By risk I meant that there is a chance they may alienate some of their fanbase.
 
You do make a very convincing argument though, the body shape does seem to suggest female.

Well, they could probably get those ones back by making her a lesbian.

But honestly, as long as the game is awesome, I really dont think anyone who is a fan of Zelda and not just an... whatever... will have a problem if a Zelda comes out with a female Hero.

Honestly, I think the calibur of the game will be what colors their perceptions of the gender of the protagonist. Whether they conciously realize it or not.

here is news about it.. its in game engine, its not cg... http://mynintendonew...-all-in-engine/

We already knew it was in game.

Did anyone doubt it was in engine footage?

Oh right, people dont believe it because 'lol wii u'

But would Nintendo really risk making Link a girl? Unless they have decided to go down the RPG route and let you choose your gender?
 
I do see where you are coming from but I think it may just be the art-style that makes him look quite feminine. It looks very anime-esque and I feel that anime has a tendency to make male characters look quite feminine.
 
It will be very interesting (and strange) if it is a girl though.

What risk?

Its not art style that makes me think this one is female. Its Anatomy. Humans are sexually dimorphic. They are very different in skeletal and muscle structure, its not just boobs and dangly bits, or pretty faces. Ive never looked at a link before and had any question of the gender despite the pretty face because of this (windwaker excluded, as at that age physical gender is irrelevant to body structure). Link has a masculine body structure.

From my experience in college art classes, particularly the classical arts anatomy and physiology of the human form. (Drawing naked people YAY! Of all body types.... and ALL ranges of (adult) ages. ALL. AAAALLLLLLLLLL AAAAAGGGGEEEESSSSS.)



This stands out strongly as a female back. from the shoulders, the scapula, down to the waste, very feminine in muscle structure. And yes, believe you me when they designed this character, and ANY character they do indeed have skeletons, and muscle structure as part of their design. As well as nude (but probably genitaless) design sheets in concept art to show off that muscle structure for people to understand how the character is formed. Yes, even in fictional characters that do not have realistic art styles. Egads if those ever got out...


And this is a feminine neck and shoulder structure.

Im not just looking at the face, and judging from the enlarged eyes and slimmed jaw... If this is still a male, It will be the first time they went past making just the face androgynous. WHich they could also do. Maybe this time the hero is hermaphrodyte!

I honestly wouldnt be surprised if Nintendo tried later to reveal this as a surprise.

Any other Link design, would have taken me by surprise if they tried to pass it off later as female. This ones body structure stands out very strongly as female to me.

I also just noticed that it is probably not Epona in the trailer either, Epona usually has a white mane. 

 

No sword
Possibly female

Not riding Epona

 

I have so many questions which will probably not be answered until 2015.

 

yeah, eponas always had a white mane.

Even Xenoblade Chronicles X has a loading time when you enter a city, or perhaps it was loading the cutscene?
http://youtu.be/RwgVanoq_a4?t=39m15s
Either way, it was a short loading screen. Also, have you seen this footage of it? IT LOOKS FRIKKIN INCREDIBLE.

That was just for the cutscene. ANd it wasnt even a loading screen.

Xenoblade chronicles X has no loading screens anywhere ever while playing the game.

Like xenoblades colony 9, you will be able to simply walk from the mountains/lakes, into the gates of the city without a loading screen.

Thats wasnt loading the city, it was loading the scripted events, voice files, camera scriptings etc..
After that cutscene you will be able to freely enter and leave the city at will, and seamlessly.

Internet morons been cracking me up since the gtav ps4 reveal.

When Shown Zelda U:

Whatever, thats nothing any ps360 open world game could do.


Same Exact people seeing gtav ps4:


OMFG LOOK AT THE GRASS!!! THAT BLOWS PS360 OUT OF THE WATER NEXT GEN POWER ZOMG!!!!

Oh man, there are landmarks, formations, and objects EVERYWHERE, I wish I could take screens of and disect. But I wont have my computer until next weekend.

Miyamoto also said there was insects, and other animal life, as well as apples on the trees, to which was remarked you could even pick and eat them. But they werent there, and it was said in such a way to make it sound like it was removed for this showing... Nintendos really been knocking everything wii u out of the park recently. I get the feeling Zelda is not going to be an exception.

*Beaten*. Seasons... Didnt think of that. Pretty astute postulation. I REALLY like that idea. Maybe controlling them oracles style at some point...

So can anyone tell what the creature watching link from the cliff/rock top is? Its right before the horse herd, with the castle like structure in the background. At first I though it was a horse, but,while a quadraped, its body structure doesnt really look like a horse to me.

Finally...

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.

Looks cool, but it doesn't look near finished yet. Barren world, frame drops, doesn't really look as good as it did at E3... I'm not worried though, I trust Nintendo to make this an amazing game.

Its definately unfinished. This demo build even more so. You have to start preparing a build of an in progress game months in advance of when you plan to show it, You have to work out what you are going to show, what you dont want to show, make sure the build is stable enough not to crash during the demo... And make sure you have it finished before the deadline. Preferrably well before.


Where Zelda U is actually at right now, in its unfinished state, Is light years beyond where the build split off to make this demo. Its just the way these things work.

Especially at the point of developement is at right now, That point where the game is nearing/feature complete, and its polish time, build changes practically daily.

The huge world excites me. Zelda is often hit or miss with me. SS was the first I skipped all together. This world with so much to explore is the first Zelda to truly get me hyped.
 
I'm keeping a close eye on all these open world RPG games and now Zelda (since Zelda is not an RPG)

Ive gotten hyped for 3d Zeldas before, but not for the same reasons As the great 2d ones (lttp, la, oracles).

I enjoyed all the Zeldas that have come out since going 3d, as they have all been quality experiences.....

But this is the first one since the series went 3d to excite me for the reasons I became a fan of the series in the first place.

You must have like super human eyes or something, it was near impossible to see any little details due to the lighting and the fact that it wasn't focused on the TV that much.

They arent tiny details, they are kind of large structures, given away by blatant design changes in the scenery around them, ie paths and clearings to get to them. I think it would be pretty easy to miss them if looking for tiny pixel details, instead of more big picture, like missing the forest for the trees or something.

Im pretty good at finding that kind of stuff, its literally the founding mechanic of my favourite genre and design style. Honestly, people who cant yet do that are probably in the 'sweet spot' where the impact of stumbling upon, and discovering, and getting adept at finding things will be the greatest. So what REALLY grinds my gears are these obnoxious crappers who think they know SO MUCH, miss EVERYTHING and complain about the game not having things. The whole POINT of the schopl of design zelda was founded on (and the 3d games destroyed) was the excitement and sense of accomplishment that came with FINDING things, which means no neon signs pointing them out, no painfully obvious cutscene introduced, step by step forced walkthrough. Its not obvious, its not supposed to be obvious, and thats the point.

People just VASTLY over estimate their abilities, thinking they are geniuses at game design, when they actually know jack crap. In fact they know so little, they LITERALLY can not begin to comprehend the knowledge it would take for them to REALIZE how ignorant they are. Straight up text book dunning kroger:
http://en.m.wikipedi...g–Kruger_effect

Pandering to them is what has destroyed gaming, design has gotten dumber, and dumber, and dumber, and dumber, and dumber, just to appease them and their pitiful powers of observation attached to their obnoxious entitled arrogance.

I wonder if you could edit the Horse ai with a slider, so if you want full blown, manual with still tree dodging, to pure manual.
 
A lot, at least on the game awards video complaining that the world is bland, silly people.

Thats because these people cant find anything unless it mushroom stamps them in the face and screams. Its way game design has devolved into 5 second attention span ubirainbow. Designing for the lowest common denominator.

In the glance over the cliff sequence there are:
A lake
With a lake house
A village
Vines for climbing
a water fall
Top of the mountain of the waterfall with traversable style geometry
Pathways in said mountains on multiple levels.
A stonehenge style rock formation
A man made shrine... thing
multiple caves and tunnels
smoking volcano
multiple sentry towers

Look at the sunlight reflecting off that grass. 
 

 
oh and look at the grass move around the horsie's hooves

If anyone wants a really good look at the grass and things up close, the best quality video is on the eshop. Somebody needs to make a zoomed in version of that feed.

You can actually see that the flowers and wheat stalks are actually still there.

To me, Wind waker is one of the most "serious" Zelda games.

Both ww and ss, in purposeful contrast to their visuals, are by far the most thematically serious Zeldas.

Yeah this is my main problem with what they showed. Nothing had as much detail and complexity as what they showed in the E3 trailer. But like I said, I'm sure they'll fix that. But I think that's what most people are complaining about.

Im not concerned. Nothings been downgraded engine wise. The differences seen here are of different areas. The first one shown was chosen because it was near finished level quality, in the areas directly shown close to link, which werent many.

The new footage had clearly unfinished areas, and showed a need for optimization... in conditions that would break just about any engine i know of (except the xeno engine and stuff like witcher 3). But its pretty easy to tell the difference between unfinished and poor or downgraded if you know what to look for.

Just to point out, despite the frame hiccups when the camera is swung around over vast amounts of actually rendered geometry like a madman, when the game is running smoothly, it appears to be going for 60fps. Its tough to tell on a youtube video for obvious reasons, but im pretty confident, the slow mo seems to help a lot with helping me feel like this, Which would make this the first 60fps 3d style/console style zelda.

I can't believe I missed this post, thanks!


 
Honestly, if I wanted to spend hours in the middle of a forest doing nothing, I would just go outside...
 
This is a video game after all, they wouldn't want to bore us that much.

I think a lot of people are getting hung up on this because they are watching instead of doing.

First and foremost, lets just get this out of the way: The final product will be teeming with background life. Thats just a given.

So, it is important to have that bit of forest with nothing in it. Its like the rests, and spaces between notes in music, it forms the rythm of the melody, constantly assaulting the player with busy work and inane things to do is like just having every instrument blasting at the same time. Its just noise. Too many games today are just design noise.

Now, what we dont want is a barren overworld with nothing to do. Thats what TP was, and I can already tell, this isnt it.

Now, while there may be patches of time where we are just passing through serene forest thats pretty to look at, this ok, its like a rest in music, its important for developing the rythm. What we want isne necessarilly being kept constantly busy, like a child with no attention span constantly needing keys jingled in front of him. No, we need lots of places to find, and quality things to find when we get their.

The journey through the landscape that is not constantly stimulating builds tension, as you remain focused on where you are going, and not 'OH SQUIRREL!!! HE WANTS ME TO GET HIS NUTS!!!'

What is it? Whats going to be there? Will I get something?

What we need are lots of these, of high quality. Windwaker tried to do something similar, and did a great job, but was held back by the limits of the time and technology. With only one island per square kilometer, there was a lot of area, and the things to do were quality, but was not enough places to go and things to do. Twilight princess had neither enough places to go, nor quality things to do for its world size. Tossing in inane fetch quests like bugs and poes, does not come remotely close to meeting designed areas with things to do.

This seems to be taking a similar approach to WW, but ramping up the number of points of interest, places the player will see and want to go too, to a very high density.

In windwaker, you could typically see 3 places to go at any time. Islands in the middle of nowhere, one front, one left, one right. Cant see behind you.

Here, just glancing over the cliff i am overloaded with the amount of set peices I see. Each and every one of them is likely the equivilant of an island in ww, its a designed place to go with something unique to do. And there were so many of them. And thats just a tiny area of a huge map.

Nah, that's just silly. You can have a town and npcs but still have an amazing looking world in the background. All we're saying is there are some points in the video where it's really empty. Not only devoid of animals and enemies, but of interesting things in general. The grass does indeed look amazing, and the lighting is great, but that doesn't make it good. I wouldn't buy a game where the extent of its praises were that the grass was good and the world looks good. I need things to do. Gameplay.

But cramming those things in every second of the game is just design noise. Its Ubicrap.

The video literally showed the landscape was PACKED with places to go and check out. The constant editing was probably removing them so they arent spoiled.

I agree with nintendo on this. When your game is literally based on discovery, everything you show beihg discovered erodes at its enjoyment once you finally get it. To that end, I already am planning on going on a blackout for this.

*EDIT* DUDE you need to find a better quality video. That look over the cliff was jam packed with land marks and features to exlore.

Ignore the top box, I did a double reply by accident...
 
I hope that the game will change according to the seasons, imagine seeing Zelda U with snow everywhere, throw snowballs at gannondorf to defeat him lol XD
 
The world in Twilight princess was SO boring, didn't wanna travel there at all...
 
Ocarina of time was perfect though, small but packed with enough things to keep you busy.
 
Well, I wouldn't mind it if they kept you occupied when travelling to another place, like  make it so you can upgrade your gear/ change it as epona goes to the destination.

Seasons would be cool.

Im pretty sure you will be able to change your gear on the touch pad while eponas ai doesnt run into trees. You will also be free to look around and notice places you might want to check out along the way. What we dont need, is Ubicrap everywhere.

Im starting to suspect flight will be featured in this game as a late game travel mechanic. The engine seems more than capable of supporting it.

lol "I agree with nintendo on this" what on earth? Agree on what? That barren overworlds are better?
 
Anyways, I can see your point, and I hope you're right that they're just avoiding the densely populated areas so they aren't spoiled.
 
As for your edit, look at my edit. The parts when they're up high are awesome and detailed.

LMAO NO!! XD

No, I agree with them cutting out all the land marks and points of interest that they clearly traversed past on their way.

(Orient the map showm, to the view over the c
iff, then match landmarks in the distance in the video from what you saw over the cliff)

I can tell they skipped the village, the hylian stone henge, and the lake house.

I agree because too a game thats all about exploration and discovery again, showing the things you are supposed to find and discover is like ruining the story for someone.

So 3dude... You playing ww HD to get some ideas about Zelda u ?

What?

....
........

Where ARE you?

Haha u on my friends list. Eddyray

Oh yeah, forgot it shows what your playing XD.

There better be a Hero Mode and/or Master Quest. And saves should be a part of your WiiU profile. What I really want in the game are mini dungeons. Not the whole "solve this one puzzle or check out this concept" like in ALBW. MINI dungeons. Like adding to the core dungeons in theme or idea, but very much its own out of the way, neat, "Holy crap, check this out!". Oh, and did I mention MINI dungeons? I want minimized dungeons to find and explore dammit. At least the size of OoT's Forest Temple.

Im sure there will be. I think horse is talking about an end game though. Letting you continue to explore, and find things you missed after last boss.

Hey 3dude question for you and others. I have seen many people mention the mane and hair physics found on epona are pretty damn good and realistic... you guys thoughs? sorry if already covered didnt read through the whole thread yet.
 
BTW here is the gameexplain analysis
 

Well the animation is very well done. Definately a lot better than the samey cloth physics weve seen on everything all last gen.

Nintendo seems to have found a way to represent inertia rather well in its animation for things like this. I dont know if its pure physics simulation or a mix of physics and hand tweaked animation instructions (my guess). Whatever it is, it works quite well, particularly since there are so few hair 'pieces'/'strands' comprising the mane and tail.

grahamf, on 06 May 2014 - 11:29 PM, said:
Yeah. it looks high resolution; but it seems to miss the, I don't know, soul of OoT

It has a a lot more soul than the inside of the n64 temple of time. Which is basically nothing. It consists of a single brick texture for walls, a poor geometrical design with said texture, and a prebaked window light.

This is pretty good for keeping rigidly adhered to the n64 games design. Sure you can replace the lamo stained glass with din and naryu symbols with a better design.... but whatever.

The guy really put a lot of detail in places where modern Zelda's put them. Intricate medal inlaid designs, chiseled stoneworks, stained glass. Though the style completely misses the mark. I never understand why these guys always try to go with a medeival european, or victorian, or even celtic design look when they try to do zelda. It couldnt be farther from the mark, (past the town building designs of oot alone) which is actually traditional japanese mixed with native american. Thats where Anouma says he got that trademark 'Hylian' style.

But like I said, Oot itself aint got diddly squat. Its pretty much the definition of souless. Plain stone walls, repeated textures, not much soul to speak of. Kinda hard to say he failed to capture the soul of 'single repeated brick texture'.

Twilight princess however, had a MUCH better version of the temple of time.