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It is impressive that a game running on an 8-year-old phone GPU will likely be game of the year. Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter m

It is impressive that a game running on an 8-year-old phone GPU will likely be game of the year. Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything.

lostmsu 3y ago
GTA 5 sold 11.1M copies on the first day. I think you are jumping to conclusions.
Dudester230518 3y ago
Minecraft's formula of poor graphics + open-ended gameplay wins again.
- maxerickson 3y ago
  Is "poor" the right description for the graphics? Like I get that they aren't anywhere close to as detailed or sophisticated as the graphics available in other games, but they appear to facilitate gameplay quite well. Like "poor" has a connotation of "bad", where in this game they just weren't a focus and clearly are good enough to not be distracting, at least in the videos I've seen.
  - Dudester230518 3y ago
    That graphics would not look out of place in a 2013 indie game from a well-established but not rich studio. It would have not been ground-breaking in 2003, but would grab some attention for sure. I bet they will use same level of graphics in 2033, maybe with some AI tricks slapped on top if they manage to get cheap hardware for that.
    - tm-guimaraes 3y ago
      > That graphics would not look out of place in a 2013 indie game from a well-established but not rich studio. Sure. The WiiU was around in that year, BotW ran on it. Indie games for powerful platforms could definitely have better grafics. > It would have not been ground-breaking in 2003 This is biggest bullshit I've heard. This is Xbox/GC/PS2 era. Not only there weren't any games with 720p or 900p resolution on those consoles, PC capable of those were very rare. Games were still very cubish. Even games like FF that spend most of their budget on visuals and were not very interactive were just so bad in comparision. You don't really know how expansive it is to have small details like hair, light small objects and things like that rendered. Also add all the particles the game generates for all its possibilities. go to a top 2003 game list, and you will notice that there is nothing that comes close visually, specially with these resolutions, moving interactable objects, etc. None of them would require one tenth of the processing power a game like TotK. BotW and TotK push the swith to its max potential. Obviously that is nothing compared to what can be done today, the switch is based on a nvidia shield which is a SoC for a portable for 2015, obviously it is not very powerful. But that doesn't mean that the game doesn't have a lot of effort to make it able to run on such a system. Sure the Switch can handle 1080p, there are nintendo games with 1080p 60fps on both switch and wiiu, and nowadays PC games aim to 4k and 120fps, but this is a Switch, and this is a beatfiful game with a level of interaction not easily seen, this is much harder to make than a lot of 4k/120fps games on PC. Well, not TotK in particular as that's BotW 2.0, but BotW is out of the ordinary, expanding is still not an easy thing.
    - the_overseer 3y ago
      Have you actually played the game or just trolling? This game is impressive today. In 2003 it wouldn't have been possible.
  - w0m 3y ago
    Poor !- Bad. But run the new game at 4k in an emulator @ 60fps and it's markedly better looking.
- IceWreck 3y ago
  Except this game does not have poor graphics. They're gorgeous. Bad FPS and draw distance yes, but not poor graphics.
  - thiht 3y ago
    The graphics are rather poor, you can literally count the triangles. The art style saves everything. This is an excellent collaboration between engineering and design that give an amazing end result.
- p0pcult 3y ago
  An artistic decision that you don't prefer is not necessarily "poor"
savant_penguin 3y ago
+ optimization It looks fantastic for the compute budget
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  30fps cap and drops to 20fps and below at times at 900p in docked mode on actual Switch hardware. Are we really calling that "fantastic"? It runs. Single digit fps at times when using ultrahand.
  - notsound 3y ago
    Yes, considering it's still fun to play.
  - eru 3y ago
    The art direction is strong.
  - jerf 3y ago
    I mean, I hate to break it to you all, but all y'all obsessing about FPS are the minority. By a lot. While it has by no means killed the XBox or the Playstation line, I think they've obsessed over that segment of the market more than they should have to their own detriment, particularly due to the expense of keeping up with it. As a side effect it has also convinced that segment that they're bigger than they actually are. Most people don't care. My kids don't care. My kids were lined up with allowances and/or birthday money in hand on day one. They're loving it. I am too. It's not a skinner box designed to extract the rest of their money from them. It's a complete, quality product. No subscription pass. No seasons. No loot boxes for money. No gambling mechanics designed to secretly back to real world money. They made a good choice. I'm sympathetic. I care at least some; not obsessed but I do understand what you're getting at. And even that position + total obsessing is clearly in the minority. Nintendo knows what they're targeting, they hit it, and while you're complaining about the fps not being very good they're rolling in dough. I mean, if I had to choose between satisfying the fps obsessives and making more money than I even know what to do with, I know which I'd choose.
Barrin92 3y ago
I think it proves that nostalgia and brands matter more than anything. I find it very hard to find much novelty in the art direction, the world seems empty, not unrelated to the technical limitations, and the gameplay seems just okay. Just like the Mario movie I think it's less of an artistic feat and just shows the sheer power of Nintendo's franchises and very, very, enthusiastic fandom.
- zpeti 3y ago
  It’s both, but your theory doesn’t explain why breath of the wild was so good. I hadn’t played a Zelda game for 15 years before that, and it had no real relevance to those games, yet it was the best game I’ve ever played in terms of the world and story and gameplay (with the possible exception of the first deus ex). Nintendo know what HBO does too, which is how to make exceptional content. That override absolutely every other value. (I also suspect that part of the success is the mythical aspects of the Zelda games, and the reaching into the historical and religious past and traditions. Western companies seem to actively want to avoid this, but it’s extremely good for building content. Archetypes are archetypes for a reason, it’s evolutionary)
- tm-guimaraes 3y ago
  > I think it proves that nostalgia and brands matter more than anything. No. That is a western view point of someone that did not play the core nintendo games. It feels like projecting what is happening on every streaming service out there, or on every AAA western studio. People are not praising new Zeldas because they are new games with the Zelda title, BotW was a complete revolution, it did open world like no other game did before it. It combined really well a huge a amount of features and fun things that no other game was able to do so before. Games like these are very rare. Saying that is nostaligia when these 2 zelda play like no other Zelda. Saying that's it's because of brand when i've seen so many friends and colleagues that never gave a shit about nintendo buying a switch or emulating it and praising the hell out of this game.
Joeri 3y ago
Actually I would say this is yet more proof of how awesome breath of the wild was, and the incredible strength of a good franchise. 10 million people instabought it just in the hope it will live up to its predecessor.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  BotW was literally the only game I’ve played to completion in the last 5 years. Nintendo knows how to lure in casual gamers.
- hdctambien 3y ago
  That's what I did. I'm apparently in the minority. though, because I HATE it. But since I bought it digitally, I can't return it so I'm counting towards those 10M sales. I guess I'll just go back to my Game & Watch Zelda and keep playing Adventures of Link. I also bought the Dragon Quest Builders game and hated that. It turns out I like classic RPG and action puzzler games but I don't like crafting and sandbox games. Now I know.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Yeah, I was surprised at the direction they took with this. Adventure + crafting is... Well, it's Minecraft's killer recipe, but those two modes of gameplay are different pacings. I think it was risky to assume Zelda fans would enjoy hitting the relative brick wall of strategic structural building.
    - philistine 3y ago
      I don’t know if you’ve discovered this, but you eventually get plans for your constructions. So you don’t have to constantly build stuff. You just need to build one very good car once.
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        Now that I've hit that part: yes yes yes they cracked the nut. :) The addition of that game mechanic creates for the player a new type of puzzle in addition to the raw crafting puzzles: pattern recognition. Coming up on a jumble of nonsense, mentally parsing it out, and recognizing you have a template that can be applied to it is actually really fun (and even more exciting when you're doing it in realtime because some monster is bearing down on you).
pjmlp 3y ago
Which everyone asking what language to use for writing a game should take notice.
giancarlostoro 3y ago
> gameplay and art direction matter more than anything. I would argue gameplay. Look at how insanely successful Minecraft is. It needs to be accessible to anyone who plays the game, nobody cares that you can emulate a fighter jet perfectly, you'll get your niche crowd, but if you want everyone, it needs to be adoptable by everyone. Quick Edit: Remember Flappy Bird? It was simple graphics, a rip off of old old browser game from the 2000s (idr name) but everyone was hooked overnight. Also to some extent 2048 though I felt that was niche to geeks.
- tomtheelder 3y ago
  Minecraft’s art direction is very cool and was, at the time, pretty unique. Arguably it was one of the most striking things about the game at the time, and definitely what got me interested back when it came out.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    It was also objectively "stolen" from another block based game that was super niche. Minecraft did well because "go out into the wilds and modify it to your will while you build a home at your own pace" is crack to the human brain. Plenty of other games tried the art style and it doesn't really add anything on it's own.
- dorkwood 3y ago
  Art direction doesn’t have to mean a complex art style. It’s more about consistency — making your assets all feel like they’re part of the same universe.
dzonga 3y ago
nintendo's playbook: bet on withered technologies. which means their focus is only on gameplay mechanics, story and art direction. not focusing on bugs that are well not known cz of using something too new, expensive etc. not fancy graphics, or other modern fancy things - that don't really add anything to the game. wish the software industry would learn to bet on old technologies and develop novel experiences on those. not the current - move to the latest framework, hardware etc. while presenting shit.
- dannyphantom 3y ago
  > Mechanics, story and art direction Their [Nintendo] art-books are so cool - while a game-art-book isn’t necessarily unique to Nintendo I do appreciate the value in them being so well done and expansive. Don’t have the time to play Zelda sadly but the books have been a really neat thing to page through. As a kid, going to Barnes and Noble and grabbing the Emerald/Sapphire/Leaf Green official strategy book was, and still is, one of the coolest “books” I have.
  - pallas_athena 3y ago
    Breath of the Wild's "Creating a Champion" [0] is hands-down the best artbook I have. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Breath_of_the_Wild_%E2%80%93_Creating_a_Champion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Breath_of...
- speeder 3y ago
  You are wrong there. Nintendo instead been always pushing the tech. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in hardware power. Mario 64 is credited along with Wing Commander for creating the AAA graphics race at all costs behavior in the industry. The Wii wasn't entirely a direction change, Nintendo felt competing on CPU power now was not interesting and went for motion controls, that later all other consoles imitated. Then we had the Wii U that tried to mix TV with handheld. Wii U kinda sucked so they just tried it again with the Switch and made it portable. This again is spawning clones (steam deck for example). I am not a Nintendo fan (I was on Sega camp during console wars and currently I prefer the Playstation) but Nintendo hardware always is impressive. PS4 and 5 for example are boring, just mostly normal x86 computers with custom OS.
Thaxll 3y ago
It proves that Nintendo is incapable of doing anything new tbh, where are the new IPs?
- chottocharaii 3y ago
  Splatoon ... Arms ... Nintendo Labo ...
  - flybrand 3y ago
    Splatoon is an amazing franchise. Advanced Wars also has real potential. I'd buy a sequel to Arms. There's a great video out there on the history of Mario Kart, where they detail how they set out to make a two player version of F-zero and wound up with Kart after balancing the technology capabilities and existing character IP.
    - crtasm 3y ago
      I was aware Advance Wars is a remake of a Gameboy Advance title but didn't realise the series goes back to 1988: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_(series)#Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_(series)#Games
  - nerdjon 3y ago
    Adding more: BoxBoy, Astral Chain, Mario + Rabbids. Not to also discount how they have done new things with their existing IP like the AR Mario Circuit. Nintendo is also innovating on their existing IP. So the idea that Nintendo can't do anything "New" is just not true. When a new Zelda game sells this well of course the team that makes Zelda games are going to make a new Zelda game. It still feels fresh after 20 some odd years.
- SantalBlush 3y ago
  At least they're still improving their old IPs and keeping them fresh, while Blizzard lets their IPs rot but keeps stocking them on the shelf.
  - 3y ago
AlwaysRock 3y ago
Gameplay, art direction, and having an incredibly popular IP with a near 50 year history of solid game releases.
lincw 3y ago
I do think this 8-year-old GPU really pretty out-of-date. Even if Nintendo did a lot of optimize for TOTK, it really has a low reslution and low fps(sometimes 540p and 20fps). Of couse the gameplay and art direction is the best part of a game(compared to Sony games, they has a great performance, but it's totally not fun). However, I saw some screen records in simulator, I think that is the best which game maker want people to play: 1080P and 60FPS. Whatever, Nintendo Games is good. But we really need a better console.
- moneywoes 3y ago
  Is it possible to stimulate? Do you need a beefy setup
  - WithinReason 3y ago
    You can emulate it on a Steam Deck
    - wincy 3y ago
      Not at a better speed than the Switch itself. The new ASUS ROG Ally handheld seems to be the minimum you’d need to get a speed up through emulation.
      - cptcobalt 3y ago
        Let's check back in a few months, the Yuzu devs have been making incredible progress improving performance in general, and it is not unfathomable to think that in a few months Steam Deck will be at or above locked 30fps while playing in Switch docked mode. (I already get a solid 40fps in Shrines, but those are comparatively undemanding, including on Switch)
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    The switch is super easy to emulate compared to past Nintendo consoles.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Is it really that impressive that focusing on game design results in a better game than spending a billion dollars on a thousand artists so that every tree can have ten times as many polygons and each texture is 16kX16k? Better graphics rarely actually IMPROVE a game, and can do nothing to fix a game that was designed poorly. AAA studios whine and cry about how expensive games are to make (completely glossing over the fact that they are 100x as profitable as they were in the 90s because videogames are no longer niche) but nobody asked them to! Linus Tech Tips water cooling a 4090 isn't the normal consumer! Most consumers want to have fun when they pay $70 for a game, not play the exact game they bought a decade ago with more detailed scenes, and more detail doesn't make a game better
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Often times better graphics make a game worse because they're at the expense of everything else, while also making the community smaller because most people can't run it. Yes, I'm still slightly salty about the train wreck that KSP 2 turned out to be.
  - eterm 3y ago
    I think I'll still be fuming about KSP2 for a long time. I don't know why I let myself have any hope it'd be good given the development history but I still bought (and returned) it on launch. KSP didn't deserve that.
    - cptcobalt 3y ago
      Yeah. In contrast to the creativity applied to Tears of the Kingdom that took the framework of Breath of the Wild and extended it majestically, KSP2 is a brazen & soulless cash grab that under delivers under the guise of "Early Access".
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    It never fails to amaze me how quickly the hate train starts or how fast it gets going when it comes time to blame technical artists for the shortcoming of others, even though they are arguably the best in the industry at reliably accomplishing amazing deeply technical feats that deliver joy. I'm glad I figured this out before spending much time going down that path, but I still know people who did, they're the smartest people I know, and it always frustrates me to watch critics line up around the block to take a shit on them, blaming them for problems they didn't cause and snubbing them for accomplishments that they did.
ecliptik 3y ago
There's a Game Maker's Toolkit video [1] that does a good job explaining how Nintendo focuses on play first. "That's how we make games at Nintendo, though: we get the fundamentals solid first, then do as much with that core concept as our time and ambition will allow" - Shigeru Miyamoto 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6HTG8LuXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6HTG8LuXQ
- flanbiscuit 3y ago
  To add this I recommend people watch Shigeru Miyamoto's 1999 GDC Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9DlhDRZ0yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9DlhDRZ0yA They also take into consideration the limitations of the hardware from the very beginning, and not just the engineers, but the designers as well. "...Although I am not an engineer, I have always included in my designs consideration for the technology that will make those designs a reality. People have paid me a lot of lip service, calling me a genius story teller or a talented animator, and have gone so far as to suggest that I try my hand at movies, since my style of game design is, in their words, quite similar to making movies. But I feel that I am not a movie maker, but rather that my strength lies in my pioneering spirit to make use of technology to create the best, interactive commodities possible, and use that interactivity to give users a game they can enjoy and play comfortably. "
  - philistine 3y ago
    And then when he wholeheartedly went into making movies, we ended up with this year’s Mario movie, which is a totally late Miyamoto snoozefest.
01100011 3y ago
Especially ironic given the direction of the company who makes that 8 year old phone GPU. Nintendo is thriving with RTX-off.
cptcobalt 3y ago
It's also more than capable of running on other platforms via emulation, and there are visual tweak mods (increased draw distance, LOD tweaks, etc) that don't change the art style but make it far more beautiful than being limited to the underperformant Switch hardware.
- TacoToni 3y ago
  interesting - i dont have a switch and dont plan to buy one, but would love to play the new zelda. Will need to look into this.
ericmcer 3y ago
IP, marketing and reputation mattered in this case. It hasn't even been out long enough to get a consensus on the quality of the game.
- kbelder 3y ago
  Mainly reputation, I'd wager.
m3kw9 3y ago
Nintendo knows graphical superior games is mainly to draw in gamers to look, but Nintendo franchises will draw regardless. The graphics just need to be good, also cartoonish graphics will look the same if you are on a PS5 or 6
jrmg 3y ago
Also polish. So many AAA titles have come out with so many bugs and performance issues they’re arguably just unfinished. Nintendo’s games _work_, and, even though many would say they can overlook glitches, I believe that maintaining a “seamless” experience - not breaking the flow - is an much, much, more important part in maintaining the subconscious ‘this game is great!’ feeling than people give it credit for. “It just works” is just as important a part of gaming as it is of other things.
Waterluvian 3y ago
It’s true. But the actual hardware doesn’t offer anything particularly unique (which is a win for me: Nintendo is settling down with the gimmicks.) This game would be an objectively better experience if it ran on a PS4/5 or Xbox if you don’t care for the handheld mode. The game is an absolute masterpiece despite hardware, not because of it. I think Nintendo should be lauded for experimenting with hardware, but ultimately they’re a games company and I almost wish they’d get out of the hardware business. I gave my kid my 3DS last week and showed him how the 3D worked. It took him no more than 30 seconds to ask me to turn the 3D off.
- arnaudsm 3y ago
  Well the Switch has a big gimmick: it is a desktop & mobile console at the same time. It's in the name. This is why they had to compromise on GPU power and basically skip 2 generations compared to the PS5.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Yes. And it’s one of the most useful gimmicks from Nintendo. But imagine if the game was also sold on other consoles. What I’m saying is that the game doesn’t directly benefit from console lock-in. It’s not like that yielded any special opportunities, like, say, how the Wiimote provides an entirely different experience from what a PS3 could offer.
    - ProfessorLayton 3y ago
      The latest Zelda games have all used motion controls, while not all contemporary consoles have the hardware for it. Sure, it could be argued that not everyone requires/enjoys motion controls, but Nintendo has never been the kind of company that designs gameplay experiences for the lowest common denominator. Part of what makes Nintendo, Nintendo is that their games target their hardware, and vice versa (Their game roadmap influences hardware design).
      - Waterluvian 3y ago
pacomerh 3y ago
> Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything Absolutely. I'm sure the PS5 has great graphics but some of the game creators don't pay attention to this enough, it's basically like throwing heavy computation at an average directed game and to me that's not appealing at all. "Look at how realistic the water looks" is not enough for me to play a game.
xwdv 3y ago
No, brand power matters more than anything.
racl101 3y ago
Absolutely. Most games coming on current gen hardware are utterly forgettable. Zelda games, especially cell animation ones tend to age so well. Like WindWaker on the Game Cube. Such an amazing and fun game even on almost 20 year old hardware. For all the amazing hardware on PS5 and Xbox Series ... most games releases are barely even an event that register in the cultural zeitgeist. A few exceptions exist of course. But for the most part, yes the graphics are pretty but the game is not that fun. And also, another thing Zelda has going for it and this cannot be said enough: it is a full freaking game. Not a broken game that needs to be patched up later (though there are always patches but the game isn't unplayable). Nor is it pay to win. You unlock stuff by just playing and progressing. The Amiibo content is optional. You get a full game with tons of stuff, ready to go. With a solid single player campaign and no online bullshit needed to experience it to its fullest. I cannot stress how much this needs to be said. But lately, broken or partial game experiences at triple A prices is a thing that people tolerate.
- dllthomas 3y ago
  > Most games coming on current gen hardware are utterly forgettable. I don't make any strong claim that the proportion hasn't shifted, but that has absolutely been the case at every point in my awareness of games. Flip through an old Nintendo Power or Game Pro. Meanwhile, some very interesting games are coming out these days - some of my favorites are from the past 5 years; time will tell how well they hold up, but I am optimistic.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    The NES has somewhere around a thousand distinct games, if you count all markets and include unlicensed games (which there weren't that many of). Maybe 200 of them aren't total trash. Perhaps 100 were genuinely good at the time. Low-tens of them are still at all worth playing for someone without nostalgia goggles—though, in some cases, that's because an entirely-superior remake exists; like, if you want to try the first three Final Fantasy games, you probably shouldn't play the NES versions, in 2023, unless you're aiming for some kind of "I want to experience them exactly as Old People did" sort of thing.
AbsoluteCabbage 3y ago
> Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything More like- Nintendo proved that in spite of barely listening to the fan base over literal decades, a solid brand will still get sales with just bleh content. They barely caught onto the open world concept and sandbox - and it took years and years.
vl 3y ago
I also upgraded to new Zelda-edition OLED Switch and case and snatched two Zelda-edition controllers from local Walmart. They will have huge bump in hardware sales as well.
summerlight 3y ago
It actually could be benefited from improved performance, for instance the introduction of the sky and the depth was only possible because of performance improvements from Switch (note that BotW's target platform was Wii U, so Nintendo intentionally limited the game's scope to the overworld). I think a sparsity of sky islands could be partially attributed to performance issues. Those need to be visible from almost everywhere, so cannot be really culled out from the drawing pipeline. Even with aggressive LoD, this will take a considerable performance budget if you put hundreds of islands given a high level of drawing distance requirement in TotK. I also noticed that TotK has lots of unusually aggressive performance optimization which seems to be done at the very last moment, and even with that a considerable level of frame drops on specific areas. I suspect this to be likely due to the reported delay of the Switch successor. They would still launch it on Switch with possibly worse visual fidelity but that would be fine if they got the successor at the launch time. So yeah "how to use it" is what really matters, but having more performance budget can allow more freedom for developers. It's a really nice time to have the successor platform for Switch, possibly with backward compatibility.
fennecfoxy 3y ago
Nah, it's Stockholm Syndrome. It's seems to basically be the same game as the previous one with a few small extras such as the building/gadget system. If you really want to be all "gameplay matters most of all, therefore we don't need to improve on anything else" then tetris is still being bought even to this day. Doesn't mean we should stop pushing the limits in new games.
deskamess 3y ago
Is this the longest comment thread ever?

It is impressive that a game running on an 8-year-old phone GPU will likely be game of the year. Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything.

lostmsu 3y ago

GTA 5 sold 11.1M copies on the first day. I think you are jumping to conclusions.

Dudester230518 3y ago

Minecraft's formula of poor graphics + open-ended gameplay wins again.

maxerickson 3y ago
Is "poor" the right description for the graphics? Like I get that they aren't anywhere close to as detailed or sophisticated as the graphics available in other games, but they appear to facilitate gameplay quite well. Like "poor" has a connotation of "bad", where in this game they just weren't a focus and clearly are good enough to not be distracting, at least in the videos I've seen.
- Dudester230518 3y ago
  That graphics would not look out of place in a 2013 indie game from a well-established but not rich studio. It would have not been ground-breaking in 2003, but would grab some attention for sure. I bet they will use same level of graphics in 2033, maybe with some AI tricks slapped on top if they manage to get cheap hardware for that.
  - tm-guimaraes 3y ago
    > That graphics would not look out of place in a 2013 indie game from a well-established but not rich studio. Sure. The WiiU was around in that year, BotW ran on it. Indie games for powerful platforms could definitely have better grafics. > It would have not been ground-breaking in 2003 This is biggest bullshit I've heard. This is Xbox/GC/PS2 era. Not only there weren't any games with 720p or 900p resolution on those consoles, PC capable of those were very rare. Games were still very cubish. Even games like FF that spend most of their budget on visuals and were not very interactive were just so bad in comparision. You don't really know how expansive it is to have small details like hair, light small objects and things like that rendered. Also add all the particles the game generates for all its possibilities. go to a top 2003 game list, and you will notice that there is nothing that comes close visually, specially with these resolutions, moving interactable objects, etc. None of them would require one tenth of the processing power a game like TotK. BotW and TotK push the swith to its max potential. Obviously that is nothing compared to what can be done today, the switch is based on a nvidia shield which is a SoC for a portable for 2015, obviously it is not very powerful. But that doesn't mean that the game doesn't have a lot of effort to make it able to run on such a system. Sure the Switch can handle 1080p, there are nintendo games with 1080p 60fps on both switch and wiiu, and nowadays PC games aim to 4k and 120fps, but this is a Switch, and this is a beatfiful game with a level of interaction not easily seen, this is much harder to make than a lot of 4k/120fps games on PC. Well, not TotK in particular as that's BotW 2.0, but BotW is out of the ordinary, expanding is still not an easy thing.
  - the_overseer 3y ago
    Have you actually played the game or just trolling? This game is impressive today. In 2003 it wouldn't have been possible.
- w0m 3y ago
  Poor !- Bad. But run the new game at 4k in an emulator @ 60fps and it's markedly better looking.
IceWreck 3y ago
Except this game does not have poor graphics. They're gorgeous. Bad FPS and draw distance yes, but not poor graphics.
- thiht 3y ago
  The graphics are rather poor, you can literally count the triangles. The art style saves everything. This is an excellent collaboration between engineering and design that give an amazing end result.
p0pcult 3y ago
An artistic decision that you don't prefer is not necessarily "poor"

savant_penguin 3y ago

+ optimization It looks fantastic for the compute budget

hammyhavoc 3y ago
30fps cap and drops to 20fps and below at times at 900p in docked mode on actual Switch hardware. Are we really calling that "fantastic"? It runs. Single digit fps at times when using ultrahand.
- notsound 3y ago
  Yes, considering it's still fun to play.
- eru 3y ago
  The art direction is strong.
- jerf 3y ago
  I mean, I hate to break it to you all, but all y'all obsessing about FPS are the minority. By a lot. While it has by no means killed the XBox or the Playstation line, I think they've obsessed over that segment of the market more than they should have to their own detriment, particularly due to the expense of keeping up with it. As a side effect it has also convinced that segment that they're bigger than they actually are. Most people don't care. My kids don't care. My kids were lined up with allowances and/or birthday money in hand on day one. They're loving it. I am too. It's not a skinner box designed to extract the rest of their money from them. It's a complete, quality product. No subscription pass. No seasons. No loot boxes for money. No gambling mechanics designed to secretly back to real world money. They made a good choice. I'm sympathetic. I care at least some; not obsessed but I do understand what you're getting at. And even that position + total obsessing is clearly in the minority. Nintendo knows what they're targeting, they hit it, and while you're complaining about the fps not being very good they're rolling in dough. I mean, if I had to choose between satisfying the fps obsessives and making more money than I even know what to do with, I know which I'd choose.

Barrin92 3y ago

I think it proves that nostalgia and brands matter more than anything. I find it very hard to find much novelty in the art direction, the world seems empty, not unrelated to the technical limitations, and the gameplay seems just okay. Just like the Mario movie I think it's less of an artistic feat and just shows the sheer power of Nintendo's franchises and very, very, enthusiastic fandom.

zpeti 3y ago
It’s both, but your theory doesn’t explain why breath of the wild was so good. I hadn’t played a Zelda game for 15 years before that, and it had no real relevance to those games, yet it was the best game I’ve ever played in terms of the world and story and gameplay (with the possible exception of the first deus ex). Nintendo know what HBO does too, which is how to make exceptional content. That override absolutely every other value. (I also suspect that part of the success is the mythical aspects of the Zelda games, and the reaching into the historical and religious past and traditions. Western companies seem to actively want to avoid this, but it’s extremely good for building content. Archetypes are archetypes for a reason, it’s evolutionary)
tm-guimaraes 3y ago
> I think it proves that nostalgia and brands matter more than anything. No. That is a western view point of someone that did not play the core nintendo games. It feels like projecting what is happening on every streaming service out there, or on every AAA western studio. People are not praising new Zeldas because they are new games with the Zelda title, BotW was a complete revolution, it did open world like no other game did before it. It combined really well a huge a amount of features and fun things that no other game was able to do so before. Games like these are very rare. Saying that is nostaligia when these 2 zelda play like no other Zelda. Saying that's it's because of brand when i've seen so many friends and colleagues that never gave a shit about nintendo buying a switch or emulating it and praising the hell out of this game.

Joeri 3y ago

Actually I would say this is yet more proof of how awesome breath of the wild was, and the incredible strength of a good franchise. 10 million people instabought it just in the hope it will live up to its predecessor.

spaceman_2020 3y ago
BotW was literally the only game I’ve played to completion in the last 5 years. Nintendo knows how to lure in casual gamers.
hdctambien 3y ago
That's what I did. I'm apparently in the minority. though, because I HATE it. But since I bought it digitally, I can't return it so I'm counting towards those 10M sales. I guess I'll just go back to my Game & Watch Zelda and keep playing Adventures of Link. I also bought the Dragon Quest Builders game and hated that. It turns out I like classic RPG and action puzzler games but I don't like crafting and sandbox games. Now I know.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Yeah, I was surprised at the direction they took with this. Adventure + crafting is... Well, it's Minecraft's killer recipe, but those two modes of gameplay are different pacings. I think it was risky to assume Zelda fans would enjoy hitting the relative brick wall of strategic structural building.
  - philistine 3y ago
    I don’t know if you’ve discovered this, but you eventually get plans for your constructions. So you don’t have to constantly build stuff. You just need to build one very good car once.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      Now that I've hit that part: yes yes yes they cracked the nut. :) The addition of that game mechanic creates for the player a new type of puzzle in addition to the raw crafting puzzles: pattern recognition. Coming up on a jumble of nonsense, mentally parsing it out, and recognizing you have a template that can be applied to it is actually really fun (and even more exciting when you're doing it in realtime because some monster is bearing down on you).

pjmlp 3y ago

Which everyone asking what language to use for writing a game should take notice.

giancarlostoro 3y ago

> gameplay and art direction matter more than anything. I would argue gameplay. Look at how insanely successful Minecraft is. It needs to be accessible to anyone who plays the game, nobody cares that you can emulate a fighter jet perfectly, you'll get your niche crowd, but if you want everyone, it needs to be adoptable by everyone. Quick Edit: Remember Flappy Bird? It was simple graphics, a rip off of old old browser game from the 2000s (idr name) but everyone was hooked overnight. Also to some extent 2048 though I felt that was niche to geeks.

tomtheelder 3y ago
Minecraft’s art direction is very cool and was, at the time, pretty unique. Arguably it was one of the most striking things about the game at the time, and definitely what got me interested back when it came out.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  It was also objectively "stolen" from another block based game that was super niche. Minecraft did well because "go out into the wilds and modify it to your will while you build a home at your own pace" is crack to the human brain. Plenty of other games tried the art style and it doesn't really add anything on it's own.
dorkwood 3y ago
Art direction doesn’t have to mean a complex art style. It’s more about consistency — making your assets all feel like they’re part of the same universe.

dzonga 3y ago

nintendo's playbook: bet on withered technologies. which means their focus is only on gameplay mechanics, story and art direction. not focusing on bugs that are well not known cz of using something too new, expensive etc. not fancy graphics, or other modern fancy things - that don't really add anything to the game. wish the software industry would learn to bet on old technologies and develop novel experiences on those. not the current - move to the latest framework, hardware etc. while presenting shit.

dannyphantom 3y ago
> Mechanics, story and art direction Their [Nintendo] art-books are so cool - while a game-art-book isn’t necessarily unique to Nintendo I do appreciate the value in them being so well done and expansive. Don’t have the time to play Zelda sadly but the books have been a really neat thing to page through. As a kid, going to Barnes and Noble and grabbing the Emerald/Sapphire/Leaf Green official strategy book was, and still is, one of the coolest “books” I have.
- pallas_athena 3y ago
  Breath of the Wild's "Creating a Champion" [0] is hands-down the best artbook I have. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Breath_of_the_Wild_%E2%80%93_Creating_a_Champion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Breath_of...
speeder 3y ago
You are wrong there. Nintendo instead been always pushing the tech. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were part of the "bits race" and kept pushing forward in hardware power. Mario 64 is credited along with Wing Commander for creating the AAA graphics race at all costs behavior in the industry. The Wii wasn't entirely a direction change, Nintendo felt competing on CPU power now was not interesting and went for motion controls, that later all other consoles imitated. Then we had the Wii U that tried to mix TV with handheld. Wii U kinda sucked so they just tried it again with the Switch and made it portable. This again is spawning clones (steam deck for example). I am not a Nintendo fan (I was on Sega camp during console wars and currently I prefer the Playstation) but Nintendo hardware always is impressive. PS4 and 5 for example are boring, just mostly normal x86 computers with custom OS.

Thaxll 3y ago

It proves that Nintendo is incapable of doing anything new tbh, where are the new IPs?

chottocharaii 3y ago
Splatoon ... Arms ... Nintendo Labo ...
- flybrand 3y ago
  Splatoon is an amazing franchise. Advanced Wars also has real potential. I'd buy a sequel to Arms. There's a great video out there on the history of Mario Kart, where they detail how they set out to make a two player version of F-zero and wound up with Kart after balancing the technology capabilities and existing character IP.
  - crtasm 3y ago
    I was aware Advance Wars is a remake of a Gameboy Advance title but didn't realise the series goes back to 1988: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_(series)#Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_(series)#Games
- nerdjon 3y ago
  Adding more: BoxBoy, Astral Chain, Mario + Rabbids. Not to also discount how they have done new things with their existing IP like the AR Mario Circuit. Nintendo is also innovating on their existing IP. So the idea that Nintendo can't do anything "New" is just not true. When a new Zelda game sells this well of course the team that makes Zelda games are going to make a new Zelda game. It still feels fresh after 20 some odd years.
SantalBlush 3y ago
At least they're still improving their old IPs and keeping them fresh, while Blizzard lets their IPs rot but keeps stocking them on the shelf.
- 3y ago

AlwaysRock 3y ago

Gameplay, art direction, and having an incredibly popular IP with a near 50 year history of solid game releases.

lincw 3y ago

I do think this 8-year-old GPU really pretty out-of-date. Even if Nintendo did a lot of optimize for TOTK, it really has a low reslution and low fps(sometimes 540p and 20fps). Of couse the gameplay and art direction is the best part of a game(compared to Sony games, they has a great performance, but it's totally not fun). However, I saw some screen records in simulator, I think that is the best which game maker want people to play: 1080P and 60FPS. Whatever, Nintendo Games is good. But we really need a better console.

moneywoes 3y ago
Is it possible to stimulate? Do you need a beefy setup
- WithinReason 3y ago
  You can emulate it on a Steam Deck
  - wincy 3y ago
    Not at a better speed than the Switch itself. The new ASUS ROG Ally handheld seems to be the minimum you’d need to get a speed up through emulation.
    - cptcobalt 3y ago
      Let's check back in a few months, the Yuzu devs have been making incredible progress improving performance in general, and it is not unfathomable to think that in a few months Steam Deck will be at or above locked 30fps while playing in Switch docked mode. (I already get a solid 40fps in Shrines, but those are comparatively undemanding, including on Switch)
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  The switch is super easy to emulate compared to past Nintendo consoles.

mrguyorama 3y ago

Is it really that impressive that focusing on game design results in a better game than spending a billion dollars on a thousand artists so that every tree can have ten times as many polygons and each texture is 16kX16k? Better graphics rarely actually IMPROVE a game, and can do nothing to fix a game that was designed poorly. AAA studios whine and cry about how expensive games are to make (completely glossing over the fact that they are 100x as profitable as they were in the 90s because videogames are no longer niche) but nobody asked them to! Linus Tech Tips water cooling a 4090 isn't the normal consumer! Most consumers want to have fun when they pay $70 for a game, not play the exact game they bought a decade ago with more detailed scenes, and more detail doesn't make a game better

moffkalast 3y ago
Often times better graphics make a game worse because they're at the expense of everything else, while also making the community smaller because most people can't run it. Yes, I'm still slightly salty about the train wreck that KSP 2 turned out to be.
- eterm 3y ago
  I think I'll still be fuming about KSP2 for a long time. I don't know why I let myself have any hope it'd be good given the development history but I still bought (and returned) it on launch. KSP didn't deserve that.
  - cptcobalt 3y ago
    Yeah. In contrast to the creativity applied to Tears of the Kingdom that took the framework of Breath of the Wild and extended it majestically, KSP2 is a brazen & soulless cash grab that under delivers under the guise of "Early Access".
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  It never fails to amaze me how quickly the hate train starts or how fast it gets going when it comes time to blame technical artists for the shortcoming of others, even though they are arguably the best in the industry at reliably accomplishing amazing deeply technical feats that deliver joy. I'm glad I figured this out before spending much time going down that path, but I still know people who did, they're the smartest people I know, and it always frustrates me to watch critics line up around the block to take a shit on them, blaming them for problems they didn't cause and snubbing them for accomplishments that they did.

ecliptik 3y ago

There's a Game Maker's Toolkit video [1] that does a good job explaining how Nintendo focuses on play first. "That's how we make games at Nintendo, though: we get the fundamentals solid first, then do as much with that core concept as our time and ambition will allow" - Shigeru Miyamoto 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6HTG8LuXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6HTG8LuXQ

flanbiscuit 3y ago
To add this I recommend people watch Shigeru Miyamoto's 1999 GDC Keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9DlhDRZ0yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9DlhDRZ0yA They also take into consideration the limitations of the hardware from the very beginning, and not just the engineers, but the designers as well. "...Although I am not an engineer, I have always included in my designs consideration for the technology that will make those designs a reality. People have paid me a lot of lip service, calling me a genius story teller or a talented animator, and have gone so far as to suggest that I try my hand at movies, since my style of game design is, in their words, quite similar to making movies. But I feel that I am not a movie maker, but rather that my strength lies in my pioneering spirit to make use of technology to create the best, interactive commodities possible, and use that interactivity to give users a game they can enjoy and play comfortably. "
- philistine 3y ago
  And then when he wholeheartedly went into making movies, we ended up with this year’s Mario movie, which is a totally late Miyamoto snoozefest.

01100011 3y ago

Especially ironic given the direction of the company who makes that 8 year old phone GPU. Nintendo is thriving with RTX-off.

cptcobalt 3y ago

It's also more than capable of running on other platforms via emulation, and there are visual tweak mods (increased draw distance, LOD tweaks, etc) that don't change the art style but make it far more beautiful than being limited to the underperformant Switch hardware.

TacoToni 3y ago
interesting - i dont have a switch and dont plan to buy one, but would love to play the new zelda. Will need to look into this.

ericmcer 3y ago

IP, marketing and reputation mattered in this case. It hasn't even been out long enough to get a consensus on the quality of the game.

kbelder 3y ago
Mainly reputation, I'd wager.

m3kw9 3y ago

Nintendo knows graphical superior games is mainly to draw in gamers to look, but Nintendo franchises will draw regardless. The graphics just need to be good, also cartoonish graphics will look the same if you are on a PS5 or 6

jrmg 3y ago

Also polish. So many AAA titles have come out with so many bugs and performance issues they’re arguably just unfinished. Nintendo’s games _work_, and, even though many would say they can overlook glitches, I believe that maintaining a “seamless” experience - not breaking the flow - is an much, much, more important part in maintaining the subconscious ‘this game is great!’ feeling than people give it credit for. “It just works” is just as important a part of gaming as it is of other things.

Waterluvian 3y ago

It’s true. But the actual hardware doesn’t offer anything particularly unique (which is a win for me: Nintendo is settling down with the gimmicks.) This game would be an objectively better experience if it ran on a PS4/5 or Xbox if you don’t care for the handheld mode. The game is an absolute masterpiece despite hardware, not because of it. I think Nintendo should be lauded for experimenting with hardware, but ultimately they’re a games company and I almost wish they’d get out of the hardware business. I gave my kid my 3DS last week and showed him how the 3D worked. It took him no more than 30 seconds to ask me to turn the 3D off.

arnaudsm 3y ago
Well the Switch has a big gimmick: it is a desktop & mobile console at the same time. It's in the name. This is why they had to compromise on GPU power and basically skip 2 generations compared to the PS5.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Yes. And it’s one of the most useful gimmicks from Nintendo. But imagine if the game was also sold on other consoles. What I’m saying is that the game doesn’t directly benefit from console lock-in. It’s not like that yielded any special opportunities, like, say, how the Wiimote provides an entirely different experience from what a PS3 could offer.
  - ProfessorLayton 3y ago
    The latest Zelda games have all used motion controls, while not all contemporary consoles have the hardware for it. Sure, it could be argued that not everyone requires/enjoys motion controls, but Nintendo has never been the kind of company that designs gameplay experiences for the lowest common denominator. Part of what makes Nintendo, Nintendo is that their games target their hardware, and vice versa (Their game roadmap influences hardware design).
    - Waterluvian 3y ago

pacomerh 3y ago

> Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything Absolutely. I'm sure the PS5 has great graphics but some of the game creators don't pay attention to this enough, it's basically like throwing heavy computation at an average directed game and to me that's not appealing at all. "Look at how realistic the water looks" is not enough for me to play a game.

xwdv 3y ago

No, brand power matters more than anything.

racl101 3y ago

Absolutely. Most games coming on current gen hardware are utterly forgettable. Zelda games, especially cell animation ones tend to age so well. Like WindWaker on the Game Cube. Such an amazing and fun game even on almost 20 year old hardware. For all the amazing hardware on PS5 and Xbox Series ... most games releases are barely even an event that register in the cultural zeitgeist. A few exceptions exist of course. But for the most part, yes the graphics are pretty but the game is not that fun. And also, another thing Zelda has going for it and this cannot be said enough: it is a full freaking game. Not a broken game that needs to be patched up later (though there are always patches but the game isn't unplayable). Nor is it pay to win. You unlock stuff by just playing and progressing. The Amiibo content is optional. You get a full game with tons of stuff, ready to go. With a solid single player campaign and no online bullshit needed to experience it to its fullest. I cannot stress how much this needs to be said. But lately, broken or partial game experiences at triple A prices is a thing that people tolerate.

dllthomas 3y ago
> Most games coming on current gen hardware are utterly forgettable. I don't make any strong claim that the proportion hasn't shifted, but that has absolutely been the case at every point in my awareness of games. Flip through an old Nintendo Power or Game Pro. Meanwhile, some very interesting games are coming out these days - some of my favorites are from the past 5 years; time will tell how well they hold up, but I am optimistic.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  The NES has somewhere around a thousand distinct games, if you count all markets and include unlicensed games (which there weren't that many of). Maybe 200 of them aren't total trash. Perhaps 100 were genuinely good at the time. Low-tens of them are still at all worth playing for someone without nostalgia goggles—though, in some cases, that's because an entirely-superior remake exists; like, if you want to try the first three Final Fantasy games, you probably shouldn't play the NES versions, in 2023, unless you're aiming for some kind of "I want to experience them exactly as Old People did" sort of thing.

AbsoluteCabbage 3y ago

> Nintendo proved again that gameplay and art direction matter more than anything More like- Nintendo proved that in spite of barely listening to the fan base over literal decades, a solid brand will still get sales with just bleh content. They barely caught onto the open world concept and sandbox - and it took years and years.

vl 3y ago

I also upgraded to new Zelda-edition OLED Switch and case and snatched two Zelda-edition controllers from local Walmart. They will have huge bump in hardware sales as well.

summerlight 3y ago

It actually could be benefited from improved performance, for instance the introduction of the sky and the depth was only possible because of performance improvements from Switch (note that BotW's target platform was Wii U, so Nintendo intentionally limited the game's scope to the overworld). I think a sparsity of sky islands could be partially attributed to performance issues. Those need to be visible from almost everywhere, so cannot be really culled out from the drawing pipeline. Even with aggressive LoD, this will take a considerable performance budget if you put hundreds of islands given a high level of drawing distance requirement in TotK. I also noticed that TotK has lots of unusually aggressive performance optimization which seems to be done at the very last moment, and even with that a considerable level of frame drops on specific areas. I suspect this to be likely due to the reported delay of the Switch successor. They would still launch it on Switch with possibly worse visual fidelity but that would be fine if they got the successor at the launch time. So yeah "how to use it" is what really matters, but having more performance budget can allow more freedom for developers. It's a really nice time to have the successor platform for Switch, possibly with backward compatibility.

fennecfoxy 3y ago

Nah, it's Stockholm Syndrome. It's seems to basically be the same game as the previous one with a few small extras such as the building/gadget system. If you really want to be all "gameplay matters most of all, therefore we don't need to improve on anything else" then tetris is still being bought even to this day. Doesn't mean we should stop pushing the limits in new games.

deskamess 3y ago

Is this the longest comment thread ever?