@@ArtemisWasHereif I'm Ganondorf and I live in a desert while all the Hylians have an abundant amount of water and grass, but I have none of that... What do I do? I'm thinking a good alternative is to kidnap a 13 year old's sister and destroy a whole kingdom, is that valid?
This started out with "Nintendo wants you to watch the same animations over and over again, and they should stop." It ended with "Nintendo wants you to stop playing so much that you notice the animations repeating so much, and they're right." Interesting twist.
Ohhh okay I was getting intrigued with the video concept since it never was a problem to me, but that’s a pretty interesting take that I appreciate actually I guess it just means I’m sufficiently touching enough grass
@@elio7610 can’t fully argue that These built in gates killed the ACNH experience for me after a while honestly, because of how tedious and boring it can be when trying to get something done Though I think with TotK animations it’s really not that obtrusive
@@elio7610there's a video called "in defence of inefficiency" and if you want your media consumption to be more efficient in this way you should go watch it
There's a whole chapter of game design called "humane design" and it focuses on things like this- providing exit points for your players so they can comfortably put down your product and live their life. Remember, a game designer's job is to save playrs form themselves
Okay yes this is amazing to know. I've been playing a lot of Story of Seasons and, at least for Mineral Town, there really aren't these moments besides having the self control to not start the next day
Isn’t that kinda naive? Like a designer’s job is one thing, but they’re at the mercy of a corporation whose job is to dehumanize consumers and milk them of time and money.
@@nesaaliyah4821 I never said designers always get to do their jobs unencumbered. I'd say the major reason the industry is the way it is, is because marketers have more say than designers
this totally changed my perspective on the cutscenes. tears of the kingdom especially is sooo enabling of my adhd, i frequently lose track of time while i'm hunting down ingredients of searching for caves. i like the idea of the animations being nintendo's way of popping in like "hey, bud? you good?"
@@TheKrimzonGuard exactly lol, lost count of how many times I say 'I'll just play a few more minutes' and then get totally sidetracked in what I was trying to do because I saw something mildly interesting in the other direction... thank god for the map markers cos otherwise I'd never finish anything
Regardless of the reason, I 1000% agree that it's intentional. People act like it's a design oversight, but it's definitely intentional. My hypothesis with Animal Crossing was that it forced you to go through the long animations and talking sequences because it's more akin to how interacting with actual people is in real life. Dealing with people requires patience.
Also how they made you craft everything one at a time. It was so players couldn’t abuse the resale mechanic to mass produce valuable items to generate millions of bells at once. This proved to be the right call bc players were trying to generate millions of bells anyway.
@@mallk238 animal crossing is really only fun for the 1st year, beyond that its just repetative, nothing changes really over the years and theres not really any long term goals that take longer than a year
@@CHLOCHLOLP Yeah, I'm more referring to how there were a ton of people who were new to animal crossing when new horizons came out who were showing off their island and saying that they'd "done everything" and were done with the game after like...a month. Or the people who complained about there being nothing to do bc they time traveled a ton and thus made even that *year* of stuff take maybe a week tops bc they wanted to be able to get things done faster and kept hitting the limits for the day too fast. for some people, games designed to either take a long time or not be done in one sitting is like...a personal attack or something.
I had a horse walk off a cliff in my game. Just took us both right over the edge and then laid there, breathing, not despawning until I looked away. It was horrible!
one of the few times I reloaded a save was cuz I had input to rear my horse back and for them to not fall off a cliff (they had already died once to a frost gleeok which was sad but I was okay with reviving them for) I wasn't going to revive them again for not accepting my input. I love the horses in botw/totk and anyone that doesn't like how they control don't want a horse, they just want a car
I got caught up by an aerial guardian while on horseback, and I couldn't tell whether to laugh in hysterics or sob in agony over how I somehow managed to survive the laser blast when my precious Nightmare laid there motionless before despawning a minute or so later... "You killed my favorite horse! I'll never forgive you!" This is why I'm a spastic saver when given the option. Scum save ftw, mate.
I think that these animations are also a way to encourage the player in two different ways: to tell them they don't have to be a completionist, and the encourage them to "upgrade as you go" rather than grinding out upgrades to do them all at once. And I think both of these are important, and it's a shame that the modern gamer mentality has basically started to indicate that these play styles aren't "right" and that anything in service to those play styles is completely wrong. But that's exactly how I played growing up, and I'm willing to be most other people did too. We did the main story, and a handful of side quests. We didn't do everything, not without a strategy guide next to us. And as we were going, we'd pop in for the incremental upgrades. Excited to increase our power as soon as we got the chance. And we had fun doing it that way
I feel like in a game that feels designed to constantly distract you, punishing people for getting distracted is pretty shitty. Not to mention we'd be excited to increase our power because the games were shorter and as a result the upgrades tended to be bigger more impactful. In A Link to the Past you'd find armor that would double your defense, you found it and you were drastically more durable instantly. The better armor doubled you defenses again. BotW/Tears take that armor, split it into three pieces, then instead of having two tiers you have four, and instead of finding these upgrades you gather several upgrade materials for each one. What used to be two treasure chests is now split over 100+ items to be collected.
@@TSPhoenix2 i think it's less punishing you for being distracted and having you just naturally accumulate things and power up over time, instead of speed-grinding something.
I would upgrade as I went if I didn’t have to teleport to Korok Forest every single time and the difference between 12 and 13 shield slots felt significant
@@Gafafsg You're not really meant to liberate Korok Forest at all. It's totally optional and if you don't then Hestu is at Lookout Landing. Fighting a Gloom Hands in a bathroom closet is meant to be Nintendo's hint that it's end-game content to be done when you don't really need Hestu or heart upgrades anymore.
i was unfathomably relieved the first time i upgraded energy cells and they batch the upgrades for you. i love the little “hey take a break” animations but god, please, just let me batch upgrade SOME things
I think Nintendo figures that you are NOT going to immediate run to the one construct dude outside of baby-town to immediately upgrade your battery given that you're probably a kilometer below Hyrule hunting Lynels or something. Thus, the batch upgrade. The fairy upgrades and the korok upgrades are intended to be "Imma ferry a few koroks and upgrade my shield stash now" so you only see the animation once, not "imma spend 8 hours ferrying koroks and then go to Hestu." Because that second statement is a little unhealthy, tbh.
@@TysonJensen then its poor design, i dont want to interrupt my exploration every few minutes to go to hestu and get a singular upgrade just because i found 4 koroks. Farming koroks may not be intended but interrupting everything to go get a single upgrade seems far more annoying out of the two options
@@Parrotcat Plenty of people agree, just search for korok warcrime of the day for videos of how much people dislike it. But the game isn't intended to be "efficiently farmed" and if that's how you've been playing it let me respectfully suggest that there are games that are better designed and probably more fun for your playstyle. Zelda is really just "Animal Crossing but for adventurers"
Honestly, the animations don't lose whimsicality for me, even after a while. I am excited for every time Hestu dances, because I adore that animation. I like waiting as I receive stamina or heart upgrades, as it just makes it feel a bit more grand and important
SAME. Hestu's dance is JOYFUL to watch for me. In the late game, it's such a rare opportunity to watch it too, I'm always so excited when I notice my seeds at 15+
I honestly only took real issue with botw/totk's long animations when it came to cooking, a thing that I would literally always want to do in large quantities. If these games had a real equivalent to Red Potion or something so cooking was just better healing as opposed to the only real option, I'd maybe be less annoyed about it lol
Yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with the animation if it wasn't such a chore to select all the items again, even with the recipe book I counted early on and it's like 7 clicks for each repetition and that's if you're repeating one food
Huh that's funny, the cooking animation is the one I like the most. I really like the cooking mechanic in BOTW and like listening to my little recipes cook haha
I feel this problem in my soul. The dodo brothers are what made me stop playing Animal crossing, because they made one of the most fun parts of the game to me (visiting the random or friend's islands) so painful. It's one thing to make players stop and smell the roses a bit, it's another to just get in their way. They often straddle the line fairly well, given their stated goals, but the dodo brothers went way past it.
DREAD!? Not ONCE did I skip that beautiful animation and song. I didn't even want inventory space, my only motivation to get koroks was to see the dance again!!
it’s kinda like when you LOVE the theme song for a show and you love hearing it every episode but when you watch with a friend they keep skipping it :(
I love Hestu's new animation and the skyview towers, etc. That said, I also think Nintendo needs to do better about allowing skipping cutscenes after you see them the first time, and also to do better about grouping screens to better facilitate these skips. For example, the end of shrines has a (skippable) floating text bubble, the award screen, then another (skippable) floating text bubble before you're returned to the world. Just make it one bubble, then award, then outside. There's loads of stuff like this, where simply re-ordering things would make a less jarring experience.
when she was talking about animal crossing's tedious interfaces and animations my first thought was the crafting, but the clip of talking to the Dodos at 4:48 triggered a truly visceral reaction from me.
for me i thought of purchasing literally anything from the atm or getting fossils accessed when youve completed the fossil section of the museum i dont rly use dodo airlines much nor have i visited friends in anch b4 so maybe thats why
My partner and I have the same discussion every time one (or both) of us gets really into a nintendo title. Every time. They can't stand the annoying elements. I freaking love them. So this video was incredibly fun. It's very much a preference thing but I think there are lifestyle implications as well. My partner has more than once pointed out that with their limited free time between work, obligations and other hobbies, they don't want to be shackled by elements designed to slow your roll. I have a lot more free time (and a much more casual attitude towards games) so I enjoy the exact same features they hate. It also means I prefer games that are more open ended and take more of a time investment to get pretty ineffectual rewards (like making my farm look juuuust right in stardew) while they will tear through something in 1/3 of the time it'd take me. So I get it... but also... I will watch Hestu dance for me EVERY TIME (and sing and dance along). I-kyakyakyakyakya i-kyakyakyakyakya i-kyakyakyakyakya i-kyaKYA!
After playing Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I have to say efficiency isn't worth ruining the experience. They opted to make most shops just menu screens. It just feels wrong.
For some reason I find armor upgrades more annoying than expansion dance but that probably has to do with having to go out farming specific parts for hours vs just organically coming across seeds
interesting! i've considered how the great faries and hestu kinda encourages you to make smaller and more frequent upgrades, rather than stocking up resources and doing marathon upgrade sessions. what i also find fascinating in totk is how often the screen just fades to blank instead of playing a transitional animation (addison and lightroots being examples on the top of my head).
Never really thought about this. I've been playing Splatoon 3 pretty regularly since launch, and I think this is probably why they have the maps on a two hour rotation - "Hey, this game type is over go have a walk". But then there are a bazillion other things that want your attention that go against that way of thinking. Catalog, badges, level ups, clothes, weapons, profile pictures, name tags, locker junk... a gacha machine, and every single one of the four modes has unlocks exclusive to it. Almost everything in that game makes it feel like you should be devoting every single hour of the day to it in one mode or the other. Some of the requirements for the badges are bonkers, almost completely unattainable for most people... maybe that's the point.
I think there's two parts to that, one is to create downtime so you can manage all the housekeeping you have to do, but the other is to create a clear breaking point so you can easily choose to take a break (though I also like that you get to play the same maps and mode so you can get into a groove)
honestly, from the thumbnail and title, i was fully expecting this to be about the LACK of animated sequences in Tears of the Kingdom at times. so often have i been in the middle or end of a side quest and they cut to black to load in a change in the world, like the position of an NPC. it feels so counterintuitive compared to instances of seeing other NPCs travelling around the world (or simulated instances of it, like beedle ‘arriving’ at the stables). i am surprised, considering how polished totk feels in many other aspects, that they opted for so many five second blackouts, but I guess they have the same function as the repetitive animated sequences too.
i mean that happens all the time in more heavily animated nintendo games (and probably more broadly too). both botw and totk have this happen, as well as the modern pokemon games. i think those are just a result of "not wanting to use limited time and resources on one time low-importance animations"
i do agree tho it jars me out of the game every time it happens. i also thought this was a video about that phenomenon and was excited for some takes on it.
Yes! I've always felt Nintendo's cutscene animations were a nudge of "Hey! Chill out, don't take this too seriously :)". Which isn't to everyone's taste, but suits me. Excellent video 👍
I would prefer they had messages pop up after saving that tell you to take a break like they used to, rather than being annoying with repeated cutscenes. They just don't do it like they used to.
i hadn't thought about this, but it kind of makes sense why i seem to pause every few hours when playing certain games, but if i'm doing something else sedentary that i'm really focusing on - like coding - there aren't those "lulls" that prompt me to take a break, and next thing i know it's six hours later and i can't feel my legs.
I saw it more of keeping a retro vibe into the game, with these quirks making it more special and nostalgic. Another example is the animation when a door opens and everything pauses, or the retro sound effects when you get an orb or upgrade or whatever. Having these quirks means that you create these associations and emotional connections that are unique to Nintendo games even if you’re a young player that doesn’t have the nostalgia aspect. So all these quirks could be about creating a deeper and long-lasting brand connection.
I would love to see an ad where a kid plays a Zelda game, then picks up a toy sword to go play with they’re friends or in the woods. That’s what I did when I got into Zelda as a kid. that would both show how fun the game is and promote activity outside like they want to advertise.
I think you're right about the reason behind Nintendo's designs, but I don't think it's a good design philosophy. Making games annoying or frustrating isn't going to get me to take a break for the day, it's going to get me to never play the game again. BotW was so unbearable I stopped playing after a couple of hours, gave the cartridge away, and haven't even thought about picking up the sequel. Sure, having natural stopping points is nice, but to me that would be similar to animal crossing running out of things to do in a day, not animal crossing long drawn out single action menus that can't be sped up or done in bulk.
This is my biggest problem with Nintendo. I love their games so much, but large amounts of unskippable repetitive animations and dialogue get really fatiguing after a while and weigh down the experience. I do appreciate having in-universe explanations for UI elements and limitations... a little bit of this increases immersion for me, but too much of this circles back round to reducing immersion. Great video!
I died a little inside playing Link Between Worlds recently, when I realised there are 100 collectible snail-things and the same, unskippable dialogue box was going to play for each one
@@waelisc I think if a single dialogue box is a problem for you, you might have issues other than that one, single, box that plays after a small puzzle that you only really do every now and then
As much a Red Dead 2 has this exact same issue, I love the shop UI. It's immersive because you're looking through a real ass catalog, but streamlined and useful.
While it doesn't happen as much as they show in the ads, the switch *is* the only console I've taken with me when I travel, and the only portable video game player I've ever had. Even the gameboy required more than one for multiplayer. I appreciate Nintendo continuing to have its games and consoles interact with the real world.
Okay, at what point are we just rationalizing bad UX and disrespecting the player's time? Do we also give non-Nintendo games the benefit of the doubt and assume annoying elements are deliberate so that you don't play their games too long? Because I've never seen any other developer get this treatment.
Pikmin Bloom (Niantic's pikmin game) is goddamn silly with this. You open the game to try to quickly get on a nearby mushroom before you get too far from it... but the game has to first show an animation of your pikmin breaking another two mushrooms, your score on those mushrooms, your pikmin picking up the rewards from those mushrooms, and then the prize boxes opening, and oh then you also finished two weekly challenges so it has to show your progress, an animation for EVERY PLAYER WHO JOINED YOU, and your rewards, and THEN you are given control. And after watching these for a few minutes, you've now walked too far away from what you wanted to interact with. Great.
a tip i discovered by accident, but for most animations in pikmin(like them running to the mushrooms/etc) you can speed them up by pressing the screen & holding. sort of puts it into fast-forward mode
It may also be a nudge to get you to keep your screen on and app open for longer. I haven’t played that particular Niantic game but part of their business model is getting more accurate data about walking paths for improving maps. They don’t want you putting your phone to sleep because then the gps data is less accurate.
An honorable mention for the repetitive animation thing would be Farcry. Farcry 3, 4, and 5 all added options in the game settings to disable the animation to skin an animal or collect an herb. So after youve already seen them enough times you can tinker with your settings and make your life easier. I think that adding more diverse animations for such mundane things such as resource collection would help, but I understand that making 20 different animations for every different collection type would be nightmarish from a game development standpoint. And even then, repeat animations will be inevitable in any RPG.
Earthbound’s “Two-Hour Dad” caught my attention, especially when you brought it up after Animal Crossing. Though I normally wouldn’t if I still had work outstanding, I actually played ACNH to take a break during the hardest semester I’ve ever had so far… and ACNH was perfect, because it was relaxing, and I could feel satisfied enough to put it down after-you guessed it-two hours. Two hours of talking to my neighbors, watering flowers, catching fish and bugs, checking for Gulliver, landing stars, moving furniture, buying clothes, bugging Blathers, and I was good. And I could get back to work. I don’t have that slow-down with other games.
See, I agree with this in theory, but when it comes to something like Animal Crossing, where all I want to do is customize and decorate my island, I don't think I should be getting annoyed at the game not even five minutes into my play session because of how tedious the building and refurbishing animation is. Anyway, this was a great video! You have such a fun presentation style! Great video!~
I agree with this. Having game mechanics that encourage break-off points like Splatoon’s map rotations or Animal Crossing’s dailies fit perfectly with this philosophy. Making things that users do often annoying just makes me want to play less, especially if it’s necessary for progression. It limits how people can enjoy a game too, which is another major Nintendo issue.
Of all the little skippable animations, I think Hestu's is the one I've skipped the least, aside from the initial version of the blood moons. His little dance is just so fun
I never skip it. That whole song and dance tickles me every time. And the subtle subtitle of Hestu singing along with the music cue that plays after, so good.
Slow moments like animations or riding through big open fields can be nice little breathers to let you reflect on your situation, why you’re playing, what your goals are. It’s when the flow stops that the emotions can sink in and be processed, after which your mind is free and you can choose consciously what to do next or if to stop. That being said, I don’t think upgrading the inventory for the 30th time or beating the 100th shrine are important enough to take a break for. I’d rather cut the repetition, experience more of the actual content and quit when I feel like I got what I wanted from the game.
Okay, so, this video is great, and I particularly applaud the well done about-face turn, because you totally had me ready to grumble at the beginning and then came back 180 and all was well... BUT THAT POOR HORSE! (ToT)
great video!! i really like your take on it. as much as the little annoyances get to me, i appreciate some of them. i like the feel of the shops, their minimal supply is absolutely intentional-- it's telling you to go out and get most of the items yourself. they'll give me the handful of arrows i need to set out on my journey, but won't give me everything. i LOVE the tower cutscene! there aren't very many towers in the game, so it feels like an epic reward for unlocking part of the map. i don't mind the health/stamina upgrades either, they also feel like rewards for my hard work. the armor and korok seeds, though? do noooot like those. i think the difference is the frequency. i'm not sure i like their design philosophy on these, but i understand them better now, thanks!
I think this is correct, but I think I preferred the prompts that the wii had. I think I'd probably be more likely to play a game for a smaller amount of time if I felt more satisfied by the game in that smaller amount of time, rather than feeling like I have to cram super hard because I can only get one korok upgrade every couple minutes. It's sort of counterintuitive, but I feel like I'd be more willing to put down the game if the game made more of an effort to respect my time and give me what I want to get out of it faster. There are also problems with "treadmills" that devs put in their games (not looking at ring fit adventure, only good example of a treadmill in a game), which nintendo also does. nintendo also has plenty of skinner box elements and fomo in games like splatoon. Even progression systems themselves can kind of be seen as a sort of treadmill. So on one hand, I think it's probably true that nintendo wants a game that people put down to do something else because that's healthy. But I also wonder if this is for altruistic reasons, or if this is because a player's more likely to play a game for hundreds and hundreds of hours if they're going at it in small chunks, instead of in long depressing 3am monster energy and vape binge sessions.
Wow, I never thought about it like that. I can very distinctly recall the friction I would feel meeting with those "annoying" moments and how it would make me want to go so something else instead of grinding shrines/etc... Seems to be pretty effective design 😅
I recently started Danganronpa for the first time, and a fairly big part of the game if you're a completionist (it's completely skippable if you like but you'll miss out on quite a bit) is a gacha machine with a hundred or so collectibles. You pick up the odd coin for it here and there, and at a certain point you get ~60 at once. Which you're expected to go and redeem, one by one. You can feed in multiple coins at once, but this doesn't net you extra collectibles, it only reduces your chance of getting a duplicate by a small percentage and is generally not worth it. So as I sat there recently, pouring coin after coin into a literal ingame gacha machine, I really did wonder if the devs wanted to punish me for being a completionist...
For the most part I agree (whatever "agreeing" means in the context of this video). The fairy animations are a slog. But I make an exception for Hestu. I watched every single Hestu dance without skipping, for every single upgrade, in both games, and I liked it.
Very good. People seem to take it as an affront to their freedom if everything isn't as easy and convenient as possible, and I think it is pretty healthy to push back against at at least a little bit. But, the Nook miles conversion in Animal Crossing borders on a war crime. I love that Stoeber hit on the design ethos behind these things people think of as mistakes, like weapon degradation in Neo Zelda. Maybe it's not for you, but oftentimes, when you push past your preconceptions and your own alleged desires, you find out there's more going on than you thought.
ive been playing fire emblem awakening, which, when youre at your little base, has a random one of your characters pop up with a line on the 3ds' bottom screen. its tuned into the device clock, so once it gets past a certain time they say things in character like "aren't you up late, [player avatar]?" and i kid you not those have helped me finally put down the game and go to bed more on time. not developed by nintendo, just published by them, and not quite the same thing, but its what this made me think of!
Really great video, I loved that you delved into the concept of Nintendo wanting to change the way people game by implementing mechanics like the Two-hour Dad. I will say though, a lot of the animations you brought up in TotK can be skipped. You don’t *have* to watch the Great Fairy do her thing every time you upgrade your armor. But you should.
Yeah but her point is that even waiting for the skip button to pop up adds a couple seconds of time where you can’t be playing the game. And when you’re trying to upgrade multiple items at once these couple of seconds can really add up
I hate most of those animation sequences. Except the Hestu dance! Honestly, I would never skip that! Well, I once accidentally skipped it, and I was angry about that lol
the encouragement to go outside can also be seen on some handheld titles! in ultra sun/moon (and prolly normal su/mo) your rotom gadget encourages you to save and take a break occasionally (haven't timed the interval but it feels shorter than an hour).
As someone who can struggle to self-moderate game time, I actually appreciate the subtle assistance Nintendo offers. I think the ideal for me would be a game that's paced with clear stopping points every 1.5 - 2 hours, where the content slows down and it temporarily stops scratching the itch to continue. A natural opportunity to think about things to do besides gaming, or at least to take a break before continuing the session.
I feel like as you progress in Tears of the Kingdom you end up with that kind of situation. There's always a dozen more things on your To Explore list, but they did such a great job with little instanced dungeon elements where once you're done you have to do a little housekeeping like upgrading or repairing or just the act of traveling to the next place creates that downtime, for me at least
in splatoon 3 if you give up or die, the other agents will give you advice, in one of marie's dialogs she reminds you to take a break if you feel upset that things arent going your way basically Nintendo is aware of how frustrating some of their harder stages in splatoon are lmao
Huh. This was extremely insightful and clever. You're right, I have put the game down because I have gotten tired of the animations... and began working on my own creative outlets. So yeah, it works.
You're describing the Exact phenomenon that happens to me every time I have to cook in BOTW - I get so annoyed with the animation, I get a few meals in and then take a break, and only come back later when my desire to play outweighs my frustration with having to hear that music and watch apples bob around in a pot until I can skip
I've been doing my own research on this, & felt like constant mashing of the skip button negatively impacted the entire game, I end up doing automatically even when I didn't want to skip. I can really appreciate Nintendo trying to make there games so you don't lose your life to it, but I think there going in the wrong direction. I still played TotK for a solid 2 months with people worrying about me. How video games make goals seems to be broken, I'm never satisfied with what I accomplished. In TotK especially I found myself frustrated with how hard it was to focus on one goal without getting distracted with a Korok seed or having to resupply my gear.
I didn’t start noticing how long some actions and NPC dialogues were in ACNH until I saw memes wishing the Dodos would go extinct again for eating up players’ time. I’m not super bothered by most of it, but it does stick out to me now.
I'm glad this video talks about the _good_ aspects of TotK, and video games other than TotK, too. This might be the best video criticizing something in a fair, unbiased way I've ever seen. Usually people go out of their way in videos like this to rant about the things a company/person/design philosophy do wrong, but under your approach, you give them constructive criticism. Keep up the good work!
Holy heck, I never thought about it this way. Just a few days ago I thought about how when I turn off my Switch, it's because I feel like I couldn't possibly play anymore Tears of the Kingdom and I'm just absolutely sick of the game mechanics. But then when I turn it on in the morning, none of the stuff annoys me! 😀I think you are RIGHT on the money here with the intentionally annoying aspects placed there to get you to take a break. Great video!
I think "a little bit annoying" is largely a North American response to Japanese humor. And Imma have to hard disagree on Hestu's dance. It cracks me up every time.
Actually just went through the hellspawn activity of clearing the monsters out Lurelin (my methods growing increasingly violent with each attempt) and yeah, the quest after that kind of confirms your point. Collecting 15 logs is just annoying
A common complaint of totk is that upgrading armor requires a TON of items, but those items are more rare than they were in botw. So rare, in fact, that many resort to duping to 100% their armor. Meanwhile, i think the purpose of having armor be so difficult to upgrade is the point. Like…you’re NOT SUPPOSED to be able to upgrade everything at once! You’re supposed to maybe stop by the great fairy every once in a while to upgrade 2-3 things and then go off to run around some more. There’s two benefits to that one. 1) balances armor in a specific way so that all of the armor with the best buffs give less protection. That way it’s a trade off between aafety and power. 2) I believe this is true for EVERY design choice that forces the player to slow down in any nindento game: They want you to take your time because it draws out the whole game. Games when they first became big were super hard, and this was bc gameboys had smaller memory, so they had less content. By making it harder it took longer for kids to beat. By making modern games take longer, they can get away with taking longer to develop games than most other studios. Just look at how much time passed between new leaf and new horizons; or botw and totk Nintendo has a lot of incentive to force the player to slow down.
This is a fantastic analysis and something I hadn't really thought about. That said, I'm going to interpret this in an over-the-top way as "Nintendo is making you take breaks by pissing you off", and to which I say, how dare you.
Good video! It cut off kind of suddenly which left me wanting more. I guess that's a good thing? Like I didn't realize what the hypothesis was until the last minute and then it's kind of just matter-of-factly like "Yep. That's how it is. Bye" I think maybe it would be better to suggest earlier in the video that nintendo knows exactly what they're doing. Then go into their history of time-gating their games. Idk though. I just know this video left me feeling a bit unusual and made me wonder why that was. So I wanted to get these thoughts out. I'm sure you've thought this all over more than I have lol
Great vid as always! I definitely think this is why I largely stick to Nintendo games when it comes to AAA fare; I would rather play a game that is annoying and joyful than one that is "addicting" and hollow. I do feel like New Horizons in particular was partially inconsistent with whether or not it was encouraging you to stop playing. Yeah, there were annoying parts like dialogue boxes or the crafting animations, but there were also things like being able to earn limitless nook-miles in a day or terraforming and outdoor designing creating a new kind of time-sink. Even small things like badges for talking to every single one of your villagers every day slowly burnt me out. Holiday updates highly incentivized you to play too much. True, a lot of the burnout with the game came from the fact that it simply was not meant to be the tentpole of sanity in a monsoon rain of Global Realities, but I also feel like the game's "release now, update later" model also left the game feeling a little exploitative of my time and attention. Anyways. I'm not salty about New Horizons "just" being really good instead of a masterpiece, I promise.
Really interesting to think about the relationship between animation + and level of interactivity and animation especially in terms of mechanics to literally make you want to stop playing. Something that stuck out to me being a monster hunter fan is that it is wild how much sometimes the opposite can be true (very subjective). The clip you showed was from the more recent monster hunter rise which got me into the series enough for me to start playing the older games. Rise is fantastic but they really do shave off a lot of the personality of the mechanical pacing when in the actual hunt by speeding up all attacks and pick up animations by at least 50 to sometimes 100% especially pick up animations. I haven’t reach the end game monsters or even seen all the monsters I could in rise but after 60 I feel as though I mechanically conquered enough of the game. However now that I’m playing generations there’s is truly something that builds in the longer animations for nearly ever hunt animation that 60 hours in I still feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface of mastery which with the lack of any narrative and very limited exploration is what I believe the game truly wants your mindset to get into. This is difficult to truly compare because generations also has a lingering legacy around it of having the most content with like 96 monsters in its roster + being the send off to the old style monster hunter games and 60 hours in I’ve only seen maybe 15-20 monsters?That definitely changes the pacing and allows them to make the forever game that has been one of mh underlying goals but it makes it so that 60 hours I’m in seeing new monsters that are beating my ass in ways the beginner monster haven’t challenged me and are opening up to me new channels of systems I had been ignoring because I like just killing with the bigger number. That + the slower style which often lends me being impatient and dying more often to these newer monsters has me hooked in a way that shaving away the inconveniences just leaves me with less of an impression. It’s not exactly what you where talking about because your mainly focused on the more menial interactions and how animations limit you there but especially for botw a lot of these smaller cutscenes allow you to bypass them if you don’t want to interact so I focused more on where those frictions points come up for mh!
You get special animations that you either can't skip, or the loading from skipping makes the time you save negligible. And then you get those fun non-animations that persist across Nintendo games, like getting those special buns from that one Stable, every time you help Addison, or curing a Leafling in Pikmin 4. Always fades to black because Nintendo decided animation was too much work for that particular sequence.
that makes me feel much better about the animations lol. I only just got Breath of the Wild though so this is the most I've seen of TOTK since the trailers
This isn't what I was thinking of with "animation problem" but it is a very valid one. I will say this isn't a modern thing either. I remember playing Chibi-Robo and needing to throw every piece of collected trash into the garbage can after gathering it up, or having to have the Hero's Shade in Twilight Princess physically show you how attacks work to teach you them. It just has gotten... much worse recently to the point where in the past they took a few seconds away from game play, but now like you say they replace simplifications to UI and UX to make it ~I M M E R S I VE~ My animation problem with Nintendo is just how samey a lot of stuff feels. The Inklings of splatoon have the same animations for weapons of the same category just at different speeds, Link's animations are the same in each of his weapon categories, the Pikmin frolicking with Oatchi all animate the same despite having different properties like how the purples are super heavy or the ice pikmin could slide around, how the villagers all dance the same despite there being different types of villagers... etc. etc. Basically I have a really strong patter recognition and seeing things like Link wielding a halberd the same as a mop, the same as a spear, the same as a rock glued to a stick just bothers me sooooo much. I love stuff like in the Souls game where even though some weapons have overlapping animations they at least make sense. Like you will never see the souls characters swing a glaive like how they stab with a spear. The designers of that seemed to at least go, "Where is the ouch part of this weapon and how does that get used?" Meanwhile Nintendo went, "Is the weapon a long stick? Give it the spear animation. This weapon can be held in one hand? Make it swing identical to the sword."
This... is actually a very good point. I'd noticed that Nintendo had all but stopped putting those "Hey bud you've been playing for a while, you oughta take a break" messages in all of their games when it came to the Switch, and at first I thought, "Ha, it's because they never want us to stop playing now," and then later, jokingly, "I guess the Switch's handheld battery is their new 'you should take a break' message," but... I think you're onto something there. Around the time I start getting annoyed with a (specifically Nintendo) game's seemingly deliberate slowdowns, like animations that seem to drag on or menu trees that seem to go on forever is also about the time I start to get a headache and such from all that gaming I'm doing. It's also much more effective than those "hey take a break messages" of old, too. Because I, like most people I'm sure, would just roll my eyes and continue on with my game. But if the game is starting to tick you off a bit, you're more likely to just put it down for a while.
I love those scenes and the only thing i skip is the temples and sometimes the cooking. But i always skip the Bloodmoon. What i don't like are the annoying Stable Trotters with their noisy music (Stable Music in Botw was chill as f***) and Paen. He is so frigging ugly i can't even. Ritos are majestic in their Design and Pean is just a big bird with the ugliest beak and face i've ever seen. I can't even see his eyes and it freaks me out. To me, he is just soulless af. I hope that Kass will return in Botw 3 or call it TotK 2.
Cooking or upgrading my armor is the thing in the game which most reliably gets me to put it down (aside from need, because I have to, like, eat and stuff, and have a family), so I appreciate being annoyed. I'd like to batch upgrade everything when those play, but I also don't want to only play Zelda, and I also kind of just like watching the animations sometimes, honestly. I've probably watched the shrine cutscene in full upwards of a third of the time, even over 130 shrines in, because I find the gloom leaving Link's body really thematically compelling, and I adore the music in the sequence.
Which is an all fine and good message when it is at the end of a 3 hour play session. But as new parent's working +40 hrs a week. The last thing either of us want to waste time on is sitting through all of the animations to get more health/stamina/slots, to the point that I end up doing all that after my partner falls asleep so she can at least enjoy the actual game in the 30-60 minutes we get every few days.
Between that and their atrocious accessibility options I get very confused at their approach. The game is beautiful and polished, but they didn't make any other considerations
i notice this kind of thing a lot when i play totk, esp as someone who likes getting into a singular progression system and wants to fulfill it completely before moving on it just ends up feeling like the game was designed for someone other than me
As a 37 year old Nintendo fan, this was a really interesting breakdown of things I've obviously experienced all along but never really thought about. Cool. Allows me to view some of my frustrations with their games from a different lens. Still weird that they do this, though.
Yeah, this is what made maintaining my animal crossing island too much work - flowers. In previous games you could pick up flowers and put them down anywhere you wanted. This time you've got to get your shovel out, position yourself correctly and bad luck if you didn't, dig the flower, then go place it elsewhere. I got so bored of it that I never wanted to change my town layout....
One thing to consider is that a lot of Nintendo games are geared for a wide range of ages and from my personal experience, younger kids (8 - 11 ish) LOVE these animations and the skips in TOTK are perfectly timed to the funniest part of the animation (to a younger kid). In this video and the comments I'm seeing a lot of people talking about these animations from the perspective of older gamers with plenty of game experience, without considering what it would be like for a younger kid with only a handful of games under their belts, which arguably is part of Nintendo's targeted demographic
What bothers me are that these are very nice and detailed animations, but the constant repetition of them makes me forget that and only remember how tired of them I am
awesome video. They do this too on splatoon 3, every hour the maps change, and this break a playing "streak", it most of the time make me stop playing for a time
So when it takes 45 real minutes to convert all my nook miles into bell vouchers....... they're saying I should go touch grass
Exactly
You should listen
Do it now
@@ArtemisWasHereif I'm Ganondorf and I live in a desert while all the Hylians have an abundant amount of water and grass, but I have none of that... What do I do?
I'm thinking a good alternative is to kidnap a 13 year old's sister and destroy a whole kingdom, is that valid?
Still the best incarnation of Ganondorf
@@rigelestbit Have you ever asked the Hylians if they could help out?
@@rigelestbit touch sand
This started out with "Nintendo wants you to watch the same animations over and over again, and they should stop." It ended with "Nintendo wants you to stop playing so much that you notice the animations repeating so much, and they're right."
Interesting twist.
Ohhh okay I was getting intrigued with the video concept since it never was a problem to me, but that’s a pretty interesting take that I appreciate actually
I guess it just means I’m sufficiently touching enough grass
Nice way to excuse bad design... Still makes it bad design.
@@elio7610 can’t fully argue that
These built in gates killed the ACNH experience for me after a while honestly, because of how tedious and boring it can be when trying to get something done
Though I think with TotK animations it’s really not that obtrusive
dude this is every zoomer's take if yall aren't nintendo fans that's ok but know YOU're the reason their new games are like this
@@elio7610there's a video called "in defence of inefficiency" and if you want your media consumption to be more efficient in this way you should go watch it
There's a whole chapter of game design called "humane design" and it focuses on things like this- providing exit points for your players so they can comfortably put down your product and live their life. Remember, a game designer's job is to save playrs form themselves
Okay yes this is amazing to know. I've been playing a lot of Story of Seasons and, at least for Mineral Town, there really aren't these moments besides having the self control to not start the next day
"Stardew valley" wants to know your location
Isn’t that kinda naive? Like a designer’s job is one thing, but they’re at the mercy of a corporation whose job is to dehumanize consumers and milk them of time and money.
@@nesaaliyah4821 I never said designers always get to do their jobs unencumbered. I'd say the major reason the industry is the way it is, is because marketers have more say than designers
TH-cam doesn't have any exit points.
this totally changed my perspective on the cutscenes. tears of the kingdom especially is sooo enabling of my adhd, i frequently lose track of time while i'm hunting down ingredients of searching for caves. i like the idea of the animations being nintendo's way of popping in like "hey, bud? you good?"
Doesn't your smartphone have an alarm?
@@CordeliaWagner Yeah but... Maybe just two minutes more? Again?
@@TheKrimzonGuard exactly lol, lost count of how many times I say 'I'll just play a few more minutes' and then get totally sidetracked in what I was trying to do because I saw something mildly interesting in the other direction... thank god for the map markers cos otherwise I'd never finish anything
bahahaaa literally my adhd as well
I played for 10 hours yesterday just doing things in hebra. Oh man i found so many koroks...
Regardless of the reason, I 1000% agree that it's intentional. People act like it's a design oversight, but it's definitely intentional. My hypothesis with Animal Crossing was that it forced you to go through the long animations and talking sequences because it's more akin to how interacting with actual people is in real life. Dealing with people requires patience.
Also how they made you craft everything one at a time. It was so players couldn’t abuse the resale mechanic to mass produce valuable items to generate millions of bells at once. This proved to be the right call bc players were trying to generate millions of bells anyway.
Or they just want to make you spend more time playing. Because, lets be real, most of us would not stop.
@@mlem6951 Oh 100% that is the reason. They don't want the player to get everything all at once. Games like these are meant to be played for years!
@@mallk238 animal crossing is really only fun for the 1st year, beyond that its just repetative, nothing changes really over the years and theres not really any long term goals that take longer than a year
@@CHLOCHLOLP Yeah, I'm more referring to how there were a ton of people who were new to animal crossing when new horizons came out who were showing off their island and saying that they'd "done everything" and were done with the game after like...a month. Or the people who complained about there being nothing to do bc they time traveled a ton and thus made even that *year* of stuff take maybe a week tops bc they wanted to be able to get things done faster and kept hitting the limits for the day too fast.
for some people, games designed to either take a long time or not be done in one sitting is like...a personal attack or something.
When the horse ran off the cliff at 7:21 I audibly gasp. Nintendo has both mastered being a little bit annoying and turning people into horsegirls 😅
Same.
I had a horse walk off a cliff in my game. Just took us both right over the edge and then laid there, breathing, not despawning until I looked away. It was horrible!
one of the few times I reloaded a save was cuz I had input to rear my horse back and for them to not fall off a cliff (they had already died once to a frost gleeok which was sad but I was okay with reviving them for) I wasn't going to revive them again for not accepting my input. I love the horses in botw/totk and anyone that doesn't like how they control don't want a horse, they just want a car
I got caught up by an aerial guardian while on horseback, and I couldn't tell whether to laugh in hysterics or sob in agony over how I somehow managed to survive the laser blast when my precious Nightmare laid there motionless before despawning a minute or so later... "You killed my favorite horse! I'll never forgive you!"
This is why I'm a spastic saver when given the option. Scum save ftw, mate.
I think that these animations are also a way to encourage the player in two different ways: to tell them they don't have to be a completionist, and the encourage them to "upgrade as you go" rather than grinding out upgrades to do them all at once. And I think both of these are important, and it's a shame that the modern gamer mentality has basically started to indicate that these play styles aren't "right" and that anything in service to those play styles is completely wrong.
But that's exactly how I played growing up, and I'm willing to be most other people did too. We did the main story, and a handful of side quests. We didn't do everything, not without a strategy guide next to us. And as we were going, we'd pop in for the incremental upgrades. Excited to increase our power as soon as we got the chance. And we had fun doing it that way
I feel like in a game that feels designed to constantly distract you, punishing people for getting distracted is pretty shitty.
Not to mention we'd be excited to increase our power because the games were shorter and as a result the upgrades tended to be bigger more impactful. In A Link to the Past you'd find armor that would double your defense, you found it and you were drastically more durable instantly. The better armor doubled you defenses again.
BotW/Tears take that armor, split it into three pieces, then instead of having two tiers you have four, and instead of finding these upgrades you gather several upgrade materials for each one. What used to be two treasure chests is now split over 100+ items to be collected.
@@TSPhoenix2 i think it's less punishing you for being distracted and having you just naturally accumulate things and power up over time, instead of speed-grinding something.
I would upgrade as I went if I didn’t have to teleport to Korok Forest every single time and the difference between 12 and 13 shield slots felt significant
@@Gafafsg You're not really meant to liberate Korok Forest at all. It's totally optional and if you don't then Hestu is at Lookout Landing. Fighting a Gloom Hands in a bathroom closet is meant to be Nintendo's hint that it's end-game content to be done when you don't really need Hestu or heart upgrades anymore.
i was unfathomably relieved the first time i upgraded energy cells and they batch the upgrades for you. i love the little “hey take a break” animations but god, please, just let me batch upgrade SOME things
This! Im not happily taking a break if all gameplay so far has only been what felt like an hour of "hey take a break" animations
I think Nintendo figures that you are NOT going to immediate run to the one construct dude outside of baby-town to immediately upgrade your battery given that you're probably a kilometer below Hyrule hunting Lynels or something. Thus, the batch upgrade. The fairy upgrades and the korok upgrades are intended to be "Imma ferry a few koroks and upgrade my shield stash now" so you only see the animation once, not "imma spend 8 hours ferrying koroks and then go to Hestu." Because that second statement is a little unhealthy, tbh.
@@TysonJensen then its poor design, i dont want to interrupt my exploration every few minutes to go to hestu and get a singular upgrade just because i found 4 koroks. Farming koroks may not be intended but interrupting everything to go get a single upgrade seems far more annoying out of the two options
@@Parrotcat Plenty of people agree, just search for korok warcrime of the day for videos of how much people dislike it. But the game isn't intended to be "efficiently farmed" and if that's how you've been playing it let me respectfully suggest that there are games that are better designed and probably more fun for your playstyle. Zelda is really just "Animal Crossing but for adventurers"
Honestly, the animations don't lose whimsicality for me, even after a while. I am excited for every time Hestu dances, because I adore that animation. I like waiting as I receive stamina or heart upgrades, as it just makes it feel a bit more grand and important
SAME. Hestu's dance is JOYFUL to watch for me. In the late game, it's such a rare opportunity to watch it too, I'm always so excited when I notice my seeds at 15+
I've maxed out my inventory. Now I don't get to see Hestu dance 😢
SAME
@GamerWho Finish collecting all 1000 koroks and you can tell him to dance whenever you want
@@mishtastic1 That's a better reward than the one we still unfortunately get for collecting all 1000 koroks
I honestly only took real issue with botw/totk's long animations when it came to cooking, a thing that I would literally always want to do in large quantities. If these games had a real equivalent to Red Potion or something so cooking was just better healing as opposed to the only real option, I'd maybe be less annoyed about it lol
Yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with the animation if it wasn't such a chore to select all the items again, even with the recipe book I counted early on and it's like 7 clicks for each repetition and that's if you're repeating one food
Huh that's funny, the cooking animation is the one I like the most. I really like the cooking mechanic in BOTW and like listening to my little recipes cook haha
Go do a shine when it's time to heal
I love it. Waiting to hear link hum his little tune 🥺
@@princessjello I know, like my boy really loves cooking his little meal huh?
I feel this problem in my soul. The dodo brothers are what made me stop playing Animal crossing, because they made one of the most fun parts of the game to me (visiting the random or friend's islands) so painful. It's one thing to make players stop and smell the roses a bit, it's another to just get in their way. They often straddle the line fairly well, given their stated goals, but the dodo brothers went way past it.
DREAD!? Not ONCE did I skip that beautiful animation and song. I didn't even want inventory space, my only motivation to get koroks was to see the dance again!!
I danced along with Hestu in BotW, I'm dancing along with Hestu and the koroks in TotK. Every time.
For me, it's cooking! I love that tinny pot jingle! Will never skip
After needing 30+ seeds for one inventory upgrade, doesn't really matter anymore, probably beat the story before seeing Hestu again lol
Yeah, I was forced to downvote the video just on that stupid preamble.
it’s kinda like when you LOVE the theme song for a show and you love hearing it every episode but when you watch with a friend they keep skipping it :(
So glad someone is talking about the important matter of the Great Fairy’s horny energy
The lack of consent and the clear discomfort on Link's face really makes me uncomfortable too, I'm glad the skip button appears so quickly for them
I been talkin about it since Ocarina! They put booby in a kids game! Zoinks!
@@Fopenplop the Ocarina fairies are redeemable though because they do that infectious posh anime woman laugh
@@Dysiode I'm a shy dude and wish more women were as forward as the Great Fairies tbh I am often uncomfortable but that's fear of intimacy talking
they reawakened a mommy kink in me that had been long forgotten
I love Hestu's new animation and the skyview towers, etc. That said, I also think Nintendo needs to do better about allowing skipping cutscenes after you see them the first time, and also to do better about grouping screens to better facilitate these skips. For example, the end of shrines has a (skippable) floating text bubble, the award screen, then another (skippable) floating text bubble before you're returned to the world. Just make it one bubble, then award, then outside. There's loads of stuff like this, where simply re-ordering things would make a less jarring experience.
when she was talking about animal crossing's tedious interfaces and animations my first thought was the crafting, but the clip of talking to the Dodos at 4:48 triggered a truly visceral reaction from me.
for me i thought of purchasing literally anything from the atm or getting fossils accessed when youve completed the fossil section of the museum
i dont rly use dodo airlines much nor have i visited friends in anch b4 so maybe thats why
My partner and I have the same discussion every time one (or both) of us gets really into a nintendo title. Every time. They can't stand the annoying elements. I freaking love them. So this video was incredibly fun. It's very much a preference thing but I think there are lifestyle implications as well. My partner has more than once pointed out that with their limited free time between work, obligations and other hobbies, they don't want to be shackled by elements designed to slow your roll. I have a lot more free time (and a much more casual attitude towards games) so I enjoy the exact same features they hate. It also means I prefer games that are more open ended and take more of a time investment to get pretty ineffectual rewards (like making my farm look juuuust right in stardew) while they will tear through something in 1/3 of the time it'd take me. So I get it... but also... I will watch Hestu dance for me EVERY TIME (and sing and dance along). I-kyakyakyakyakya i-kyakyakyakyakya i-kyakyakyakyakya i-kyaKYA!
After playing Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I have to say efficiency isn't worth ruining the experience. They opted to make most shops just menu screens. It just feels wrong.
For some reason I find armor upgrades more annoying than expansion dance but that probably has to do with having to go out farming specific parts for hours vs just organically coming across seeds
interesting! i've considered how the great faries and hestu kinda encourages you to make smaller and more frequent upgrades, rather than stocking up resources and doing marathon upgrade sessions. what i also find fascinating in totk is how often the screen just fades to blank instead of playing a transitional animation (addison and lightroots being examples on the top of my head).
Never really thought about this. I've been playing Splatoon 3 pretty regularly since launch, and I think this is probably why they have the maps on a two hour rotation - "Hey, this game type is over go have a walk". But then there are a bazillion other things that want your attention that go against that way of thinking. Catalog, badges, level ups, clothes, weapons, profile pictures, name tags, locker junk... a gacha machine, and every single one of the four modes has unlocks exclusive to it. Almost everything in that game makes it feel like you should be devoting every single hour of the day to it in one mode or the other. Some of the requirements for the badges are bonkers, almost completely unattainable for most people... maybe that's the point.
I think there's two parts to that, one is to create downtime so you can manage all the housekeeping you have to do, but the other is to create a clear breaking point so you can easily choose to take a break (though I also like that you get to play the same maps and mode so you can get into a groove)
What's interesting about this is that their battery upgrade is an "as many as possible" interaction.
honestly, from the thumbnail and title, i was fully expecting this to be about the LACK of animated sequences in Tears of the Kingdom at times. so often have i been in the middle or end of a side quest and they cut to black to load in a change in the world, like the position of an NPC. it feels so counterintuitive compared to instances of seeing other NPCs travelling around the world (or simulated instances of it, like beedle ‘arriving’ at the stables). i am surprised, considering how polished totk feels in many other aspects, that they opted for so many five second blackouts, but I guess they have the same function as the repetitive animated sequences too.
i mean that happens all the time in more heavily animated nintendo games (and probably more broadly too). both botw and totk have this happen, as well as the modern pokemon games. i think those are just a result of "not wanting to use limited time and resources on one time low-importance animations"
i do agree tho it jars me out of the game every time it happens. i also thought this was a video about that phenomenon and was excited for some takes on it.
This makes so much sense!!! So glad I’m not alone in thinking the “you finished a shrine” animation takes too long lol
Yes! I've always felt Nintendo's cutscene animations were a nudge of "Hey! Chill out, don't take this too seriously :)". Which isn't to everyone's taste, but suits me.
Excellent video 👍
I would prefer they had messages pop up after saving that tell you to take a break like they used to, rather than being annoying with repeated cutscenes. They just don't do it like they used to.
i hadn't thought about this, but it kind of makes sense why i seem to pause every few hours when playing certain games, but if i'm doing something else sedentary that i'm really focusing on - like coding - there aren't those "lulls" that prompt me to take a break, and next thing i know it's six hours later and i can't feel my legs.
If their idea truly is to annoy me into going outside, then both Nintendo and I need to examine our priorities 😂
I saw it more of keeping a retro vibe into the game, with these quirks making it more special and nostalgic. Another example is the animation when a door opens and everything pauses, or the retro sound effects when you get an orb or upgrade or whatever. Having these quirks means that you create these associations and emotional connections that are unique to Nintendo games even if you’re a young player that doesn’t have the nostalgia aspect. So all these quirks could be about creating a deeper and long-lasting brand connection.
I watch the Hestu dance every time cause I love how he sings along with the musical sting
I would love to see an ad where a kid plays a Zelda game, then picks up a toy sword to go play with they’re friends or in the woods. That’s what I did when I got into Zelda as a kid. that would both show how fun the game is and promote activity outside like they want to advertise.
I think you're right about the reason behind Nintendo's designs, but I don't think it's a good design philosophy. Making games annoying or frustrating isn't going to get me to take a break for the day, it's going to get me to never play the game again. BotW was so unbearable I stopped playing after a couple of hours, gave the cartridge away, and haven't even thought about picking up the sequel.
Sure, having natural stopping points is nice, but to me that would be similar to animal crossing running out of things to do in a day, not animal crossing long drawn out single action menus that can't be sped up or done in bulk.
This is my biggest problem with Nintendo. I love their games so much, but large amounts of unskippable repetitive animations and dialogue get really fatiguing after a while and weigh down the experience. I do appreciate having in-universe explanations for UI elements and limitations... a little bit of this increases immersion for me, but too much of this circles back round to reducing immersion. Great video!
I died a little inside playing Link Between Worlds recently, when I realised there are 100 collectible snail-things and the same, unskippable dialogue box was going to play for each one
@@waelisc I think if a single dialogue box is a problem for you, you might have issues other than that one, single, box that plays after a small puzzle that you only really do every now and then
@@waelisc Oh boy, the original Skyward Sword is absolute torture with this exact mechanic.
As much a Red Dead 2 has this exact same issue, I love the shop UI. It's immersive because you're looking through a real ass catalog, but streamlined and useful.
While it doesn't happen as much as they show in the ads, the switch *is* the only console I've taken with me when I travel, and the only portable video game player I've ever had. Even the gameboy required more than one for multiplayer. I appreciate Nintendo continuing to have its games and consoles interact with the real world.
Ah yes. The classic. "It's not a flaw. It's a feature."
Okay, at what point are we just rationalizing bad UX and disrespecting the player's time? Do we also give non-Nintendo games the benefit of the doubt and assume annoying elements are deliberate so that you don't play their games too long? Because I've never seen any other developer get this treatment.
Pikmin Bloom (Niantic's pikmin game) is goddamn silly with this. You open the game to try to quickly get on a nearby mushroom before you get too far from it... but the game has to first show an animation of your pikmin breaking another two mushrooms, your score on those mushrooms, your pikmin picking up the rewards from those mushrooms, and then the prize boxes opening, and oh then you also finished two weekly challenges so it has to show your progress, an animation for EVERY PLAYER WHO JOINED YOU, and your rewards, and THEN you are given control. And after watching these for a few minutes, you've now walked too far away from what you wanted to interact with. Great.
a tip i discovered by accident, but for most animations in pikmin(like them running to the mushrooms/etc) you can speed them up by pressing the screen & holding. sort of puts it into fast-forward mode
It may also be a nudge to get you to keep your screen on and app open for longer. I haven’t played that particular Niantic game but part of their business model is getting more accurate data about walking paths for improving maps. They don’t want you putting your phone to sleep because then the gps data is less accurate.
An honorable mention for the repetitive animation thing would be Farcry. Farcry 3, 4, and 5 all added options in the game settings to disable the animation to skin an animal or collect an herb. So after youve already seen them enough times you can tinker with your settings and make your life easier. I think that adding more diverse animations for such mundane things such as resource collection would help, but I understand that making 20 different animations for every different collection type would be nightmarish from a game development standpoint. And even then, repeat animations will be inevitable in any RPG.
Earthbound’s “Two-Hour Dad” caught my attention, especially when you brought it up after Animal Crossing. Though I normally wouldn’t if I still had work outstanding, I actually played ACNH to take a break during the hardest semester I’ve ever had so far… and ACNH was perfect, because it was relaxing, and I could feel satisfied enough to put it down after-you guessed it-two hours.
Two hours of talking to my neighbors, watering flowers, catching fish and bugs, checking for Gulliver, landing stars, moving furniture, buying clothes, bugging Blathers, and I was good. And I could get back to work. I don’t have that slow-down with other games.
See, I agree with this in theory, but when it comes to something like Animal Crossing, where all I want to do is customize and decorate my island, I don't think I should be getting annoyed at the game not even five minutes into my play session because of how tedious the building and refurbishing animation is.
Anyway, this was a great video! You have such a fun presentation style! Great video!~
I agree with this. Having game mechanics that encourage break-off points like Splatoon’s map rotations or Animal Crossing’s dailies fit perfectly with this philosophy. Making things that users do often annoying just makes me want to play less, especially if it’s necessary for progression. It limits how people can enjoy a game too, which is another major Nintendo issue.
Of all the little skippable animations, I think Hestu's is the one I've skipped the least, aside from the initial version of the blood moons. His little dance is just so fun
I never skip it. That whole song and dance tickles me every time. And the subtle subtitle of Hestu singing along with the music cue that plays after, so good.
I never used my golden shit because I didn't want to go thru the animation
Slow moments like animations or riding through big open fields can be nice little breathers to let you reflect on your situation, why you’re playing, what your goals are. It’s when the flow stops that the emotions can sink in and be processed, after which your mind is free and you can choose consciously what to do next or if to stop. That being said, I don’t think upgrading the inventory for the 30th time or beating the 100th shrine are important enough to take a break for. I’d rather cut the repetition, experience more of the actual content and quit when I feel like I got what I wanted from the game.
Theres an option where you can skip cutscenes, check it out.
Okay, so, this video is great, and I particularly applaud the well done about-face turn, because you totally had me ready to grumble at the beginning and then came back 180 and all was well... BUT THAT POOR HORSE! (ToT)
great video!! i really like your take on it. as much as the little annoyances get to me, i appreciate some of them. i like the feel of the shops, their minimal supply is absolutely intentional-- it's telling you to go out and get most of the items yourself. they'll give me the handful of arrows i need to set out on my journey, but won't give me everything. i LOVE the tower cutscene! there aren't very many towers in the game, so it feels like an epic reward for unlocking part of the map. i don't mind the health/stamina upgrades either, they also feel like rewards for my hard work. the armor and korok seeds, though? do noooot like those. i think the difference is the frequency. i'm not sure i like their design philosophy on these, but i understand them better now, thanks!
Okay but Hetsu’s dance is delightful every time
another absolute banger from Jenna, been thinking about this over and over in TOTK
I think this is correct, but I think I preferred the prompts that the wii had. I think I'd probably be more likely to play a game for a smaller amount of time if I felt more satisfied by the game in that smaller amount of time, rather than feeling like I have to cram super hard because I can only get one korok upgrade every couple minutes. It's sort of counterintuitive, but I feel like I'd be more willing to put down the game if the game made more of an effort to respect my time and give me what I want to get out of it faster.
There are also problems with "treadmills" that devs put in their games (not looking at ring fit adventure, only good example of a treadmill in a game), which nintendo also does. nintendo also has plenty of skinner box elements and fomo in games like splatoon. Even progression systems themselves can kind of be seen as a sort of treadmill. So on one hand, I think it's probably true that nintendo wants a game that people put down to do something else because that's healthy. But I also wonder if this is for altruistic reasons, or if this is because a player's more likely to play a game for hundreds and hundreds of hours if they're going at it in small chunks, instead of in long depressing 3am monster energy and vape binge sessions.
Wow, I never thought about it like that. I can very distinctly recall the friction I would feel meeting with those "annoying" moments and how it would make me want to go so something else instead of grinding shrines/etc... Seems to be pretty effective design 😅
I recently started Danganronpa for the first time, and a fairly big part of the game if you're a completionist (it's completely skippable if you like but you'll miss out on quite a bit) is a gacha machine with a hundred or so collectibles. You pick up the odd coin for it here and there, and at a certain point you get ~60 at once. Which you're expected to go and redeem, one by one. You can feed in multiple coins at once, but this doesn't net you extra collectibles, it only reduces your chance of getting a duplicate by a small percentage and is generally not worth it.
So as I sat there recently, pouring coin after coin into a literal ingame gacha machine, I really did wonder if the devs wanted to punish me for being a completionist...
For the most part I agree (whatever "agreeing" means in the context of this video). The fairy animations are a slog. But I make an exception for Hestu. I watched every single Hestu dance without skipping, for every single upgrade, in both games, and I liked it.
Very good. People seem to take it as an affront to their freedom if everything isn't as easy and convenient as possible, and I think it is pretty healthy to push back against at at least a little bit. But, the Nook miles conversion in Animal Crossing borders on a war crime. I love that Stoeber hit on the design ethos behind these things people think of as mistakes, like weapon degradation in Neo Zelda. Maybe it's not for you, but oftentimes, when you push past your preconceptions and your own alleged desires, you find out there's more going on than you thought.
Have you tried pressing the skip cutscene button? Its + or X depending on the cutscene!
ive been playing fire emblem awakening, which, when youre at your little base, has a random one of your characters pop up with a line on the 3ds' bottom screen. its tuned into the device clock, so once it gets past a certain time they say things in character like "aren't you up late, [player avatar]?" and i kid you not those have helped me finally put down the game and go to bed more on time. not developed by nintendo, just published by them, and not quite the same thing, but its what this made me think of!
Really great video, I loved that you delved into the concept of Nintendo wanting to change the way people game by implementing mechanics like the Two-hour Dad.
I will say though, a lot of the animations you brought up in TotK can be skipped. You don’t *have* to watch the Great Fairy do her thing every time you upgrade your armor. But you should.
Yeah but her point is that even waiting for the skip button to pop up adds a couple seconds of time where you can’t be playing the game. And when you’re trying to upgrade multiple items at once these couple of seconds can really add up
I hate most of those animation sequences. Except the Hestu dance! Honestly, I would never skip that!
Well, I once accidentally skipped it, and I was angry about that lol
the encouragement to go outside can also be seen on some handheld titles! in ultra sun/moon (and prolly normal su/mo) your rotom gadget encourages you to save and take a break occasionally (haven't timed the interval but it feels shorter than an hour).
whats the cat game 2:47
As someone who can struggle to self-moderate game time, I actually appreciate the subtle assistance Nintendo offers.
I think the ideal for me would be a game that's paced with clear stopping points every 1.5 - 2 hours, where the content slows down and it temporarily stops scratching the itch to continue. A natural opportunity to think about things to do besides gaming, or at least to take a break before continuing the session.
I feel like as you progress in Tears of the Kingdom you end up with that kind of situation. There's always a dozen more things on your To Explore list, but they did such a great job with little instanced dungeon elements where once you're done you have to do a little housekeeping like upgrading or repairing or just the act of traveling to the next place creates that downtime, for me at least
@@Dysiode That's great to hear! I've not given TotK a try yet, but that's a solid selling point for me lol
in splatoon 3 if you give up or die, the other agents will give you advice, in one of marie's dialogs she reminds you to take a break if you feel upset that things arent going your way
basically Nintendo is aware of how frustrating some of their harder stages in splatoon are lmao
Huh. This was extremely insightful and clever.
You're right, I have put the game down because I have gotten tired of the animations... and began working on my own creative outlets. So yeah, it works.
I will never skip Hestu's dance.
But other animations in the game get old fast.
this was what made me lose steam with animal crossing sadly
You are wonderful! I'm looking forward to checking out your other vids
Jenna I'll have you know I watch the Hestu animation EVERY TIME and I am THANKFUL for it because it SLAPS! OOH-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha! Cha-CHA!
in BotW I watched all the shrine animations to honor the sacrifice of the guardians who sat in them for A HUNDRED YEARS waiting for me
And then after the dance we get to happily sing DA-NA-NA-NA-NAAA with him. It's beautiful!
You're describing the Exact phenomenon that happens to me every time I have to cook in BOTW - I get so annoyed with the animation, I get a few meals in and then take a break, and only come back later when my desire to play outweighs my frustration with having to hear that music and watch apples bob around in a pot until I can skip
I've been doing my own research on this, & felt like constant mashing of the skip button negatively impacted the entire game, I end up doing automatically even when I didn't want to skip.
I can really appreciate Nintendo trying to make there games so you don't lose your life to it, but I think there going in the wrong direction. I still played TotK for a solid 2 months with people worrying about me. How video games make goals seems to be broken, I'm never satisfied with what I accomplished.
In TotK especially I found myself frustrated with how hard it was to focus on one goal without getting distracted with a Korok seed or having to resupply my gear.
I didn’t start noticing how long some actions and NPC dialogues were in ACNH until I saw memes wishing the Dodos would go extinct again for eating up players’ time. I’m not super bothered by most of it, but it does stick out to me now.
I'm glad this video talks about the _good_ aspects of TotK, and video games other than TotK, too.
This might be the best video criticizing something in a fair, unbiased way I've ever seen. Usually people go out of their way in videos like this to rant about the things a company/person/design philosophy do wrong, but under your approach, you give them constructive criticism.
Keep up the good work!
I never minded those animations, but I can see how they could get annoying
Holy heck, I never thought about it this way. Just a few days ago I thought about how when I turn off my Switch, it's because I feel like I couldn't possibly play anymore Tears of the Kingdom and I'm just absolutely sick of the game mechanics. But then when I turn it on in the morning, none of the stuff annoys me! 😀I think you are RIGHT on the money here with the intentionally annoying aspects placed there to get you to take a break. Great video!
As someone who named her giant white horse Mildred I appreciate the name Bertha lol
I think "a little bit annoying" is largely a North American response to Japanese humor. And Imma have to hard disagree on Hestu's dance. It cracks me up every time.
Actually just went through the hellspawn activity of clearing the monsters out Lurelin (my methods growing increasingly violent with each attempt) and yeah, the quest after that kind of confirms your point. Collecting 15 logs is just annoying
A common complaint of totk is that upgrading armor requires a TON of items, but those items are more rare than they were in botw. So rare, in fact, that many resort to duping to 100% their armor.
Meanwhile, i think the purpose of having armor be so difficult to upgrade is the point. Like…you’re NOT SUPPOSED to be able to upgrade everything at once! You’re supposed to maybe stop by the great fairy every once in a while to upgrade 2-3 things and then go off to run around some more.
There’s two benefits to that one.
1) balances armor in a specific way so that all of the armor with the best buffs give less protection. That way it’s a trade off between aafety and power.
2) I believe this is true for EVERY design choice that forces the player to slow down in any nindento game:
They want you to take your time because it draws out the whole game. Games when they first became big were super hard, and this was bc gameboys had smaller memory, so they had less content. By making it harder it took longer for kids to beat. By making modern games take longer, they can get away with taking longer to develop games than most other studios. Just look at how much time passed between new leaf and new horizons; or botw and totk
Nintendo has a lot of incentive to force the player to slow down.
This is a fantastic analysis and something I hadn't really thought about.
That said, I'm going to interpret this in an over-the-top way as "Nintendo is making you take breaks by pissing you off", and to which I say, how dare you.
Good video! It cut off kind of suddenly which left me wanting more. I guess that's a good thing?
Like I didn't realize what the hypothesis was until the last minute and then it's kind of just matter-of-factly like "Yep. That's how it is. Bye"
I think maybe it would be better to suggest earlier in the video that nintendo knows exactly what they're doing. Then go into their history of time-gating their games.
Idk though. I just know this video left me feeling a bit unusual and made me wonder why that was. So I wanted to get these thoughts out. I'm sure you've thought this all over more than I have lol
Great vid as always! I definitely think this is why I largely stick to Nintendo games when it comes to AAA fare; I would rather play a game that is annoying and joyful than one that is "addicting" and hollow.
I do feel like New Horizons in particular was partially inconsistent with whether or not it was encouraging you to stop playing. Yeah, there were annoying parts like dialogue boxes or the crafting animations, but there were also things like being able to earn limitless nook-miles in a day or terraforming and outdoor designing creating a new kind of time-sink. Even small things like badges for talking to every single one of your villagers every day slowly burnt me out. Holiday updates highly incentivized you to play too much. True, a lot of the burnout with the game came from the fact that it simply was not meant to be the tentpole of sanity in a monsoon rain of Global Realities, but I also feel like the game's "release now, update later" model also left the game feeling a little exploitative of my time and attention. Anyways. I'm not salty about New Horizons "just" being really good instead of a masterpiece, I promise.
I agree with every other animation except Hestu's dance, which I always watch to completion
I think this is also the beauty of older pokemon games, the wild encounters are suppose to annoy you.
Really interesting to think about the relationship between animation + and level of interactivity and animation especially in terms of mechanics to literally make you want to stop playing. Something that stuck out to me being a monster hunter fan is that it is wild how much sometimes the opposite can be true (very subjective). The clip you showed was from the more recent monster hunter rise which got me into the series enough for me to start playing the older games. Rise is fantastic but they really do shave off a lot of the personality of the mechanical pacing when in the actual hunt by speeding up all attacks and pick up animations by at least 50 to sometimes 100% especially pick up animations. I haven’t reach the end game monsters or even seen all the monsters I could in rise but after 60 I feel as though I mechanically conquered enough of the game. However now that I’m playing generations there’s is truly something that builds in the longer animations for nearly ever hunt animation that 60 hours in I still feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface of mastery which with the lack of any narrative and very limited exploration is what I believe the game truly wants your mindset to get into. This is difficult to truly compare because generations also has a lingering legacy around it of having the most content with like 96 monsters in its roster + being the send off to the old style monster hunter games and 60 hours in I’ve only seen maybe 15-20 monsters?That definitely changes the pacing and allows them to make the forever game that has been one of mh underlying goals but it makes it so that 60 hours I’m in seeing new monsters that are beating my ass in ways the beginner monster haven’t challenged me and are opening up to me new channels of systems I had been ignoring because I like just killing with the bigger number. That + the slower style which often lends me being impatient and dying more often to these newer monsters has me hooked in a way that shaving away the inconveniences just leaves me with less of an impression. It’s not exactly what you where talking about because your mainly focused on the more menial interactions and how animations limit you there but especially for botw a lot of these smaller cutscenes allow you to bypass them if you don’t want to interact so I focused more on where those frictions points come up for mh!
You get special animations that you either can't skip, or the loading from skipping makes the time you save negligible. And then you get those fun non-animations that persist across Nintendo games, like getting those special buns from that one Stable, every time you help Addison, or curing a Leafling in Pikmin 4. Always fades to black because Nintendo decided animation was too much work for that particular sequence.
that makes me feel much better about the animations lol. I only just got Breath of the Wild though so this is the most I've seen of TOTK since the trailers
Counterpoint- the little inventory dance the guy with the maracas did with his friends is very cute and that should be the video game
I always felt evil for skipping the monhun rise dango animation coz everyone else loved it so much
This isn't what I was thinking of with "animation problem" but it is a very valid one. I will say this isn't a modern thing either. I remember playing Chibi-Robo and needing to throw every piece of collected trash into the garbage can after gathering it up, or having to have the Hero's Shade in Twilight Princess physically show you how attacks work to teach you them. It just has gotten... much worse recently to the point where in the past they took a few seconds away from game play, but now like you say they replace simplifications to UI and UX to make it ~I M M E R S I VE~
My animation problem with Nintendo is just how samey a lot of stuff feels. The Inklings of splatoon have the same animations for weapons of the same category just at different speeds, Link's animations are the same in each of his weapon categories, the Pikmin frolicking with Oatchi all animate the same despite having different properties like how the purples are super heavy or the ice pikmin could slide around, how the villagers all dance the same despite there being different types of villagers... etc. etc.
Basically I have a really strong patter recognition and seeing things like Link wielding a halberd the same as a mop, the same as a spear, the same as a rock glued to a stick just bothers me sooooo much. I love stuff like in the Souls game where even though some weapons have overlapping animations they at least make sense. Like you will never see the souls characters swing a glaive like how they stab with a spear. The designers of that seemed to at least go, "Where is the ouch part of this weapon and how does that get used?" Meanwhile Nintendo went, "Is the weapon a long stick? Give it the spear animation. This weapon can be held in one hand? Make it swing identical to the sword."
This... is actually a very good point. I'd noticed that Nintendo had all but stopped putting those "Hey bud you've been playing for a while, you oughta take a break" messages in all of their games when it came to the Switch, and at first I thought, "Ha, it's because they never want us to stop playing now," and then later, jokingly, "I guess the Switch's handheld battery is their new 'you should take a break' message," but... I think you're onto something there. Around the time I start getting annoyed with a (specifically Nintendo) game's seemingly deliberate slowdowns, like animations that seem to drag on or menu trees that seem to go on forever is also about the time I start to get a headache and such from all that gaming I'm doing. It's also much more effective than those "hey take a break messages" of old, too. Because I, like most people I'm sure, would just roll my eyes and continue on with my game. But if the game is starting to tick you off a bit, you're more likely to just put it down for a while.
I love those scenes and the only thing i skip is the temples and sometimes the cooking. But i always skip the Bloodmoon. What i don't like are the annoying Stable Trotters with their noisy music (Stable Music in Botw was chill as f***) and Paen. He is so frigging ugly i can't even. Ritos are majestic in their Design and Pean is just a big bird with the ugliest beak and face i've ever seen. I can't even see his eyes and it freaks me out. To me, he is just soulless af. I hope that Kass will return in Botw 3 or call it TotK 2.
Cooking or upgrading my armor is the thing in the game which most reliably gets me to put it down (aside from need, because I have to, like, eat and stuff, and have a family), so I appreciate being annoyed. I'd like to batch upgrade everything when those play, but I also don't want to only play Zelda, and I also kind of just like watching the animations sometimes, honestly. I've probably watched the shrine cutscene in full upwards of a third of the time, even over 130 shrines in, because I find the gloom leaving Link's body really thematically compelling, and I adore the music in the sequence.
Which is an all fine and good message when it is at the end of a 3 hour play session. But as new parent's working +40 hrs a week. The last thing either of us want to waste time on is sitting through all of the animations to get more health/stamina/slots, to the point that I end up doing all that after my partner falls asleep so she can at least enjoy the actual game in the 30-60 minutes we get every few days.
Between that and their atrocious accessibility options I get very confused at their approach. The game is beautiful and polished, but they didn't make any other considerations
i notice this kind of thing a lot when i play totk, esp as someone who likes getting into a singular progression system and wants to fulfill it completely before moving on
it just ends up feeling like the game was designed for someone other than me
As a 37 year old Nintendo fan, this was a really interesting breakdown of things I've obviously experienced all along but never really thought about. Cool. Allows me to view some of my frustrations with their games from a different lens. Still weird that they do this, though.
Really good video! Probably the second I've seen from you and I'm excited to see more, subscribed!
"Both would encourage you to stay hydrated" That joke took me out.
Great content as usual!
Yeah, this is what made maintaining my animal crossing island too much work - flowers. In previous games you could pick up flowers and put them down anywhere you wanted. This time you've got to get your shovel out, position yourself correctly and bad luck if you didn't, dig the flower, then go place it elsewhere. I got so bored of it that I never wanted to change my town layout....
One thing to consider is that a lot of Nintendo games are geared for a wide range of ages and from my personal experience, younger kids (8 - 11 ish) LOVE these animations and the skips in TOTK are perfectly timed to the funniest part of the animation (to a younger kid).
In this video and the comments I'm seeing a lot of people talking about these animations from the perspective of older gamers with plenty of game experience, without considering what it would be like for a younger kid with only a handful of games under their belts, which arguably is part of Nintendo's targeted demographic
It’s like Sonic Frontiers’ Hermit Koko problem. Thank god that one got fixed.
What bothers me are that these are very nice and detailed animations, but the constant repetition of them makes me forget that and only remember how tired of them I am
awesome video. They do this too on splatoon 3, every hour the maps change, and this break a playing "streak", it most of the time make me stop playing for a time
This is so consistent with where and when I saved and quit the game in TOTK