Zelda: Breath of the Wild uses dynamic resolution scaling
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 34 Comments
Eurogamer has a new report up explaining how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild uses dynamic resolution scaling. It doesn’t mean much for the end user, but it’s still pretty interesting. The technique is used in the game to help maintain the frame rate.
When Zelda: Breath of the Wild is running Switch to the max, resolution appears to dip to 90 percent on both axes. In other words, when in portable mode, resolution drops to 1152×648 for 81 percent of native 720p in total. Breath of the Wild has a native pixel-count of 1440×810 when docked and stressed, dropping from its usual 1600×900.
Eurogamer further adds:
Neat trick to get more Ancient Parts from decayed Guardians in Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 19 Comments
When you walk up to a decayed Guardian in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you can obtain various Ancient Parts. However, players can receive even more by using a special trick.
brandonNaustin discovered that Magnesis can be used to pick up metallic rocks and flip over Guardians. Doing so reveals additional parts. It doesn’t work with Guardians that have legs or are buried in the ground, but you should find this useful in a number of instances.
Here’s a look at the trick in action:
@jeffgerstmann @bradshoemaker @DanRyckert @VinnyCaravella You can turn the ancient machines over and there's parts underneath. pic.twitter.com/AzXR0RBqU7
— Brandon (@brandonNaustin) March 13, 2017
Nintendo teases “The Making of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”, debuting tomorrow
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 9 Comments
Nintendo is readying a special video event that will give fans insight into the creation of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Tomorrow, a three-part series will debut for the game. It’ll air at 6 AM PT / 9 AM ET / 1 PM in the UK / 2 PM in Europe.
Nintendo just tweeted out the news:
Tomorrow at 6 AM PT, we’ll be debuting a three-part series called The Making of The Legend of #Zelda: Breath of the Wild! pic.twitter.com/bTDROEZ8i0
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 13, 2017
Zelda: Breath of the Wild director inspired by Minecraft and Terraria, talks developing for Switch
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 14 Comments
In the past, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma has spoken about being inspired by games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in creating Breath of the Wild. But what about the game’s director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi?
Fujibayashi cited two games while speaking with EDGE this month about games that inspired him: Minecraft and Terraria. He told the magazine:
“I was rather inspired by playing Minecraft and Terraria. I was able to learn from the gameplay and the possibilities found in. I could learn from the sense of adventure, exploration and how it inspired curiosity.”
As for real life inspiration, Fujibayashi is involved with an adventure club with other Nintendo staff in which they participate in outdoor activities:
Zelda: Breath of the Wild art director on how The Wind Waker HD shaped the game’s art style
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 7 Comments
As you can probably tell, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD served as a big inspiration for the art style in Breath of the Wild. This goes all the way back to when Nintendo was working on the Wii U remaster a few years ago. Breath of the Wild art director Satoru Takizawa spoke about how the game’s style was determined during a session at GDC last week.
When looking to see how different Zelda games would look like in HD, Nintendo took models from previous games and placed them into a development environment to try different mockups. Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, and The Wind Waker were all tested. Wind Waker “stood out” the most “and really captured the imagination of the lead artists on Breath of the Wild”. The team took it from there.
While Wind Waker would end up being used as inspiration, the art style couldn’t be carried over completely. The cartoonish direction couldn’t allow for a certain sense of realism that the team wanted to achieve. Additionally, there was some concern about it being a turnoff for older players.
Breath of the Wild’s final look was ultimately determined based on a slogan Nintendo decided on, which is “refreshing and full-flavored.”
Here’s the full explanation on how the game’s art style came to be from Takizawa:
Zelda: Breath of the Wild team on dev approach, difficulty, speedrunners, concept art, Shrines, bugs, and more
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 9 Comments
The Verge recently chatted with Zelda: Breath of the Wild director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, art director Satoru Takizawa, and technical director Takuhiro Dohta. Tons of topics were discussed in the new interview. Among them include how the team approached development, the game’s difficulty, speedrunning, the crazy concept, designing Shrines, and making the experience as bug free as possible.
We’ve rounded up notable excerpts from the interview below. You can read the full discussion on The Verge here.
Art director says Link’s iconic hat is missing in Zelda: Breath of the Wild since it’s tough to make it look cool
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 68 Comments
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild breaks many of the series’ conventions. Among these is the lack of Link’s iconic hat, which has long been a staple of the series.
In an interview with Polygon, Breath of the Wild art director Satoru Takizawa told Polygon that due to the rise of graphic fidelity, it’s tough “to make that hat look cool.”
He said:
“As the graphic fidelity has increased it becomes more difficult to make that hat look cool. As the game becomes more realistic it’s difficult to present it in a way that’s appealing.
If you look at Twilight Princess, I really made the hat long, so it would flap in the wind and move around. But because of that people were like ‘What’s he got? What’s in that hat?’ We’re reaching our limits as to how we can make it look cool.”
Takizawa added that with Skyward Sword, he attempted to make Link’s hat diminutive and giving it much less motion, but “we’re reaching our limits as to how we can make it look cool.”
Zelda: Breath of the Wild may have a tribute to Iwata
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch, Wii U | 13 Comments
YouTube user Seaniccus may have uncovered a small but lovely tribute to Satoru Iwata in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
We won’t get too much into the specifics just in case there are some of you who want to be completely blind of the game’s smaller secrets and whatnot, but the main idea here is that one of the game’s NPC bears a striking resemblance to the late Nintendo president. Along with that, he tells you about a certain mountain in the game that’s just one letter off from “Satoru”.
For the full video, continue on below.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild – full GDC 2017 panel
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Switch, Videos, Wii U | 1 Comment
The full panel is now online for the Zelda: Breath of the Wild session at GDC 2017. Nintendo’s Hidemaro Fujibayashi,
Satoru Takizawa, and Takuhiro Dohta go in-depth with discussing how some of the convention-breaking mechanics were implemented in the game. Check out the full video below.
Defeating enemies in an unconventional way in Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Switch, Videos, Wii U | 20 Comments
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild lets you do all sorts of neat and interesting things. In battles alone, there are plenty of ways to approach encounters.
One YouTuber managed to come across one humorous way of defeating enemies in particular. This is far from a major spoiler, but we’re putting the clip past the break just to be safe.