I've beating Classic mode once or twice, I have some good pokemon but i'm tired of running Zazian, Keldeo, Excadrill, Gyarados etc. every run. Any recomendations on easily available mons that are worth investing in?
They released a new video on their twitter and youtube accounts that clarifies some details form the previously shared leaks. Here is the translated TLDR:
Honestly some of those points seem so good they must have a catch lol
Twitter post link. Thanks @/CATXALOTE_ for the summary.
So, since it's been a while since the last mainline Zelda game came out, fans have been all over the internet speculating about the next direction the franchise will take. Among the many topics being discussed, I want to talk about art style, art direction, and realism.
I've noticed that, while people here on Reddit tend to be more reasonable regarding THIS SPECIFIC TOPIC, there seems to be a loud community on Twitter obsessed with glazing Twilight Princess at every opportunity, almost reaching grifting levels. A lot of these people are also very insistent that the franchise NEEDS to return to a “realistic” art style like TP supposedly had.
Conversely, I also see tons of people doomposting, worried that an art style like that would be terrible and somehow kill the franchise.
I've come to the conclusion that most people don't really know what they're talking about. And I don't want to sound arrogant — I'm not an art expert myself — but I'm pretty sure terms like “realism,” “realistic art style,” and “cartoony art style” get thrown around without much thought about what they actually mean.
First, let's talk about Twilight Princess, since it seems to be at the center of so much discourse surrounding Zelda's graphics and art direction. Here's my hot take: I don't think TP's art style is actually realistic, even for the time it came out. I think that when people call this game's visuals “realistic,” what they really mean is “stylized (towards realism).”
The game has textures that were meant to look high fidelity by GameCube standards, the lighting is more dramatic, and I can concede that the environmental design tries to resemble real-life locations more closely. But you can't look me dead in the eyes and tell me the characters in this game are meant to resemble actual humans.
Aside from the somewhat realistic proportions of the main cast, a lot of the Hylians have very cartoony designs, facial expressions are often exaggerated, and the animations are heavily anime-inspired. And that's a good thing. I think TP understands very well when to combine gritty and dark elements with heavily stylized designs, and when to break its own rules for the sake of stronger art direction. I guess what I mean is that TP's uses some sort of "selective realism" to make his artsyle work well with its world, but I wouldn't call the overall result "realistic".
My problem with the term “realism” is that it's way too broad. If the next Zelda game is supposed to have “realistic graphics,” what does that even mean? Should it look like Red Dead Redemption 2? Cyberpunk 2077? The Insomniac Spider-Man games? Final Fantasy VII Rebirth? Because all of those games are often described as realistic, yet their art styles are completely different from each other.
RDR2 focuses on extremely detailed textures and models. Cyberpunk 2077 plays heavily with materials, lighting, and highly detailed facial expressions. The Spider-Man games are another example of stylized character design that allows for more dynamic and expressive animation, and so on.
Now, for those people that seem to faint at the very mention of a future Zelda game with reslistic visuals, let's all relax a little. The Zelda team can make great games that look cartoony, and they can also make reslism work. I understand where all this "unreal engine realism slop" narrative comes from but I'm confident they can pull off whatever style they decide to go with. Of course everyone will like some kind of artsyle over others, but I don't think the franchise has ever failed to deliver a strong and cohesive style for all it's games.
Personally, if Nintendo ever wanted to make a Zelda game with high-fidelity graphics, I'd love something closer to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Highly detailed textures and environments that still use strong colors and contrast, while keeping stylized, anime-inspired character designs for both humans and monsters. That approach allows characters to remain expressive while also enabling more creative and visually interesting designs. Monster Hunter Wilds is another example of this approach. Now that I think about it, this kind of artsyle feels like the natural evolution of TP's
I know some people dislike anime-inspired character animation and facial expressions, but honestly, I think Zelda is at its best when it embraces that influence. Skyward Sword Link is a great example of this, and it's also very noticeable in Twilight Princess.
I also want to mention something that I know a lot of people don't want to hear: I actually think Breath of the Wild's art style is amazing, but I also think we haven't seen its full potential yet. It combines stylized designs with a Ghibli-like cel-shaded aesthetic that fits the franchise and its world incredibly well.
The fact that BOTW's Hyrule contains so many different races and monsters, and that almost all of them look fantastic, really proves how much potential this art direction has.
That said, even if I understand that the Wild-era games are limited by their own design philosophy and hardware constraints, Link being so emotionally unexpressive is honestly inexcusable. So if the series wants to continue with a similar visual style moving forward, I'm completely fine with that — but I want to see noticeable evolution.
So, what do you guys think? Are my takes unpopular?
So i'm looking to expand my switch/switch 2 game library and I thought I could finally give those games an opportunity, but since I've read they are in some aspects pretty different to the original Hyrule Warriors i'm afraid of not liking them as much and feel I wasted money on them.
I know close to nothing about AoI other than its setting in relation to ToTK, but from AoC I've heard that even if it's non-canon and has weird fanfic-like twists on it, it's main story makes an honest attempt to build upon BotW backstory. If it has some good story beats and cool moments with decent writting i'll be satisfied. I never cared that much for the first game's Legend mode so if this one makes me more invested i'll be happy. I've also read the combat is in general more refined compared to the first game which is good.
What concerns me the most is side content. The most enjoyement I had (and i'm still having) from Hyrule Warriosr was grinding Adventure Mode, collecting tons of skins, weapons and fairies while triying and mastering all the different characters in the roster.
However I heard that AoC has less gameplay variety between characters (which I don't think it's the end of the world) and that its side content doesn't compare to Hyrule Warriors. So I really want to know if I'm gonna have an excuse to spend time learning the characters movesets in AoC and AoI or if it isn't a lot of stuff to do outside of the main story mode. I don't expect the gameplay of these games to have more longevity than the first game had, but I do want a game I can pour a lot of hours in.
"Because Zelda sent Link to the Child Timeline" Yeah I understand that, but acording to the info I was able to gather, Ganon broke his seal several generations after his imprisionment, so the Hero of Time would be dead anyways at that point.
The way I always understood the spirit of the hero is that it is a metaphysical force or "mechanism" that manifest on a hero (Link) in order to protect the descendant of the Goddess (Zelda) whenever she and the kingdom are threatened by evil (usually but not exclusivelly Ganon).
It's implied that the different Links aren't necessarely descendants of eachother (except TP's Link and the Hero of Time) so Link leaving the timeline without descendence should not prevent another Link carrying the spirit of the hero, yet WW's Link is commonly agreed by the fanbase to not carry the spirit of the hero and instead just being a guy that became one by chance and circustances without divine intervention. However if that's the case it's weird that not that many years later the Hero of Trains showed up too.
So this leaves me with a few different possible conclusions:
So what are your thoughts about this topic?
Since I heard the rummors about the posible OoT full remake and the growing involvement of Monolith Soft in the Zelda IP I've been thinking a lot on the future of the franchise. Thing is, due to how the industry is evolving and due to how Nintendo's dev teams work it seems like the wait between mainline 3D Zelda games will keep getting longer and longer.
Breath of the wild took about 5 years to make for a team of 300+ devs, which I find fairly impresive, even if they have been slowly progressing to the formula since SS and they have a clear idea of what they wanted to do. Tears of the Kingdom took about 6, but it was in development during the covid pandemic which slowed things down and had one full year focused only on testing and QA.
The thing with Nintendo is that they aren't the kind of devs that like to develop simple or underwhelming games just because they want or need to send games into the market. DK Bananza was said to be the result of the development of a 3D Mario game that they turned into a DK game since they thought it's gameplay and mechanics fit the character more. Mind you the last 3D Mario game released on 2017, with Mario Wonder releasing in 2023, which means they have been producing ideas for a mario 3D game for almost a decade.
Now with Breath of The Wild being the culmination of the evolution to the Zelda formula they've been chasing for so long and Tears of the Kingdom being the ultimate expansion of it, I'm pretty sure that they won't drop a new 3D Zelda game until they feel they have cooked a big, innovative game up to the high standards of the franchise and the company, and that can (and should) take them a lot of time. I'm sure the creative minds of Nintendo don't really care if they have to take a full decade to develop a new game, but I don't think the same applies to the directives, investors and part of the fanbase.
So I believe that bringing in studios like Monolith Soft and Grezzo to make smaller scale projects to fill the gaps between releases is a very healthy direction to take for the future of the franchise. And this isn't even something new, they had Capcom develop the oracle games and Minish Cap in the past, and Monolith already helped them with games like A Link Between Worlds. I personally also enjoy spin-offs like the Hyrule Warriors games and even Cadence of Hyrule quite a lot and wouldn't be mad if we got more games like those from third party studios while the main Zelda team focused on the next big projects.