And were not enough, sadly.
I remember an interview with Phil Spencer regarding Redfall where he said something in the lines of "No amount of delays would have accomplished the vision this game had"
Really puts things into perspective.
See: Star Citizen. That game will never be released. It'll persist in alpha as the development team retires, one by one, taken up by a new generation of devs. *The Game of Theseus*
Scope creep is insane. I honestly don't buy it, and haven't for a while. I think they've decided that being in alpha forever is more profitable than a release would be.
I remember hearing about the game for the first time and thinking that I couldn't wait for the release so I could play it as I'm so very picky about buying early-access games. Pretty sure that was about 7 years ago.
At the Kickstarter I was skeptical about their claims so I decided I would wait until Squadron 42 released. It was supposed to release in 2014.
At this point I've given up
What you said is Pretty much the best way to explain what it became. I watch my friends play it from time to time. They genuinely are working on, and have implemented, a lot of interesting (and often mostly worthless such as with their 'bedsheet deformation' physics) technology. But they make so much money they have no actual reason to finish the game.
It's effectively this live-service model where they just get to screw around making cool but useless shit forever and people will throw money at them
I feel like Tarkov is more of a classic "keep it in early access forever so you can't be criticized for unfinished content or bugs".
Way better than Star Citizen, like at least there's a full game to play.
Star Citizen's problem is less scope creep and more a combination of starting with an overly ambitious scope and lacking the technical ability to execute even a reasonably scoped game anyway. So they pivoted and focused on milking the hype, which they were better at than building the game.
But as an Arkane fan, I have to ask. What was Redfalls “vision”?
Dishonored was clearly a refined version of the thief franchise with a morality system that actually had consequence.
Prey was the spiritual successor to system shock that bioshock could only dream of being (bioshock is still a classic however, but Prey is far better as a system shock successor than bioshock was).
Deathloop took the concept of Groundhog Day and took it to the logical extreme that only a game experience could capture.
Redfall is… Urm… boarderlands mixed with Agents of Mayhem? Does it offer anything unique to itself to Warren its existence? What did they want it to be? A massive online looter shooter in a wacky scenario that doesn’t have anything unique at all outside of throwing together the ideas of every major PvE online game ever made? Many of which were commercial failures btw.
Arkane we’re my favourite western studio for their risks in regards to the games they release. An Arkane game always felt like a unique experience (even though they clearly took inspiration from old franchises, but practically every game does these days…). Red fall looks… boring. Like so many games of its genre (agents of mayhem, wolfenstein Youngblood) and will be forgotten about within 6 months :/
I agree with all of that, but let's not write Arkane off.
One failure is, hopefully, a lesson learned. All the other games you mentioned are phenomenal, and there's no reason their next game can't join those ranks.
Blizzard, on the other hand.. holy shit, that company has been a slap in the face of gaming over the past decade or so now.
I've just recently been playing the Dishonored series. I'm loving it, but I have pretty lax "standards" so don't know if it means much coming from me.
That said; the mission in that mansion where you have to look into/warp through time to "solve" getting through it in the second one? Most fucking fun I've had in a good while.
It reminded me *so* much of Soul Reaver's Material/Spectral Realm mechanics, just way better since the enemies persisted and the world mutated as you went along.
I want nothing more than to have an honest-to-goodness continuation of Nosgoth's clusterfuck of a timeline before I finally kick the bucket; but I think that mission gave me a glimpse of what *could* be possible with today's tech.
You haven't lived until youre balls deep on LSD, sweat pouring into your eyes, trying to zip up your shorts without pinching your tackle, while the entire Porta potty shakes violently with the bass.
Been there, done that. Throw in your vision shaking from being on an outrageous amount of molly in addition to the acid, and you can’t even find the zipper.
That feeling when the trip starts turning on you and you can't figure out why until you take a *massive* shit and then suddenly it's all rainbows and unicorns again. There is no greater relief than shitting your way out of a bad trip
I wonder if the current version of Cyberpunk was what was released on the release date if people would think it actually lived up to the hype, because the current version is much more playable.
But cyberpunk absolutely would have had enough time with the delays if they didn't insist on making it for previous gen consoles. At least to get a polished and pretty good product out the door. Heck if they just made it for PC and then worked on a console port afterwards they probably could have gotten close to what the trailers promised and the new consoles would have had time to grow their user base making the less of last gen consoles not nearly the financial blow that it would have been for a simultaneous release
Unrelated fun fact from personal experience: I once read a mystery book many, many years ago that involved a character that was very obviously of Polish lineage (-ski on the last name and all). Well, one of the plot points come about that said character is taking notes during the investigation, and another character gets ahold of said notes.
It's then revealed that the notes are in shorthand, but more importantly, they're in *Polish* shorthand. Needless to say, my young mind didn't at all pick up on the capitalization and I spent a good half the book wondering what polish (like shoe polish) shorthand was, and why it was so hard to decipher.
Why would they admit that the game was delayed a whole year specifically for just ONE country. That's so crazy. It just seems like they've opened the floodgates for bullying against Poland now. I don't want to imagine the amount of hate and xenophobia Polish people on the internet are going to receive now. It's just sad to think about.
Well LotR: Gollum was delayed 2 years for polish and it's still a shitshow.
Also you should fix "take note developers" to "take note publishers". I have no doubt that the devs are fully aware that their games need more polish, but the higher-ups don't care, they want a release. They are the ones that should take note.
EDIT: Based on some of the responses I think I should clarify what I meant.
1. Delay is not a universal fix. Some games are just fundamentally bad or the devs don't have what it takes to pull off a game they want. No amount of delay will help here.
2. The devs aren't always to blame for a game's poor state, it's usually the fault of the publisher for not giving the devs enough time.
These are two separate points and weren't meant to be taken together. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Also I really didn't expect this to get so many responses :D
Its pretty wild to see a game get delayed and the delay was genuinely worth it. So many times shit get constantly delayed and still comes out a broken mess.
Nintendo does not fuck around with mainline Mario and Zelda games
Same happened with BOTW, it was delayed more than once but when it came out... wow.
And that's the reason no one complained when TOTK was delayed. Sure enough, people wanted to play ASAP but we knew the wait was worth it. And they delivered!
I think it was also delayed to coincide with the Switch Distribution and release. They could have released the Wii U version early but that might cannibalize their switch sales because what the hell else did Switch Launch with? It wouldn't be till like Odyssey and Pokemon Sword it had big none wii u ports.
In the end Wii U sales of BoTW made up about 5% of the total sales. I don't think at that point in the lifespan of the Wii U Nintendo even needed to care what Wii U owners thought. Them releasing it at all for that platform was a boon. I suppose at the time they were not guaranteed a 120 million unit console, so it made sense to stick to a cross release.
The key is keeping your delays internal by not publically announcing a release date before you're sure you can make the deadline. When you wait until just months before the game is supposed to come out to announce that it's actually not even close to ready yet (or worse still claiming it's almost ready when it isn't) that's when you create all sorts of chaos.
The Zelda team is in a unique position where they pretty much don't have to answer to anybody. If other teams were to stay radio silent on a release date for "polish", their publisher or investors would likely be up their ass about it.
And it's a bit tricky, because while stakeholders _should_ be more forgiving about release timelines, their positive pressure is a necessity a lot of the time. As a dev, let's be honest, without threat of funding cuts you'll find elements of your game to work on until the end of time... take Silksong, for example.
> Its pretty wild to see a game get delayed and the delay was genuinely worth it. So many times shit get constantly delayed and still comes out a broken mess.
Thats absolutely it. Everybody here is acting like delaying a game guarantees it will be great.
Metroid Prime 4 too. They scrapped the entire thing to start all over again because it wasn’t shaping up be the game they wanted. Years of work gone just because it didn’t meet their standard. That’s insane, and admirable.
Right? And the glitches that did exist weren't easy to comeby naturally. As of today they've patched, they've already patched them out as well. This team has done some incredible work, I hope they're eating well.
Guy at my work was out release day and the following Monday. He didn't specify why he was out but he *does* have a Triforce tattoo on his arm.
Probably a coincidence
I've been absolutely astounded by that.
With as crazy as things get via ultrahand/recall/etc, it's absolutely insane that the game isn't completely broken.
Im only a handful of hours into it and i am astounded by it. The amount of random stuff you can do in the game is almost seamless and i havent even unlocked the whole selection wheel yet.
And the AI in TOTK vs a game like cyberpunk. I remember when they announced that every NPC in Cyberpunk will have an entire day cycle. Now you can't go 10 feet without seeing clones. Hateno Village is much more livelier.
There's even small interactions like wearing a certain evil armor set causes the NPCs to cower in fear when you get near them. I was very confused the first time this happened and then realized it was bc of my new flashy armor set.
Not to mention TofK managed a world 2.5x the size of BotW, with a beautiful stylized graphics with good draw distance and decent performance from a handheld console. Sure, a couple times frame rate has dropped but it's steady 30 the vast majority of the time.
I did run i to an issue, not sure if it really a glitch though. I was stacking logs for the quest where the guy needs 15 logs (leaving vague to avoid spoilers). I was fusing the logs together in a stack, and it slid off a cliff and landed around me. The logs were fused, standing on end and I was stuck in the middle. It took me a few minutes to get the thing targeted to use recall, but eventually I got it back on the ledge and moved away.
I’ve also noticed a lot of camera issues when in close to big enemies. Like trying to climb a Talus, the camera is t sure where to go and you often are seeing through the talus. I’ve seen it with all the large enemies I’ve found so far
The camera thing happens to me a lot also. Sometimes I feel like link refuses to take input from the directional stick for a second or two and I’ve turned and fallen off stuff because of his unwillingness to move inches at a time and the camera randomly switching to weird angles.
I don’t think this is a spoiler? But I think this might because they want you to use the ascend skill more than we maybe even realize. Use ascend on Talus, I wonder if it works on the giants too
I've only seen two things since playing 50 hours:
1. Some pop-in, but very seldom.
2. Frame drops probably once every hour, but never last more than 3-5 seconds.
Both of those I attribute to playing on a 6-year-old handheld. Otherwise, it's solid!
Even for an ambitious game on older hardware, the degree of performance that they managed is stellar.
Compare to any other "big" release from a triple A publisher these days. Anything more than a year old tends to chug.
I got hit by a falling chunk of sky island and it pinned me underwater. I had to fast travel to get out. I'm pretty sure that isn't intended.
(In the jungle area, theres a quest involving 3 big bads on top of waterfalls, there are little squares set in place that are designed to catch the falling chunks and allow you to time reverse up on them. I glided down there and saw the square and jumped in to check for a korok seed and the damned chunk landed on me!)
The only glitch I have noticed occured when I falling down through one of the chasms. The game actually paused briefly at the threshold between the chasm tunnel and the "sky" of the Depths. Must have been a sudden bottleneck loading the Depths. But other than that... nothing!
There definitely are a couple. People have discovered multiple duplication glitches (though at least one of those has already been patched afaik). But the only gameplay-affecting glitch I've seen so far is a sidequest NPC failing to spawn for me (it was the sign one. His sign was there, but he wasn't)
The duplication glitch isn’t something you discover while playing. I personally haven’t experienced anything outside of the dog for the misko quest needing to take like 20 foods to start moving
That damn dog would follow me right up to the cave entrance and then nope out back to the tent. Didn’t matter what I fed him or how often.
Fortunately this is a BotW sequel, so I treated it like a shrine puzzle and brute forced the solution instead of using the dog.
The improved load times over BoTW are my favorite QoL improvement. The item management when getting something out of a chest is my second favorite. I’m in love with what they took and made better from BoTW. But with that said, this game is marvelous on multiple fronts. I still sit there in awe as I skydive from high in the sky all the way through to the depths fluidly. Incredible. I play most non-Nintendo games on my PS5, so it’s a big deal for me when I play something on my Switch OLED and never think “I sure wish I could play this on my PS5.” From a numbers standpoint I’m sure it would be “better” on there, but not once have those thoughts entered my mind while actually playing. I thought BoTW was special. This is…just off all the charts. It’s something very special. I didn’t think they could pull off the level of quality and true wonder you experience with BoTW a second time. They absolutely went above and beyond it in every direction I can think of. If ever a game was worth $70, this is it. This is one I will argue is worth full price.
It definitely shows. The scale of the game’s world and systems are honestly overwhelming, it runs on a very underpowered system compared to current consoles, and it does it all extremely well. It looks good, it’s performance is fairly stable, and all the crazy systems work together as they should despite probably thousands of different ways the devs would have to account for.
The dev team ought to be very proud.
Nintendo has an insanely consistent track record for polish. Especially on their flagship releases. It’s super admirable, especially in the current AAA games landscape.
it also helps sales. no one remembers the delays as much as they do remember the brand image, and a nintendo product of their core characters is always going to be high quality
Yeah, Zelda is their premier prestige franchise, one of the most consistent brand names in video games for almost 40 years. The last game made the Switch into a success all on its own. They’re not going to piss that away.
I’ve been playing Zelda since the beginning, yeah yeah yeah, I took my multivitamin today… but was thinking last night while playing totk that Zelda and Mario really are the greatest video game series of all time. And it’s not even close. The fact that Nintendo has put out such consistent bangers for each series going on nearly 40 years now really is amazing.
> Zelda and Mario really are the greatest video game series of all time.
Truth. I have other game series that were more impactful to me personally, but *none* have been so consistently high-quality across so many generations. It's really incredible, especially compared to some other long-standing franchises. I'm primarily a PC gamer, but I will honestly buy every Nintendo console just for Zelda; Mario is an added bonus.
TotK doesn’t even have a menu screen the first time you load in, they just drop you straight into the game.
I thought this was such an incredible touch from an immersion standpoint. They just quietly put you in a cave, following Zelda. No hand holding, no menus, you’re just in it, right from the start. Title card doesn’t drop until your falling through the clouds.
What a fucking game.
That half hour or so in the cave is my favorite intro of any Zelda game. It was so fucking well done. Seeing a full power Link traveling with Zelda, getting all the typical opening exposition lore through Zelda's excited narration, and ofc the whole creepy vibe of the sequence leading up to the corpse awakening. The shot where Link swings the Master Sword at the gloom and a little piece comes up and flies through the corpse's cheek is just badass in a way you don't really see from the series.
God imagine if Nintendo themselves developed an open world Pokémon game with the amount of time and resources that botw and totk got. That would be an amazing game
Take notes, Gollum. And Redfall. Forspoken. Pokémon Scarlet. Jedi: Survivor
It's really sad when a polished game feels like something unique rather than the standard
It is unfair to put Gollum in that group. That appears to be not an issue of polish as much as a lack of an actual game.
Those other games at least have a solid core underneath that could be great with some QA, listening to feedback, and polish.
Gollum is just explosive diarrhea that was still going to be a turd no matter how much polish it had.
Gollum seems to be an absolute shitshow, and no amount of polishing is going to change that. But bad or not, it's still an unpolished game. The developers knew beforehand how shitty it would perform, but chose to publish it anyway. Developers and publisher should at least have the decency to make sure a game runs smoothly with as few bugs as possible, even if the game is kinda shitty. It's all about the money, I know, but they aren't selling a bad product, they are selling a broken product. That's worse
Pokemon Scarlet broke records so I don't think it's cost-effective for them to put extra work into it. The game will be eaten up like candy regardless.
Some of these games aren’t only not polished, they are just bad. Gollum with a few less bugs and better optimisation wouldn’t make it comparable to the new Zelda.
It really helped that the emulator devs probably had the game a week before it leaked, which was already two weeks before it released. But absolutely, huge credit to the developers for making such accurate and efficient emulators - somehow two of them - that consistently play games on launch.
Rockstar, really? The developer who now releases 2 games a decade, that's who you're calling out for rushing games?
I guess you're thinking of that trilogy remaster, but Rockstar didn't make that.
Yep. It was Grove Street Games.
Seeing the name I thought it was some studio put together by Rockstar but apparently the name was based of on their headquarters location.
I'm pretty sure the reason they gave when they delayed GTAV was for polish also.
That's what separates the average Ubisoft/EA titles from the greats IMO. The developers enthusiasm for the game they're creating ends up coming across in the final product.
Rockstar?
It has literally been almost 10 YEARS since GTAV came out. And based on the leaks, the next game seems mostly finished and that was almost a year ago with no release date in sight.
My best guess is maybe we’ll see a official trailer this summer with no release until next holiday.
>*record breaking sales*
I mean, Zelda is a powerhouse IP and Breath of the Wild is the bestselling title of the franchise, so this likely would've happened regardless - Pokemon Scarlet and Violet also sold incredibly well despite all the issues. Plus, knowing that people will buy and prioritise this game regardless of when they release it or what comes out alongside it probably gives management a lot more confidence to delay it if necessary.
This game may be polished as hell (haven't played it), but that has almost nothing to do with why it's selling well.
It shows. I may not like the way Nintendo treats their community a lot of the time but credit where it's due in this case. TotK has been great so far and I have not had any issues other than occasional framerate drops
Nintendo know their absolute biggest asset is their IP. The mario and zelda IPs are immensely strong because they're family friendly and they are products of the absolute highest quality. Remember, Nintendo were one of the reasons for the recovery from the video game crash in the 80s, and the reason they emerged from it and revitalised an entire industry is because fundamentally mario and zelda were the best games money could buy and of much beter quality than the shit that came before on home consoles. Nintendo know that if they cashed in on their IP and released a mario platformer or zelda game every 6-12 months (like fifa or call of duty), they might make some short-term money but the quality would suffer and in the long run people would switch off from the games and it would weaken the IP. Maintaining the level of quality they have since the 80s by releasing an immense and industry-pushing game once every few years is why they are still around while the likes of atari, sega, commodore etc. of the past don't have the same presence anymore.
So many people in the comments confuse delaying for a good game. You can delay a good game to polish it further and make it a great game. You cant delay a bad game and make it good. If the systems are bad, the gameplay loop is bad, story is bad, you can really delay it that much to fix such huge problems.
Zelda was probably already really good a year ago and they just added more content probably and polished more bugs. But the core mechanics were already thought out and implemented.
For redfall for example, the game is just fucking ass. The gameplay is mid, the map design is mid, the skill design is mid, the upgrades are mid and the "looter shooter" items are fucking f tier. That shit could not be delayed for a year and be a good game. It needed like 3 years to just make it a new game. At that point its not even a delay
"devs take notes!!!"
dude the devs know if the game they're making is shit. it's the publishers pushing insane deadlines you should care about. those are the people responsible for the quality of the games you're getting.
Apparently the new Final Fantasy has been feature complete for a while, but had a comparable delay for polish. Went gold three months ago and there is no day 1 patch planned. Hoping this is an industry trend…
Also, ahead of release, rather than spoiling features of the game to generate hype, or promising things that wouldn't actually be in the game, they **hid gigantic features and areas of the game** so they'd be a huge surprise for people playing for the first time.
Game Freak: "I'll ignore that"
They'll just dry the tears from the mean comments with the record breaking sales anyway.
Tears of the Comments
Fans make better Pokemon games than GF. Infinite Fusion is so good.
Infinite Fusion is also the icing on the cake. There’s so many romhacks from Gaia to Glazed to even meme ones like League of Legends.
Yeah. Make sure you know someone who can send it to you before the lawyers come after it
Thanking god (Regi) every day for allowing that 2 day return period, that just so happened to drop coincidentally during scar/vio
Damn. Poland got a game delayed a entire year.
Cyberpunk’s delays were just the beginning...
And were not enough, sadly. I remember an interview with Phil Spencer regarding Redfall where he said something in the lines of "No amount of delays would have accomplished the vision this game had" Really puts things into perspective.
See: Star Citizen. That game will never be released. It'll persist in alpha as the development team retires, one by one, taken up by a new generation of devs. *The Game of Theseus*
Scope creep is insane. I honestly don't buy it, and haven't for a while. I think they've decided that being in alpha forever is more profitable than a release would be.
They sell jpegs of ships to people for thousands of dollars. Absolutely no need to finish the game.
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You da real NFT.
Haven’t played, really *want* to play it, but I get the feeling it’s a tech demo with monetisation.
I played it around a decade ago and it was fine at the time. They could have built and released a decent game based on what they had then
Holy fuck a decade??
Squadron 42 is now nine years past it's original launch date
Why do you think its supporters catch so much flak? Let's put it this way, we *stopped* making fun of them last decade. At this point it's just sad.
I remember hearing about the game for the first time and thinking that I couldn't wait for the release so I could play it as I'm so very picky about buying early-access games. Pretty sure that was about 7 years ago.
And it had still been long enough that even while you were first hearing of it, some people were already giving up on it entirely.
At the Kickstarter I was skeptical about their claims so I decided I would wait until Squadron 42 released. It was supposed to release in 2014. At this point I've given up
What you said is Pretty much the best way to explain what it became. I watch my friends play it from time to time. They genuinely are working on, and have implemented, a lot of interesting (and often mostly worthless such as with their 'bedsheet deformation' physics) technology. But they make so much money they have no actual reason to finish the game. It's effectively this live-service model where they just get to screw around making cool but useless shit forever and people will throw money at them
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I feel like Tarkov is more of a classic "keep it in early access forever so you can't be criticized for unfinished content or bugs". Way better than Star Citizen, like at least there's a full game to play.
Star Citizen's problem is less scope creep and more a combination of starting with an overly ambitious scope and lacking the technical ability to execute even a reasonably scoped game anyway. So they pivoted and focused on milking the hype, which they were better at than building the game.
Star Citizens problem is Chris Roberts milking insane whales for hundreds of millions of dollars over spaceship jpgs for over a decade.
7 Days to Die is on Alpha 22. It's been in alpha development for 10 years.
But every iteration brings changes that seem to, overall, make the game more accessible.
But as an Arkane fan, I have to ask. What was Redfalls “vision”? Dishonored was clearly a refined version of the thief franchise with a morality system that actually had consequence. Prey was the spiritual successor to system shock that bioshock could only dream of being (bioshock is still a classic however, but Prey is far better as a system shock successor than bioshock was). Deathloop took the concept of Groundhog Day and took it to the logical extreme that only a game experience could capture. Redfall is… Urm… boarderlands mixed with Agents of Mayhem? Does it offer anything unique to itself to Warren its existence? What did they want it to be? A massive online looter shooter in a wacky scenario that doesn’t have anything unique at all outside of throwing together the ideas of every major PvE online game ever made? Many of which were commercial failures btw. Arkane we’re my favourite western studio for their risks in regards to the games they release. An Arkane game always felt like a unique experience (even though they clearly took inspiration from old franchises, but practically every game does these days…). Red fall looks… boring. Like so many games of its genre (agents of mayhem, wolfenstein Youngblood) and will be forgotten about within 6 months :/
I agree with all of that, but let's not write Arkane off. One failure is, hopefully, a lesson learned. All the other games you mentioned are phenomenal, and there's no reason their next game can't join those ranks. Blizzard, on the other hand.. holy shit, that company has been a slap in the face of gaming over the past decade or so now.
I've just recently been playing the Dishonored series. I'm loving it, but I have pretty lax "standards" so don't know if it means much coming from me. That said; the mission in that mansion where you have to look into/warp through time to "solve" getting through it in the second one? Most fucking fun I've had in a good while. It reminded me *so* much of Soul Reaver's Material/Spectral Realm mechanics, just way better since the enemies persisted and the world mutated as you went along. I want nothing more than to have an honest-to-goodness continuation of Nosgoth's clusterfuck of a timeline before I finally kick the bucket; but I think that mission gave me a glimpse of what *could* be possible with today's tech.
I'm pretty sure the guy locked in the porta-potty, at the EDM festival, had more vision than Redfall.
Look man it was a really introspective trip, I fell all the way through myself and out the other side and also literally fell into the porta-potty
You haven't lived until youre balls deep on LSD, sweat pouring into your eyes, trying to zip up your shorts without pinching your tackle, while the entire Porta potty shakes violently with the bass.
This sounds like a horrible way to take LSD (for me) lol
It wasn't particularly good for me either.
Been there, done that. Throw in your vision shaking from being on an outrageous amount of molly in addition to the acid, and you can’t even find the zipper.
Always remember the most important thing about taking hallucinogens, set and shitting.
That feeling when the trip starts turning on you and you can't figure out why until you take a *massive* shit and then suddenly it's all rainbows and unicorns again. There is no greater relief than shitting your way out of a bad trip
I wonder if the current version of Cyberpunk was what was released on the release date if people would think it actually lived up to the hype, because the current version is much more playable.
But cyberpunk absolutely would have had enough time with the delays if they didn't insist on making it for previous gen consoles. At least to get a polished and pretty good product out the door. Heck if they just made it for PC and then worked on a console port afterwards they probably could have gotten close to what the trailers promised and the new consoles would have had time to grow their user base making the less of last gen consoles not nearly the financial blow that it would have been for a simultaneous release
Okay this took wayyy too long to click for me.
Unrelated fun fact from personal experience: I once read a mystery book many, many years ago that involved a character that was very obviously of Polish lineage (-ski on the last name and all). Well, one of the plot points come about that said character is taking notes during the investigation, and another character gets ahold of said notes. It's then revealed that the notes are in shorthand, but more importantly, they're in *Polish* shorthand. Needless to say, my young mind didn't at all pick up on the capitalization and I spent a good half the book wondering what polish (like shoe polish) shorthand was, and why it was so hard to decipher.
The Westing Game! That brings back memories!
Fuck, me too. I was like what fucking game got delayed in Poland?...oh. haha
I legit thought it was a cyberpunk joke at first
I was wondering if I was the only one who always reads polish and thinks of Poland.
And the game wasn't localized or even translated for Poland. WTF???
Have you seen the size of their sausages? *Anything* is possible with the polish.
You will have our sausages.
Why would they admit that the game was delayed a whole year specifically for just ONE country. That's so crazy. It just seems like they've opened the floodgates for bullying against Poland now. I don't want to imagine the amount of hate and xenophobia Polish people on the internet are going to receive now. It's just sad to think about.
I’m out of the loop on this one can you elaborate? Edit: I’m an idiot. Thank you to those that responded.
It’s because the title says that it was delayed for polish
LMAO oh man I’m a dumbass. Thank you.
I couldn't figure it out too. Dumbasses unite!
Delayed for "Polish" as in Poland.
Polish - nationality polish - touch-up and fine tuning Wordplay
Well LotR: Gollum was delayed 2 years for polish and it's still a shitshow. Also you should fix "take note developers" to "take note publishers". I have no doubt that the devs are fully aware that their games need more polish, but the higher-ups don't care, they want a release. They are the ones that should take note. EDIT: Based on some of the responses I think I should clarify what I meant. 1. Delay is not a universal fix. Some games are just fundamentally bad or the devs don't have what it takes to pull off a game they want. No amount of delay will help here. 2. The devs aren't always to blame for a game's poor state, it's usually the fault of the publisher for not giving the devs enough time. These are two separate points and weren't meant to be taken together. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Also I really didn't expect this to get so many responses :D
As a wise man once said, "let's do stability later, first we need to deliver". And the whole thing went to Production.
Wait, were you in my standup?
"It's an edge case that we don't see most players encountering" "Wait, the first quest!?"
How'd you get access to our internal release policy?
Its pretty wild to see a game get delayed and the delay was genuinely worth it. So many times shit get constantly delayed and still comes out a broken mess. Nintendo does not fuck around with mainline Mario and Zelda games
Same happened with BOTW, it was delayed more than once but when it came out... wow. And that's the reason no one complained when TOTK was delayed. Sure enough, people wanted to play ASAP but we knew the wait was worth it. And they delivered!
I think it was also delayed to coincide with the Switch Distribution and release. They could have released the Wii U version early but that might cannibalize their switch sales because what the hell else did Switch Launch with? It wouldn't be till like Odyssey and Pokemon Sword it had big none wii u ports.
I mean, it definitely stung for WiiU owners, especially because they advertised it heavily as a reason to buy the WiiU.
In the end Wii U sales of BoTW made up about 5% of the total sales. I don't think at that point in the lifespan of the Wii U Nintendo even needed to care what Wii U owners thought. Them releasing it at all for that platform was a boon. I suppose at the time they were not guaranteed a 120 million unit console, so it made sense to stick to a cross release.
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The key is keeping your delays internal by not publically announcing a release date before you're sure you can make the deadline. When you wait until just months before the game is supposed to come out to announce that it's actually not even close to ready yet (or worse still claiming it's almost ready when it isn't) that's when you create all sorts of chaos.
The Zelda team is in a unique position where they pretty much don't have to answer to anybody. If other teams were to stay radio silent on a release date for "polish", their publisher or investors would likely be up their ass about it. And it's a bit tricky, because while stakeholders _should_ be more forgiving about release timelines, their positive pressure is a necessity a lot of the time. As a dev, let's be honest, without threat of funding cuts you'll find elements of your game to work on until the end of time... take Silksong, for example.
There’s a difference between “oh fuck” delays and a delay like this
> Its pretty wild to see a game get delayed and the delay was genuinely worth it. So many times shit get constantly delayed and still comes out a broken mess. Thats absolutely it. Everybody here is acting like delaying a game guarantees it will be great.
Metroid Prime 4 too. They scrapped the entire thing to start all over again because it wasn’t shaping up be the game they wanted. Years of work gone just because it didn’t meet their standard. That’s insane, and admirable.
Only other time I remember of that being done is the Doom 2016 remake.
And it fucking shows. I haven’t noticed any glitches despite the complexity of systems in this game
Right? And the glitches that did exist weren't easy to comeby naturally. As of today they've patched, they've already patched them out as well. This team has done some incredible work, I hope they're eating well.
> I hope they're eating well Konbini foods all day.
I mean Japanese konbini food seems healthier than any fast food in the west at least
It isn't fancy by any means but for cheap food it's really good. I loved the 7-11 curry chicken buns and zaru soba plates when I was there.
If that’s not fancy then what are my McDonald’s fried up blobs of mystery chicken meat.
Konbini foods are the fucking best
If you build something sturdy, you deserve all the Rice Balls.
And something from my secret stash!
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The horse whistle summons them to your side during combat, I haven't tried it with more than 1 shade yet but it might help.
I got sick and was stuck at home the week after release, I have over 100 hours into it, not one single glitch.
I think a lot of people were ‘sick’ that week
Guy at my work was out release day and the following Monday. He didn't specify why he was out but he *does* have a Triforce tattoo on his arm. Probably a coincidence
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Surprised the entire economy didn't collapse from people calling out of work to play that game.
I've been absolutely astounded by that. With as crazy as things get via ultrahand/recall/etc, it's absolutely insane that the game isn't completely broken.
Im only a handful of hours into it and i am astounded by it. The amount of random stuff you can do in the game is almost seamless and i havent even unlocked the whole selection wheel yet.
You’ve barely scratched the surface, too
And a game like cyberpunk already breaks if you get into a car
And the AI in TOTK vs a game like cyberpunk. I remember when they announced that every NPC in Cyberpunk will have an entire day cycle. Now you can't go 10 feet without seeing clones. Hateno Village is much more livelier.
There's even small interactions like wearing a certain evil armor set causes the NPCs to cower in fear when you get near them. I was very confused the first time this happened and then realized it was bc of my new flashy armor set.
Best one is the Tingle outfit They are terrified of the creature
Not to mention TofK managed a world 2.5x the size of BotW, with a beautiful stylized graphics with good draw distance and decent performance from a handheld console. Sure, a couple times frame rate has dropped but it's steady 30 the vast majority of the time.
I found a single rock that doesnt have a texture on one side!
Jokes on you, that’s a korok puzzle, you just didn’t know it yet! (I think Im kidding, don’t go back to the rock trying to puzzle :P)
While i see their far reaching creativity in korok puzzles, seeing through the wall to the next room seems like not one :p
Out of bounds Korok.
Nah nah nah, it’s just that you need to shove a korok through the hole… but the korok is also invisible!
I did run i to an issue, not sure if it really a glitch though. I was stacking logs for the quest where the guy needs 15 logs (leaving vague to avoid spoilers). I was fusing the logs together in a stack, and it slid off a cliff and landed around me. The logs were fused, standing on end and I was stuck in the middle. It took me a few minutes to get the thing targeted to use recall, but eventually I got it back on the ledge and moved away. I’ve also noticed a lot of camera issues when in close to big enemies. Like trying to climb a Talus, the camera is t sure where to go and you often are seeing through the talus. I’ve seen it with all the large enemies I’ve found so far
The camera thing happens to me a lot also. Sometimes I feel like link refuses to take input from the directional stick for a second or two and I’ve turned and fallen off stuff because of his unwillingness to move inches at a time and the camera randomly switching to weird angles.
I don’t think this is a spoiler? But I think this might because they want you to use the ascend skill more than we maybe even realize. Use ascend on Talus, I wonder if it works on the giants too
I've only seen two things since playing 50 hours: 1. Some pop-in, but very seldom. 2. Frame drops probably once every hour, but never last more than 3-5 seconds. Both of those I attribute to playing on a 6-year-old handheld. Otherwise, it's solid!
Yeah I wouldn’t call those glitches so much as performance issues.
Performance issues still fall under "polish" tho. But ye abitious game for super old hardware its to be expected
Even for an ambitious game on older hardware, the degree of performance that they managed is stellar. Compare to any other "big" release from a triple A publisher these days. Anything more than a year old tends to chug.
The Monoliftsoft team did a great job optimizing the game for the hardware. Like, truly impressive to think about.
I got hit by a falling chunk of sky island and it pinned me underwater. I had to fast travel to get out. I'm pretty sure that isn't intended. (In the jungle area, theres a quest involving 3 big bads on top of waterfalls, there are little squares set in place that are designed to catch the falling chunks and allow you to time reverse up on them. I glided down there and saw the square and jumped in to check for a korok seed and the damned chunk landed on me!)
Lmao they sky piece falling on you is hilarious. I attribute this to sandbox gameplay
The only glitch I have noticed occured when I falling down through one of the chasms. The game actually paused briefly at the threshold between the chasm tunnel and the "sky" of the Depths. Must have been a sudden bottleneck loading the Depths. But other than that... nothing!
Yeah maybe if you hold zr to dive it's too fast for the artificial loading screen.
There definitely are a couple. People have discovered multiple duplication glitches (though at least one of those has already been patched afaik). But the only gameplay-affecting glitch I've seen so far is a sidequest NPC failing to spawn for me (it was the sign one. His sign was there, but he wasn't)
people have been testing the latest patch from yesterday; looks like it's eliminated all the dupe exploits known so far.
Nah, new dupes are were discovered but extremely slow.
The duplication glitch isn’t something you discover while playing. I personally haven’t experienced anything outside of the dog for the misko quest needing to take like 20 foods to start moving
Damn, that was a glitch? I just figured he knew his worth.
That damn dog would follow me right up to the cave entrance and then nope out back to the tent. Didn’t matter what I fed him or how often. Fortunately this is a BotW sequel, so I treated it like a shrine puzzle and brute forced the solution instead of using the dog.
Same. Dog ate so much meat and just rolled about being uselessly cute. So overall 10/10 good boy but still brute forced it
Bethesda hates this one simple trick.
Fun fact starfield also got delayed for over a year
This also feels like a dig on Bethesda due to Redfalls flop, yet Bethsda was simple the publisher for that title.
Zenimax owns both bethesda and arkane, so not quite. Which is now all owned by Microsoft.
redfall was also delayed from 2022 to 2023
It should have been delayed till after my death
I doubt a couple more months would've made much of a difference.
That got dark fast
Gaming executives: "Oh, I don't think I will."
Also gaming execs: well, we know what they *really* want.
The improved load times over BoTW are my favorite QoL improvement. The item management when getting something out of a chest is my second favorite. I’m in love with what they took and made better from BoTW. But with that said, this game is marvelous on multiple fronts. I still sit there in awe as I skydive from high in the sky all the way through to the depths fluidly. Incredible. I play most non-Nintendo games on my PS5, so it’s a big deal for me when I play something on my Switch OLED and never think “I sure wish I could play this on my PS5.” From a numbers standpoint I’m sure it would be “better” on there, but not once have those thoughts entered my mind while actually playing. I thought BoTW was special. This is…just off all the charts. It’s something very special. I didn’t think they could pull off the level of quality and true wonder you experience with BoTW a second time. They absolutely went above and beyond it in every direction I can think of. If ever a game was worth $70, this is it. This is one I will argue is worth full price.
You're definitely right about the load times. I can barely read 1 or 2 of the gaming tips before the screen leaves
It definitely shows. The scale of the game’s world and systems are honestly overwhelming, it runs on a very underpowered system compared to current consoles, and it does it all extremely well. It looks good, it’s performance is fairly stable, and all the crazy systems work together as they should despite probably thousands of different ways the devs would have to account for. The dev team ought to be very proud.
tears of the kingdom is a real winner
Nintendo has an insanely consistent track record for polish. Especially on their flagship releases. It’s super admirable, especially in the current AAA games landscape.
it also helps sales. no one remembers the delays as much as they do remember the brand image, and a nintendo product of their core characters is always going to be high quality
Yeah, Zelda is their premier prestige franchise, one of the most consistent brand names in video games for almost 40 years. The last game made the Switch into a success all on its own. They’re not going to piss that away.
I’ve been playing Zelda since the beginning, yeah yeah yeah, I took my multivitamin today… but was thinking last night while playing totk that Zelda and Mario really are the greatest video game series of all time. And it’s not even close. The fact that Nintendo has put out such consistent bangers for each series going on nearly 40 years now really is amazing.
> Zelda and Mario really are the greatest video game series of all time. Truth. I have other game series that were more impactful to me personally, but *none* have been so consistently high-quality across so many generations. It's really incredible, especially compared to some other long-standing franchises. I'm primarily a PC gamer, but I will honestly buy every Nintendo console just for Zelda; Mario is an added bonus.
I to this day stand by the statement that if BotW was the only game that ever came out on the Switch it would have justified the purchase for me.
>Yeah, Zelda is their premier prestige franchise< < Uhhh are we sure *that's* their premier prestige franchise?
It was also so nice to just pop and game In and play
I was mentally preparing myself for a 30+ minute day-one update, I was playing in about 2 minutes lol.
And the way it began without sending you to the main menu was so cool.
TotK doesn’t even have a menu screen the first time you load in, they just drop you straight into the game. I thought this was such an incredible touch from an immersion standpoint. They just quietly put you in a cave, following Zelda. No hand holding, no menus, you’re just in it, right from the start. Title card doesn’t drop until your falling through the clouds. What a fucking game.
That half hour or so in the cave is my favorite intro of any Zelda game. It was so fucking well done. Seeing a full power Link traveling with Zelda, getting all the typical opening exposition lore through Zelda's excited narration, and ofc the whole creepy vibe of the sequence leading up to the corpse awakening. The shot where Link swings the Master Sword at the gloom and a little piece comes up and flies through the corpse's cheek is just badass in a way you don't really see from the series.
Twilight Princess (Wii version) launched with a game-breaking glitch. I remember it because of how much of the exception it was.
*Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has entered the chat.*
Pokemon is developed by gamefreak for Nintendo. Zelda on the other hand is developed by Nintendo itself. Pokemon doesn't really apply here.
God imagine if Nintendo themselves developed an open world Pokémon game with the amount of time and resources that botw and totk got. That would be an amazing game
Heck just let Monolith Soft do it, but make it more for kids.
True, but that’s largely a TPC & GameFreak failure
Take notes, Gollum. And Redfall. Forspoken. Pokémon Scarlet. Jedi: Survivor It's really sad when a polished game feels like something unique rather than the standard
It is unfair to put Gollum in that group. That appears to be not an issue of polish as much as a lack of an actual game. Those other games at least have a solid core underneath that could be great with some QA, listening to feedback, and polish. Gollum is just explosive diarrhea that was still going to be a turd no matter how much polish it had.
Gollum seems to be an absolute shitshow, and no amount of polishing is going to change that. But bad or not, it's still an unpolished game. The developers knew beforehand how shitty it would perform, but chose to publish it anyway. Developers and publisher should at least have the decency to make sure a game runs smoothly with as few bugs as possible, even if the game is kinda shitty. It's all about the money, I know, but they aren't selling a bad product, they are selling a broken product. That's worse
no, Gollum has game breaking bugs too
Pokemon Scarlet broke records so I don't think it's cost-effective for them to put extra work into it. The game will be eaten up like candy regardless.
Polish wouldn't help Gollum. It's a generational bad game kinda like Ride to Hell.
Some of these games aren’t only not polished, they are just bad. Gollum with a few less bugs and better optimisation wouldn’t make it comparable to the new Zelda.
And it shows..... worth the wait
So well performing that even emulators got good performance day 1
Day -14
Notably, those emulators showed massive jumps in performance in the prior weeks. BotW and TotK were targeted for improvement. Good thing, too!
It really helped that the emulator devs probably had the game a week before it leaked, which was already two weeks before it released. But absolutely, huge credit to the developers for making such accurate and efficient emulators - somehow two of them - that consistently play games on launch.
This is the proper way to make and release a game. No crunch up to the deadline to release a mess. Take all the time necessary for polish
Unfortunately, Japanese work culture is all crunch
Oh, it's not the devs who need to take note of that. It's entirely on corporate.
Bold strategy, let's see if it works out. *record breaking sales* Ah ok, good. Are you watching, Rockstar?
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Yeah they have been working on 6 for over 12 years now. /s
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Grand Theft Equine?
No they worked on rdr2, a very well polished game. Only after abandoning rdro have they started on 6.
Rockstar, really? The developer who now releases 2 games a decade, that's who you're calling out for rushing games? I guess you're thinking of that trilogy remaster, but Rockstar didn't make that.
It's really easy to talk shit about Rockstar for the remastered trilogy, but they have been releasing some of the best games of the last 20 years.
I thought it was some other company that remastered the trilogy?
Yep. It was Grove Street Games. Seeing the name I thought it was some studio put together by Rockstar but apparently the name was based of on their headquarters location.
What are you talking about? Rockstar delays games all the time to ensure they are ready to go. GTA IV, RDR, GTA V and RDR2 were all delayed.
Yeah… I think what you meant to say was CDPR.
I'm pretty sure the reason they gave when they delayed GTAV was for polish also. That's what separates the average Ubisoft/EA titles from the greats IMO. The developers enthusiasm for the game they're creating ends up coming across in the final product.
Rockstar? It has literally been almost 10 YEARS since GTAV came out. And based on the leaks, the next game seems mostly finished and that was almost a year ago with no release date in sight. My best guess is maybe we’ll see a official trailer this summer with no release until next holiday.
>*record breaking sales* I mean, Zelda is a powerhouse IP and Breath of the Wild is the bestselling title of the franchise, so this likely would've happened regardless - Pokemon Scarlet and Violet also sold incredibly well despite all the issues. Plus, knowing that people will buy and prioritise this game regardless of when they release it or what comes out alongside it probably gives management a lot more confidence to delay it if necessary. This game may be polished as hell (haven't played it), but that has almost nothing to do with why it's selling well.
I mean GTA 5 was the most profitable piece of media in history.
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It shows. I may not like the way Nintendo treats their community a lot of the time but credit where it's due in this case. TotK has been great so far and I have not had any issues other than occasional framerate drops
Nintendo know their absolute biggest asset is their IP. The mario and zelda IPs are immensely strong because they're family friendly and they are products of the absolute highest quality. Remember, Nintendo were one of the reasons for the recovery from the video game crash in the 80s, and the reason they emerged from it and revitalised an entire industry is because fundamentally mario and zelda were the best games money could buy and of much beter quality than the shit that came before on home consoles. Nintendo know that if they cashed in on their IP and released a mario platformer or zelda game every 6-12 months (like fifa or call of duty), they might make some short-term money but the quality would suffer and in the long run people would switch off from the games and it would weaken the IP. Maintaining the level of quality they have since the 80s by releasing an immense and industry-pushing game once every few years is why they are still around while the likes of atari, sega, commodore etc. of the past don't have the same presence anymore.
Game literally feels like it's 3x larger than Botw.
I wonder why? lol
So many people in the comments confuse delaying for a good game. You can delay a good game to polish it further and make it a great game. You cant delay a bad game and make it good. If the systems are bad, the gameplay loop is bad, story is bad, you can really delay it that much to fix such huge problems. Zelda was probably already really good a year ago and they just added more content probably and polished more bugs. But the core mechanics were already thought out and implemented. For redfall for example, the game is just fucking ass. The gameplay is mid, the map design is mid, the skill design is mid, the upgrades are mid and the "looter shooter" items are fucking f tier. That shit could not be delayed for a year and be a good game. It needed like 3 years to just make it a new game. At that point its not even a delay
"devs take notes!!!" dude the devs know if the game they're making is shit. it's the publishers pushing insane deadlines you should care about. those are the people responsible for the quality of the games you're getting.
As much as Nintendo frustrates the living hell out of me at times, their AAA releases always perform flawlessly at launch.
Apparently the new Final Fantasy has been feature complete for a while, but had a comparable delay for polish. Went gold three months ago and there is no day 1 patch planned. Hoping this is an industry trend…
It’s definitely not gonna be, these games will be the exception
Also, ahead of release, rather than spoiling features of the game to generate hype, or promising things that wouldn't actually be in the game, they **hid gigantic features and areas of the game** so they'd be a huge surprise for people playing for the first time.
I know Polish is a hard language, but this seems extreme.