fact that if you just throw enough Zonai devices at the problem, they will in fact successfully kill everything. A couple of the devices will get flipped over, but you can in fact defeat every construct in there without picking up a weapon.
I felt that way at first,but the more I played this game,the more game tought me about different possibilities. It's like the game whispers to you, encouraging you to think outside the box. You play,have access to new devices, expanding your battery became stronger and SMARTER. Not only it's satisfying when you found the way to bypass your problems, it's also helps to associate yourself with Link even more. You both learning how to use your new powers and knowledge is also a weapon that you must to master. That is also why I try not to watch other people play throughs a lot, because you start to use others ideas,and less of your own
When I fought that squid shark thing above Zora’s domain, I had a lot of trouble clearing up the much and fighting it at the same time. So, I built a robot designed to follow the enemy and squirt water everywhere. As a bonus, it also hit it sometimes. Also Prince Sidon’s water ghost thing was with me so I basically had 2 assistants in that boss battle. That *almost* seemed like cheating, but then later I got Autobuild, and the part where you right just then learned to instantly build robots and/or vehicles is immediately followed by a boss battle with a guy who keeps summoning trucks. If you weren’t supposed to use robots in boss battles, why was retrieving Autobuild immediately followed by a boss battle that emphisize autobuild? What you call “cheating” I would call “trying to outsmart the enemy”. Zelda has always involved using your brain to solve riddles. BotW and TotK are simply letting you think you’re outsmarting them. Nintendo are actually smiling and saying “OK, you do that. In fact, here, have a thing that lets you do that.”
An old, tongue-in-cheek saying comes to mind. "It's not cheating, it's just a clever use of game mechanics." For me, I enjoyed feeling like I figured out a way to accomplish the task. Instead of it feeling cheap or like I missed out on the intended route, I merely wondered what other solutions existed. This made me try even more things. Experimenting and playing around with the movement, abilities, and building mechanics reminds me of when I was teaching myself electronics and playing with LEDs, capacitors, resistors, diodes, and transistors. Just coming up with an idea, trying to make it work, and learning from the experience is an amazing way to grow and learn. And yea, I'm old. I played through A Link To The Past when it was new on the SNES and then I went back into it and used glitches to mess with the game. When OoT came out, my mind was blown. But after playing through it, I whipped out a GameShark and hacked the game, discovered glitches, floated Link to the skybox, and tried to uncover all of it's secrets. However, even though I really enjoyed playing through Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and even Breath of the Wild, I didn't feel the same freedom that got me excited from those earlier games. But Tears of the Kingdom is the first game in decades that I've actually played all the way through and worked hard to 100% everything (well, I still need to get the rest of the Koroks and Bubbulfrogs but everything else is done). It's also the first game in decades that I want to hunt for glitches, try new strats, and potentially speed run. Sure, this isn't the case for everyone, but I'm so happy ToTK exists the way it does.
I remember my first big cheese in TOTK. On the great sky island, I was in the snowy portion. I didn’t see an obvious path up, it was probably super late at night and I had played a long time. So instead of looking for the “right” way. I went across the swift water, cut down a bunch of trees, fused like 6-8 of them together, fused a board to the bottom, and transported it back to the tall spot that was too slick to climb. Getting my construct across the river and up the waterfall was fun. Then I simply climbed my tall tree 😊
burning my wood weapon and using ultrahand on it and burning something instead of using a torch that's quite literally right infront of me feels like cheating
i also think it's worth noticing the placement of those easy solutions everywhere in the game (e.g. a bunch of balloon parts next to a mountain) because, at least for me, it makes it extra satisfying when i decide to do it "the manual way". taking the hard way up that mountain will be extra rewarding because i know i turned down a much easier alternative, and i actually really appreciate that part since it adds into that feeling of control over the game that cheesing also gives me :]
Thats a good point! The developers arent hiding what they 'intend' for you to do, so it feels like youre getting the designed experience when you obey, but it feels extra good knowing you could have disobeyed. Its like playing Minecraft and knowing you COULD go in creative mode but not doing that
I got in trouble playing bullshit because the other players said I was cheating. For instance, I would say 4 queens and put down 4 queens, but underneath I would also put down a Jack and maybe more cards. There are no rules that say you can or can’t unload more cards than you stated.
The problem is the player tendency to "optimize the fun out of games." Even though cheating is satisfying up to a point, when you can completely bypass huge portions of almost any puzzle it becomes a problem. Its a non-puzzle and non-game at that point. Imagine if Portal 2 had a rocket shield and you could just jump up to the end of the chamber without engaging with the puzzle mechanics.
Yeah, as just one example, I built an airbike pretty early, and then the game shrank massively as I flew over every interesting piece of design. Maybe it feels nice to subvert the game a few times, but it definitely made the game worse when I did it every time. Oh, and add on that the subversion is often the same, so you dont even get the satisfaction of coming up with a new idea.
It is why I dislike Mario Odyessy, Mario's move set is literally this. So you're never facing a challenge with your movement in mind, you're doing something dull or skipping the entire thing.
Reminds me of my feelings towards Fallout: New Vegas. It's my favorite game of all time, but I know it like the back of my hand. It makes it incredibly hard to roleplay it it anymore because I know every objectively optimized pattern and playstyle. Never put anything into charisma, beeline to the strip without dying, I know the results of every speech outcome, etc.
now what does feel like cheating to me is looking up solutions to puzzles. It doesnt feel like it, it just is. I originally wanted to play through the game without any online help, but i found myself not wanting to play the game because i couldnt find anything out. but now i enjoy the game but still feel guilty for looking up solutions.
There are 2 (general) types of players: 1. Play by the rules, experience it how it was intended to be experienced. 2. Break it. Turn it over, shake it around a bit, find out how it falls apart and put it back together in a new way. I am the second type, but I do get an occasional feeling of wistfulness that "maybe I should go back and walk the roads properly instead of freeballing it up the back of the lanayru highlands to avoid the monsters". I have multiple save files for a reason.
I do be hearing "Calling" somewhere in the background as you talk about the intended experience, and I am ACHING for you to do literally any video talking about The World Ends With You.
at 16:45, I actually cheesed that shrine by putting the pole on top of the platform, then using recall, and climbing on the pole. I had no idea what the actual solution was but I knew that what I did was not intended.
Where I draw the line is stuff like cliping throguh walls, duping items, or using x-ray. Also, coming up with your own solution sounds like more of an acomplishment then using a prefabed solution you can lookup online.
Maybe it is but even if someone takes an idea from something online, it's not your place to tell them they're wrong for playing the game in the way that best suits them.
I did so many shrines without the paraglider. It always was so rewarding to beat one or even get so close to fail. For example A bouncy device shrine i spent 30 minutes on to fail on the final jump.( I didn't know about the rocket shield thing) I left but didn't feel defeated but happy that I got past the first three jumps.
One huge difference between old Zelda games and BOTW/TOTK is that in the old games you'd be receive explicit guidance towards your end goal and you got to feel clever when you managed to figure out what it was that you were supposed to do (because that was the only way to do it, progressing means "congrats! You solved it, you figured out the puzzle, you win!"), whereas in BOTW/TOTK you find yourself questioning your own intelligence and wondering whether or not you solved a puzzle "correctly" because you're not sure if your solution, one of many possible ways to progress, was the intended way or overly complicated (possibly even straight up dumb)...
I always feel cheated by thinking I should spend 30 min building something for a korok when a five minute walk would do. There are literally 100 of those pairs. F that.
Interesting. Yeah, I kinda felt like I cheated, when I was in the Goron-Temple. It was so hard for me to have a sense of direction. It was so confusing, so for the last two switches I just built a flying machine to reach them, because I had no idea how to do so the "intended" way..
i used the airbike to get all the lightroots, shrines and korok seeds. the increased mobility options made it far far more enjoyable than the shrines and koroks were in BOTW. especially when i managed to find the sweet spot of putting the korok on the front of the bike in such a way that it didnt offset the balance. saved that to autobuild as soon as i did.
This video was great and taught me some cool tricks as I haven't found certain shrines yet. I love how the game is and enjoy cheezing things. But my main takeaway is just to say thank you for using some music from The World Ends With You. I hardly ever see anyone acknowledge that game and it's absolutely one of my favorites. Definitely gonna check out more of your work now. You have great taste!
bomb arrows also work for the shrines btw also for the capsules just leave and drop the rockets out side to put them on shields (as i keep a few shields with rockets)
I solved the boat shrine without shooting through the bars. I didn't even know that was the intended solution lol. I think I landed on top of one of the "sticks" that go out of the boat (which gives you the necessary altitude) and ascended into the cage.
im one of those old school 3d zelda fans. I had all four 3d zeldas on gamecube and then mm and oot again on n64 and i played them endlessly throughout my childhood and teen years, those games mean more to me than i can say. I wasn't one who got mad about botws lack of temples or anything like that, i loved the new direction, and i REALLY enjoyed finding cheese in that game lol. but totk did have a few moments where i felt like i was cheating myself out of the intended experience. at the start. so i intentionally went out of my way to forego the solutions i had come up with, in order to figure out how the game "wanted" me to solve its puzzles. and those were easily the points where i was having the least fun. it wasnt until i came across that rocket shrine that i realized the game was encouraging my stupid, simple solutions, and everything from that point forward felt so much better. plus, the more you play the more you want to find new stupid solutions, and it's just a whole lot of fun to play with what the game gives you. they even added cheese as a food item so like edit: small thing, but i also rly like that im not forced to strap koroks to a contraption and launch then across the map, most of them i can tuck safely in a horse cart and walk to their destination lmao
I think if you move the gem it could remain in existence forever, as long as it does not get too far from you, so just maybe you could even bring them into the depths if you make sure it never gets too far away.
As ex Beta tester/ex moderator (Tech help guy) and small serv admin from small steam indie dev team. and yeah been gaming since intel 8088/86 days. building PC since 90's. True I am no dev but have my eyes opened few years back when was helping them out. Have better understanding of development of games, At least on Pcs. Since TOTK /switch has such limited amount of ram. (4 Gb where Steam deck has 16 GB) They have too have things de-spawn once it hits a certain range, This is to help with game performance, but there is way around this, so if you ever build something like a glider or some monster creation you don't want too lose.. Drop a dragon scale and attached it to the device and it will stay where it is, but there still a limit HOW far you can go before It will de-spawn. but the distance is a lot further then if you just walked away from something you made. Yeah give a try. attached single dragon scale to anything you build.. Good Video man :) Btw Twilight Princess HD and Links to past are my two fav Zelda game. Wind Waker HD was good too, I even named my kitten and called her Zelda lol.
I absolutely do not agree with the people who think that building a vehicle to traverse the depths is cheap. In fact, it actually does feel like the intended solution. They give you little depots with parts to build vehicles all around the depths, and all of the Yiga hideouts have ready-made vehicles that you can steal and use to get around. All evidence points to vehicles being the intended means of traversal in the depths.
Regarding shrines. No one cares if it's cheesed. Because you can always go back to that shrine, to do it the "intended way." But what is the intended way? People will decide what the intended way is. The thing is, people play and enjoy totk their own way. And it's a beautiful thing to watch ♥ In every classic zelda games, when playing, we all said something along those lines "I wish I could..." "I would --- id I could" "Would be funny if..." Now you actually can, it it's what makes TotK so good, and fun. It's not "cheating, or cheesing" if you're using what the game provided you. Tools, and shows you methods... You're just enjoying the game your way. And that's always better than always being on rails.
In a way, this peak game design. When the player thinks they came up with a solution, instead of finding the preconceived solution designed by the dev, the illusion of the game becomes perfect.
The game is not breaking its own rules by removing the crystal. It's got another rule that you should appreciate: if you lose control of the crystal it will respawn at it's original location. If you had recalled it before this happened it would have been on the plane.
Admittedly, Gem puzzles are really annoying when transporting them and failing somehow. Just having to restart when your flying machine and gem fall off the edge is very annoying, but at least they don't force you to do a shrine as well, just a blessing shrine. Honestly the only really annoying part of the game. But I love the trick blessing shrine. It looks real, but why is there arrows on the ground and a fire fruit bush?
I only figured out about rocked shield the other day, through a loading screen note actually, but my smooth brain solved that puzzle with a stone slab and a rocket on each corner
I always have the person goal to figure out what the devs want me to do for the same reason I play the game in the first play, which is to just explore And if I figure out the intended way before beating a shrine I'm just like, "Ah they wanted me to do this" *and then I proceed to cheese my way to the exit because my goal is complete* Tldr: I always have the goal of figuring out the intended way but I don't plan on actually doing it
The key element of this is that the game is super ambitious but designed to run in a switch, a super underpowered device. It's a miracle it runs at all. If it had 32gb of ram we wouldn't have problems like despawning items.
I like this take. So many of the shrines have what seems to be the "intended" solution to the puzzle, but they also give you the tools to do it your way and I definitely think that's intentional. It's kind of funny to see so many people post their weird solutions and go "Look! I outsmarted the devs!" But no, I don't think you did. Your way may not have been one they thought of, but they definitely intended for you to find YOUR way. They just also made THEIR way (or A way) available to you should you want to attempt it. Also, Mimic Tear? Ha! I lived in the days of chucking fire bombs over the wall to kill the capra demon before you even walk through his fog door. Bring on the CHEESE!
I came to the same conclusion about 40 hours in (and at my age, that's DEEP in to the game). Super reassuring to see someone else found the cheesy tutorial shrines super reassuring
The shrines in this game are like 10× better than in BOTW since they're all just "hey, you know you can use this cheesy technique in the over world, right? No? Well now you do".
I don’t like too much freedom. Solving a problem with limited resources is what I find fun. Figuring out how to overcome an obstacle is easy and boring when you have infinite freedom and resources. Figuring out how the game intended for you to beat it is fun and interesting. That’s why I rarely used Zonai capsules. I preferred figuring out why certain devices were present in the environment and using those to solve the puzzle. Often I see multiple “intended” solutions, and I just pick the one I feel like at the time. I don’t have a competitive spirit, so “outsmarting the developers” means nothing to me.
The game effectively makes you become an engineer to solve many of the puzzles/shrines/traversal/exploration. But it also allows much of the traditional zelda gameplay tropes. Want to ascend a mountain by using the staircase of baddies and fight each one? Ok. You can. You'll get some valuable materials and possibly gear. Or you can bring out some balloon structure or dive from a sky island and reach the top that way.
Conundrum here: You gain a guilty freedom, but lost the perenity of the saintess weapons... No more missile boomerang, slingshot and eternel bow. no more Unbreakable overpowered ( once you have full hearth) sword that may( or not) evolve with you ... Only Link, using the last durable weapon( or liability) that may help him revail : His brain.
5:25 I felt like _such_ an idiot with that rail puzzle. I tried about five different versions of a shape that would balance the weight carefully enough to make it through that turn before I realised I could just... make a centreboard... so it never fell off... And yeah I do often wonder how the hell I was supposed to complete the puzzle. It's good to find other solutions but after a while 'recall' feels too much like an instant win rather than actually using my brain. BUT I prefer the open-ended approach, because it means you're relying on your own problem solving rather than trying to bend your brain into the shape the devs intended. Often I just never 'understood' video game puzzle logic and always got stuck looking at a walkthrough. With Totk I feel like if I hammer away enough at it, I'll come up with something. However sometimes I think it covers up lazy design. The wind temple was pretty good and I assume the fire temple had... some sort of logic to it, I just climbed everywhere when I felt my brain unable to conform to the intended solution. But _was_ there a way to get through the water temple without just climbing and jumping to different locations? It wasn't satisfying to solve at all. Also that hoverbike: It's honestly hard to use if you haven't got a LOT of battery power, by which point you've done some decent grinding to 'earn' it I feel. I haven't got nearly enough battery to make it viable.
My belief is that true intelligence is not memorization of hard facts, but the effective, and sometimes unorthodox use of available resources and perhaps abnormal critical thinking and problem-solving. I say there’s nothing wrong with finding abnormal ways of solving problems. One could argue that sticking to the established ‘correct way’ of solving a problem is actually the complete opposite of intelligence, as you’re just following a formula with no deviation.
I haven't played Tears of The Kingdom yet but I'll get around to it at some point. Honestly the more I see about it the more I feel like it is similar to GMOD or a game like it where the idea isn't to have the traditional Zelda experience where there is only 1 solution but where they tell you the rules and let you decide how to interpret them. As is showed in the video devs know the game and trust me they know it better than anyone other than a speed-runner will. They know what you can make and the small little angles you need to be on to glitch through that wall to bypass half the level. Nintendo especially knows exactly how their game works and I can assure you if they don't want you to do something they know the 75 ways to get over the wall you will try before giving up and learning how they actually want you to proceed. I think it's purely because of how the series has been people think of these things as cheating not because the devs didn't want you to do it. I mean after all, to do anything in a videogame it has to be programmed in...unless it is a side effect of that very code.
I think it's okay to feel cheap and it could be instinct or like you said how we are used to these games playing out. But I also think it's the natural evolution of game design. We're seeing game design, customization, and other aspects being tailored to the players/community such as early access or these complex building/creative systems for players to figure out and even take it further than devs imagined. The balance of amount of content vs player freedom has to be right or you can get either overly long and linear experiences OR feel like you're in a massive sandbox without all that much to really do.
I've always been of the opinion that is it's in the game it's meant to be used. It's a tool given, and there is no cheating to use what's in the room. Heh, sometimes the tool is unintended but it's there anyway and I've no problems with using it. Especially if it adds ways to solve a problem. The less I have to do, the less time wasted on a game, and it adds a new way to solve the current puzzle. I love it when games have multiple solutions to the same problem too, not just for time saving as that's going to be for when I dislike a level/mission. It gives me a reason to play again, to see how else I can/could succeed/fail. Some missions in Cyberpunk I look forward to playing in a new way, finding a new route to sneak in, etc.. In short, to me there is no "cheating" in games when the "cheat" is a too/mechanic.
Personally, I find figuring out and using the "intended" solution to be a sort of self-imposed challenge. I know I could skip the shrines and puzzles if I wanted to, but I want to know how the devs wanted me to solve them. It's an opportunity to learn new mechanics I wouldn't have thought of if I were to just rocket shield everywhere. I don't have an issue with people solving things their own way. I don't feel upset when someone cheeses through something they already know, I just feel a little disappointed when people do that without already knowing the intended solution because it means they gave up on learning. Not so much that I'd get upset at someone for doing so though -- They're not me. They learn and do things in their own ways and at their own pace. Getting upset at someone for not being you is ridiculous.
Here’s the thing I’m in my 30s I don’t always have time to play the game right and I appreciate these added benefits. I do respect conquering without aids as well. Don’t forget games were made to be replayed it’s fine if you use some help the first time through.
Weird, I never knew that it would bother people. Literally my whole gaming experience is all about how far can I push this game before I end up ultimately using mods or cheats to bring the game to it's knees (These mods/cheats being made by myself because using mods/cheats made by other people takes the fun out of it for me. I like that feeling of me against the system)
I remember reading that the 'ascend' ability started off as a developer tool that one of the team members used to get out of caves when he was finished play testing them. He came to realize that having to backtrack out of the cave, now devoid of enemies and puzzles and loot, was not fun the same way it was to enter the unknown and discover - so this core ability of the game started off as a way for devs to 'cheat' themselves out of caves and realized it was way more fun.
I absolutely LOVE that story, because it's such a genius way of solving the question of "how do you make leaving a place more interesting?" The out of the box nature of Ascend as an answer to the question is a perfect reflection of how Nintendo wants the players to think outside the box too. I like to think about how that compares to how others have answered that same question, like how skyrim has one way shortcut exits at the end of basically all of the caves and dungeons so that you can leave in a different way than you came in, or the tomb loops back to the entrance with a false wall you can only open from the treasure room end, same thing.
Where's the fun in walking? Why wouldn't you attach a korok to the bottom of your car's wheel so that it gets run over on every revolution, or glue them to the underside of your boat?
@@mckaygoodman6514 Eh, sometimes it's annoying and the whole point of the game is to have fun. If you want to challenge yourself by doing everything in your power to avoid the "preconceived" solution then all power to you. The video's point goes both ways, it's about how much challenge you want. If you want the most challenging experience in the game you disallow yourself to use builds and instead have to solve as many things as possible without them.
I accidentally got the master sword early and thought that maybe I ruined the story experience a bit. In the end as I got the rest of the tears, it felt more like dramatic irony and honestly imo a better experience. So no one should feel bad about the way they play this game, I feel like its fully intended to be an individual experience. To tell a story with that ability is actually astounding.
@@eli9867you only need to do like 20 shrines to be able to get the sword, very early for most people. If someone did 20 shrines, went to go turn in 100 charges for a battery segment, and on their way out sees something eye-catching below them, it's reasonable they would get the master sword very early without glitches like 4 hours into the game.
@@ssgoko88 you don't even need the battery upgrade, I did it without just because I got a map marker telling me to go ride the dragon, so I went up to a tower that was really close to it and just jumped on it lol
The only weakness of the game's story imo was the dungeon end cutscenes becoming repetitive but given how much of the game you can do in any order, the fact that that's the only part that stood out to me is really impressive
I think giving Link a dedicated jump button in these games (vs the prior "run to ledge to auto jump") is a good indicator of what kind of approach Nintendo wants players to take. Before you could only do actions at specific points in specific ways at specific times. Now you can just kind of jump spam up odd slopes and crouch under weird half ledges and scam your way around little physics problems in tiny ways that can all add up to getting around problems the way you want, not just by the way the devs allow.
again, if the game allows it, then it was intended, lot of people dont get that if something is wrong with the game, or if they didnt want you to do or use certain things, they would just remove it like they did the dupe glitch in totk ver 1.1.1
@@Aqsticgod I don't know about that. There are plenty of glitches and exploits in BOTW that are clearly not intended yet were never patched. The specific instance I was thinking of when I made my comment was a shrine that had a switch in a large cube room that when struck it rotated the entire cube around you, moving the floor to the ceiling. It had holes in it to facilitate the puzzle. My solution (which crucially for my point didn't feel like the solution intended) was to stand on the lip of one of the wall holes (after gliding to it while the cube was already rotating), shoot an arrow at the switch, and then as the cube rotated again, I just of just walked at the wall until I would slide down and started spamming jump so I could make it onto the flatter outside ceiling, and thus walk to the goal. Not sure what specific shrine it was but the game wasn't buggy or anything and it was very easy, but it didn't feel like someone at nintendo said "then at this point the player needs to stand on this thin part of the hole, shoot the switch, and then jump at this odd angle to hopefully not slide off". There are basically 3 solutions to problems in this game. Built in, oddball, and exploit. Oddball solutions are fine but they aren't intended.
@@samwoodley1653 Thing is, that's fine. The developers probably realized that there would be some solutions they didn't see coming. If they didn't want you to be rewarded for that type of extremely creative or exploitative solution, they would have patched it when testing the shrines, or when seeing how it's played afterward.
Yeah, but speaking of jumping, the very first 3D game, OoT also had the side jump and back flip, and they absolutely allowed you to get to places that were (probably) unintended like heart piece above Dodongo Fortress and the guy sitting on a roof in Kakariko Village.
There's an interview with the Divinity: Original Sin director, where someone asked him if he's aware of an exploit that lets players stack dozens of status effects onto themselves before a hard fight. His reply was that not only did they know, but they chose not to fix it because it's so much fun to do
this falls in line with fromsoftwares philosophy, otherwise why put the ashes in the game? if they wanted you to play a certain way they wouldnt have those objects in game.
there's also the ability to use telekinesis to maul enemies with an object that weighs an absolute ton, letting you one shot most enemies with a bit of setup
Great video as always! My favorite TOTK hack is definitely "make a bigger bridge" It's truly staggering how many puzzles can be solved by building an aggressively large bridge 😂
Yes. I just did the shrine crystal puzzle today and landed it pretty well. However, I also brought out an extra fan, added two batteries nearby, a large battery and two rockets instead.
My go to "cheat" is rocket shields. Make them outside a shrine, and boom, anything not locked behind doors is done. Also, Rewind is amazing for making your own floating platforms
I still remember clearing the Fire Temple by almost completely ignoring the minecarts and just climbing the place and using Ascend on the little available spots on ledges.
That is EXACTLY what I did. I looked at those minecarts and realized my half-baked monkey brain would never get it. It's like that math problem in high school you accept you're just never gonna understand and move on.
yeah i saw the maze of tracks and i was like umm. i was scared to do them in the wrong order and have to backtrack. and then i came to an area where i couldn't figure out the intended strat so i put on my climbing gear and just scaled the outer wall lol
talking about ignoring the intended path for the path to the water temple I didn't realize the zora armor let you climb waterfalls by gliding into them (as opposed to starting at the bottom) in this game until the last one into the temple proper so the wind sage got a workout making sure I reached the side of those floating water dispensers to climb up them
Glad I'm not the only one who did this. I maxxed stamina really quickly and lucked into the climbing shirt early on, so I've just been spidering and gliding and ascending everywhere, which isn't too far off from what I did in BotW honestly.
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What's been your favorite "cheat" you've pulled off in TOTK?
I really want to play games the intended way, that is the way developers intended. I don't enjoy cheap cheeses and even if I see opportunity to do them I refuse to. I just think it's common sense that you trust developers of the games to know how to bring you best experience. If you alter it there is too much third wall breaking and I don't like that. I like immersion way more over feeling like "smart person".
'MimIc TeAr Is ChEaTiNG' uses giant crusher with royal knights resolve ash of war with 16 buffs slamming the boss for 46000 damage per swing and calls it skill
@@matrixfull are you really playing 'as they intend' if you refuse to use over 50% of the mechanics and items they hand deliver to you? i.e. both in totk and any souls series naked with only sticks is not the intended way no matter how much the community tries to force feed you that b/s
I brought a frost emitter to the spirit temple boss and just didn't let it do anything
@@matrixfullcheck the video at 17:42 Aonuma himself says you’re meant to “cheat” although cheat isn’t necessarily the best word for it. Think of it as creative solutions rather than cheating. All within the realms of what is allowed in game by the developers because otherwise they wouldn’t have added it. Cheating would be something like whistle running in BOTW. That was not intended by the devs that’s a glitch that breaks the games mechanics. THATS cheating. Whereas every creative solution your mind can fathom no matter how much it feels like cheating in Tears is just that. A creative solution thought up by you and provided by the devs.
if you think about the rocket jump shrine, it teaches you MULTIPLE shield things. It's actively showing you that there are lots of options for fusing stuff to shields that aren't just "more durability"
my friend in botw I always do boe lift smuggling glitch that how I fly
And its subtitle is something along the lines of "more than defense", which tells you right when you walk in that the lesson is about the versatility of shields.
I had a Hydrant Shield, i used that
@@GamingRabbit17 I wish I realised this for the water temple LMAO
@@nujuat Didn't even think of that
My feeling has always been that the developers were watching how speed runners were breaking breath of the wild, and decided to make a game that was designed to be exploited like that
That makes sense. This is a sequel to Breath of the Wild.
Inspired by, maybe. But I can't imagine myself being excited to see a speedrun until they find some way to clip through a wall that sends them half-way across the world. Part of what made exploits fun was that it was some absurd solution that seemingly appeared from thin air. Here, they're just handing you toys and telling you the experience they built isn't worth your time.
The speed runners in BotW were “cheating” in quite lame ways outside of the ‘rules’ of the game. Basically finding glitches.
Like the whistle running and whatever that ‘bullet bounce’ is called (I’ve forgotten all the corny glitch names).
All the creative solutions Ive seen in TotK are way better. Though I haven’t seen speed running videos and assume they’re packed with lame stuff.
@@codycast >hasnt actually watched any speedruns
>insults them anyway
lmao
@@leeshapon I’ve seen tons of speed runs. I found most of the ones involving glitches to be boring as it wasn’t someone beating the game quickly as I view beating the game.
It would be like if someone found a random sequence of key presses that instantly teleport you to Gannon where you can then 1 shot and the process took 20 seconds
To me that’s not “beating the game quickly”
Since the beginning, I've felt like this game's shrines are intended as sparks of inspiration for the player.
In the shrines, they teach general concepts. I definitely figured out a few awesome tricks thanks to the foundation that they formed for me
That's why i like those proving grounds shrines so much, they make you rely on experimenting with the mechanics the game gives for you, like that shield rocket boost, and teach you a lot about the deeper mechanics in a controlled envrionment.
The shrines in this game are a lot better for experimentation in general tbh
I think it's interesting that when I find an obviously unintended solution, I *always* have a moment where I question "...wait, am I sure that wasn't intended" no matter how farfetched it was
Yeah…. Almost any shrine with movable objects you can ascend through after time warping and get into broken places. Or attach rockets to your shield before entering, etc. like the shrines are really fun but it’s so easy to cheese so so many of them
the shrine for ascend it surrounded by ice and ice is unclimbable naturally, so the obvious thing to do is make a tree wall and climb it to the shrine, i did that the first time i played through but on a new playthrough i wondered 'was that not the intended way?' and so i continued to circle the mountain and you have a short drop down with your way back up covered in unclimbable ice which led to me having to make a 45 minute treck back to the temple of time and all the way past every other shrine a second time because the closed loop cannot be backtracked with no glider no bombs no zonai materials they *intend* for you to build things its kind of the point of the game not *cheese*. you might think something isn't intended but it is, if its not youll painfully know as you make an hour long walk back or get a game over screen
@@Spyziy Can confirm. I've completed shrines that were CLEARLY intended to be completed AFTER getting the glider. Without the glider. Hell, I've mapped sky islands without the glider. That's how damn broken this game is, and I love it.
It was a pain in the ass, but I did it lol.
@@thunderborn3231 My point isnt that they dont want you to build in creative ways to solve problems, it's that combining multiple abilties can completely bypass the entire shrine. By lifting up a plank you're supposed to put a ball on and fly across a massive ravine in a shrine in the right position, freezing it with time stop, then ascending through it, you can completely climb over the shrines walls and get straight to the blessing.
It's the TOTK variation of the Xanatos gambit.
Gamer: Hah, I beat it in a way the devs thought couldn't or shouldn't be done.
TOTK Devs: Yes, it's performing as designed. We won.
I've also seen a lot of people treating the platform recall trick "cheating" as well, but several shrines demand that you know about it. There's one with a sagging bridge you have to ultrahand into place and then recall it back up so you can reach the other end. The devs know, and they want you to know too.
I'd honestly never thought of it until seeing it in this video. There was a backpack korok that would have gone WAAAAYYY faster if I'd though of that. instead I had to build some horrible stepladder bridge. XD
Unless of course if you rocket shield over it. Or just use rewind to let you jump to the other end.
Boy did I feel smart when I discovered it. For me it was the very first shrine on the surface. It expected me to have the paraglider but because I had run off in the other direction than the game told me to, I didn't have it yet. There was the box that I was obviously supposed to shoot in the air, jump off and glide over the gap. And there was me glider-less and still pretty clueless about all the mechanics and stuff. Of course, you can leave shrines any time so I thought that was the safetly measure left by the devs if you come here when you can't complete it yet. And then the thought struck me: what if I float the cube over the gap, climb on and rewind? And obviously it worked! So personally, I felt like I worked for that trick and deserve to use it now.
The bridges happen so often too! Like, in the fire temple, tons of shrines. They teach us that it's possible. They even teach us to ascend through it!
I just feel like I'm cheesing most puzzles by doing that though
Ascend ability was originally a cheat code during development for devs to get around quickly untill they realized how annoying getting out of caves is without it so they just made it a real thing 😂
Yeah it seems tailor made to solve that problem.
“If you aren’t cheating you aren’t trying” that’s my new motivation in life.
That was a hidden bit of wisdom we didn't know we needed
That’s how most ppl pass their final exams tbh
Living by the words of the late Eddie Guerrero
That's the Chinese philosophy.
I think a lot of the time when the “cheating” feels bad is just when the cheese is kinda trivial and lame. Like just happening to have a rocket shield and skipping the whole shrine incidentally feels kinda lame cause you basically didn’t do it at all. Whereas solving it with some random bullshit that just so happens to work out feels very fun
I agre, true cheese is when the correct way is easier than the cheese way, but you didn’t bother doing it the correct way so you chose the harder cheesy way
Fantastic take
This is defintely how I feel. No amount on weird contraptions I build to make solutions make me feel bad for completing a shrine, because I applied creativity to use it. But if there is a complex puzzle in front of me for a chest, and I simply abuse recall, then it just feels like I robbed myself of doing something cool.
@@maxminton7861 Exactly. I think in some cases alternative solutions can be good puzzle design, in some others not so much. Like building your 1st makeshift bridge to skip something, using rockets to gain height, or bomb flowering a pressure pad is fun the 1st time, but when this solution can be repeated so many times I don't care that it's ''uNiNtEnDeD, omg so many solutions = good design'' at this point it's a non puzzle. And even the intended solutions are sometimes too easy because most of the shrines are not really all that hard. They usually introduce a concept, then make it a little bit more difficult, then they end the shrine abruptly before the can expand on the concept because they have to keep things bitesized. Doesn't help that in an open world everything has to be level 1 because they never know where you can go, so you're left with many disappointing shrines and alternative solutions are not really all that fun most of the time.
@@awayekevin3397 I agree with this 100%. I don't understand how people can say that the shrines have obtuse solutions. Even the "intended" way is super easy 90% of the time. I really miss the difficult puzzles in other Zelda's, but I don't think we'll ever get them back because of how much more widespread the series has gotten, and it must appeal to a wider audience that hasn't been playing Zelda for 20 years.
I’ve finished all the shrines by now, and since I always just carry rocket shields, there’s been a good number of them where I’ve seen the possibility for an easy cheese and chosen to do the intended puzzle anyway, because the puzzles are fun to solve and the cheese being there just gives me a safety net. The few times I’ve just used the cheese, it’s because I’ve been standing there like ‘ok, I know how to solve this, it seems annoying and tedious to get it exactly right, so I won’t bother’. Gets me the fun part of solving the puzzle without having to go through the actual work of executing the solution
just because your key also fits the lock doesn't mean its cheating to open the door
@@thunderborn3231 its not cheating if Nintendo wants players to solve the puzzles their own way.
The puzzles aren't engaging enough to make me do them by choice.
Having some puzzles literally just raise a platform in a game where any number of banal things can shoot you upward is bad design.
Those are few and far between tho, fortunately
I didn't use rocket shields much, but I did use my fair share of Recall Elevators and Bomb-Flower-Shields. It's just really rewarding to cheese yourself through a puzzle
The multitude of options for cheese also helps keep the open world more open. There are a lot of games where you can access more challenging areas early, but the expected response after getting eaten by a dinosaur or something is to backtrack and come back later. In BotW/TotK, you're encouraged to give it another try and think of something clever.
One of the best parts about totk in my opinion, is that if you find yourself losing you can quite literally just burn through materials to fuck up whatever you're fighting. Find yourself dying over and over again against an enemy camp? Welp, time to load that lynel bow with rubies to nuke the shit out of them
@@gabusdeux Or get good, like I had to do when I first played BotW and got trapped by the Zora's domain lynel, without knowing I could go back to an earlier save. Anyway, I died a few hundred times, but I managed to beat it!
@@idiotically-everythingI love the game gives you options tho!! I absolutely adore it, esp bc I’m not a gamer-gamer who’s got like, less than twenty game experiences under my belt. My brother (who I shit you not, has like 4 solid years by now of game time on Destiny/Destiny 2) was like “oh yeah all the bosses are super easy lol” and I’m like, thank god for that a little bit, bc it keeps me going through em…
Those are necessary experiences that are made accessible so everyone, from pros to little 10-year old Timmy (I do find it hilarious tho bc it’s intended that way but in Australia at least, BOTW and TOTK are both rated M) can enjoy and complete the game.
The optional enemies are what sell me though. Lynels, and I haven’t tried yet but Gleeoks? Genuinely difficult and skill requiring! Yes you could cheese them, but aside from duplicating (my game updated beyond it) it’ll drain your resources real quick I’d imagine. So esp if you wanna farm their parts for upgrades… it’s time to learn those mechanics a bit, cook some dishes that temporarily let you fight god, and nail your flurry time rushes in time with their attacks. I’ve done that for Lynels now, and breezed the Red variety so will be taking on blue and whites now. Hoping to fight a Gleeok soon once I restock on arrows LMAO. I should also give a big shoutout to the Fuse ability which MASSIVELY improves upon BOTW’s weapon system, just… literally game changing. Nothing beats the Hudson Shield! 😤
@@idiotically-everything lol, it sounds like you just got used to it's fighting patterns. That's fine and all, but you could have probably beaten it easier if you had a shit ton of materials y'know? Besides though, I was more referencing things like massive monster groups
@@gabusdeux Yeah, also known as "get good"
I was absolutely mind bogged when I first played the game and learned all the new abilities the game gives you and it instantly made me think Nintendo has incredible faith in their level design, and I felt respected as a player to be trusted with the absolute amount of freedom
Honestly every single hour with Totk I have spent so far has felt like i was cheating the game even if it's something as simple as fusing 2 strong weapons together to make something that even a lynel would fear or using reversal on a piece of metal i dropped from the air to give me height to jump and paraglide to the end of the shrine. However more often than not, I found myself being more proud of my efforts when they went against the designed structure of the game which is why it's really cool in my opinion that the devs have that "it's your game. Do something creative if you want" kind of attitude.
the game urges you to do that tho, hows that cheating? its like ppl like you assume that because you did something different, or saw a different solution its not "intended" but riddle me this, if it wasnt intended why is it allowed? cheating would be the dupe glitch, or hacking/modding the game, thats cheating, but thinking you cheated cuz the game allowed you to use a different solution to the puzzle is about the worst kind of gatekeeping ive seen gamers utter.
@@Aqsticgod "If it wasn't intended, why is it allowed?" That's not really how that works. In pretty much any game, even without glitches, there are ways to do things the game allows even though they aren't intended. It's a big part of why glitchless speedruns are just as entertaining as the glitch ones.
TOTK and BOTW were likely built with each puzzle having at least one solution, maybe even a few, in mind, but the game still wants you to be able to find solutions they didn't consider. Plenty of solutions absolutely can be described as "cheating the puzzle," but it's not a bad thing to cheat them. I don't think anyone is gatekeeping this except the people actively against the cheese.
I love how they fully embraced open puzzle design. Finding creative ways around a puzzle is often just as fun as solving it. Plus it means you’re basically never stuck in the game, if you think hard enough there’s always a way forward
yes, that's an issue I encountered in earlier zelda games, you miss a key item and then you're stuck till you find it.
When I cheese a puzzle that appears to have an intended solution, I don’t always feel clever. I don’t feel like I cheated the game to win, or like I cheated myself out of the satisfaction of solving it “right”, instead I feel like the game won against me because I’m too poopoo brain to figure out the solution so I had to activate rocket shield easy mode.
I think the puzzles are the easy way out actually. I imagine if there's an absolute uncreative person that only wants to play by the rules enters a puzzle room, they can certainly find all the tools to solve it, like in the older games. But I fell like that's more of a failsave. If you're not creative enough to "cheese" your way through, you can go the old-fashioned way.
Hah yeah. Kind of like when a kid draws a line all the way round a maze instead of solving it properly.
@@luka_8 Depends on the shrine. Bomb-shield-bouncing over the entire puzzle is unsatisfying.
Fusing the stupid ball to a random stick you have, throwing it, missing, recalling it to yourself, throwing it at the target again, only to realize that you now have to jump 2 stories to get to the exit door, probably using the mechanic you already couldn't figure out when trying to solve the puzzle correctly. So, you check your inventory and don't have any bomb shields but do have a board shield (a shield with a 4x8 sheet of wood attached), so you drop it, ultrahand it up where you need to be, tilt it so you can make it all the way, bring it back, and hop on and recall. (anyone who's done this shrine probably knows which this is)
That's satisfying.
I'm impressed that something so eloquently put includes the words "poopoo brain". Well done.
Lol that example of going around the maze is how I solved two of the sky labyrinths.
If you’re not playing online competitively, do anything the game will allow you to have fun. The best part about both BOTW and TOTK is finding out how other people did the same puzzle/obstacle that you did. I am always amazing, entertained, laughing when people will better or dumber ways to do things.
Just gotta say, this was a really good video. I greatly respect the way you delivered the message of "cheating" is trying.
This video was recommended to me right around when it came out, and just seeing the title helped make my tine with the game since a bit more fun. Just remembering when i wanted ro use a neat trick "maybe they didnt intend this, but they definitely intended players to do what they didnt intend" and specifically remember this video existing. I didnt even watch it until right now
I would say the ONE exception I’ve seen to this thus far is bomb arrows being able to activate those big shrine pressure plates. That feels like you can dodge the lessons they want to teach you on occasion
There’s one shrine which you can even bomb arrow the back of the button and still activate it, it’s honestly hilarious
I found another way to cheese it, I hover the balls with ultrahand to big plates and then use recall 💀 I thought this was intended before I cheesed 3 or so shrines and was like yep. I'm cheesing
I remember talking with a friend about the shrine where you learn about stablizers. At the end of it there's a massive pit you need to get over somehow.
He has a clip of him managing to piece together a long chain of grates, use a stablizer to prop them upright at a 45° angle, then walk up it and glide the rest of the way across the pit.
And by pure chance that was actually one of the shrines I *_also_* had saved a clip of me completing it, and I used the stablizer to create a catapult to shoot me across the pit.
My favorite story about this was in the shrine where you have to put the balls in specific holes as a sort of combination lock. I couldn't figure out how to get the bonus chest room to open up, so I decided to carefully use a bomb jump to get over the wall. It was then that I realized that the door wouldn't be opening behind me, trapping me inside the room. It was a perfect example of the game allowing an action but not endorsing it
There are so many shrines where i can clearly see what they want me to do but they made it so easy to skip the puzzle with reverse and ultrahand
As always I'm super impressed with the Zelda team. For a game so open-ended. I'm surprised that there are no major issues or bugs with it. I remember reading about how Shigeru Miyamoto would have nightmares that people would find bugs or cheats in the games, and it's cool that now everyone is like "fuck it" and "the point is to BS and cheat". It feels like it's both liberating to both the player and the game devs.
Also, I used to be one of those people that needed everything to be done perfectly and to have collected everything when it comes to games. And now with big games like BOTW and TOTK, they've shown me that I don't need to have a perfect run through and I don't need to collect everything. It's shown me that I am more imaginative and creative than I thought I was and that it's okay to make mistakes and miss some things. That way, I always have something to look forward to no matter how many hours I've put into the game! If this is the start of a new era in Zelda games (and an already phenomenal start at that), can't wait to see what the future has in store!
The problem of those non-linear but open (sandbox-like) world games is sometimes the chaos which can unfold itself, especially with enemy spawns. Example from BotW as I am not too much into TOTK yet: Nighttime, kees swarm coming for you, Yiga Officer spawns and attacks, while stal-enemies spawn next to you to attack - everyone knows that situation if you've been to the late game. I am taking a great relief in knowing that I am always able to choose my fights - in linear games they are forced most of the times, especially in dungeons. If I had to drop into an enemy camp because I ran out of stamina while paragliding, it is good to know that you can always teleport yourself somewhere else, especially if there are really strong enemies presents. Same with your example: If you are low on weapons or most of your weapons are about to break, its good to have a hot air balloon at hand to just skip the fights you would have to do if you ascended the perceived intended way. In exchange you will miss out on loot and also some combat training. This is also part of the freedom which was advertised with Breath of the Wild and is even more prevalent with Tears of the Kingdom.
Sometimes when I solve a shrine it feels cheap for me too. Usually I will go back and look for the "intended" solution - thats also fun for me, to toss aside my "obvious" "cheaty" solution and go for an alternative.
Crystals are set to respawn back at starting location if you drop of lose them. The game assumed you dropped it and so if respawn at the starting point.
Small spoilers ahead:
I’m glad that you can have janky solutions to puzzles because I still don’t know what the “intended methods” were for like half of Mineru’s shrine, both the lava corridor and the rail that kept blocking you I had to brute force my way through
Yeah, I have no idea what the intended solution for the lava corridor is. I just used her piece to create a moving platform with recall lol
Same, I just strap 3 rockets to the piece and blasted it to the other side
a lot of Zelda speed runners don't even remember the original ways to do certain dungeons
I figured out the Lava corridor, but that electric rail, though....
I eventually just glued all the available wheels into a line on the part box and stood it against the opposite wall, climbed the ladder, and pulled the box back up to me. I'm really curious to know the actual intended way to solve that.
I think that's a case of poor game design in that area. Perhaps because the dev said fuck it they'll cheese it one way or another.
Here's the biggest thing I've learned about how interestingly and *differently* this game is designed, in my time.
First, with the exception of shrines and the temples - and even half of those, honestly - fighting *constructs* is entirely optional.
That enemy you were looking at as you took what was very clearly a built-in bypass? A construct. This was actually taught to me in the tutorial of the game, that initial sky island. See, there's nothing stopping you from going to the snowy part of the island second, after doing that first shrine and getting the Ultrahand. It even puts a bunch of spicy berries and a cooking pot right by the entranceway to the area from where you meet Rauru. With the exception of maybe one or two enemies on the way to that Ultrahand shrine, though (and even them you could probably bypass if you bothered to sneak), every enemy on that island is optional. Going to the snowy shrine this way, you encounter zero enemies on the actual route, and while the set of wings and the building there that lets them lift off smoothly is probably mainly to get you back to the gate to talk to Rauru again, it's also the perfect height to let you circle around and land at the foot of the shrine even without attaching any fans.
Second, the game is very actively aware, if sometimes only vaguely, of how you can cheat. It doesn't particularly care, it just makes sure you always know.
Those shrine tricks? You entirely know it's cheating. Sure. Only because you can see that it's giving you tools, though, and you're refusing to use them. And it's largely fine with this. This game was very clearly meant to enable you to use your brain to deal with challenges - and specifically, threats - that you don't have the skill to deal with. That's why there's so many specifically combat-based Zonai devices. Hell, the monsters will even respond to them. There's an entire shrine, I think with the title The Great Hunt, that revolves around the fact that not only do they react to and even try to fight Zonai devices, but also the fact that if you just throw enough Zonai devices at the problem, they will in fact successfully kill everything. A couple of the devices will get flipped over, but you can in fact defeat every construct in there without picking up a weapon.
I felt that way at first,but the more I played this game,the more game tought me about different possibilities. It's like the game whispers to you, encouraging you to think outside the box. You play,have access to new devices, expanding your battery became stronger and SMARTER. Not only it's satisfying when you found the way to bypass your problems, it's also helps to associate yourself with Link even more. You both learning how to use your new powers and knowledge is also a weapon that you must to master. That is also why I try not to watch other people play throughs a lot, because you start to use others ideas,and less of your own
When I fought that squid shark thing above Zora’s domain, I had a lot of trouble clearing up the much and fighting it at the same time. So, I built a robot designed to follow the enemy and squirt water everywhere. As a bonus, it also hit it sometimes.
Also Prince Sidon’s water ghost thing was with me so I basically had 2 assistants in that boss battle.
That *almost* seemed like cheating, but then later I got Autobuild, and the part where you right just then learned to instantly build robots and/or vehicles is immediately followed by a boss battle with a guy who keeps summoning trucks.
If you weren’t supposed to use robots in boss battles, why was retrieving Autobuild immediately followed by a boss battle that emphisize autobuild?
What you call “cheating” I would call “trying to outsmart the enemy”. Zelda has always involved using your brain to solve riddles. BotW and TotK are simply letting you think you’re outsmarting them. Nintendo are actually smiling and saying “OK, you do that. In fact, here, have a thing that lets you do that.”
An old, tongue-in-cheek saying comes to mind. "It's not cheating, it's just a clever use of game mechanics."
For me, I enjoyed feeling like I figured out a way to accomplish the task. Instead of it feeling cheap or like I missed out on the intended route, I merely wondered what other solutions existed. This made me try even more things. Experimenting and playing around with the movement, abilities, and building mechanics reminds me of when I was teaching myself electronics and playing with LEDs, capacitors, resistors, diodes, and transistors. Just coming up with an idea, trying to make it work, and learning from the experience is an amazing way to grow and learn.
And yea, I'm old. I played through A Link To The Past when it was new on the SNES and then I went back into it and used glitches to mess with the game. When OoT came out, my mind was blown. But after playing through it, I whipped out a GameShark and hacked the game, discovered glitches, floated Link to the skybox, and tried to uncover all of it's secrets.
However, even though I really enjoyed playing through Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and even Breath of the Wild, I didn't feel the same freedom that got me excited from those earlier games. But Tears of the Kingdom is the first game in decades that I've actually played all the way through and worked hard to 100% everything (well, I still need to get the rest of the Koroks and Bubbulfrogs but everything else is done). It's also the first game in decades that I want to hunt for glitches, try new strats, and potentially speed run.
Sure, this isn't the case for everyone, but I'm so happy ToTK exists the way it does.
I remember my first big cheese in TOTK. On the great sky island, I was in the snowy portion. I didn’t see an obvious path up, it was probably super late at night and I had played a long time. So instead of looking for the “right” way. I went across the swift water, cut down a bunch of trees, fused like 6-8 of them together, fused a board to the bottom, and transported it back to the tall spot that was too slick to climb. Getting my construct across the river and up the waterfall was fun. Then I simply climbed my tall tree 😊
burning my wood weapon and using ultrahand on it and burning something instead of using a torch that's quite literally right infront of me feels like cheating
i also think it's worth noticing the placement of those easy solutions everywhere in the game (e.g. a bunch of balloon parts next to a mountain) because, at least for me, it makes it extra satisfying when i decide to do it "the manual way". taking the hard way up that mountain will be extra rewarding because i know i turned down a much easier alternative, and i actually really appreciate that part since it adds into that feeling of control over the game that cheesing also gives me :]
Thats a good point! The developers arent hiding what they 'intend' for you to do, so it feels like youre getting the designed experience when you obey, but it feels extra good knowing you could have disobeyed. Its like playing Minecraft and knowing you COULD go in creative mode but not doing that
I got in trouble playing bullshit because the other players said I was cheating. For instance, I would say 4 queens and put down 4 queens, but underneath I would also put down a Jack and maybe more cards. There are no rules that say you can or can’t unload more cards than you stated.
The problem is the player tendency to "optimize the fun out of games." Even though cheating is satisfying up to a point, when you can completely bypass huge portions of almost any puzzle it becomes a problem. Its a non-puzzle and non-game at that point. Imagine if Portal 2 had a rocket shield and you could just jump up to the end of the chamber without engaging with the puzzle mechanics.
Yeah, as just one example, I built an airbike pretty early, and then the game shrank massively as I flew over every interesting piece of design. Maybe it feels nice to subvert the game a few times, but it definitely made the game worse when I did it every time.
Oh, and add on that the subversion is often the same, so you dont even get the satisfaction of coming up with a new idea.
It is why I dislike Mario Odyessy, Mario's move set is literally this.
So you're never facing a challenge with your movement in mind, you're doing something dull or skipping the entire thing.
Reminds me of my feelings towards Fallout: New Vegas. It's my favorite game of all time, but I know it like the back of my hand. It makes it incredibly hard to roleplay it it anymore because I know every objectively optimized pattern and playstyle. Never put anything into charisma, beeline to the strip without dying, I know the results of every speech outcome, etc.
I actually was able to ascend up into that room at 16:20, and when I did I was very aware that the game didn't expect me to do that
now what does feel like cheating to me is looking up solutions to puzzles. It doesnt feel like it, it just is. I originally wanted to play through the game without any online help, but i found myself not wanting to play the game because i couldnt find anything out. but now i enjoy the game but still feel guilty for looking up solutions.
There are 2 (general) types of players:
1. Play by the rules, experience it how it was intended to be experienced.
2. Break it. Turn it over, shake it around a bit, find out how it falls apart and put it back together in a new way.
I am the second type, but I do get an occasional feeling of wistfulness that "maybe I should go back and walk the roads properly instead of freeballing it up the back of the lanayru highlands to avoid the monsters". I have multiple save files for a reason.
I do be hearing "Calling" somewhere in the background as you talk about the intended experience, and I am ACHING for you to do literally any video talking about The World Ends With You.
at 16:45, I actually cheesed that shrine by putting the pole on top of the platform, then using recall, and climbing on the pole. I had no idea what the actual solution was but I knew that what I did was not intended.
Where I draw the line is stuff like cliping throguh walls, duping items, or using x-ray.
Also, coming up with your own solution sounds like more of an acomplishment then using a prefabed solution you can lookup online.
Maybe it is but even if someone takes an idea from something online, it's not your place to tell them they're wrong for playing the game in the way that best suits them.
I know literally nothing about Elden Ring, so I have no idea what a mimic tear spirit ash is.
I did so many shrines without the paraglider. It always was so rewarding to beat one or even get so close to fail. For example A bouncy device shrine i spent 30 minutes on to fail on the final jump.( I didn't know about the rocket shield thing) I left but didn't feel defeated but happy that I got past the first three jumps.
One huge difference between old Zelda games and BOTW/TOTK is that in the old games you'd be receive explicit guidance towards your end goal and you got to feel clever when you managed to figure out what it was that you were supposed to do (because that was the only way to do it, progressing means "congrats! You solved it, you figured out the puzzle, you win!"), whereas in BOTW/TOTK you find yourself questioning your own intelligence and wondering whether or not you solved a puzzle "correctly" because you're not sure if your solution, one of many possible ways to progress, was the intended way or overly complicated (possibly even straight up dumb)...
I always feel cheated by thinking I should spend 30 min building something for a korok when a five minute walk would do. There are literally 100 of those pairs. F that.
I got that icky feeling sometimes. Thank you for this perspective. I think it's gonna help.
Interesting. Yeah, I kinda felt like I cheated, when I was in the Goron-Temple. It was so hard for me to have a sense of direction. It was so confusing, so for the last two switches I just built a flying machine to reach them, because I had no idea how to do so the "intended" way..
i used the airbike to get all the lightroots, shrines and korok seeds. the increased mobility options made it far far more enjoyable than the shrines and koroks were in BOTW. especially when i managed to find the sweet spot of putting the korok on the front of the bike in such a way that it didnt offset the balance. saved that to autobuild as soon as i did.
This video was great and taught me some cool tricks as I haven't found certain shrines yet. I love how the game is and enjoy cheezing things. But my main takeaway is just to say thank you for using some music from The World Ends With You. I hardly ever see anyone acknowledge that game and it's absolutely one of my favorites. Definitely gonna check out more of your work now. You have great taste!
All I do with the gems on the plane is disconnect it from the plane and drop it before I land
bomb arrows also work for the shrines btw also for the capsules just leave and drop the rockets out side to put them on shields (as i keep a few shields with rockets)
I solved the boat shrine without shooting through the bars. I didn't even know that was the intended solution lol. I think I landed on top of one of the "sticks" that go out of the boat (which gives you the necessary altitude) and ascended into the cage.
im one of those old school 3d zelda fans. I had all four 3d zeldas on gamecube and then mm and oot again on n64 and i played them endlessly throughout my childhood and teen years, those games mean more to me than i can say.
I wasn't one who got mad about botws lack of temples or anything like that, i loved the new direction, and i REALLY enjoyed finding cheese in that game lol. but totk did have a few moments where i felt like i was cheating myself out of the intended experience. at the start.
so i intentionally went out of my way to forego the solutions i had come up with, in order to figure out how the game "wanted" me to solve its puzzles. and those were easily the points where i was having the least fun. it wasnt until i came across that rocket shrine that i realized the game was encouraging my stupid, simple solutions, and everything from that point forward felt so much better. plus, the more you play the more you want to find new stupid solutions, and it's just a whole lot of fun to play with what the game gives you.
they even added cheese as a food item so like
edit: small thing, but i also rly like that im not forced to strap koroks to a contraption and launch then across the map, most of them i can tuck safely in a horse cart and walk to their destination lmao
Me and my GF were watching this video and said you and I quote “look like squid-wards house” 💀
I think if you move the gem it could remain in existence forever, as long as it does not get too far from you, so just maybe you could even bring them into the depths if you make sure it never gets too far away.
I think thats the case, but falling off a cliff must have triggered its "too far away" logic before it ACTUALLY got out of range of the recall.
As ex Beta tester/ex moderator (Tech help guy) and small serv admin from small steam indie dev team. and yeah been gaming since intel 8088/86 days. building PC since 90's. True I am no dev but have my eyes opened few years back when was helping them out. Have better understanding of development of games, At least on Pcs.
Since TOTK /switch has such limited amount of ram. (4 Gb where Steam deck has 16 GB) They have too have things de-spawn once it hits a certain range, This is to help with game performance, but there is way around this, so if you ever build something like a glider or some monster creation you don't want too lose.. Drop a dragon scale and attached it to the device and it will stay where it is, but there still a limit HOW far you can go before It will de-spawn. but the distance is a lot further then if you just walked away from something you made. Yeah give a try. attached single dragon scale to anything you build..
Good Video man :)
Btw Twilight Princess HD and Links to past are my two fav Zelda game. Wind Waker HD was good too, I even named my kitten and called her Zelda lol.
I absolutely do not agree with the people who think that building a vehicle to traverse the depths is cheap. In fact, it actually does feel like the intended solution. They give you little depots with parts to build vehicles all around the depths, and all of the Yiga hideouts have ready-made vehicles that you can steal and use to get around. All evidence points to vehicles being the intended means of traversal in the depths.
I was able to use ascend in the air ship shrine once I made it in there I saw the poll and went "OH! I was supposed to shoot that dang it"
Regarding shrines. No one cares if it's cheesed. Because you can always go back to that shrine, to do it the "intended way." But what is the intended way? People will decide what the intended way is. The thing is, people play and enjoy totk their own way. And it's a beautiful thing to watch ♥
In every classic zelda games, when playing, we all said something along those lines "I wish I could..." "I would --- id I could" "Would be funny if..."
Now you actually can, it it's what makes TotK so good, and fun.
It's not "cheating, or cheesing" if you're using what the game provided you. Tools, and shows you methods... You're just enjoying the game your way. And that's always better than always being on rails.
In a way, this peak game design. When the player thinks they came up with a solution, instead of finding the preconceived solution designed by the dev, the illusion of the game becomes perfect.
The game is not breaking its own rules by removing the crystal. It's got another rule that you should appreciate: if you lose control of the crystal it will respawn at it's original location. If you had recalled it before this happened it would have been on the plane.
Admittedly, Gem puzzles are really annoying when transporting them and failing somehow. Just having to restart when your flying machine and gem fall off the edge is very annoying, but at least they don't force you to do a shrine as well, just a blessing shrine. Honestly the only really annoying part of the game.
But I love the trick blessing shrine. It looks real, but why is there arrows on the ground and a fire fruit bush?
Outside of entering actual codes and buying devices to make games easier, there is NO cheating in video games. There is creativity and skill.
As a Navy Seal once told me, "If you're not cheating, you're not trying."
I only figured out about rocked shield the other day, through a loading screen note actually, but my smooth brain solved that puzzle with a stone slab and a rocket on each corner
I always have the person goal to figure out what the devs want me to do for the same reason I play the game in the first play, which is to just explore
And if I figure out the intended way before beating a shrine I'm just like, "Ah they wanted me to do this" *and then I proceed to cheese my way to the exit because my goal is complete*
Tldr: I always have the goal of figuring out the intended way but I don't plan on actually doing it
Facts. Even many of the glitches are time consuming to setup and execute. A modded save made this tedious game much more tolerable to finish.
The key element of this is that the game is super ambitious but designed to run in a switch, a super underpowered device. It's a miracle it runs at all.
If it had 32gb of ram we wouldn't have problems like despawning items.
I like this take. So many of the shrines have what seems to be the "intended" solution to the puzzle, but they also give you the tools to do it your way and I definitely think that's intentional.
It's kind of funny to see so many people post their weird solutions and go "Look! I outsmarted the devs!" But no, I don't think you did. Your way may not have been one they thought of, but they definitely intended for you to find YOUR way. They just also made THEIR way (or A way) available to you should you want to attempt it.
Also, Mimic Tear? Ha! I lived in the days of chucking fire bombs over the wall to kill the capra demon before you even walk through his fog door. Bring on the CHEESE!
The only reason why I ever Play tears of the Kingdom nowadays is because I still have the duplication glitch with an unupdated save file
I came to the same conclusion about 40 hours in (and at my age, that's DEEP in to the game). Super reassuring to see someone else found the cheesy tutorial shrines super reassuring
The shrines in this game are like 10× better than in BOTW since they're all just "hey, you know you can use this cheesy technique in the over world, right? No? Well now you do".
I don’t like too much freedom. Solving a problem with limited resources is what I find fun. Figuring out how to overcome an obstacle is easy and boring when you have infinite freedom and resources. Figuring out how the game intended for you to beat it is fun and interesting. That’s why I rarely used Zonai capsules. I preferred figuring out why certain devices were present in the environment and using those to solve the puzzle. Often I see multiple “intended” solutions, and I just pick the one I feel like at the time. I don’t have a competitive spirit, so “outsmarting the developers” means nothing to me.
The game effectively makes you become an engineer to solve many of the puzzles/shrines/traversal/exploration. But it also allows much of the traditional zelda gameplay tropes. Want to ascend a mountain by using the staircase of baddies and fight each one? Ok. You can. You'll get some valuable materials and possibly gear. Or you can bring out some balloon structure or dive from a sky island and reach the top that way.
Conundrum here: You gain a guilty freedom, but lost the perenity of the saintess weapons... No more missile boomerang, slingshot and eternel bow. no more Unbreakable overpowered ( once you have full hearth) sword that may( or not) evolve with you ... Only Link, using the last durable weapon( or liability) that may help him revail : His brain.
5:25 I felt like _such_ an idiot with that rail puzzle. I tried about five different versions of a shape that would balance the weight carefully enough to make it through that turn before I realised I could just... make a centreboard... so it never fell off...
And yeah I do often wonder how the hell I was supposed to complete the puzzle. It's good to find other solutions but after a while 'recall' feels too much like an instant win rather than actually using my brain.
BUT I prefer the open-ended approach, because it means you're relying on your own problem solving rather than trying to bend your brain into the shape the devs intended. Often I just never 'understood' video game puzzle logic and always got stuck looking at a walkthrough. With Totk I feel like if I hammer away enough at it, I'll come up with something.
However sometimes I think it covers up lazy design. The wind temple was pretty good and I assume the fire temple had... some sort of logic to it, I just climbed everywhere when I felt my brain unable to conform to the intended solution. But _was_ there a way to get through the water temple without just climbing and jumping to different locations? It wasn't satisfying to solve at all.
Also that hoverbike: It's honestly hard to use if you haven't got a LOT of battery power, by which point you've done some decent grinding to 'earn' it I feel. I haven't got nearly enough battery to make it viable.
7:10 I like the mimic tear, all the perks of cooping minus the downside of having to be online or deal with people. Lmao
My belief is that true intelligence is not memorization of hard facts, but the effective, and sometimes unorthodox use of available resources and perhaps abnormal critical thinking and problem-solving. I say there’s nothing wrong with finding abnormal ways of solving problems. One could argue that sticking to the established ‘correct way’ of solving a problem is actually the complete opposite of intelligence, as you’re just following a formula with no deviation.
I wonder if this logic applies to the "hit the target wirh the ball" things where you can just use a bomb arrow.
I haven't played Tears of The Kingdom yet but I'll get around to it at some point. Honestly the more I see about it the more I feel like it is similar to GMOD or a game like it where the idea isn't to have the traditional Zelda experience where there is only 1 solution but where they tell you the rules and let you decide how to interpret them. As is showed in the video devs know the game and trust me they know it better than anyone other than a speed-runner will. They know what you can make and the small little angles you need to be on to glitch through that wall to bypass half the level. Nintendo especially knows exactly how their game works and I can assure you if they don't want you to do something they know the 75 ways to get over the wall you will try before giving up and learning how they actually want you to proceed. I think it's purely because of how the series has been people think of these things as cheating not because the devs didn't want you to do it. I mean after all, to do anything in a videogame it has to be programmed in...unless it is a side effect of that very code.
As someone who knows very little about the Mimic Tear, how is summoning the mimic any more "cheating" than summoning **any** spirit?
I think it's okay to feel cheap and it could be instinct or like you said how we are used to these games playing out. But I also think it's the natural evolution of game design. We're seeing game design, customization, and other aspects being tailored to the players/community such as early access or these complex building/creative systems for players to figure out and even take it further than devs imagined. The balance of amount of content vs player freedom has to be right or you can get either overly long and linear experiences OR feel like you're in a massive sandbox without all that much to really do.
I've always been of the opinion that is it's in the game it's meant to be used. It's a tool given, and there is no cheating to use what's in the room. Heh, sometimes the tool is unintended but it's there anyway and I've no problems with using it. Especially if it adds ways to solve a problem. The less I have to do, the less time wasted on a game, and it adds a new way to solve the current puzzle. I love it when games have multiple solutions to the same problem too, not just for time saving as that's going to be for when I dislike a level/mission. It gives me a reason to play again, to see how else I can/could succeed/fail. Some missions in Cyberpunk I look forward to playing in a new way, finding a new route to sneak in, etc.. In short, to me there is no "cheating" in games when the "cheat" is a too/mechanic.
YOU CAN PUT A CART ON THE BOTTOM??? I just made myself a hover bike and put the gem on the bottom
I was tired of those big buttons that you had to hit, so i tried a bombflower and it worked lol
16:47 you can ultrahand the first one and then ascend onto it so you can ultrahand the second one high enough
Personally, I find figuring out and using the "intended" solution to be a sort of self-imposed challenge. I know I could skip the shrines and puzzles if I wanted to, but I want to know how the devs wanted me to solve them. It's an opportunity to learn new mechanics I wouldn't have thought of if I were to just rocket shield everywhere. I don't have an issue with people solving things their own way. I don't feel upset when someone cheeses through something they already know, I just feel a little disappointed when people do that without already knowing the intended solution because it means they gave up on learning. Not so much that I'd get upset at someone for doing so though -- They're not me. They learn and do things in their own ways and at their own pace. Getting upset at someone for not being you is ridiculous.
Rip to that one shrine crystal. I feel the pain. Great video!
Here’s the thing I’m in my 30s I don’t always have time to play the game right and I appreciate these added benefits. I do respect conquering without aids as well. Don’t forget games were made to be replayed it’s fine if you use some help the first time through.
I just wish the shrines in general in Totk had more complexity. 80% of them are far too simple imo
Weird, I never knew that it would bother people. Literally my whole gaming experience is all about how far can I push this game before I end up ultimately using mods or cheats to bring the game to it's knees (These mods/cheats being made by myself because using mods/cheats made by other people takes the fun out of it for me. I like that feeling of me against the system)
I remember reading that the 'ascend' ability started off as a developer tool that one of the team members used to get out of caves when he was finished play testing them. He came to realize that having to backtrack out of the cave, now devoid of enemies and puzzles and loot, was not fun the same way it was to enter the unknown and discover - so this core ability of the game started off as a way for devs to 'cheat' themselves out of caves and realized it was way more fun.
I absolutely LOVE that story, because it's such a genius way of solving the question of "how do you make leaving a place more interesting?" The out of the box nature of Ascend as an answer to the question is a perfect reflection of how Nintendo wants the players to think outside the box too. I like to think about how that compares to how others have answered that same question, like how skyrim has one way shortcut exits at the end of basically all of the caves and dungeons so that you can leave in a different way than you came in, or the tomb loops back to the entrance with a false wall you can only open from the treasure room end, same thing.
@@burnin8ablewario land 4 hurry up
@angelman69 so true. Pizza tower really did make the answer to that question central to its core gameplay
Basically the trope Door to Before, but on the demand.
"Oh you don't like walking? Well... how about you just go up?"
I always feel like I’m cheating when I walk korok’s to their friend instead of shooting them to the moon on a rocket
Where's the fun in walking? Why wouldn't you attach a korok to the bottom of your car's wheel so that it gets run over on every revolution, or glue them to the underside of your boat?
or nail them to a cross
You guys take the koroks to thier friends?
@@mckaygoodman6514 Eh, sometimes it's annoying and the whole point of the game is to have fun. If you want to challenge yourself by doing everything in your power to avoid the "preconceived" solution then all power to you. The video's point goes both ways, it's about how much challenge you want. If you want the most challenging experience in the game you disallow yourself to use builds and instead have to solve as many things as possible without them.
@@player_lv430 I just mark them and save it for later. Encountered well over 50 but did around 10
I accidentally got the master sword early and thought that maybe I ruined the story experience a bit. In the end as I got the rest of the tears, it felt more like dramatic irony and honestly imo a better experience. So no one should feel bad about the way they play this game, I feel like its fully intended to be an individual experience. To tell a story with that ability is actually astounding.
accidentally? isnt that a complicated ass glitch?
@@eli9867 you assume there's only one way to glitch this game to do an action
@@eli9867you only need to do like 20 shrines to be able to get the sword, very early for most people. If someone did 20 shrines, went to go turn in 100 charges for a battery segment, and on their way out sees something eye-catching below them, it's reasonable they would get the master sword very early without glitches like 4 hours into the game.
@@ssgoko88 you don't even need the battery upgrade, I did it without just because I got a map marker telling me to go ride the dragon, so I went up to a tower that was really close to it and just jumped on it lol
The only weakness of the game's story imo was the dungeon end cutscenes becoming repetitive but given how much of the game you can do in any order, the fact that that's the only part that stood out to me is really impressive
I think giving Link a dedicated jump button in these games (vs the prior "run to ledge to auto jump") is a good indicator of what kind of approach Nintendo wants players to take.
Before you could only do actions at specific points in specific ways at specific times.
Now you can just kind of jump spam up odd slopes and crouch under weird half ledges and scam your way around little physics problems in tiny ways that can all add up to getting around problems the way you want, not just by the way the devs allow.
Ye old Skyrim horsing in action
again, if the game allows it, then it was intended, lot of people dont get that if something is wrong with the game, or if they didnt want you to do or use certain things, they would just remove it like they did the dupe glitch in totk ver 1.1.1
@@Aqsticgod I don't know about that. There are plenty of glitches and exploits in BOTW that are clearly not intended yet were never patched.
The specific instance I was thinking of when I made my comment was a shrine that had a switch in a large cube room that when struck it rotated the entire cube around you, moving the floor to the ceiling. It had holes in it to facilitate the puzzle.
My solution (which crucially for my point didn't feel like the solution intended) was to stand on the lip of one of the wall holes (after gliding to it while the cube was already rotating), shoot an arrow at the switch, and then as the cube rotated again, I just of just walked at the wall until I would slide down and started spamming jump so I could make it onto the flatter outside ceiling, and thus walk to the goal.
Not sure what specific shrine it was but the game wasn't buggy or anything and it was very easy, but it didn't feel like someone at nintendo said "then at this point the player needs to stand on this thin part of the hole, shoot the switch, and then jump at this odd angle to hopefully not slide off".
There are basically 3 solutions to problems in this game. Built in, oddball, and exploit. Oddball solutions are fine but they aren't intended.
@@samwoodley1653 Thing is, that's fine. The developers probably realized that there would be some solutions they didn't see coming. If they didn't want you to be rewarded for that type of extremely creative or exploitative solution, they would have patched it when testing the shrines, or when seeing how it's played afterward.
Yeah, but speaking of jumping, the very first 3D game, OoT also had the side jump and back flip, and they absolutely allowed you to get to places that were (probably) unintended like heart piece above Dodongo Fortress and the guy sitting on a roof in Kakariko Village.
There's an interview with the Divinity: Original Sin director, where someone asked him if he's aware of an exploit that lets players stack dozens of status effects onto themselves before a hard fight. His reply was that not only did they know, but they chose not to fix it because it's so much fun to do
Oh, cool, I figured it was on purpose.
this falls in line with fromsoftwares philosophy, otherwise why put the ashes in the game? if they wanted you to play a certain way they wouldnt have those objects in game.
there's also the ability to use telekinesis to maul enemies with an object that weighs an absolute ton, letting you one shot most enemies with a bit of setup
DOS is such a good game. Both games are entirely "heres a problem, figure it out we dont care how."
That trick of filling a crate and just chucking it at enemies in DOS is always funny.
Great video as always!
My favorite TOTK hack is definitely "make a bigger bridge"
It's truly staggering how many puzzles can be solved by building an aggressively large bridge 😂
Bridges trump vehicles every time lol
have you heard of the (double) recallevator?
@@munchrai6396 Early game bridges are best until you have enough battery to make the hoverbike last longer.
Yes. I just did the shrine crystal puzzle today and landed it pretty well. However, I also brought out an extra fan, added two batteries nearby, a large battery and two rockets instead.
My go to "cheat" is rocket shields. Make them outside a shrine, and boom, anything not locked behind doors is done.
Also, Rewind is amazing for making your own floating platforms
Another thing about the rocket jump is that its literally shown in the TRAILER, using it to get to the very top of the monster camp in Eventide Island
If it's a feature, of course Nintendo knows of it and wants you to use it!
I still remember clearing the Fire Temple by almost completely ignoring the minecarts and just climbing the place and using Ascend on the little available spots on ledges.
That is EXACTLY what I did. I looked at those minecarts and realized my half-baked monkey brain would never get it. It's like that math problem in high school you accept you're just never gonna understand and move on.
Bro same
yeah i saw the maze of tracks and i was like umm. i was scared to do them in the wrong order and have to backtrack. and then i came to an area where i couldn't figure out the intended strat so i put on my climbing gear and just scaled the outer wall lol
talking about ignoring the intended path for the path to the water temple I didn't realize the zora armor let you climb waterfalls by gliding into them (as opposed to starting at the bottom) in this game until the last one into the temple proper so the wind sage got a workout making sure I reached the side of those floating water dispensers to climb up them
Glad I'm not the only one who did this. I maxxed stamina really quickly and lucked into the climbing shirt early on, so I've just been spidering and gliding and ascending everywhere, which isn't too far off from what I did in BotW honestly.
I will not ruin my loving marriage no matter what this game wants me to do
Aonuma wants you to learn the joy of polyamory
@@cleverman383 Hey, if all parties are consenting it ain't cheating
looking at your profile picture I am fearful as to what this loving marriage entails
@@Fabiocean2000 😏
but its fun :D