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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 มิ.ย. 2023
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Thank you to @TylerTownsend for recording some of the footage for me! Check his channel out here / @tylertownsend
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Video Credits: docs.google.com/document/d/12...
Tears of the Kingdom is finally out and we've had a full month to play it. I've enjoyed quite a lot about TotK, including the new powers like using Ultrahand to craft new vehicles, and using Fuse to craft new weapons. But if Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom does have one major weakness, it is the Sky Islands. Unfortunately, the sky is just not very good, especially compared to the Depths. There just isn't much to find other than Shrines and Koroks. It feel similar to the islands in Skyward Sword. Tears of the Kingdom is still a way better game than Breath of the Wild, but the sense of exploration in the sky could have learned from BotW.
#Zelda #tearsofthekingdom #totk #legendofzelda #nintendo #nintendodirect - เกม
The sky islands have been built with the same design philosophy as the shrines. Mostly one and done.
Yeah, at least the shrines have more diversity!
Honestly most of the game is like that
@@naughtyNuGetzz23facts lmao
You mean son and done!
“Mostly” is a stretch. They’re COMPLETELY one and done.
You're spot on, I completely agree. I think it would've been better to focus more on either the Depths or the Sky Islands instead of both, because I feel like they are both repetitive and underdeveloped in similar ways. I feel like the depths are unnecessarily massive compared to how much they have to offer and how useful they are, so I honestly wish they cut back on the depths to focus more on the sky islands. Most of the depths are empty and repetitive so I would GLADLY trade better sky islands in exchange for less of the depths.
I really enjoy the depths so I'd be sad to see them go, but it would have been a worthy sacrifice for actually decent sky islands
The wildest part is that in a recent interview, they talked about how there were even more islands that they cut out of the game to reduce clutter. Just imagine how barren they would be!
Thank you for the comment Grazzy!
me like depths 😢
Really good take, i kind of like how large the depths are, they feel dangerous and out of scale which makes sense for a place that’s basically the upside down
But i would not mind having less depths and more sky at all, i think that’s a good idea, maybe if the depths had a mix of claustrophobic confusion caves and large expensive caverns, and maybe get rid of the whole mirrored overworld thing, i just dont get it, maybe theres a lore reason but it made it feel like i knew what would be there already and took away from the unknown
One last thing, I REALLY wish there was at least one more sky island around the size of the great sky island, maybe above the gerudo region? Oh! What if it was a rainforest island! That would be awesome, like avatar or something… ok this comments to long ill stop
lets be real, the depths are only there for the amiibo stuff
6 years of development is enough to make BOTH a great underworld and sky world. they've got millions of dollars and the best designers in the world. If From Soft can do it, so can Nintendo.
I… agree. It was pretty disappointing. I ended up enjoying the game anyway, but the actual experience was completely different from the one I had imagined based on the marketing
Yeah the game is great despite the sky sucking so bad
"I had imagined"
Lol
Lmao
My biggest _"L"_ for the game is the absence of Shieka tech. Something which pretty much defined this Hyrule's timeline.
The Kingdom of Hyrule fell overly easily to just a mere "giant shade" of the true calimity, only because it could override the guardians, which then dominated big parts of Hyrule's openworld for a 100 long years due to how dangerous they were. 💀
And when Link reawakens after his grievous injury finally healed, he soon activated a mechanism that spawned monumental Shiekatower landmarks.
Yet when we visit certain locations in the game, they are all just... *GONE* !?!?! Something like that is impossible! Where are they?
It doesn't look like much time has passed since the first game, maybe a year or so, which totally would not be enough to just make all of these towers disappear like that.
Wether the Hylians would have dismantled them for ressources, or even if they had retracted back in the ground. But even there visible influence is missing. 🤨
Like *_" NO. "_* Noooooooooooooooo! 😨
My IMMERSION, 😫 this utter sense of disbelief!
This ugly reminder that we are just in a videogame!
And not in a real world with realistic consequences to it's timeline.
Even if they would not serve much of a function anymore except for the immersive aspect and a cosmetic one!
I wanted to see a few more ruined Guardians, maybe a few Shiekatowers getting slowly overgrown by nature!
Or even destroyed by a falling sky-structure! Nintendo what the hell! Give me something damn it!
But no... nothing.
°sigh°
What for a disappointment.
I had the same thoughts. The amount of marketing showing the sky does not equal the amount of content that we got. Similarly, the underground was basically not marketed and yet it's insanely huge.
Yeah a bit of a letdown for sure!
And insanely empty
its huge size wise but its super empty and only really have amibo stuff
It was so sad to jump off the great sky island when you finished it, just to rarely go back to it. Then there was basically no other sky islands…
Repetition is by far the biggest flaw of the open air games so far. I don't think it is an inherent issue that will forever plague the format, but it's fairly obvious Nintendo was a bit inexperienced, and also seemingly over encumbered by the load of developing these gigantic worlds and regions for BotW and TotK. It is very obvious where the games struggle and why, and it always seems like the issues can be sourced back to the fact they made the world too large and spent too much time emphasizing that fact.
It is kinda wild they've miffed islands in four games in a row!
@@NayruYT For real, I cannot fathom what the issue is sometimes lol. Especially with this game in particular having basically an entire year of play testing and bug fixing. Stuff like this has happened too many times for it to be only a coincidence, I feel like it's a symptom of their broader dev philosophy and what the supervisors and higher ups on the Zelda team tell them to focus on.
Repetition is a problem with open world games in general, but the Wild Saga handles it better than most other games despite the Zelda team's "inexperience" IMO. There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with repetition, there just needs to be ways to handle it well.
If you think these are repetitive/boring open-world games... can I introduce you to Ubisoft?
I think I mostly agree. Wind Waker's islands were each more interesting. But of course, the ones in TOTK aren't meant to be inhabited, and once you don't have NPCs, it gets a little harder to design increasingly interesting, always new concepts around the islands.
That is true, though I think they could have at the very least had some visual variation.
@@NayruYT yeah, there's def more they could have done. Instead now we gotta put in extra work for koroks missing their friends
Good point, maybe if there were more friendly constructs that gave you stuff to do, like the diving mini game and the paraglider mini game
They really should have added more construct variety, or had ruins of old Zonai settlements to explore. Imagine you find a Zonai village with unique loot and lore. But for some bizarre reason the devs decided to handicap the whole Zonai race by making Rauru and Mineru the last two... so that severely limits the environmental storytelling potential.
TotK is truly a game made of really baffling decisions.
While on the Topic of NPC's... Why are the NPC's there? We have massive flux Constructs defending Islands with no military importance other than a treasure chest, and Gleoks as literally the only monsters on ANY Sky island... Except for I think 1 or 2 Like-Likes and Chu-Chu that are somehow on the GSI... And then we have the quest temples with Aerokuda and 3 boss's...
Why are no other Islands being invaded or like a "demon prison" with hidden bosses inside a labyrinth we have to fight our way inside as it is being raided by monsters and defended by constructs? Say a temple with Ganondorf's sealed weapons they removed after he himself was sealed?
The Sky Islands boasted a lot during the marketing campaign and definitely left a lot to be desired after playing them. I only pursued them at the end of the game to get all of the shrines. So yeah, apt video!
Much appreciated!
@@NayruYT yessir 😎
I was hoping they would've given more Zonai based lore or something, also adding more islands cause it just doesn't feel like there's enough.
It would've been cool to either find well preserved journals from zonai or ancient hylians.
Yeah it was a bit of a letdown how story and lore-sparse the sky was
@@NayruYT Considering how much they advertised the darn things
That would be cool, i think it would’ve been cool to have more buildings like different houses and temples, i love ruins
@@nerdwisdomyo9563 Also make more islands since the middle part of hyrule and the northeastern part feels a bit too barren. (Though maybe the middle is barren due to the final finale boss fight)
@@rockowlgamer631 the gerudo region REALLY needs more islands, the desert literally has like one island and the desert was like the perfect spot for another giant island
I agree, the problem is also they all use the same asssets, there is no frozen skyisland or a hot one, they all are the same tiny rocks with golden grass and trees on them... it feels like the sky in skyward sword, and also after the intro the story never goes realy back into the sky, yeah the wind and watertemple are there but there is no real point for them to be in the sky, so the sky only exist to exist...
But the underground isnt much better, since its just the overworld inverted (everything that goes up in the overworld goes down in the underground), even the shrines are nearly identical with the roots... its just not interesting to explore, when i have explored the overworld i know nearly exactly what is in the underground, so what is the point, it doesnt even have some storypoint...
I definitely disagree about the Depths, but I totally agree with the Skyward Sword comparison
I loved my experience with the depths, but what really sucks is that there are no OG labyrinths down there. It's all the same old mine. The central mine is pretty big, but there's not much there still. It's a lot of interesting looking ruins, but not much in the way of actual gameplay or lore. There's the observation deck and the factory, but the main factory building is mostly empty, and the parts you visit are tiny and mostly disconnected. I still enjoyed doing it, but this game always left me wanting more lore, more "here's what happened" environmental story telling, if not a few surviving zonai to actually talk to or something.
Totally agree about the sky’s missed potential. If they were only going to design a few types of islands, at the very least I wish they’d have peppered in some interesting lore content, having more constructs bopping around with some Zonai fun facts would have helped as a reward. The depths definitely made up for it to me though, so I’m not too mad about it. 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah I should have touched on this in the video, but it was utterly bizarre how divorced from the narrative the sky islands were
Yeah but then the depths were repetitive too with not much to actually find.
@@TheRealNintendoKidthey literally reversed the topography of the surface for the depths and made everything monotone 😂
There were actually Hylien tablets up there you had to take pictures of that gave some lore. There's one of those that was so high up that I struggled with.
I wish it would have worked like game levels. Each region would have a Great Sky Island except for Hebra and Zora's Domain I don't know what rehion that's in. But imagine, The Great Gerudo Sky Island, full of puzzles to drain sand or a bunch of tricky traps! The Great Eldin Sky Island, an action-packed minecart extravaganza! There was so much they could do.
My big issue with the sky islands is that it feels like the "intended" methods of getting up to them (balloons and the falling rocks) don't really work. Like, balloons run out of time before making it up most of the time, and the falling rocks don't stop far enough in the air to make it to the islands, or are so far away that it's not possible to glide to the island, which means alternatives, and the only real option there is fanbike.
I always thought that was really weird, yea😂
@@ameliastar_7267 Just wish the fallen rocks were a bit bigger/more even so like springs could be used to gain that bit of extra height. That, or balloons needed to last longer so they can actually reach the islands.
Spoiler warning: mention of one of the sages typically found later game.
Dragonhead island had to be my favourite island to stumble upon *pre-removing the thunder storms*. I got up to there when I had 4 hearts aka no heart upgrades and getting to the shrine inside (Joku-u Shrine) felt truly unique while navigating the almost no visibility I had. Combined with the music being great, while I did do energy upgrades elsewhere (Lookout Landing) I only ever did every upgrade for energy and health on that island next to the giant door requiring a certain amount of heart containers to get through.
The feeling once I finished the energy wheels and went on to heart containers, checking every time to get through the door.. only to not have enough hearts until finally I did. It was great. I then got that door opened and interacted, leading to what I didn’t realize was anything Sage/Mineru related.
A part of the magic to finding and starting Mineru’s quest was getting to that island early, not knowing that I was doing a Sage quest. I had only done Tulin sometime shortly before Mineru was actually my second Sage I found. Yet now being late game just hunting Koroks and so on.. I eventually did the quests leading up to removing the storms on the islands and.. the magic just wasn’t there. What made the island special isn’t there anymore. I know not everyone else used rockets and fans to fly up to those islands and get there/Mineru early but it was what made it more special. I am just glad I only ever cleared the storm there after retrieving the final Main Quest/the one for Final Boss.
Also: getting to Dragonhead island before even doing a single Regional Phenomenon goal truly made me think that there would be more Strength-Heart Container test doors to make progress in areas of the game… which was disappointing.
I went there early too... and it's still my favourite part of the whole game ♥
The sky islands had so much potential. I wish there were more of them, and they were all basically the same thing, and if they were bigger.
My experience with Sky Islands essentially boiled down to this:
- ooooh, Great Sky Island is cool, can't wait to explore more!
- wait, these are tiny and barren. Are we doing a Skyward Sword again? We're doing a Skyward Sword again, okay
and from that point I proceeded to barely interact with them at all for majority of my playthrough. After finishing the story, I've made a lap, stopping at each I haven't visited yet, purely to pick up Shrines and armour. Felt more like a checklist than proper exploration. You've pointed out that the Sky is more of the same style of exploring as BotW offered but I disagree - much like I've stated in that one discussion we've had before, it is actively worse than what we had in BotW. Sky offers less visual variety, less terrain variety, less rewards variety, less enemy variety, just... less.
As a bit of a sidenote, I think one aspect of BotW that went largely undiscussed throughout its lifespan is just how much traversal options bring to the table when exploring. BotW would scatter points of interest around the map and whenever you saw something you liked it would ask "how do you get there?". Addition of climbing, Cryonis and rafts for crossing bodies of water, gliding and shield surfing to usual running, horse riding and swimming movement options expanded your toolbar, resulting in gameplay decisions centered around traversal. Do you climb this mountain to get to the other side or do you look for a way around? Do you want to find a route you can bring your horse through? It doesn't feel like much but when the only movement option is flying, I do feel the lack of these moment to moment routing decisions. Maybe it could be more interesting if there were more large islands you want to get to but with limited battery you need to plan accordingly and stop at smaller ones along the way but there weren't enough sky islands even for that. There are clusters separated by long stretches of nothing. I suppose you are meant to only come up briefly when you get a tower and then come back down soon after? Idk.
All in all, the sky was very disappointing to me. Like, even the Crystal Shrine Quests - you've said they've been all unique but that's honestly being too generous. I'd need to check to know for sure but I remember one and a half crystal delivery quests with a unique setup. The rest were one of two options: either the crystal was attached to a Flux Construct on an arena conveniently located below the destination island (once the arena was almost level with the destination island though, as a plot twist!) or the crystal was hidden behind some vines, on an island floating slightly higher than destination island, with a large hollow tree stump at the top. Inside the island, besides the Crystal, there'd usually be a wing with some fans and a steering stick.
When I was doing my Shrine lap it got so bad that sometimes I'd cut out the middle man and go straight for the crystal, without triggering the quest first - why would I need to do that if I knew exactly where the Crystal was anyway?
All in all, I agree with you on your criticisms. The sky is a missed opportunity and its such a shame.
I appreciate your comment, and yeah you are totally correct in saying that island exploration is worse than in BotW. Because at least experiencing a new environment for the first time in BotW is enjoyable, whereas the sky islands are all the same. And yeah, the joy of traversal is markedly less exciting when it is all done via the same method of locomotion.
@@NayruYT Yup, exactly. Would be nice to at least have some different shapes and biomes around the sky but alas :C Btw, do you also find it odd that upper layers of sky are only cold above cold areas? It makes sense for it to not be freezing in the middle of the day above the desert but there are plenty of climates that should be fairly cold at those altitudes. Makes snow area on the Great Sky Island even weirder, since there are lots of islands both higher than it and floating above cold zones which don't get any snow even though they should. It's a bit of a disconnect.
@@DrakenwildToo high for snow, perhaps?
No cause honestly it’s the same yellow terrain and it’s so taxing to get all the way up there to find basically nothing
@@babyturtleshoe8451 I really liked the yellow terrain up until I realized there is nothing but yellow terrain :/
One I wished they kept was the high amount of cloud barrier!!! It feels very empty without it. Once the cloud disappears it's gone permanently. They also should of kept more islands. 1st trailer had so much but "Aoyuma" (dont know his name) said it looked like a mess littered everywhere. I rather have so many islands with construct enemies too. :(
I love being up in the heavens and calling it Aether tho sky island needs more floating islands
Agreed!
The sky islands feel like an extension of Hyrule rather than its own world, which disappointed me. I was also disappointed with the depths after realizing most of it is empty and the mines are boring. The sky and depths have a few interesting locations, but I just wish that we would discover awesome things all the time in both worlds.
I have enjoyed exploring the sky but I do agree that there should've been a lot more too it considering how much it was advertised, like there's whole chunks of sky that ust have nothing in it, I wouldn't want it to be too crowded or anything but more varied/bigger islands would've been great
Yeah I'm fine with the island count, I just wish what is there was more interesting!
I like Oasis Islands for restocking Fairies, something quite useful having lost both Mipha's grace and most easy land locations with Fairies(Fairy fountains don't have them often anymore) and with so many 1-shot monsters before you upgrade armor.
The repetitive issue is not jsut with sky islands but also with the depths too
At least the islands are pretty lol
Yeah they nailed the one and only terrain type haha
For me it kinda feels like they put so much attention on the sky islands in the trailers just to show off something new without spoiling the reveal of the depths.
As you said, the sky islands feel kinda tacked on and lazy and are in fact not at all that important to the gameplay and I feel like the devs didn't really prioritize them during development. It's a shame, because they could have been extremely fun to explore.
Yeah you are likely correct
@@NayruYTI Hope they improve them for dlc. Maybe they could make like 4 more huge islands similar to the great sky islands and have them story related, or something like that
I do agree that sky islands needed some more variations. It would have been cool to see islands off much more different color instead of yellow. They shoulc have easily made a Lake Hylia Sky Island and have multiple islands connect to each other and have a Gleeok guard the sky to stay grounded.
I am glad that we don't have that many sky islands. The underground and surface are already overwhelming if taken together (by sheer size).
I would have rather the underground been made smaller for better sky islands!
@@NayruYT Or that way around, sure.
Either way, I think there can be too much in general.
Whilst I've been playing this game I've had this exact thought at the back of my head, but haven't thought about it much until recently. This was a very good analysis. I almost feel bad because this game is so brilliant, it just falls short a bit here. (still tons of fun though.) In an official Nintendo interview they gave one reason for the sky islands not being too big? "one day, the designers scolded us. They said we'd made the skies messy by adding too many islands. (Laughs)"
And honestly I thought the skies could've looked messy after the February 2023 trailer, but yeah if they added some really high-up ones behind another cloud barrier that you can barely see (like GSI) I would've loved that. Because GSI or great sky island is one of my most treasured memories of playing this game. It was truly magical on release day. The cloud barrier looked beautiful. You also have a point with the islands in older games, as much as I hate to say it. The only islands that I think hit almost the same "magical" level of GSI for me was the thunderhead and dragonhead isles for the first time a few days ago. The music, atmosphere and limited exploration made it feel bigger than it was, and the aesthetic in the room where you get the Mineru mask is just breath-taking.
But finally, what I agree with by FAR the most is biomes. GSI following the great plateau formula with a snowy region was on obvious choice from a design point of view, but it's just such of a let down to see this brilliant zonai sky aesthetic be so overused. They fixed this a little more in the depths with mines, groves, lava areas and other things, but I can't help but think about this game potentially having a sky village, or a depths village with inhabitants. Surely they'll fix this in DLC, right? xD
Yeah it really just feels like they wasted a lot of potential. Like we get these fleeting moments of brilliance with the sky islands, but they are gone as quick as they come and then we're back to monotony.
Man i wish they kept the cloud layer, I think the idea of having a cloud layer above all the sky Islands with bigger islands up there would be absolutely awesome… but that might be a little to much to ask for… but then again thats kinda want happened with the depths
I personally wish that there was a giant island absurdly high in the sky the same size as the map, that just would’ve been sick
It seems there WAS going to be “more” of the sky islands.
I noticed in past trailers they showed Link near some big masses of sky islands that are above Hyrule. The thing is, some islands they showed are not even in the game anymore.
It seemed they shrunk the sky islands. I felt like lots of the sky was just optional. I didn’t NEED to go to the shrines, I didn’t NEED to go to labyrinths, and so much more optional places. The only places you need to go is Dragon Head Island and the Dungeons.
I enjoyed the sky but wished it was bigger and I wish there was more to do other than shines. I was hoping for tons of large masses of sky, they really sponsored the sky in all their teasers but it was just….eh.
I loved the great sky island. I had high hopes for the rest of the sky. The diving games were fun, the furnace was cool, but ultimately pretty inconsequential. The labyrinths were fun in their own way, but pretty easy also (a lot of the games “puzzles” were pretty easy and/or self-explanatory), but I definitely was hoping for more especially from the marketing. I found the sky to be like a giant puzzle of how to get around with only zonai devices and however much battery/charges you currently have. I liked getting the old maps, but as I realized that the chests would be there anyway in the depths even without getting the map, it just meant I needed to explore the depths thoroughly. A legitimate critique.
Don’t get me wrong, I put more than 220 hours into the game and still play it periodically to get more of those ding dang koroks (as far as I know my only obstacle to 100% completion), but retrospect definitely highlights some of the failings, and the sky was mostly empty. When the patents came out I was hoping sky combat would be a little more nuanced than the haphazard aerocuda that can be easily taken out or just ignored if you’re on a device (the ones I’d run into would just bounce off the device itself).
My only regretful exploration before the quest was when I flew into the eye of the storm above Faron only to pretty much land directly in front of the spirit temple quest room and little did I know ruin my experience of one of the last quests in the game 😔
Great video! Thanks for sharing your thoughts
Thank you for the comment! I relate to a lot of what you've written here 😅
Same for me! They should’ve made it so you couldn’t go near the cloud because of the lightning. Huge mistake on their part because it ruined the narrative for me
I loved exploring the sky islands and how you had to figure out how to get to some of the higher islands. There was one of the tablets you had to take a picture of and it was the highest island. And getting to the labrinths in the sky was also super cool. The exploration was the best part about it even though the reward wasnt always up to the same caliber.
I definitely agree with this, I feel like the heavy advertisement of the sky was to throw us off from the depths, but then it definitely left something to be desired in the sky, that it didn't quite meet for me... still a great game tho, great video man!
Which is funny because the Depths arent that impressive either when you really spend time down there:
The *concept* of the Depths is interesting, and things were initially interesting when you first saw how dark it was down there & it made you wonder what horrors could be there--but after awhile, you realize that its mostly just the same copy-and-pasted enemies from the surface down there (except for the Frox), and there's no interesting civilization down there either.
(Now fans of the game would say "the Yiga are down there", but...the Yiga have already been harassing me on the surface-world since BOTW. i dont need them being annoying down here too. Thats nothing new).
The game-executives spent way too much time making the game "wide & spacious", but they didnt bother to make it "dense & rich." its like a mansion that looks big on the outside---but on the inside, its nothing but all-white with barely any furniture, pictures, or decorations; there's just two plants...and maybe some abstract marbles on the coffee-table.
@@natesamadhi33dang that is a perfect way to describe it
I do hope they add more islands for DLC. Big chunk at least. I can say I taken too many screenshots up in the sky because it's just that beautiful 💀
They could of taken Minecraft Aether sky islands approach with different biome
Yeah the Minecraft reference is a good example!
Not counting plot related areas, once you complete the zonai suit, glide suit and labyrinths, what's left? I'm assuming dlc will be a thing. Hopefully the sky can be improved.
Not much at all unfortunately!
I feel like this was specifically targeted at me and the conversation we had. 😂 14:57
But this was a really well explained video! I didn't realize how much I missed the Great Sky Island until you brought up the repetition of the other islands.
Your criticism definitely helped inform that section!
Agreed. I was imagining a boundless sky that reaches further and further into the sky where the clouds and weather may slightly obscure something interesting that you see. I was expecting air combat of some sort but the sky Islands are incredibley bland besides the great sky island.
From the footage and screenshots we saw before the game came out what we now know is the temple of time in the great sky island which most people thought as a dungeon. I was expecting more unique areas in the sky 😢
Yeah I really do feel like it was a bit of a bait and switch
@@NayruYT I was really fortunate with that stormy islands in faron ( the story related one ) I explored through the storm and couldn't see anything it was challenging but ultimately i fell off and landed in faron only to stumble across floating debris leading up to the main part of the island I built a balloon up there and landed in the dragon shaped head I was awe struck that I stumbled upon it and suddenly activated the story related thing without knowing that there was an entire quest that leads you there. It was one of the best moments in the game for me, the music too I was blown away 😂 but I wasn't happy that was the only interesting sky island..
@@repingers9777 Haha well at least you got a pretty cool moment out of it!
Exploring the islands covered in thunder clouds, relying only on lightning to see the way ahead, basically walking in the dark was the *absolute* highlight of TOTK gameplay for me and most fun I had in a while, finding a mysterious mask in the end, having no idea what this is, following that thread, again, blind - still can't forget how exhilarating that all was!! So for me sky islands delivered, just from this experience.
Thunderhead was really excellent and I wish there were a lot more islands like them. (Also thank you for subscribing!)
After the tutorial, the sky looses all interests. They're jusy more puzzles, every single time, and the same could be said of the regular world: every secret, every question, every puzzle... can be answered with either a shrine or a Korok seed. It doesn't help that the main story is also bad.
Yeah the sky goes entirely downhill after the excellent Great Sky Island
The biggest failure was fucking up the Gibdo/ReDead debate lmao
They just specifically knew it would make my life miserable and put it in to spite me 😓
They're pretty much the same thing
The Great Plateau was the start of something big, whereas the Great Sky Island was the end of something big. Sure, there's more to discover when you go down to the surface and below, but as far as the sky is concerned it peaks with the Great Sky Island in my eyes. I get that it's called the "Great Sky Island" and that implies it's going to be the biggest, but given the marketing of the game and the general expectation that this tutorial gives you, it gets you excited to continue exploring the other sky areas, to diminishing returns...
A million times YES
SAY IT AGAIN FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK
I have Burger support
Yeah, the sky lands were probably the worst part. The tutorial zone was fine. But it was pretty much the only sky island that they did anything with. So much of it was just...nothing. Minimal reason to check out anything in the sky. Which surprised me. They hyped up the aerial element of this sequel so hard. But outside of that first jump off the tutorial island...you could just ignore the sky almost entirely. It's like they got part way through developing them and just said "nah, just ship it." Despite it taking so many years to make the game.
I agree completely. I think this, and a few other gripes I have with the game, all boils down to the source of most of my problems with BotW: overcommitment to the open design philosophy. I don't mean to imply that open world is bad or, for that matter, a bad fit for a Zelda game (I'm actually loving the openness in TotK, aside from the overly uniform experience in the sky and depths). It's just that it seems very hard to make big, epic, and unique gameplay experiences outside of the main quest when you've imposed the constraint that everything else needs to be essentially freely accessible at any time.
I absolutely agree! And I hope the next "open-air" world in a new setting doesn't feel the need to adhere to BotW's design philosophy so strictly, and perhaps will be willing to take on more traits from the previous games. My dream Zelda game is a halfway point between Twilight Princess/Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild.
Nah, the open design isn't the problem at all, they just need to fill it with more things. They did a much better job with the overworld this time, but then the new stuff suffered from the problems the last game's overworld had.
@@NayruYTsame, I like it being open world but the story line got ruined for me BECAUSE I could go anywhere and do anything. I hope it has the same modern style but I wouldn’t mind if they sort of copied god of war with cutscenes and a story. The world building for TOTK and botw is lacking for me and story in general
The depths was never marketted because... IT HAS NOTHING TO SHOW.
I was just talking about this yesterday! Cut and paste islands everywhere. I'd say there is only one time to go to the sky from each tower. Get your Sage's Will, Shrine and Maps then go back to the ground. The only other thing I could see useful in the sky is the hearty radishes and the fairies at the "oasis".
I feel everything you say bro. Felt the same way
I agree with you by so much. I was very angry to finish most of my sky island shrine hunting just to realize that Nintendo overhyped it. It almost makes me feel like they were just trying to hide the depths if you ignore previous islands within the franchise. I was so excited to explore the skies sweating that'll I'll fall off a lot due to the amount of enemies that could've been up here but in the end it's just the same old robots, one shot baby dragons, and random middle to late game bosses that is too easy to get used to. I hope the future dlc gives much more diversity up there compared to the depths and te surface combined.
But in the end, this game is still amazing and winning a game of the year
Not just the skye islands was repetitive and boring , the whole game was , so much so that for the first time of all the zelda games I have played , this is the first one that I never bother finishing
They totally missed a trick with the Sky Islands - they could have done loads more with variation with the islands.
Maybe the switch just couldn’t handle more assets
I wish they would have doubled down on the sky islands and scrapped the depths. We didn’t need all that. Twice as many sky islands alongside the caves would have given us plenty to explore.
I 1000% agree with you about the aky Islands. They over commercialized but ultimately under delivered on them.
the saddest thing is that they cut down on them from what they originally had and i don't find their reasoning convincing at all (in the sense that i don't think it was a good reason 😭)
(6:05) the practical use of "Oasis Islands" is they are fairy fountains. As far as I can tell, fairies don't loiter around Great Fairies anymore, they're up here on the pool islands in the sky!
Yeah, I completely agree. I explored the Gerudo the highlands/tabantha sky last, and I remember getting SO excited when I discovered Starview island and Lightcast island because they actually had more than usual to do. At the same time though, it made me so frustrated that more of the islands weren't like that. As you said, there are def some memorable and interesting sky islands, but they are so few and far between compared to the ones that all feel samey that it makes the sky portion of the game feel like a bit of a let down when all is said and done.
The problem with the sky islands is that in this type of game you only have enough memory to have a certain amount of assets loaded at a time, and in the sky you can see the entire ground world which is already pretty big. A lot of those things get culled off or replaced by simpler LOD assets, there is still a lot so the amount of memory left for the sky islands is pretty small. This could have been solved with better hardware or by making the overworld simpler.
Now we can see how important adequate hardware is.
I was a little upset when I got to the absolute highest island, found nothing and couldn't even lay down a Travel Medallion
They had different plants in the sky but didn't even have cool and great ones to motivate me to keep gathering up there. Sky mushrooms suck. A dlc could simply add those missing islands back, as a start
I Agree with everything you've said. The sky islands were a lot of rinse and repeat. Now what I LOVED and still love are the caves. It seems like no one talks about the caves.
$70? Now i understanding the anger
Dude. Forget about the sky fit a while and then go back. Once you get your batteries full and learn to make some drones it's much amazing going back up there. The way the sky has a troposphere and you can literally chase dragons around their paths and meet them off at their pre scheduled time.
I go back to the sky after a week of not playing, and am met with the same barren and copy-paste islands as before. Riding dragons is pretty cool for sure and the islands are visually pleasing, but that only gets you so far
Literally one of the very best content creators ever ! Also it's about Zelda?! You my guy are a true hylian*
It's only the second thing for me, the biggest miss is the reused music
Eh that doesn't bother me much, Majora's Mask had tons of reused music too so I didn't think TotK would be different. I thought the new music was really great too.
I liked totk. I understand that feeling you get once you've explored everything it feels there wasn't enough diversity in the sky or depths but that's still after dropping 60+ hours enjoying everything which is more than most games.
The sky will be a nice place to plop down new DLC lore candy bites.
Ngl I went into the game thinking there'd be lots of places like the great sky islands scattered across the sky, I was so disappointed as I uncovered the sky map and had to realise that most sky islands are just sky pebbles. They really gave you the best first and I routinely forget to explore the sky islands bc of it
Exactly how I've felt. I go to the depths and the surface every time I pick up the game but I don't think I've been to the sky for about 30 hours since I've more or less done everything.
Something that i really missed are caves on sky Islands. I loves the caves on the great sky islnd and also love them on the ground so for me its very weird why they didnt put a single other cave on the sky islands.
Felt too similar to the skyward sword islands. Everything in the first place you go and then nothing. Saved the labyrinths for the end and the forge construct island was the only thing I was exited for and it was nothing
This is an interesting take. I actual feel this more applies to the depths than the sky islands. The first few hours in the depths felt amazing. I thought there would be a lot of story elements that took place there. But once you start exploring, you find that most of the depths just reuses the same ideas constantly.
And tbh, this may just be a problem with the whole game. I loved it and felt the high moments of the game were far better than in Botw, but I admit that once I discovered most of the main story contents and beat the game, I grew bored and stopped playing. The rest of game just reuses a few ideas with disappointing rewards. Those ideas are fun but I lost interest after a few hours of them.
I find them interesting enough, if not, like you said, a bit repetative. Though the gameplay loop that i found myself in was aided by them being one and done. I would have plans for what to explore next, head there, find a tower and shoot up into the sky with it, then land on nearby islands and complete them first. Being able to "complete" a single island fairly quickly meant it didn't hugely interrupt my attention for too long, so i didn't feel like my progress was being halted. Plus, i got every shrine, and doing the sky islands slowly during the course of the entire playthrough was much more fun than it would've been had I waited and done them all in a row, because then it would've felt REALLY repetative
I don't have a source, but I have heard that they originally had designed many sky islands that explored several game play concepts. But they thought it made the sky too crowded, so they removed many of them.
Maybe Nintendo Forecaset?
The next game, maybe:
Purah: "Robbie, is that floatation device ready?"
Robbie: "It sure is! Just gotta do a few tweaks and....it's done!"
Josha: "I wanna push the button!"
A massive earthquake happens, and all of Lookout Landing, Kakariko Village, and Hateno Village launch into the air as sky islands.
Purah: "Robbie! Did you activate the devices while they were still underground?"
Robbie: "Maybe.....It was her idea!"
Josha: "Hee hee, floaty villages!"
Rumors say that there WERE more sky islands previously, but that Nintendo thought it looked too cluttered and convoluted, and scaled them back in number.
13:30 on top of what you mentioned regarding the depths, the game actually encourages you to visit the depths relatively often in order to stock up on zonaite so it feels like they worked the depths into the gameplay loop better than the sky islands.
There’s one sky island in particular, very unique, I think somewhat to the east of the tutorial. I love arriving there and it looked like something out of a Studio Ghibli film. I thought I was going to find more special ones like that but didn’t…
Posted this in your community post instead of this video cuz I’m a big dumb, sorry for making it so long, but here are my thoughts if you're interested:
Perhaps the scarcity is due to technical and time limitations. A lot of people feel like they could’ve done more for the game as a whole (not just the sky islands) and I agree, but considering this already took 6 years to make, any more and they might as well have waited for the next gen Nintendo console to come out (if it ever does).
Not to mention the Depths which spans the entirety of Hyrule, though just like the sky islands (but not to the same degree of course) I personally feel like they didn’t utilize it well enough. I honestly feel like they could’ve upped the scare factor down there, but over abundance of brightbloom seeds just made it a walk in the park with more or less the same scenery. I feel like more subquests or side adventures involving the Depths could’ve done it more justice, but that’s just me.
On the other hand, it already boggles me how they were able to fit so many mechanics along with the physics and size of the world itself with so many interactable objects into a 16gb package without the game caving into itself, so asking for more in this case makes me feel like an entitled douche.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with asking for more in a game we love, but I feel that as a fan we also need to understand the limitations involved going into developing these games. It’s easy to say to just think outside of the box but almost no one ever thinks how someone is supposed to think outside when they’re always in the box. Or like, one may think it’s weird that they (Nintendo) always have the same problem with what you mentioned about their obsession with islands, but considering how the majority of the fanbase doesn’t complain or just blindly worships the game, how could they ever think that a problem is a problem?
I understand that to a hardcore fan, people whose livelihood involves judging the capacity of games or franchises as whole, or even simply those who are sensitive to details, these problems may appear glaring, but to casual fans or just people who enjoy games simply these problems are just things that can be wholly ignored or not even given a thought. Considering the reaction and thoughts of the vast majority who played the game, then sadly Nintendo may never really acknowledge the things you cited as "problems" or "failures", thus giving them the impression of "since this works why change it? It saves time and the people are satisfied."
Heck, there are even some who feel like they put too much that it keeps them from enjoying the game or doing anything meaningful! Like, just play it how you like and don't let other people tell you how to play it, geez.
Again, I also feel like they could’ve put in more, but either that’s asking too much from the Switch hardware or that’s asking for more delays (with a chance to attain vaporware status), and knowing how toxic a fanbase can be, there’s really no good option. I’ve already put over a 100+ hrs in and had an incredibly satisfying conclusion (and that’s not factoring in the replay value of the mechanics alone) so personally I feel satisfied with my “$70 glorified expansion”
Thank you for the comment!
The idea that it is a technical limitation would be a compelling explanation, but Aonuma recently gave an interview where he revealed that they initially had way more islands, they removed a lot of them for aesthetic reasons. They felt like the sky was too cluttered. So it doesn't seem like island count had much of a burden, which makes sense since I'm sure they are loaded out when they're not visible
Truthfully I would be totally fine with the island count we currently have, I'd even be happy with less of them, if each island was more unique and we saw less blatant repeats.
@@NayruYT oh that’s interesting. In this case, the issue becomes either time or aesthetics as Aonuma mentioned. It’s strange that they decided on uniformity as an aesthetic choice for the islands instead of the diverse biomes they could’ve had considering that’s already accomplished through the mainland.
Though i do I feel like it’s an excuse for other limitations. Time is questionable since Nintendo is also the publisher along with being the developer, so they shouldn’t have the same level of pressure as some developers do for having their games published by other larger companies.
As an interesting note, one of my friends who got the game as soon as it was released tried fusing and combining as many objects as possible. This was the earliest version of the game which didn’t even include the small hotfix patch they did, so somehow he was able to combine more than 20 overworld items to an object he dubbed “the Mass”.
Suffice to say, his game’s framerate took a dive and eventually crashed because he just kept adding more stuff to it 😅. He actually needed to create a new game in order to play since loading the save somehow didn’t fix it even though the items despawned. After the first small patch, he could no longer make “the Mass” and his game’s framerate wouldn’t dive anymore. Well, these are our technical experiences at least, so the issue with aesthetics probably lay with the game’s designer. Whether it’s time or not, we’ll know eventually know from successive interviews or media. Hopefully a new design works book or encyclopedia. Or better yet, expound on them through a DLC
Id argue the reason why the sky feels so disappointing is because it took up a lot of the marketing.
The depths which are far more intricate took up basically zero marketing.
I honestly think that was the best move they could make because it made the depths even existing a much bigger surprise.
I honestly am more disappointed by the Depths. There was so much potential for cool secrets that were kept from us before release but in the end it was just a whole lot of boring nothingness.
The great sky island is the most linear thing in totk and definitely not even close as good as the the great plateau was o.O
The flaws are infinite Materials and being able too cheese a lot of the content. My most hated part is buffs are locked into Gear. At least let us be able too choose the buff we want in gear OR stop putting buffs in gear and add new attachments likes “Rings and Earrings” seperate from your main gear like in Oot. It sucks that their was nothing cool too find in chest when Dupeing was a thing, Infinite M.Sword, and once you have a favorite gear all the gear you find is just clogging your inventory. The korok gps being locked behind the mask really sucks cause it ruins the look of link when i basically needed too wear it to make korok seeds easier to find. I just said f it because i had the infinite M. sword so inventory was pointless.
A valid point!
Looking back on it they probably were marketing the sky islands like that because they wanted to make the depths more surprising
As an extension of the land, rather than a sprawling chain of independent ecosystems. I do rather enjoy what the islands accomplished despite very clearly being capable of more. Finding a way to each island in the indended way to do so was always fun to me. Since you can go anywhere to start, I assume they littered each Island with Zonai parts so that regardless of what part of the islands you start out in, there is always an opportunity to explore nearby islands at the beginning of your adventure. This is also helpful later on in the game, since not everyone is Zonai device farming, and travel independent of your inventory was a very big relief more than I could realize.
The main enemy in the way being Zonai Soldier constructs was a smart decision. Them being every where just makes sense in regards to the lore. But it is the main way to farm Zonai charges. Charges always being near a device dispeanser means that devices are never to far away from the player. Which speeds up the rate of exploration a considerable amount even with just a few battery upgrades.
Incentivicing exploration of the depths with treasure maps was a smart choice for early game progression. Being curious to go down there eventually forces even the most timid of players to discover Zonite is everywhere down there. Since it is the best place to increase not only your battery, but your armor options it inevitably creates a progression loop that would probably make even the most casual of players confident in taking on some of the more challenging areas of the game.
The larger Quests and challenges that were up there all were fairly entertaining. Making the Mazes a triple decker journey was rather shocking the first time going about it, and was fun even on the second and third time around. Since all of the sky mazes are extremely isolated, and finding a way there with the limited battery I was working with was a bit of a puzzle in itself. The mystery of the thunder head islands still aludes me, and I'm sure finding the riddle to clearing up that mess will be satisfying, considering what I have already discovered lays within them. Lastly, the skydiving challenges were solid. Since the reward achieved for completing them is worth it imo. The outfit has helped me conserve stamina and be more comfortable in my ability to reach further distances while gliding from place to place.
With that being said. The sky islands really do feel copy and paste once you really take a moment to analyze them for a while. Theres too many that have that rotatable launcher, a Zonai device dispenser, a shrine and either a boss fight island or an island with a "hidden" cave that houses the green rock inside it. If I had to guess what percent this particular sky island structure is of the total islands. It has to be near 40% man, stg.
Bruh the truth hurts , but you’re totally right.
The depths have like 3 quests and the rest feels like copy and paste and randomly generated.
I was baffled with the riot quest, the whole climb was a magic moment for me, but the rest feels bland
the art directors actually told the game designers to cut down on sky islands btw so i wish we coulve seen that version
I wished that they would have less but bigger sky islands, like 7 or so across the map but not being on top of the biggest landmarks so every part of the map has an impactful area. Either on the sky or on the ground. It would also make more sense because why would the sages have raised unimportant sky islands instead of the most important ones? That would also explain the emptiness of some areas on the ground because the important things that have been there before would have been lifted into the sky.
Well this is a very neat video. I will agree that I wish the sky islands had a bit more to them either numbers wise or scale wise, but my thoughts are that it's very likely the sky is where new dlc is planned to go. I could totally see a thing where link gets to learn more about the zonai history and causes more sky islands to be accessible or something. While there wasn't as much as there could've been up there though, I did appreciate them as little breaks from exploring the ground. see for me, whenever I found a tower, it felt like I was unlocking a new little section of the sky and you'd never know what you'd find. You'd usually from each sky tower be able to reach some cool island or another eventually and the other islands were more... part of the path to them. Sorta like how there's landmarks and there's just plains since obviously not every inch of hyrule's gonna be a land mark. Same w/ the sky but it was done on a smaller scale.
While one can just make an airbike and fly wherever, I found it more fun to see what devices were made available to me to try to come up w/ a new flying machine that was there. It both helped keep the puzzle aspect of given crystals alive but also served as a means for me to learn new ideas and mechanics of flight that ultimately helped me come up with better flying machines. Like yeah the air bikes great if you just wanna fly but once you try to weaponize it for example it's not near as good unless you put like just 1 laser but then you're pathetically weak. But based on various models of different flying machines and parts I eventually made a flying machine that is decently fast (maybe mid speed level) has pretty decent control and is heavily weaponized while being capable of perpetual flight w/ the right techniques even but I only could do that after experimenting w/ many different flying vehicles which by trying out the different parts those various crystal shrines offered let me try a variety of flying machines out vs just sticking to one. My final design was inspired by but not a copy of one of the vehicles used on one of those crystal shrines actually so I gotta say... it really helped me become a better hyrule engineer so to speak!
In essence the fun WAS in trying to use whatever parts were around to make something new but it also was the game organically training me to be a better engineer and be able to better get used to mechanics of vehicle flight. As for the oasis islands I know some of them had sky diving challenges attached which were fun though yeah, I suppose some were just little loot boxes so to speak though they tended to have a shrine that actually had a puzzle too so they weren't so bad. But I saw the sky islands more as sections I can explore as a bonus when I found a tower and have some fun seeing more of what's up there which helped me tackle it in sections and thus since I wasn't going for the sky the whole time all at once it always felt fresh to me though I guess not everyone did it that way. And yeah, I would've liked more but I genuinely believe that the dlc will involve more stuff in the sky most likely and given there was so much to do in the base hyrule and how interesting the exploration of the depths ITSELF got as I slowly figured out all the little things how I could use base hyrule to infer certain things about the depths... I had no lack of things to do and even the sky islands themselves were consistently fun for me because of how I explored them, as little sections to look at over time as breaks from after exploring the base hyrule a while and finding a tower and it worked great for me.
I really feel like the air bike ruins the fun for a lot of people if used TOO often too early in the game. The game feels a lot more fun when explored organically with as little outside advice as possible I felt. Instead of looking at a vid that tells you the best flying vehicles to make, coming up w/ vehicles over time and evolving your engineering builds over time. It's probably why I don't hate koroks like a lot of people. I didn't sit there rushing to get every stupid korok all at once they were just... part of the world I'd find as an occasional minigame of sorts as I explored and over time I found enough to max my inventory. But I still do them after not because I care about the great golden turd but because well... I find the koroks fun! Sure you can just stick a korok to an air bike but most of the time they're next to parts and well... once again I get to explore different ground based designs to get a korok which just like in the sky helped me become a better engineer and introduce me to concepts that might not immediately be apparent until I tried out this different build. I really feel like I enjoyed the game a lot because of how I ended up approaching it, not trying to get everything in existence but just... finding things as i went and letting it mostly be surprises and something new in every place I visit! And don't get me wrong. air bike is great eventually. I just don't think it's as fun to just play the game using it all the time. You could call it handicapping yourself but to me it's more exploring different options and improving your engineering skills. I feel certain if I just relied on the air bike all the time I'd never have made some of my other fun creations that ultimately have uses beyond transportation like my big airship of doom, my minion bot, heck even my tank that can traverse both land AND water at once and that ITSELF was the fun as I came up with all those cool designs. Yeah the air bike's cool and orbital cannon is fun but there's other really useful vehicles you can make. My airship can literally go from the depths of hyrule all the way into the sky islands without any battery boosters or landing even once during the whole trip with the right techs. it can blow up many bosses if piloted well even silver lynels, and nuke camps without using weapons and can travel at solid but not mach speed. It even can land on water and then continue flying if I so desire to! But well... I wouldn't have come up with it without making use of all the things I learned throughout the game from those many different chances to try vehicles out. But at least for me I feel like the sky islands and the backpack koroks are really good as means to organically teach players about the engineering aspects of the game if you try to use what tools are given vs just using the same answer for everything and they're a lot more fun that way!
I agree that this is a problem with the game, but personally it's not as big of an issue for me. I've been exploring the land and depths far more. I haven't been exploring the sky as much because a lot of it does seem bare bones. I guess I'm just not that explorative of a player. When I see sky islands off in the distance, I'm not as prone to run off towards them. Many just look a like floating rocks to me. It's shame they didn't do more with the concept though.
I think if they were more interesting-looking, you might be more curious to fly up to them!
@@NayruYT Absolutely. The land and depths as is just have more interesting structures. Shrines are also so much better this time around. So, whenever I see a new shrine off in the distance, I want to to go there.
I really hope if there is dlc, atleast 2 sky islands that are like the great sky island are added, maybe this will be possible with a switch 2
I understand what you're saying and I mostly agree that the sky islands were not as prevalent or as diverse as I had hoped, but within the context of the game's gameplay loop and flow, I find the sky islands to be a pleasant quick detour from the rest of the map. Everything connects together in Tears of the Kingdom. You can be running around on the overworld and see a shrine, you complete it and then notice a falling rune. you recall up to a sky island and complete a shrine and a boss fight and then sky dive back down to Hyrule, only to now notice a spot to enter the depths. You dive down and spend some time in the depths. You find a new armor piece and collect some zonaite. It all flows very nicely together. So, my point is that, on their own, sky islands don't seem like much, but when you consider how they eb and flow with the rest of the game I think you can start to appreciate them more as fun distractions and little mini adventures that add to the overall experience and gameplay loop.
Definitely agree. The game loses a lot of its magic once you realize how many islands are copy/paste boss arenas and stone fetch quests.
I hope whatever dlc they have planned is more of an expansion than a one time quest like in botw. Like maybe have skybirds and new islands inhabit the sky, and twili down in the depths
Where did this footage come from? Did you record it yourself? (I’d like to make a Totk video in a few months, so I need to be prepared 😊)
Yeah! I recorded it with a capture card, I use an Elgato HD60
@@NayruYT Thank you.☺️
Is the video copyright claimed?
Is the video copyright claimed?
Just finished BOTW loved it so much I bought the DLC which was immediately so tedious and unforgiving I put the game down and started TOTK. Great Sky Island is absolutely terrible, I completely disagree with your opinion on it. If they wanted you to progress in a specific path they needed to make the path more clear, and making it so terrible to navigate is probably the worst part about it. Forgot a shrine? It’s only a 45 minute climb to the opposite side of the island! What an awful opener/tutorial. The game seems fine, but that level was a terrible introduction to the game. Stupid stupid stupid.
It would have helped if they condensed all the sky content into one "city" or equivalent per region with maybe 3-4 minor areas.
The ground world has Hylia Castle, Gerudo, Zora, Goron, Rito, Hateno, Kakariko, Lumeria(the sea town), and if you want to include Kara Bazaar and the Yiga Clan Hideout as towns, as well as the Deku Tree. That's.... 11 areas with stuff in it (oh wait there is Tarrey town so it's 12). How many regions are there again? I mean I wasn't expecting too much with the depths but they had different areas (most of it felt copy/paste, but it wasn't too bad). There was no excuse not to put a city or two up there, probably and optional dungeon, maybe a flying boss robot you had to climb on top of and stuggle to stay on, or Air to Air combat. The depths when you found something, it was usually meaningful, not just another shield or weapon I don't really need. And you know what? I can fly in there. I can fly in there and zap enemys with my and gets my loots. And fight Yiga clan member and their boss. The sky is cool but it's not content.
It's interesting for me. I actually felt the same way you did in the beginning, but slowly i stopped caring and had so much fun with everything the game offered including the things that supposedly bothered me before. Other aspects of the game are so incredibly strong for me that it became merely an after thought. Thank you for sharing your opinion!
Totally i spent half the game thinking the forge island in particular would have some significance due to its size and height over the other islands, but i was disappointed when there was LITERALLY JUST A SHRINE. Absolutely nothing else there, just a little challenge to get to a shrine
Yes the Sky Islands are too few in number of variations, if you saw some of them you saw them all in a way but my main Problem with them is more of how empty the sky feels. You have some cluster of Islands and the rest is a barren wasteland with nothing in it and i hope we will get more with a DLC or two and that this Islands will be much wider in variation.
They focused on making the game big, not on handcrafting it. I'd rather the game was a quarter the size, but all handcrafted, rather than the size we got but with copy pasta
the labyrinths by the way can all be cheesed easily. All you need is 1 warp medal and a flying vehicle. Get ontop of the maze and put a warp point. Now the rest is a cake walk
When I found the charged clothes and went through the thunderhead isles, I was so excited to find sky islands like that for Naydra and Dinreal, but I was disappointed when I saw a tutorial video that showed the Naydra clothes being in random places on the surface
At least the bright side to it’s current emptiness is that there’s so much room for DLC to add on to it, I would be surprised if the DLC didn’t expand on the sky islands in any way
I feel like the 2021 trailer had more sky islands
It's interesting how in your first 20h of the game, you're blown away by just how many kinds of new content they are, and they all feel fresh at first -- sky islands, depths, caves, even wells -- but by the time you finish the game, whether that's at 50h or 150h, all of that content was so repetitive that it actually invalidates the good first impression.
If they had picked just 1-2 of these things to flesh out properly, while it may have made less of a first impression, I think many people would have finished the game more satisfied overall.
The optimist in me thinks they really wanted each of these things to be amazing but ran out of time and what was already done was a sunk cost. The cynic thinks they knew that reviews and a big round of purchases would be based on first impressions so optimizing for that was good business sense. Whatever their intentions, that's what ultimately succeeded and we can't be surprised if they lean in to that idea in future work.
I built a 3 fan hover bike, as I keep seeing people make a 2 fan bike, I don't like the 2 fan one, as I keep drifting left and the bike keeps falling over. I used the 3 fan hover bike, to reach the King Gleeoks, I also use the hover bike to move around the depths.
I kept my version at 1.1.1, I duplicated dragon parts and Star pieces.
Would of been good if there was an island in the sky, a shop where I could just out right buy those amiibo paraglider clothes, I have the champion cloths as they were sold as a pack of 4.
That would be a very cool idea!