Oh man and this is ONLY horse and weapon mechanics, we haven't even seen any characters, dungeons, or story elements yet!
 
Anyone notice the arrow over the enemies is the one similar to the one in WW HD?
 
Link is right handed! Could this mean that motion controls may be an option again?
 
His hood! He has it in the beginning, but then he takes it off off camera, wonder what's up with that.
 
How come Aonuma didn't say anything when Miyamoto said "That must be a dungeon!"?
 
"It's sunset"
 
Would the environment change according to the time in the game?
 
How come we still haven't seen Link with his green tunic yet?

So many questions! Excited?

I think there is quite a bit of meat to the simple gamplay shown. Wish I had my pc with me right now, so i could really dig in. Ill try to answer some questions I feel I may have some insight on.

I wouldnt be surprised if the arrows over enemies is a placeholder. Final 2d hud graphics can come pretty late in the game, with placeholders used from previous libraries, or just thrown together (go look at early hud elements of X, or xenoblade).

Could be motion controls, though i doubt they will be as in depth as SS because of traditional controls also being an option. Could just be they got used to making him a rightie.

Hyrulians creed. (hylian doesnt work with the bad pun, wait, maybe it does?) Hylians Creed. Eh take your pick.

Likely because he doesnt want to confirm or deny. The whole point of a world like this is the mystery and awe of discovery. Actually FINDING dungeons again... Could it really be that glorious?

Probably just pointing out the real time day cycles... Conspicuously missing from SS. Though, it is a 3d Zelda standard for things to happen, or change at certain times.

The tunic of the hero has been a fairly big plot point in the past couple games. Im not surprised they are holding off.

I also wouldnt be surprised if they turned a lot of things off, and were using the debugger/specifically altered version of the game, to ensure everything happened, or didnt happen, in a way that showed just what they wanted to show, with no unexpected glitches, crashes and other surprises, or... Spoilers.

It worries me that they won't be able to have enough NPCs and stuff in that BIG open world by end of 2015, hopefully it won't get delayed.

Beat me Sorcerer.

I hope it doesnt get delayed, but I would rather a delay than an empty world.

Im pretty optimistic from what ive seen though.

Theres definately a lot to digest, and though it looks great, they do have quite a bit that could use polish, from frame rate to texture transitions. Though if it released looking as is, it would still be a world I relish diving into.

Hope we get a direct feed soon. Still so much to digest.

Love the independant horse AI. Long time coming I say, you dont drive horses like cars after all.

Zelda... was pretty cool. Want to watch again.

They wont stop making them until people stop buying them. If people want gaming to begin evolving and progressing in design again, they need to stop being tools to marketing.

 

Real game designers, the ones with talent, are leaving the videogame market to persue varied, and very successful careers in gamification instead, because they enjoy the creativity and talent they get to excersise that just isnt financially rewarded in todays marketing brainwashed publisher conglomerate dominated consumer market.... And they now make more money in months working half the time than they used to make in a year.

 

If people want great games again, we need an audience worth making games for. As of right now, we have an audience that simply wants to be told what to buy, and then be told how awesome what they just bought is, and enjoy being conditioned to viciously attack anything else.

Im actually really intruiged by how they gave each race and everything related to them to a different art director, to emphasize the differences in culture. Thats really neat.

Oh Wow.

As I said, I knew jack all about the stuff that Saga/Gears covered. I knew some of the stuff from XBC's philosophy through your previous posts, and I wasn't intending to imply that Xenoblade was bad. I've just heard that Saga/Gears was more ..IDK,something deeper/more complex, due to the directors statement of Basic. Then again, if you look at some of the greatest works(LotR, Shawshank Redemption, Hamlet) there's an implied basicness about them. Doesn't mean it's not as deep as some other more complicated stuff.

Oh yeah, I got that you hadnt played them (though I would suggest giving gears a try if the oppUrtunity presents itself, still a fantastic game. Er, half a game).

I just run into the kinds of commenters you were talking about a lot. And basically, they link to a well worn article about Xengears philosophies and themes... And then completely fail to use the same thought process described in the article to approach an understanding of Xenoblade. Basically, they had to have gears spelled out for them, years after the fact and since no one did the same for blade, they assumed there was nothing there.

They often use out of context quotes from takahashi from a certain interview (dont know if its the one you are talking about) But conveniently leave out the part where he said his former overcomplicated melodrama style was a dead end for videogames, and that he was returning to basics to start a new foundation more suitable for interactive media with a small scale expirimental test (this turned out to be xenoblade)

His streamlining of plot and dialog did wonders for Xenoblade, especially in comparison to the mess that was saga, his return fo and improved focus on a creating a story and worldbuilding suited for interactive storytelling did wonders for blade, again, especially compared to saga, and his use of philisophical themes grew in sophistication, as he applied and grew in all directions for blade.

I'm imaging from what I know of Gears/Saga that it will go a lot more into the themes of religion and such. From what I know(Haven't played either game/Trilogy yet) the Xeno games prior Xenoblade were basically a philosophical guide on religion. In Comparison, Xenoblade's big themes feel like..baby content. Feel free to correct me, Ryudo, as I know nothing.

Xenoblades story is considerably deeper in that regaurd than either gears or. Well, gears, Saga fell flat on its face on that end, going for melodrama out the wazoo instead, but leaving the philosophy incredibly shallow.

Xenogears, and to a lesser extent, saga, was a pretty straight forward and surface level use of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's philosophy works, hampered by the fact the game had to be translated, xenogears was only half finished, and saga was... Well, Namco bandai.

Xenoblade is based on several different philosophies, from actual old time philosophies, to theoretical metaphysics of the 16-17th century, to modern day computer functional programming, and of course, religion that all actually used the same word in a similar context: The monad.

The main basis was Gottfried Leibniz’s most famous work, 'The Monadology'. Ill just give a breif overview of relevent bits that will be familiar to players of Xenoblade:

Every element in existence is made up of a single substance, the simplest substance that can not be broken down any more. This single unit, is known as the monad. In Xenoblade its ether. Different arrangements of the monad within space comprise different elements.

He attempted to bring together the clashing ideals of Teleology, Mechanism philosophy. As youve likely already guessed, when you go to the wiki pages you will basically be looking at the philosophical versions of the bionis and the mechonis.

Philosophically, The Monadology arrived at several conclusions, that play heavy themes in Xenoblades story.

1. Idealism, since it denies things in themselves (besides monads) and multiplies them in different points of view. Monads are “perpetual living mirrors of the universe.” - You may be hearing faint echoes of several lines of dialouge after reading this, its ok, its normal.... I think.

2. Metaphysical optimism, through the principle of sufficient reason, developed as follows:

a) Everything exists according to a reason (by the axiom "Nothing arises from nothing");

Everything which exists has a sufficient reason to exist; -Sound familiar yet?

c) Everything which exists is better than anything non-existent (by the first point: since it is more rational, it also has more reality), and, consequently, it is the best possible being in the best of all possible worlds (by the axiom: "That which contains more reality is better than that which contains less reality"). -Cue about a bazillion lines from Xenoblade that are now popping into your head.

But wait, theres more. Xenoblade also incorporates modern usage of the Monad, its use in functional programming.

'In functional programming, a monad is a structure that represents computations defined as sequences of steps: a type with a monad structure defines what it means to chain operations, or nest functions of that type together. This allows the programmer to build pipelines that process data in steps, in which each action is decorated with additional processing rules provided by the monad.[1] As such, monads have been described as "programmable semicolons"; a semicolon is the operator used to chain together individual statements in many imperative programming languages,[1] thus the expression implies that extra code will be executed between the statements in the pipeline. Monads have also been explained with a physical metaphor as assembly lines, where a conveyor belt transports data between functional units that transform it one step at a time.[2] They can also be seen as a functional design pattern to build generic types.[3]'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(functional_programming)

Basically, its the computer programming version of the concept of ether (The monad in greek philosophy/Leibniz's monadology)...

The Monado wasnt a sword, it was in I/O interface with the AI that could control the placement of, well, ether 'atoms' if you will. A spot in space with an ether atom was a 1, a spot without it was a 0, chaining/nesting these arrangements of these 1's and 0's determined the make up of the world. If you could see what ether was where, you could tell where it was soon going to be, and if you could edit them... Yes, this is exactly what alvis was talking about during the telethia intro fight.

Shulk wasnt able to weild the monado like no other on bionis because he was the chosen one. He was able to weild the monado because he was the only sentient bionis being who aquired the capacity to begin to comprehend functional computer programming logic.

Dunban was able to get as far as he did through sheer discipline and focus, but his lack of understanding likely began to, well, randomly edit his arm until it lost function.

Shulk seeing the future, was simply reading the code of the world zanza programmed, and seeing where it went. Shulk slicing things with the monado was literally editing them apart.

And perhaps most impressive of all, was that the concept of the monad/monadology, went beyond the story, dialogue, and plot. The gameplay itself was saturated with the concept.

The simplistic poo pooing of Xenoblades story looks like a cut and dry case of the Dunning-Kroger effect everytime I come across it. The detractors never demonstrate more than shallowest surface level comprehension of the story, or its themes.
http://en.wikipedia....g–Kruger_effect

Xenoblade, will be very, very, hard to top.

Here is what I want from nintendo next home system
1. specs
 4+1 PPC cores , +1 core is reserverd for the OS, the other 4 for development
 1gb of DDR4 reserved for the os
  3-4gb of esram
a GPU capable of 3-5 to 4.5 Tflops
  1080p gamepad and support for 2 gamepads and 4 pro controllers
2.Improvments
better gamepad battery life
ability to install your own hardrive
 
A much much mcuh improved online service+ game streaming

3-4 Gb esram? Wow.Thats uh.Thats going to be a huge processor.

Wolfenstein 3d back in... 1992? Back When freemium with purchases to expand was called shareware, because it wasnt crap.



Hm.... Dont think I can narrow down a favourite.

Metroid Prime, Half life, system shock 2, call of cthulhu dcoe, Halo, dues ex, faceball 2000, Chex quest, red steel 2...

Game Advertisement Of The Year: The Game Awards^tm

Beat me to the punch.

I was going for the PMA's, Publisher marketing awards.

I haven't seen that on PS4, pretty sure I would have noticed it.
 
Personally, I really enjoyed the game as I didn't have the insane expectations that some people seemed to have.  I'm very much looking forward to Watch Dogs 2 HOPEFULLY properly optimised for the PS4/One/PC.
 
Then again I have also been enjoying Assassins Creed: Unity and still looking forward to The Crew even after playing the beta, so I'm guessing I wont have much credibility.

Eh, maybe you just arent as burnt out on these gameplay design tropes as I am. I liked them well enough in the 6th gen, though I started to tire of them towards the end... And the seventh gen doubled down on them along with with a rather noticable aversion to variety....

But if you either havent been doing it for the past decade or just have a higher saturation point/tolerance for this design, its not like they are TRULY BAD games, even though they dont come anywhere NEAR being as good as the way overbearing marketing Campaign Ubisoft spent a vulgar amount of money on.... Its like a hideously twisted parody of 'raving fans' that purposefully misses the point...

So now gamers are attacking reviews for not being positive enough? Jesus christ.

almost like theyve formed an entire hate movement around that concept something.

Metacritics not the only source of the problem, but its a huge part it, and it is the trigger for these unproportianately extreme responses. Its a cancer that has got to go.

I mean, its not like the guy even got anything hugely objectively wrong gameplay wise (looks at w101 reviews)

He was dissapointed with the lack of 'new', mainly reffering to not having a 'story' mode like sub space emmissary, something that i recall a great deal of people being upset about when it was announced, meaning this review would be a useful service to them.

It wasnt a great review, there several things he mentioned but never explained.He typoed online multiplayer instead of local.

But its not a great enough offense to warrant those responses. He really likes the adventure/sub space emmissary mode, it was removed, he dropped the score from 9 to 8. Its not like he raped a plush doll of Sonic the hedgehog or anything.

I'm probably going to drag a lot of hate for this, but...they're halfway right.
 
The Wii brand is a shadow of its former self. In both sales, public awareness, and developer support.
And as for the Vita...while it hasn't gotten much in the way of "AAA" support, or even straight up support from Sony and its owned companies, I've admittedly been using it way more than my Wii U in just about every aspect. Gaming, youtube...granted, I know this is more of a personal opinion, but the Vita /is/ a pretty good value if you don't mind trying new things. I've got more Vita games than I do for the Wii U, honestly. :T

Its a great peice of hardware. and I would get one soooooo hard if sony would just support it.

This is the machine sony should be experimenting with, its powerful enough to do anything in their stable, yet as a handheld halfway between ps2/3 its cheap enough to make full featured games for a fraction of the cost of a ps4.

We should be seeing those high quality sony ip's left out to dry during the worst generation out the arse on this, Dark cloud vita, alundra vita, colony wars vita, legend of dragoon v2 vita, team ico something damned vita, ghost hunter vita, Tomba vita, bushido blade vita, rise of the kasai vita....

Sigh, this dimension sucks. Where are the sliders, I need to go to a dimension where everyone didnt screw everything up...

Hmmm odd. check this... brielfy as game boots... says "installing game data on system memory" it's a minute and 2 seconds in. Don't recall seeing this before on any game, at least not a message saying so.
 
more footage of wii u version.
 

Yeah, Its the first one ive seen.

Pretty common on ps360 though.

Installing some data to hard drive allows the ability to stream from both disc and hdd concurrently effectively increasing bandwidth.

As much time as i spend laughing at this terd... I gotta hand it to the port team, they did a pretty decent job of porting it.

Dont know, but it wouldnt surprise me.

Dat Ubiquality

 

 

 

Well, financially, the Wii u IS a shadow of the wii.

 

Unfortunately, the vita is a shadow of the psp...

Its like hes trying to tell me something...

 

Hes talking about seamless streaming and online integration. I wonder if hell go more in depth with talking about the seamless streaming.

For some reason some of these drawings just remind me of the scientifically accurate sonic the hedgehog spoof.

"Before Captain Toad ever made his debut in Super Mario 3D Land"

 

Uh...I thought his debut was in Super Mario Galaxy as the leader of the Toad Brigade?

 

Yeah thats true, so I just assume he means playable debut

That.... Explains a lot.

Im not sure what you are asking op. You say you havent kept up with the wii u, and that you arent interested in nintendo games. But Im not sure if you intended to make such a large blanket statement. Maybe you meant you werent interested in the games nintendo was releasing at the time? Like new mario bros, 3dland?

 

Are you asking if Nintendo has other styles of games now coming out that would interest you?

 

something like this maybe?

 

Wow! can we see pictures of how it looks now?

 

Aonuma: NO!!! HA HA HA HA!!!!

 

WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP!

That would be the original dooms engine, or raycasting engines in general.

 

Faked 3d and sprites each drawn from 8 angles.

 

IDtech wouldnt start using actual polygons until idtech 2 with quake