How Tears Of The Kingdom Keeps You Playing Forever
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- Опубликовано: 20 сен 2024
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Tears of the Kingdom is a compulsively playable game, with many people losing hundreds of hours to its impossible-to-resist charms - but what distinguishes Link's latest outing from the many many games stuck languishing in our backlogs that we intended to keep playing, but could never quite find the enthusiasm to go back to?
After diving into the depths and ascending to the skies, The Architect has gotten a few ideas - maybe the secret to a game that keeps us playing, and stops us from burning out is one that doesn't just distract us, but makes us care about what's going on? And just maybe, could it be that the secret to creating a sense of investment lies not in the work of developers, but our own minds?
You Saw:
Redfall - 2023
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - 2023
Gone Home
Fallout 4
Divinity Original Sin 2
From Dust
Super Mario 3D World
Hades
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 2017
Resident Evil 4 Remake - 2023
The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe - 2022
Vampire Survivors - 2021
Persona 5 Royale - 2019
Star Wars Jedi Survivor - 2023
Psychonauts 2 - 2021
The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess - 2006
Forza Horizon 5 - 2021
Final Fantasy 7 Remake - 2020
Cassette Beasts - 2023
Fortnite - 2017
Marvel Snap - 2022
Dark Souls 3 - 2016
Far Cry 5 - 2018
Metroid Prime - 2002
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - 2004
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - 1997
Xenoblade Chronicles - 2020
Dredge - 2023
Journey - 2012
Yume Nikki - 2004
Doom Eternal - 2020
Terra Invicta - EARLY ACCESS
Sid Meir's Civilization 6 - 2016
Wildfrost - 2023
Elden Ring - 2022
Lonely Mountain Downhill - 2019
Nier Automata - 2017
The Pathless - 2020
Half Life Alyx - 2020
DOOM - 2016
Fallout New Vegas - 2010
The Witness - 2016
Dishonored - 2012
Super Mario Odyssey - 2017
Terra Nil - 2023
Celeste - 2018
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - 2016
Mass Effect 3 - 2012
Minecraft - 2011
Metal Gear Rising: Revengance - 2013
Hi-Fi Rush - 2023
Undertale - 2015
Chrono Trigger - 1995
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - 2000
It Takes Two - 2021
Death Stranding - 2019
Mario Kart 8 - 2014
Kirby and the Forgotten Land - 2022
Genshin Impact - 2020
God of War: Ragnarok - 2022
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 2017
Atomic Heart - 2023
The blood moon of capitalism rises once again, brave hero - and with it so do my ever-growing bills for maize-based bacon flavored snack food. Please! You must help me!: www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Yahahaha! You found me! My special Korok task? Why, it's to follow me on twitter! of course!: twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Hard disagree. I play for 5 minutes then stop playing because most monsters insta kill you. Then i just go play league of legends instead
@@slycethskill issue
@@slyceth do more shrines and get better weapons and materials
Im not walking to twitter after getting shot 2 times with arrows,then kill the 1 shooting me,just to:shoot my head with an arrow.
"bright side... is very... dark."
You are fine, Legend of Zelda is good for you, don't worry about the addiction :3
This game is like a real life fast-forward button. To me playing in what seems like an hour, is actually 5 hours.
Like I'm thinking yeah I've played for twenty minutes and it's been AN HOUR AND A HALF
That’s what I’ve always said about games, they are basically time machines!!
This was my exact thought yesterday, the same exact ratio 1:5. With typical games, you think you’ve played an hour and it’s been 2 hours. Zelda TOTK is different. It’ll be 11pm and I say “Ok 1 hour until midnight, then I stop.” Next thing I know, it’s 4 AM!!
Yep. I thought i just reached 60hrs, but i'm actually at 170hrs playtime. 😅
Standing next to your switch you see the option for “sit” and it gives you until morning noon or night
I was SHOCKED to see my play time at 95 hours today. That’s half the amount of Elden Ring playtime I put in over the course of a year and I LOVE Elden Ring. This game is addictive.
Damn only 95?
@@mildlyaggravated7066I like my playtimes how I like my women
@@youtubesucks1821 Long?
@@Felix-Sited Over 40
@@mildlyaggravated7066 as someone who works 60 hours per week it was a shocking number for me 🤣 I have not been getting good sleep lmao. That’s an average if 5 hours per day
In a similar vein, I have a principle that I call “Final Boss Syndrome”. I’m sure plenty of folks have experienced it. You’ve reached the end of the game, probably done some grinds, played mini games, and worked through time and skill and for whatever reason you just go “eh”, stopping right before the big showdown. Maybe you feel like you’ve gotten everything you want out of it, or maybe you decide that you’re gonna save it for another day and just don’t get back around to it. Final Boss Syndrome has been the bane of a number of my gaming experiences.
i did. that with BOTW - i started two different play through, one in 2018 and one this January, and both times Final Boss Syndrome plagued me hard. I had to force myself to go beat Ganon on May 12th, despite having nothing else left to do, because i felt if i beat Ganon, the game “canon” i played would be over for good, and anything else was wasted time. It took the knowledge of a sequel coming out the same day to make me say “okay, fine, i can be done with BOTW now”
Yay someone like me !!!
It always happens to me at my second playthrough. At the first I always finish the final boss / mission. But if I've already beaten it even if the previous playthrough was over a year ago I always stop before the final challenge.
Damn it, this is me, who has played through final fantasy VII multiple times, and just never went past the entrance to the Northern Cave. I have the game with New threat 2.0 to make it interesting. Hopefully I can get back to it, with the crazy backlog I have. I did finally manage to defeat Kefka FFVI a few years ago. The end game grind can definitely burn you out. Also, these two games were crazy with the side quests contributing to the burn out.
This happened with me just a few months after Botw was released! I stopped right before going into the last divine beast. I didn't touch the game and even my switch until summer 2018, so I decided to just beat the beast and go straight to Ganon. My last save in botw was in September 2018 and still had so much content and exploration left, but didn't feel like I had purpose for it anymore after beating the story. It shocks me now how little time I put in botw even though it's a game I have fond memories of. 65 hours total. I've already reached 25 hours in Totk and I'm so invested in the exploration that I want to savour the story and drag it out this time around.
The damning magic charm of this game is that there is _always_ something to do, and most of these things don’t take long to do. Thus you have an endless series of gratifying short-term goals that don’t put a drain on you, thereby you keep on doing them one after another, and before you know it, three hours have flown by. And you haven’t even made a dent in the sheer amount of game here.
Just started and finished a side Quest in one sitting in the toilet. For me , as a parent, that's awesome.
I keep saying to myself "let me just get to that dragon tear, then I'll stop" then it's 3:30 in the morning and I have to get up for work in 2.5 hours.
You haven’t gone for a no glitch 100% yet. I so tired of hunting those little korok bastards 😂😂 sad thing is I could of beat the game day 2 yet still haven’t. Trying to compete everything else first and I honestly don’t see how anyone can do that in less than 300 hours. It’s getting ridiculous at this point.
As someone who’s put roughly 400 hours into BOTW, TOTK is like a revelation, nearly every mechanic is an improvement over BOTW. I’m having a blast and haven’t beaten the game yet.
Edit: The Lightning Temple rules.
Same here man. I agree so much. About 350 hours so far for me. Cannot wait for a master mode already
Botw felt like a huge game when I played it, now totk makes it look like it was a demo.
Lightning Temple was peak Zelda.
Fun fact. I still haven't beat the first one either... I keep cooking... ill never beat this game
I completely disagree. Botw was and is a masterclass in game design. Totk is just all over the place. Its sloppy, unfocused, like a chef tossed every single ingredient into the pot. Thats not what makes a good soup.
Every single sentence, sometimes multiple beats within a sentence, you have the perfectly chosen scene to reflect what you're saying, from game footage that is actually relevant to the point you're making. The amount of work that has gone into this video beyond just the script is incredible. Not only was I engaged, but I was invested.
I was also noticing the same thing! it backs up the theory of the whole video - very skillfully made.
2:30 this part is my favourite way he did this 😂
I have read this comment several times, from different accounts. Bought bot-compliments?
Hot take but I actually think that the Koroks are one of the few downgrades from BotW. The BotW koroks took like 5 seconds to complete so they didn’t really distract your exploration too much. The TotK ones (specifically the get me to my friend ones) take too long to do so after like the second one, I just marked them on my map and kept it pushing because I had other things I wanted to do
But you get 2 seeds.
@@cirkleobserver3217 one seed for 10 seconds of work or two seeds for like 3 minutes to build your contraption and traverse the distance
@@cirkleobserver3217 Feels like it should be worth more. 5, maybe? Or they could give different amounts according to how difficult it is / far it is to travel, if Nintendo weren't slaves to repetition
I get your point but I think the idea behind them is to let you be creative on how you transport them. There's often many stuff around to build vehicles to get them from A to B. And sometimes you also discover new stuff on your way.
To me they're more fun then wasting 50+ arrows on insanly fast baloons moving around me.
Counter point, the existence of these new Koroks enables us to torture them
I personally found BOTW very engaging, and beat it to 100% (it took 300 hours). Although, I agree that TOTK improves on it in every way. It also shores up most of the areas where BOTW fell a little short. BOTW's story was "everything already happened, all you're doing is killing the bad guy, all story elements are flashbacks", and that wasn't as engaging. It also suffered from monotonous shrines/korok seeds, and a severe lack of dungeons. And while the ambience that plays is amazing for exploring the world, it barely had any moments with the orchestral scores Zelda was always known for. TOTK fixes all of this...shrines are much shorter and much more fun, korok seeds have a lot more variety, and there is a mix of both ambience and epic scores, and there are real dungeons. Also, the story happens in the moment.
Improves it in every way 🙄 sure adding some things makes it ten times better
I did everything in BOTW except collecting all the Korok seeds. SCREW that!😂
@@mxb1585
You... haven't played TOTK have you?
@@sethfeldpausch4337 I did that. I am not ashamed to say I used a guide. I found...maybe 1/4 of the seeds on my own.
@@sethfeldpausch4337 LMFAO SAME
4:34 I love that you covered up that footage just a pair of frames before falling off the glider XD
shhh I'm really good at zelda I swear
Fantastic video. I especially relate to the point about feeling guilty about not getting everything in a game. As a personal example: I love Fire Emblem but often run the risk of burring myself out because I keep trying to get the most out of every unit I get-keeping them leveled and especially seeing all of their supports- despite the fact that there's no need to do all of that in a single playthrough. Setting goals for yourself when playing a game, and thus boundaries, is definitely something I need to practice more.
Fire Emblem is my all time favorite series, I've completed one of the stories (Golden Deer) in Three Houses, but it got put on the back burner due to life events. I'm now in a place where I feel like I need to replay each path. (I think the plan will be replay Golden Deer on Maddening w/o NG+ for the background)
Engage is in an even worse place.. it arrived 2 months late & by the time, my excitement faded and the next Zelda was imminent. So at this point, I guess I'll finish TotK and then circle back
“ok Nintendo lawyers let’s agree to not think too hard about why the Botw footage is running at 60 Fps ok”
Hey adam before the Nintendo assassins get to you I would like to thank you for your great videos, Rest in peace brother
Has he written his will yet?
Huh?
@@codycast to play at 60 fps, you need to either have a modified switch (unlikely) or pirate the game on pc emulators.
@@ordainedtitle9587 gotcha
@@ordainedtitle9587 Or you can create a dump of your copy and then play that through an emulator which is completely legal.
Instead of multiple endings I like having just one but also having different points where you can consider the game finished. For example in Xenoblade games the end of the main story is a great ending but the superbosses allow for a mechanical culmination.
That's just standard practice
In Xenoblade I enjoy more replay the game to re-experience the story again, the world, the ost
This was my exact experience with BoTW and ToTK. Exploration in BoTW rather quickly felt empty and stale. 40+ hours into ToTK and exploration still feels good. And I finally completed one region of the main quest and that was so fun!
It keeps you going because you want to hear "yahaha !" about 800 more times, obviously !
Honestly man.
I literally can’t stop. There’s just so much to do, and so much to see. The creativity of it all leaves you thinking of new ways to tackle stuff even more than breath of the wild allowed.
I’ve easily put in over 100 hours before even getting to the 4th dungeon.
It’s a sort of double edged axe for me because i have ADHD, so it helps that I can see something and go “let’s go check that out” but simultaneously forgetting what I was doing, and continuing to explore more. Which isn’t a bad thing lol.
Very good game.
The Witcher 3 had this incredible hook for me. The story actually starts kind of slow but then you start encountering these amazing sub plots and side stories, from extremely dark to funny to intriguing... And you kept this amazing urge to come back to it because during the 50-100 hours I just kept wondering what story was going to be told next. This must have been very difficult to write. Most games with a good story always have a point where it becomes clear how things will play out and the rest of it is... Well just that, it plays out. The Witcher never reached that point. Maybe because the game is designed like a great novel and it's much more a collection of short stories only loosely tied together.
Man I wish I got into that game, but I never really clicked with the combat and rpg mechanics
I had a little different experience myself. Because I binged through all the books before starting the game, I did the work of introduction for the game. Then all The Witcher had to say was that Ciri was missing and I flew through the game so fast I never even stopped to change my armour until I had her in Kaer Mohren.
@gollygosh I'd say those are indeed not the strongest parts of the game. Especially potions, oils and all that stuff can be very tedious, all those different ingredients are kind of a nightmare to manage. Perhaps try it again with normal difficulty and play the game like an action adventure instead of an rpg. That would highlight the strong points of the game and makes the annoying parts less relevant. That way its almost like you are playing an interactive fantasy novel.
No one, including CDPR, has been able to match the consistently amazing writing in the Witcher 3. Especially in regards to the side quests. Some of the best content in that game is hidden away in obscure villages where the main narrative never takes you.
@@Oxtocoatl13 Actually, Cyberpunk has some proper storytelling going on. Its indeed less than The Witcher but more focused. Anyway, just want to mention that Cyberpunk is up there as one of the few games out there that reach "novel" tier writing. Ive read Dune, Neuromancer, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress among other sci-fi novels and I got to say that some of the Cyberpunk storylines are really up there. The game of course got a lot of bad press, and rightly so, for releasing as a buggy mess, therefore I think the quality of the writing might even be underrated. There are only a few games that I finish without ever asking myself if I should, and Cyberpunk is without a doubt one of those. The story of Cyberpunk might even be better than that of the Witcher because it really forces you on to the important questions: Why do we live? What makes us human? Whats the point of it all since we will die anyway? Plus all the dystopian art and the music, Nina Kravitz
sometimes i find a game that is over-engaging ends up in my backlog too, because i know if i pick it up again it will consume all my time until i finish it again. happens with factory games and MMOs a lot for me. I keep saying ill play it again, keep putting it off because i know i wont be able to play it in moderation while i have other stuff to do. That and knowing im 100% in for a 300+ hour commitment that i WILL be unable to stop is kinda daunting...
I did exactly the same thing on BotW. I liked it so much I burned out doing shrines and koroks and still feel guilty about not finishing it
Can't believe you didn't beat botw.....shame
same
The way I handled things was by prioritizing sections. For example a cool thing about the new game is how the roots in the underground are directly bellow the shrines in the over world. When I noticed this I made completing the roots my goal cause then I was able to just mark all shrine locations in the over world. I then prioritized the sky tower in an area followed by all the shrines I have access to. By doing this I got another benefit which was that traveling was now a solved problem. In a way games are sometimes too complex throw too much at us to make us feel like there is a lot of game. The only way I have found to actually finish games like this is making way smaller games with smaller scopes out of em
Yep, it’s like the old saying about eating an elephant- one bite at a time. I did something similar- first the sky towers/map, then tears, then stables, then regional quests, etc.. All while fighting the hundreds of distractions planted along the way such as Koroks, chatting up NPCs, etc..
I feel like TOTK did an especially good job at knowing where BOTW players were most likely to go (shrine of resurrection, where you get the paraglider, the place where you fight Ganon in the castle, etc.) and ensured that there'd be interesting things there while also having a lot of new things to explore along the way so it didn't feel like you were just doing the same things again. And actually, this was a problem I had with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 where it didn't feel quite as connected to the previous 2 games despite its entire plot depending on those games; it's still an amazing third game, but there were a lot of things working against it, like all the side content that takes you farther away from the actual next objective, how long it takes to get from plot point to plot point, and the lack of familiarity (apart from that there are gormotti, high entia, etc.) until the second half of chapter 6. But I will say that it implements the "darkest hour" bit the best out of any XC game
After getting off the Great Skyland I Beelined for Gerudo Desert because Riju was my fav character in botw and I wanted to see how she was doing.
Her glow up did not dissapoint, but God damn was doing the desert with 5 hearts and barely any good gear a hell of a thrilling challenge.
@@35173Elise I bet it was a hell of a challenge, I just beat the lightning temple last night and it was my last dungeon of the four to complete. I had the master sword, two stamina wheels, and at least 11 hearts and I was still struggling at certain parts of that quest line at times. I salute to u
This. I love how they both encourage you to go to lesser explored places from botw by placing shrines and other points of interest there but also rewarding you for going to familiar locations like Rhoam's hut or the castle's throne room
Sometimes they punish you for the same thing with Gloom Hands, it's great
@@ambusher8675 yeah It was rough. Especially when I came to battling the passive heat.
I always wonder what makes a game interesting enough for me to finish it. Sometimes it’s not the games fault at all. I will bounce off a game only to come back to it at a later date and fall in love with it. So part of it is my mood and what I feel like playing that particular day.
I know they’re not particularly “profitable” ventures, but personally, I’ve had a ton of fun with the korok quests. Hilariously launching a korok off the side of a cliff by accident and figuring out how to get them back to their friend is a blast.
What's amazing about Totk is that it manages to make near everything rewarding. Just before beating the game, I decided to see if I could successfully travel from Zora's domain to lake Hylia via fan boat. At this stage, I'd completed every shrine and fully explored the depths. Yet, during my journey I discovered over a dozen Koroks, five caves/monster lairs, fought a lynel in a wetlands area east of Central hyrule with absolutely beautiful scenery I'd somehow just... Overlooked, and even stumbled across a mini game. Mind you, this was after a couple hundred hours of exploration. Yet somehow my river rafting adventure turned out just as rewarding as more narrative focused elements of the game.
This is part of thr reason I stopped fast traveling as much as I can. There is so much that can happen if you just go down a between path you haven't explored before.
For me, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is a game that I routinley come back to and that once you play it you get stuck for hours.
Same for me. It’s been a while since I’ve played it, but I know I can always jump back into at any time and go for hours.
The backpack koroks are annoying because they take you out of your gameplay look and require lots of time, but normal korok seeds are great because they are a small reward for exploring. Picking up a suspicous rock on the top of the mountain is alot better that spending 5 min travling with a korok
Couldn't agree more. The backpack koroks feel like a chore that makes you go out of the way to complete, especially when the destination for the korok forces you to backtrack to where you just came from, only to have to backtrack again to where you were planning on going. I see why the game has them becase a lot of time it forces you to engage with the ultra-hand vehicle creation mechanic, but a lot of times it's just easier to walk them to their destination. The normal koroks feel like quick one off puzzles that don't take you too far out of your path and feel rewarding to complete.
That’s beauty of having way too many korok seeds to collect. You can skip these if you personally don’t like them and it won’t matter. Plus they offer you double the seeds and take less than a minute. Not 5 minutes. These are also a lot easier to spot than regular korok so they’re impossible to miss, give you an extra seed and can normally be walked there in less than a minute
Rain World is one of the very few games that had me hooked from the start to the end, and even after getting every achievement, beating every campaign multiple times and spending hundreds of hours with it - I just can't stop thinking about it. It's not that the ending left me wanting more through any fault of the game - I simply think I found a game that truly clicked for me on a more fundamental level, and I honestly probably could not explain why! If I had to take a guess on why I found it so engaging I'd probably point to all of the parts coming together to produce a unique atmosphere and central mystery that you can ignore or piece together with context clues and the very limited dialogue. Finally piecing things together and getting a "comprehensive" understanding of the lore and world goes hand-in-hand with slowly getting more proficient with the unique movement system and mastering the environment.
When Co-op got added to the game I played with some friends and I realized how far I'd come... I was doing tons of advanced movement techniques and destroying every enemy we ran into, and I had to specifically stop and slow down for the newer players so they could have a better experience. It was a humbling reminder that just a hundred hours ago I was a tiny creature in a huge, dangerous world, not understanding anything, barely scraping by.
Very few games have allowed me this feeling of constant progression through nothing but personal skill and understanding, and it's something I tend to find is the most likely to keep me engaged with a game for a long time.
The amount of effort you put into choosing footage to sync with the video is like a whole secondary metacommentary on your own commentary
From Dust is a very beautiful game. I highly recommend more people play it.
We would all need to live near that moth to play with it,and saying "it" is offensive.
Im pretty sure im doing easter stuff for the comments.
Fantastic game and concept, but the mid-later levels can be quite tedious and the AI frustrating.
Just don’t play on your 4K tv
love the points on the players having some responsibility here. i haven't played TOTK in a few days now because i could feel myself burning out, even though i am OBSESSED with it. i played for a week straight, and eventually my adhd started floundering for more dopamine and not getting it, so i've forced myself to put it down. it's something i wish i'd done with a lot of games in the past, especially BOTW. you only play a game for the first time once, gotta keep the brain in check to get the most enjoyment from it!
Interesting that you point to Tears of the Kingdom's more extensive narrative as a point in its favor, when personally I felt there was a bit of an awkward disconnect there that led to some rather frustrating moments where the game *allowed* me to collect all of the Dragon's Tears right ahead, and doing so eventually led to the game's central mystery being completely resolved fairly early on... Yet the entire rest of the game progressed as if I didn't know the thing I had literally been told. That plus the part in Hyrule Castle where you get lured all over the map into a bunch of obvious traps yet there's nothing you can do except spring them... That honestly just felt like something out of a different game. Breath of the Wild's narrative was, by comparison, a lot more straight-forward and pretty much gave you all the context you needed for the ending right off the bat, but I felt that as a result, it avoided any pitfalls that I feel TotK fell into with trying to be fully open and also telling a linear story with a gradual buildup to a climax.
...TotK did have an absolutely phenomenally awesome ending that leaves BotW's in the dust though. So there is that.
Very fair criticism!
Personally I think they should have had memories in this game done in order regardless of where you go first, just because I think it made sense for botw to have it out of order but this one not so much
I would’ve loved to see the tears split into 2 separate sets, with the second being triggered after the castle sequence. That way you can’t just immediately resolve the mystery, yet it still feels like you’ve completed them and figured it out until boom, more tears, more story to go find.
Obviously it would’ve had to be written to make sense, but sort of like mass effect 2, you can only keep building your squad after certain points of the story have been done.
It's funmy seeing Cassette Beasts. It's intro really hooked me and the rest of the game is really well built to keep you playing and exploring the map. It may not be the biggest map but it was fun to traverse and complete quests throughout. The battles are great too, which really helps.
I hear it's good, but TOTK has me so hooked I haven't even looked at it.
Metal Gear Solid V is I think a very interesting game in this regard as it built its postgame into the narrative itself. Just as you the player play beyond the game's ending in hopes of a true ending that will never come, so too does your player character. Just as you begin to replay your past missions for better ranks, your character begins to stage harder recreations of their past missions. Just as you begin to engage in the multiplayer mode in hopes that it'll unlock some new missions in the singleplayer, so too does the player character. The game's ending feeling empty ends up being the perfect ending to a story all about the hollow nature of revenge... and to a lesser extent the hollow nature of open world games and live services.
Ludonarrative resonance 😎.
Nice way of coping with the rushed ending of that game
@@TheBaxes we kinda gotta, it sucks but hey at least we got cool millitary sandbox
@@XenobladeNerd Yeah, the gameplay at least is very good
@@TheBaxesif the game is gonna be rushed either way, why not rush it in a way that's thematically appropriate?
Ok, this was really nice reference talking about things that cant continue forever and putting a footage from Automata where dozens of robost repeat ad nauseum "this cannot continue"
I just restarted Hades from the beginning, and then joined a Discord both to get tips on how to improve my play, and also to share my experiences. Although I didn’t exactly 100% it, I did reach the family ending the second time around. Sometimes the key really is in how you approach a game.
Well, the other thing is that not every game actually has a hard ending. In fact, most open-world games, and many RPGs, have a soft ending where after you finish the main quest, the game still continues and you can keep playing from that point onwards, doing the remaining side content without needing to load an earlier save. Skyrim and Fallout 4 come to mind right away, but also Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA 5, and several other games also do this. The point of that is to make continuing the game more natural and lower that hurdle after you've done the main content. Zelda just ain't there yet I guess, maybe one day.
he mentions that hifi rush gets best right at the end and it left him wanting for more, but the game really really wants you to replay and perfect it. There is sooo much more to the game after beating it, beating it also unlocks customizing your character, and it's pretty wild
I see your love of Morag and am 100% here for it
I wish TotK was in VR with one of those 360 degree running, gliding (indoor skydiving setup?), shield surfing, and mountain climbing platforms. I’d be in the best shape ever.
I love finding the korok seeds just to hear the "ya ha ha!" I love that.
this game will grip you right in the balls and wont let go for atleast a couple hundred hours and you’ll love every second of it
Fully agree with your comments on the Korok seeds. "Take me way over there for 2 seeds." "Nah. My inventory's big enough."
The upside of coming to your own conclusion of "I'm about burnt out, let's go for Ganon" before 100%ing the worthwhile stuff in both BotW and TotK has a nice side effect of adding some replayability in subsequent runs down the road. "Hey, I don't think I've ever seen this shrine before!"
my first playsession was only broken by lunch, dinner, and 2 bathroom breaks. i played well over 15 hours. after that i took a small 1 hour break where i did nothing, then followed it by another 12 hour session of totk. my god im averaging 6 hours a day even now.
If you want more slots for weapons and shields, the Korok side quests are worth doing. Though they can be annoying.
Everything in ToTK feels like a puzzle. How do I get there? Puzzle. How do I defeat that enemy? Puzzle. What is that thing? It’s a Puzzle. Shrines and Temples? Literally puzzles. They are never toooo difficult, bc there are 100+ solutions to any problem. But usually not too easy, so I feel like a genius every 5 min
I got to the hebra stable, and then I got this OVERWHELMING sense of "What the hell am I doing?" So I deleted my save ( of 50 hours ) and restarted, but currently haven't even gotten off the sky island.
Just adding my comment for love of From Dust. It really is a beautiful game in itself and has inspired some fantasy worldscapes and imagination for me to this day.
Fun fact:
A Kotok genocide is called "a Korokaust"
I had the same experience of BOTW.
I bought a switch when I broke my collar bone. Couldn't do anything or use a keyboard.
So for 3 months I played hundreds of hours BOTW with the controlers against my left shoulder.
I grind the sh*t out of the koroks, the shrines, and the armor upgrade.
Just before I could use my arm again, I went to try to find ganon. Got lost in hyrule castle for 2 hours and had to leave.
3 days after I was allowed to use my arm again and didn't touch the switch for 7 months. Having forgotten all about ganon
TotK also removes a lot of the confusion and FOMO that BotW has.
Without looking at an online walkthrough i was always walking around areas thinking "But what if there's a shrine here I haven't found?" so I'd keep looking just in case. At times that "but what if" became more of a slog than something i was having fun with.
With TotK I can know for certain that an area is complete because of the depths.
This is something I don't think gets enough attention. Getting the shrines in this game is more of a process than a challenge, and it's all thanks to the depths. Honestly, while ultrahand and fuse are the media darlings of "what's new" in this game, I think the depths are far and away one of the most critical additions to the experience. High challenge, big rewards, cool treasures, building recipes, zonaite keeping you coming back so you can keep autobuilding, and a visual marker of exploration progress.
The sky islands dominated the marketing, and they are cool, but they are so much less influential on the game's evolution from BOTW than the depths are.
I also think that I’ve de played TotK longer than BotW at this point. TotK is soooo addicting, I’ve never felt like this with BotW.
talking about burnout while Link is literally on fire is such a nice touch
I think it also kinda helps the ToK is a Switch Game. Which makes it super easy to pick up and play a little bit at a time. I've found myself using my switch and 3DS far more in the evening because I can simply play them in bed while something comforting, like old reruns of Columbo, play in the background.
Someone pass that feeling along to me. I almost get overwhelmed then when I start playing I'll make small progress every time but lose interest really fast.
To be honest that's how it is almost playing any game anymore.
same thing happened to me with sevtech ages... I spent the whole industrial age waiting for autocrafting to be unlocked so it could kick up a notch and when I finally finished it the modpack just said, "ok, do galacticraft now" and being experienced with modpacks and knowing I don't like galacticraft, I decided to quit it and never go back.
I like how you used Celeste's soundtrack when you start talking about "endings" and how many games give a final challenge or use it to "pay dividends". Great choice.
Am I the only one who actually likes korok seed puzzles?
sad to see the forbidden shrimp no longer being in the credits. i always loved seeing that name
Great video - I'd never thought about it in those terms but as a really story driven player, this makes a lot of sense. I haven't seen many people mention it but there's one other thing I noticed that has helped me feel engaged, invested, and honestly just have the energy to play: the switch has an unbelievable freeze state. I'm not a huge gamer so idk if that's what you call it, but I can be mid-quest, put the switch to sleep, go walk the dog and come back 45 minutes later to the exact same moment with no loading screens or downtime. Compared to something like AC: Odyssey, it takes like 5 minutes for my xbox to even load the system, load the game, load the file, and then actually return to where I was. If you're not a gamer who can dedicate hours to a single gaming session, it makes it almost inaccessible. I can play for 25 minutes and have a productive 24 minutes on switch where on the xbox, if I play for 25 mins, I get maybe 15 minutes of usable time. Great job again on the vid, liked and subbed!
Isnt the reason why most games loose our interest is why other things loose our interest? They dont interest us.
For me, the last of us kept me playing because i found the story interesting on a psychological level. The relationship between ellie and Joel. Thats why that scene with the flesh eating cultleader while he tried to bang her was so much better in the game. The character were more fleshed out, if you know what i mean. I was invested because i was them.
Also the witness had me hooked because i felt i got to learn something tracing those lines, cant say what exactly, but things.
They get me invested because they ask something from me i think. Not many games dare to do that, they just wanna hook me and try to entertain. That said vampire slayers ran warm on my phone for a couple of weeks though 😅
As someone with a completionist mind, I can't relate to some of the feelings described here at all... The main pleasure I get from games is completing/finishing them, seeing that platinum trophy popping up is very satisfying. Thus, I can barely drop games I'm not having that much fun because I know I'll feel good finishing them, dropping games I like is unimaginable!
Beat the game today and unlike other games which makes me satisfied and fulfilled with the game, totk had me wanting more. It's just such a good damn game
One thing to add is the amount of games coming out and irl responsabilities, time is precious to me since i work a lot so i had to sacrifice horizon for elden ring for example.
I'm in the exact opposite camp on the new koroks. Because each of them is a traversal puzzle, they each have unique solutions. It expands the realm of experiences from the koroks in the last game by a huge amount. Instead of like... 7ish (I forget the exact number of different puzzle types), you get many more with the new korok puzzles. On top of the already expanded puzzle types. (Despite the removal of some - I haven't found any tree fruit puzzles yet. Maybe I'm just not looking closely enough.)
Also by giving you 2 seeds instead of 1, there will be fewer korok puzzles overall throughout the game that you have to do. (Hopefully - I haven't looked up exactly how many there are.) Or at least, that you have to do to get all the inventory slots you want. (Please let them still give us slots, I haven't managed to find hestu anywhere and I have like 150 seeds....)
"The more our skills decay..."
Cue The Master Sword in TOTK
from dust is a complete hidden gem, which I was fortunate enough to get for PS3 (RPCS3 has no ubisoft launcher)
The uplay thing is honestly such a mood. I keep meaning to go back to watchdogs but then uplay starts up and im just like ugh no
Minor spoilers ahead,
When I was playing through TOTK I was loving finding all of the memories. And then I started to connect the dots before the final reveal and I genuinely got physically ill. Like I figured it out and got sick to my stomach and had to put the game down for 2 days before daring to go back. Just thought it was an interesting experience and wanted to share to see if anyone else had that with this or other moments in games
Same, I got so shocked I had to put the game down and just cry. I didn't see any point in going further until my sister explained what eventually would happen. Then I went back to playagain lol
Didn't really bother me since I know Nintendo are way too safe too commit to something like that, plus they kind of made it super obvious as soon as they bring up the concept in question, like they bring it up so randomly and with such narrative weight that of course that's what happened
i couldn’t help but laugh at how stupid the story was as i played it, personally. then i just got disappointed that it was bad and removed any investment i had in that aspect of the game.
@@JEANS__ really? I mean for me the only kind of stupid part was that ganon really didn't have any motivation for taking over hyrule, and that zelda somehow didn't see "ganondorf" as "GANON" but honestly otherwise I thought the story was really good
@@electricisnthereatthemomen6535 zelda knows who ganondorf is and tells rauru he just doesn’t care.
but my issues with it are mainly that zelda transforming and just the idea of it to be i find very goofy and hard to take seriously.
the memories were very boring the game doesn’t tell you the an order til after you watch it, making them hard to care about. not that watching them in order do anything interesting though. the characters aren’t developed and the writing is just poor. the zonai’s culture and history is still mostly a mystery. ganondorf isn’t utilised well and i was generally underwhelmed by it all.
Dead Island 2 is like Hi-Fi Rush. Right when I got a good set of weapons and abilities the game was done.
That zoom onto BD-1 at 3:53 was perfect. I would die for BD-1.
For me to stay invested in open world games, I often complete main quests at a similar rate to side quests. That way I get to play the more interesting story based quests to keep me invested, while also getting the good rewards from side quests
stumbled onto your channel from a discussion of the depths. You earned my sub today.
I've been awake for at least four days. I ceased being productive or having ANY sense of direction or purpose... overwhelming as the exponential possibilities unfold and a simple trip to a nearby pin becomes 18 hours of aimless wandering in the depts or... I can't even tell you WHAT I've been doing. It's just so much more than anything I imagined possible. So tired.
4:34 nice work using the graphic to cover up you falling off that glider lmao
I can't believe the shout out to the obscure puzzle game I absolutely LOVE, From Dust. I love that game so much, it's infinitely fun playing with the water and lava physics.
But I still won't condone uplay if you don't want to play it.
It's interesting how TotK is so different from BotW and it all comes down to scope, how the world is filled with interesting stuff and movement options. In BotW I was pulled away from my initial path many, many times, but it was still within a certain area and I mostly just went for some korok puzzles or shrines. In TotK I went from the Sky to the Depths and back constatly, took a tower, flew across a quarter of the map, cause the points of interest are everywhere you look, especially while sky diving and the rewards are always worth your time. I pushed back finishing the game so many times, cause I wanted to get all lightroots and shrines, then I suddenly see something that wasn't there before I appearently unlocked. It took until the very end when I only had a few side quests and some unexplored caves left that I decided that I finally want to see the ending.
175h never passed by quicker and it was so much fun.
I am hooked too. I currently have my game playing now. I am hanging on the Zelda dragon so I can farm her parts for armor upgrades. This game is easy to get hooked on for sure. I can see how the three things apply to both BOTW and TOTK. BOTW has a hook. When Link first emerges from the Shrine of Resurrection, there is a gorgeous view of the wild. There is a wide shot showing the great open world. That really hooks the player in exploration. There is something weird that does happen in the beginning. I buy the part about healing for a hundred years and getting amnesia. Yet one odd part is that Link is all naked except for underpants. Couldn't the Shiekah, with all their technology, give Link some kind of a body covering while healing. Maybe there is a breathable tunic or even robe that allows healing waters through. I wonder if the naked part serves as another hook. Link is very attractive in this game. This early part does offer a lot of fan service for potential women players. I wonder if that is a hook too. The middle is interesting. The bulk of the game is here. It is intreaguing that the side activities have to be useful. Shrinew are good at rainsing health and stamina. Great fairies are good at improving armor. I think that is the most significant side activities. Having a flexible ending is good. It adjusts to differening attention spans. The main quest in both BOTW and TOTK take up a tiny amount of the gameplay. Most stuff is optional. There are cases of speed runners that go straght from Great Plateau to Hyrule castle in BOTW. Then they beat Ganon to death with a spoon. I think this case is too extreme. It would be more reasonable to expect players to comple all dungeons plus do mastersward quest. It doesn't take that long. Heck if anything limitong oneself to the main quest and essential character uogrades makes the game take about as long as a traditional railroad game. That may help the players used to traditional Zelda games.
oh my gosh discussion of a Minecraft modpack in a game design video??? i need more of that in my life
Okay Adam I hate you for introducing me to Guess the Game. Did the entire back catalog and only missed Cry of Fear and got most with 3, many in 1. I now hate myself for being a terrible, terrible nerd. THANKS. I HATE IT.
my brain completely tuned out at 4:50 because of the drastic change in tone, voice, and music. I thought it was an ad section and my brain autoignored it. so I had to rewind a solid 7+ minutes because I finally realized that couldnt all be an ad lmao
What I like about TOTK is the surface is relatively safe. All those Guardians stopped me exploring in BOTW.
I feel exactly the opposite. Played BOTW for 100 hours straight and still wanted more but had to move on, while I'm feeling like there is very little to come back to in TOTK despite realizing that it fixes many problems from BOTW. It just doesn't feel separate enough to me, and my motivation was very quickly killed by lackluster dungeons, baffling bad implementation of sage abilities, and the samey feel of sky islands and depths areas, and the repetitive nature of the story missions
4:07 wow nice match between script and scene.
I got yelled at this morning because I played it from 3pm-6am and I didn’t realize how long I was playing
I find investment is the big reason I don't finish a lot of CRPG games. I was absolutely obsessed with Divinity: Original Sin 2 for the entire first act. But once I finished the first act I felt like the story was over, the big goal was leaving the island and once you get it done I lost a lot of investment in the story.
Same with Encased, which I played recently. After the first act it's easy to lose investment. The big goal you were working towards is complete and suddenly there is a new goal, but I'm not invested enough in the new goal.
I love the CRPG's that I managed to finish, and they had much more long form stories and goals rather than dividing the whole game into separate acts with different goals. Namely Neverwinter Nights 2 and Pathfinder: WOTR. There is a big change up in WOTR but its so far into the game that it's actually exciting. In DOS2 there was a big change up but I was still so invested the characters and exploration of the first act that going to a completely new area made me lose interest.
How about Baldur's Gate?
@@Szili0 I don't like RTWP, only turn based
Ironically, trying to remember what you were doing last time is how your make learning stick.
I’ve seen crazier names. Have you ever seen Drew Dumil’s patron names? Like half of them are insulting and/or threatening him.
Dude really just voiced everything I've been feeling about games lately. And same story with zelda, started it last year, put it down, recently picked it up again and I've played it more than most others lately
*listening to the video*
"never leame them in a position of stasis"
*pauses, looks at the video, rewinds*
*chuckle*
At 3:30 just as you mention disenfranchisement, you use a clip of Vampire Survivors where the player just kinda gives up and dies. I can't imagine that wasn't on purpose, so kudos for apropos editing.
Looks like the channel has grown up a lot, 410k subs, that's pretty good.
I took my time and beat BOTW around 130 hours, I felt like I interacted with most of the content in the game. When I checked my playtime in TOTK I was around 90 hours (felt like 30), I haven’t even beat one of the regional phenomena yet. I’ve only mapped like 30% of the sky, 40% of the overworld and 15% of the underworld. I’ve only seen 2 Lynels.
At about the 18 minute mark, I realized something about my gaming habits that I may forget while writing this…It’s funny how much responsibility comes into play in videos games, not unlike film, books, all art really.
I usually tire from open world games rather quickly. Some can keep me for longer than others, but I never stick around or have any desire to achieve "completion" in them. This is the first open world game, that I can see myself actually completing...eventually (barring the korok seeds).
I played botw over the course of 2 years and racked up about 120 hours. I can easily feel myself reaching that time in totk within a month or 2.
Wow, do I appreciate your pointing out "engagement" and "investment" here. The subtle difference and importance of that next level is incredible and now I can point to what's missing when I'm engaged but ... still apathetic if not actively doing. I feel like this is a key thing I'm missing not just with my gaming hobby most of the time, but also with my other hobbies (such as drawing, music, or programming) and general life choices (careers, homes, etc).
Thank you. Wow.
Its so fucking good that I finished all the shrines, got all the armor, finished the story, got half the Koroks, and *started a new file* already.
I want to start a minecraft server with my group of friends, and this video definitely makes me think of what goals i could set for ourselves to complete the game and close the server on.
Like defeating the ender dragon, and leaving the server open for an extra week before closing.
I’m not the only one who noticed when he said “buzzing”, he uses a honeycomb
(about a third of the way through the video I only see the -time left for some reason)
you clicked on the playtime so it shows the remaining time instead of how much time has played through
Ight thx