Although much maligned, I can appreciate Breath of the Wild's durability system for what it was attempting to do. It does also create an interesting automatic balancing feature, in that players can't find a single high power weapon and invalidate any other loot. I find the alternative approaches to open world loot admirable, instead of going for common strategies like equipment with randomly rolled stats or bonuses. Really though, the thing I found most stifling about the durability system was just how it disincentivized combat. It never felt good to just get into a battle, because the weapon cost was always weighing on my mind.

Well after all, Fromsoft has a track record for amazing chests

I think it's also improved by the fact that Souls games have a lot of weapons and armor to begin with. Especially if they reuse weapons. I'm excited to be on the hunt for the Moonlight Greatsword.

I think the same can be said of spirit ashes. They’re just using the same enemies in the game but making them look like spirits. Most of them aren’t especially useful once you have unlocked the stronger ones in the game. But they’re unique so you usually don’t feel disappointed picking one up.

My wife (a game designer) watched this and went “oh my god, those poor From Software animators…” As a game dev who knows how hard it is to add animations… no. Your second example is likely incorrect. This isn’t being done cause it’s easier… it’s that From Software is insane with the effort they put into their game mechanics. Making a new weapon model and re-using the old animations is way easier than making a system to map animations to any weapon you want.

I just just love how you immediately stab the chest before you opened it

One idea I heard (I think from Ceave gaming) is to have weapons breaking give you shards of some sort to reward going through weapons. Perhaps those shards could boost the master sword and other weapons

Honestly after the first dozen or so hours of BOTW (if that), running out of weapons stopped being an issue for me; I had plenty to go around. If anything, the annoyance as the game went on became about having too many-- I'd find a cool weapon and get frustrated that I didn't have a slot for it, even as I couldn't find anything I wanted to get rid of to take its place.

I can definitely say that I think Elden Rings approach is the better of the two. In BotW's case of being a more "character" driven open world game, having the weapons as resources doesn't detract from the overall experience too much. But in the case of a Souls-esque game like Elden Ring, where the weapons one uses are pretty much integral to the identity of the character the player creates, it would've been much more damaging.

"Striking a balance between the scale of the world you're building and how much you can fill it with is crucial." You condensed that concept perfectly. Love that

This reminds me of a relevant quote: "Given the opportunity players will optomize the fun out of almost anything." Seems to be an unfortunate truth and quite a challenge for good game design. I liked BotW's system personally although it did have its flaws. It's funny that some of the most fun I had in the game was when my weapons were taken away like during the master sword trials or that one island trial, it forces you to think outside the box and make the best of what you have.

As someone who always had his weapon invintory full in breath of the wild, I absolutely loved the durability system, as it forced me to try out different weapon types instead of just sticking with one forever, which is what I used to do before playing botw.

Zullie is a smart cookie. I like Zullie.

My gripe with the durability system in zelda is it seemed to limit the designers’ willingness to make anything “too cool” to lose. Like the master sword is cool so they have to make a way for you to get it back, everything else can’t be THAT cool because the player can’t be too upset when it breaks.

"It would be unrealistic to expect that many unique assets" You know, that why reusing assets like crabs, dogs or animations isn't a problem when making a new game. It free up a massive amount of time to be spent elsewhere. And I feel it's why BotW has so little variety compared to Elden Ring: FromSoft had assets from 3 games they could reuse since ER has the same gameplay compared to Nintendo. Even more, imagine the kind of games that could be made if assets could be shared instead of being kept for one studio, for one (or a few) projects? Game like what Cyberpunk 2077 wanted to be would be much easier to do.

"they're much less taxing for developers to create than whole weapons" this is definitally wrong, making a sword mesh and textures is simple compared to making an ash of war that has to animate the player, their outfit, their weapon, and all the hitboxes, while deciding on things like hyper armour, poise damage, cancelability, etc, and trying to balence it all so its not overpowered while also making sure players can't use it to glitch through walls or something, thats way harder than just making a weapon and tweaking a few of the variables of a similar weapon to make something new.

When I first played Breath of the Wild, I was totally on board for weapon durability and didn't see the issue with it. It was only when Master Mode was introduced that I realized a huge problem: what's the point in engaging with and fighting ANYTHING in the open world? You get no experience points or anything, usually the weapons you break for killing enemies are replaced by worse ones (bokoblin clubs, etc.), and there's usually a single chest waiting with a mediocre reward for clearing a camp of enemies. So when you have all these great weapons you've collected in your inventory, you start avoiding fights because you don't want to waste them! Wasn't too big a problem in normal mode, but Master Mode essentially incentivized running away from everything.

I think the biggest problem with botw's weapon durability is that when you reach the endgame, the only weapons you really need (for combat anyway) are the lynel and ancient ones. This means that after you use up lesser monster parts on armor upgrades, the only enemies worth fighting at lynels and guardians since even bokoblins at that point are too tanky to bother with. I think the durability system actually shines the most in more self contained areas like eventide island or the trial of the sword.

I think my favourite system for this is New Vegas’s, especially since it meshes with its post-apocalyptic setting so well. Pristine weapons are a rarity, and most stuff you find is ancient and in horrid condition. But depending on your Repair skill, you can poor-condition combine weapons of the same type to make a higher-condition weapon. And that isn’t even getting into the modding you can do to your weapons, which iirc is the most sophisticated modding system in the Fallout series.

I would like to strongly disagree with this video. Ashes of war definitely take much longer to develop than it is implied here. From's strength in this regard is that they can reuse assets from previous entries, whereas BotW doesn't have any previous game to import assets from, and getting the current assets working in the more physics-based environment is harder, which is why it is quite lacking in terms of abilities and enemy variety when compared to other franchise entries or other open world titles. Also, for BotW, fighting enemies gives you loot, so you'll still want to go for combat, and by the time you'll want to keep some high level weapons at all times in the inventory you should have enough slots to keep a couple of disposable weapons for normal battles. Because you'll get weapons from the enemies as you fight them, you can just swap them as you go. Also, high level weapons should be used on high level enemies and used up until they're broken so you won't wake up with all weapons almost at the breaking point. It's quite obvious that this is how the game was intended to be played imo, and weapon durability is not a challenge or annoyance after a while, once you stocked up on inventory slots and good weapons.

Honestly, I think Breath of the Wild was just shy of the best solution for how it wanted to go: weapon durability should have had a companion repairing/crafting system where you can take weapons you collect to a blacksmith and consume them to either repair one you really like, or roll new stats on it. This incentivizes combat and exploration by making even the weaker weapons you might find useful. That's the system used in Age of Calamity to incentivize replaying battles and collecting more and more weapons over time. You consume weapons of the same basic type to increase the strength of a favored one, give it bonuses, and customize it. Durability could still be a thing to make it a risk/reward for long stretches of combat. Harder combat encounters would call for your stronger weapons, and Bokoblin camps would naturally be more a target for your run-of-the-mill ones?

Don't forget the two other ressources they use to fill the chests : Spells and Cookbooks. With Ashes of War, this will be the three mains recompense to explore the world. Having a new sword or a new armor set will be much rariest. Not a big fan of crafting, but eh, at least I won't have to farm to gain some low-level comsumables dropping randomly on enemies.

I can definitely appreciate what the durability system in Breath of the Wild was TRYING to do but it's definitely arguable how successful it actually was, and for me personally it was a huge hindrance on my enjoyment of the game. I think I actually might have preferred accidentally stumbling on the best gear too early over...feeling like no gear was actually particularly good because of how transient it all was. Finding a cool new weapon was never rewarding, because the first thought that went through my mind every time is "yeah but it'll break after like one fight, so who cares." The Champion weapons were the worst by far, since they're A) not as good as random gear you can find lying around and B) absurdly expensive to remake, so they just ended up decorating my house. There was never a situation where I wanted to use them, so they didn't even feel like real rewards. I think in one sense it did work. When I was scrounging around for gear constantly it helped create a sense of tension (will I have enough supplies to get through this encounter?) and encouraged creative thinking. Unfortunately that...didn't actually happen very often. The game pretty quickly starts to overcompensate with weapon drops, to the point where after about the midway point, even random Bokoblins are carrying full-durability knight's broadswords. After that point I almost never had an empty slot in my weapon inventory. I would almost always get more weapons from a fight than I spent, even without being creative in the slightest, which completely destroyed the purpose of the durability system at all. Even most of the rewards felt useless because half the new weapons I'd find were worse than the ones I was already carrying. If I wanted something I'd always have to throw something else away, which feels bad. I don't think durability by itself is a problem, I just think the system was really poorly balanced and executed. What I actually wanted to find more of was straight rupees, but that almost never happened. I think what they should have done was given money as a reward more often, weapons as a reward less often, but increased the durability of most weapons to match their new rarity. That way I'd have a smaller chance of constantly overflowing in quality one-handed swords.

One thing that I think gets left out of the convo about BOTW’s durability system is that it also pushes players to get creative in battle environments and other methods of attack. I found that seeing my melee weapons/wands as limited resources meant I was constantly searching for new ways of blowing up, shooting, pitfalling, etc my enemies

I love Breath of the Wild, but a big gripe I had was that the chests couldn't reasonably contain anything unique; a helpful boost (at best) rather than a cool moment of discovery. Ashes of War are really looking like a consistently exciting reward to find.

Not to mention the catalyst (is this what they were called?) system for the creation of unique potions. God, I can't wait for this game.

The summons also add to this imo. Reused enemies as an item. Genius.

I like the initial ideas of weapons and durability. It furthers the theme of this Link being a hunter who not only has to remember where his prey is but also where he can get the tools to do so. It makes it so that you have to mark and remember where weapons can be found during each cycle. The system overall could definitely be improved like being able to buy weapons from shops or being able to smith weapons using the materials you find.

The only problem I had with BotW's durability system was the lack of a basic weapon to fall back on. Beyond Oasis on the Genesis/Megadrive also had weapon durability but it also gave players a dagger to fall back on when all weapons were broken or when trying to conserve weapons.

BOTW's looter approach had the exact opposite effect of what is intended in my opinion in that it made the chests almost entirely unexciting and unrewarding. Not only because the weapons are basically just consumables but also because you likely already have too much of it in your inventory.

Breath of the Wild has what I call "Blueberry chests." In Star Ocean Till the End of Time, a significant number of chests were filled with blueberries, a common hp-restoring consumable. Chests rarely felt special as a result. Elden Ring isn't immune to Blueberry chests itself (why is it always mushroom), but in BotW there are almost no rewards that feel special.

true, but 50% of all chests in elden ring have mushrooms in them.

I without a doubt commend Ashes of War. They are another way to customize a character, they make use of assets that already existed so they aren't a chore to make... It's just neat.

I'm going to play Elden Ring with this music on.

i spent so much more time running away from enemies for the sake of keeping my weapons than seeing what i could get in return, and that's what made me realize i wasn't really having that much fun

After playing through the whole game on Switch, I emulated it and re-played through the game with infinite weapon durability. I used MORE weapons and had more fun than I did in the switch version. So many weapons are not worth picking up and wasting the inventory slot just for a gimmick. But now, I can have lightning weapons, frost weapons, fire weapons, magic rods, boomerangs, plus my trusty rwgular swords and wooden alternatives for thunderstorms. I can have different types of bows based on their qualities instead of just getting seven copies of guard bows and I can collect all of the random stat upgrades as progression. It turns BotW into a much better experience, imo.

When I saw the ash of war all I could think was “those poor QA testers”

I appreciate what Nintendo was trying to do with weapons and keep that sense of reward attached to them with the durability system; it just wasn't well implemented. Constantly having to dip in and out of a pretty basic menu really interrupted the flow of combat. Weapons should've just auto-replaced or rotated like they do in the second Ni No Kuni game.

The one thing I am struggling to wrap my head around with BotW, that there isn’t a single blacksmith anywhere in the game to give you the chance to repair what weapons you have…or better yet a skill tree on smithing to prolong/repair the weapons you have. Foraging for weapons early in the game was cool while you were building yourself up, but it became extremely tiresome for me after the first dozen hours or so. It absolutely gutted me to discover that even the Master Sword had a cooldown period of use against “unworthy enemies.” The one weapon in the game that you shouldn’t have to worry anything about, and they still put a leash on it.

Personally I loved BoTW's weapon durability system it made fights more interesting because weapons would break and you'd have to scramble to improvise something new. I never avoided fights in that game because the combat is so fun and I never felt like I lost more than I gained. Plus it feels awesome to be able to finally pull out a super strong weapon when you go up against a powerful enemy

Something worth considering in the Souls context is intrinsic reward. The Souls games rely less on loot because a lot of the fun comes from applying skill and strategy in combat. That means that any loot given is better off diverse than especially powerful. Ergo why Ashes of War fit, why twinblades have returned, and why spells are less orthodox. Your reward for finding stuff is, actually, more ways to do stuff.

Your insight into game design is always impeccable. I never really thought about the “why” these systems exist as they do but it makes perfect sense the way you explain it.

Coming back to this after beating the game is pretty interesting. Talismans and their countless effects, miracles, incantations, ashes of war, and spirit ashes, etc. They gave players a lot of unique stuff to find and typically, unless a dungeon gives a spirit ash (I mean really, there's like 3 super good ones that render the rest irrelevant) I usually walk away feeling very rewarded. Your video was very predictive. :)

Subbed. The algorithm works. Got randomly recommended one of your vids and it has changed the way I look at games. Skyrim especially. Been getting more and more into vr and seeing the differences between Skyrim vr and Skyrim flat is quite eye opening. Wouldn't have seen them without your videos.

I really did find while playing the CNT that each dungeon really did have something tucked away that justified exploring it. A unique item, weapon art, weapon, armor or summon was around every corner. They've given themselves so many slots to fill on the character sheet to fill it with essentially and I never felt like the "loot" I was getting was useless even the Noble sorcerer Summon (a summon who legitimately will cower and run from strong enemies) or the bubble spell. Those things add to the world too, they're bad but in a way that is kinda funny and/or brings color to the world. Like you see a chest at the bottom of a lake and take time to get to it and open and I'd much rather find a weird quirky weapon art or even a Sheep Summon than just another iron sword. Also the dungeons have unique boss fights at the end of them as well so even if the reward is kinda bad, seeing something like the Guardian Hound and knowing that each dungeon has a possibility for similarly weird encounters sticks with you and gives you excitement to see it through.

It helps that FromSoft has pretty large library of weapons and weapon art concepts to fill out their world. Just think of many different weapons there are in DS2 and DS3.

Another way to handle it without having to add animations or new assets would be to add a crafting/repair/upgrade system, letting raw materials be used to duplicate items you've found before, octo jelly could function as a repair kit for all weapons, there could be a blacksmith of some kind that could apply multiple modifiers to weapons (increasing cost of both rupees and materials with each modifier added) and after weapon breakage still have the choice of dropping or repairing instead of exploding into a million pieces. Materials used to upgrade and repair equipment could provide meaningful loot without having the "this is too valuable to ever use" effect on rare items. Also the champion weapons could have an auto regen feature similar to the master sword (and maybe elemental affects correlating with their associated champion abilities) or have more unique move sets on the champion weapons to set them apart and make them worth using.

Personally, I can appreciate BotW’s concept of having one item that does a relatively simple thing, but it’s how it flows with other items at your disposal and the environment where it gets interesting. It feels really satisfying finding a more efficient way to approach your fights like taking advantage of Stasis+, parrying a Remote Bomb to send enemies flying, or using Cryonis or some other vantage point to create a bullet time on enemies. Champion abilities add more to this by encouraging you to experiment with the ways you can use them for adventuring as well as combat. Durability was never an issue for me, even for my first play through back in 2017, but I can definitely see how it would frustrate some people given how you can experience the game in any order. The only thing I could ask for is more enemy variety, which looks like will be issued in the sequel 🤞. As for Eldin Ring, I haven’t played much of it, but it’s a very beautiful game and a I had a lot of moments where I’d see something far off and say “yeah, I want to go there.” Both great games without a doubt but BotW will always have a special place in my heart.

gamer : "what do you put in the chests?" devs : "breakable epic legendary mighty weapons and armors"

Hmmm, I'm struggling a lot with how to word this, but comparing for example Stalker and BotW, I feel like one strikes a much better balance between permanent progression and spontaneous gameplay than the other. So, for reference, in Stalker items can break, but they're not necessarily permanently broken. They stay in your inventory, so you can return to the same offensive potential you had with a gunsmith or a repair kit. In BotW, when your sword is broken it's gone. If you get into a tussle with a bunch of bandits in Stalker and break your gun, that's essentially like a debuff that you can fix with an inventory item or restore at a hub town. In BotW, your weapons are less like weapons in the way most games use them and more like, say, potions or spell scrolls. You can hoard a few, but unless you have a constant supply of highly potent ones, it's not something you can generally plan around.

I've never really minded the weapon durability much in Botw, but I do certainly hope they refine it for the second game, and it's quite simple; just add repair and crafting/upgrades to them. Let players be able to fix busted weapons, augment them with magic or buff, and thusly give more purpose to the mountains of items that are collected.

Botw durability system have another unintended problematic effect - it makes player hoard weapons and don't use best of them, because "there might be better time to use that thing". And this bad times never happens because you keep getting new weapons

I remember TB Skyen had a thread about BotW’s weapon durability system (now deleted because of bad reception) where his view on it was that the knowledge of where powerful weapons were contained was a reward for exploration itself, as an extension of the idea of weapons as resources rather than permanent tools like runes. The other weapons were meant to carry you between the points where you’d get more powerful weapons, and the low durability and large variety of weapons meant you were forced to play through multiple types of weapons and learn the ins and outs of them instead of just relying on one style, which gives you knowledge of which weapons you like using and which ones you want to avoid. That means that once you’ve gotten far enough into the game that you can reliably defeat the enemies holding those weapons, you are rewarded by having knowledge of which weapons you want to kit yourself out with and the exact location of where those weapons are when you need to replace them. While that line of thinking doesn’t necessarily absolve the system of its inelegance, I think it’s an interesting reading of the system that falls in line with BotW’s general focus on exploration

*People complaining about weapon durability Me, a Fire Emblem player: You merely adopted the weapon durability. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see unbreakable weapons until I was already a man. Same thing for pokemon, but to run out of move pp is pretty hard to do to be honest.

The weapon durability thing was the reason my first priority in BOTW was getting the master sword. At least it will regenerate after a while. Currently working on clearing the master trials, so that I can get that boost to its durability.

This was honestly a good video that I didn't know I needed to watch but grateful I did. Just added alittle perspective to the gaming world that I enjoy knowing. Thank you!

For me the thing with weapon durability is that it's just not what I want from Zelda. I love building up my arsenal of unique weapons and tools that have unique effects on enemies. Instead I just have a row of basically the same weapon that I don't want to use because I don't want to use it and lose it forever.

You know, while it was still at the BotW part, I was thinking, "Why not have weapon *upgrades* instead of tons of weapons that can degrade?" Interesting to see that Elden Ring will go that route. Dark Souls already did, kind of - you found lots of weapons (and armour), of course, but you also found materials to make the weapons/armour stronger, or change the type of damage they did (fire, divine, etc). I'm pretty excited for Elden Ring - yours are about the only videos I've been watching about it, because you focus on mechanics and behind-the-scenes stuff, instead of story and lore, which I generally prefer to go in blind for.

Static weapon assets are incredibly simple to make, costing little relative time. They have no moving parts, tend to be able to be canabalized from like-models, and can usually be built with primitive shapes, or nearly primitive ones, unless you're making bizarre final fantasy weapons, which Zelda avoids. The prime issue botw faced was not a matter of assets. It was a matter of game mechanics. If every weapon was better than the last, power would spiral out of control and the variance between hard to reach and easy to reach chests wouldn't matter. If chests remained static, but power was the sole determinate of the chest's value, nobody would look for the weaker ones. The weapon durability system encouraged continual exploration, which was the central focus of the game. The big downfall of it was in making enemies too beefy for the weapons- a problem they leaned in to in service to their central aim, but one they were rightly criticized for.

Smart…but the majority of players still hate the durability solution. It often takes a great amount of time and effort to abtain a certain good weapon…to know it will brake next boss fight is just a huge turn off

This is sort of related but the more I played of BoTW the more I realised I didn't like the mini dungeons. You knew what the reward was before you even entered, and they were essentially filler content. It wasn't a 10/10 game like I thought when I first started playing, still great though. Elden ring looks like it's gonna give me some of that feeling I got from OoT when I got a new item, and the dungeons i've seen so far seem more varied than the mini ones from BoTW which I'm excited about

I think that's one of the things BotW may have been solving, but it's also that open world games can have you approaching problems with the same strategy forever (silenced sniper rifle every camp) It forces you to think on your toes an use the environment more

I think my issue with BOTWs version is all the weapons have pretty bad durability. An ability to repair a heavily damaged weapon would've been cool. Make it expensive so that the player really thinks about which weapon he is using it on. Also the master sword should never have a cool down period.

your videos are so pleasant to watch! im trying to avoid elden ring spoilers and spoilers to the other games i havent played so i cant watch all of your videos, but they are always such a treat c:

Weapon durability was easily the *WORST* thing about BotW for me. You could find an AWESOME flame sword that was hidden away, and just as you start to celebrate what you found, you remember that it will break in 30 swings, with no way to fix it, and suddenly all that excitement dissolves instantly. That is tragic.

Personally I would have been fine with every chest just being filled with a Shotel or a firekeeper soul, but I suppose that would not be seen as ideal for everyone. Heh.

It's certainly helped by the fact that elden ring just has a huge variety of unique weapons and armor to be found too

"How does From Soft answer the chest problem?" - *Ateria leaf* - *Mushroom*

I think this ashes of war, or just in general, options to augment existing armor, is a great system, and I intend to use it as a Dungeon Master as well. I want to reward players, but I can only give out so much gold and magic items before they all have artifacts out the wazoo

I know Zelda games aren't really one for an upgrade system, most of what you get is for a specific purpose and I think they backed themselves into a corner when faced with something that had an RPG element to it. That said, I really think this could have been better handled, if we had something that could have just increased the durability on weapons like a whetstone, or even have a blacksmith repair weapons at the point of breaking would have made things a lot more bearable and not so much resource management. Hell, even something like a permanent strength boost, so we don't waste half of our Great Flameblade's durability fighting a moblin.

It somehow simultaneously felt like weapons broke too easily and that I always had no room for more weapons. Weapons after combat were nice, since you would rarely go through an entire combat (multiple weak enemies or few strong enemies) and still have the weapon you started with, but weapons while exploring and while in shrines often requires me to drop a partially used weapon for one with more durability. It did also occasionally discourage fights (like you said, weapons are resources) because as part of the opportunity cost of the fight, you have to factor in the weapons you will lose and gain from the encounter.

Weapons in BOTW for me faced the "I'll use the strongest ones last" which is the same issue consumables have always had in video games. Player get to the end of the game and have a stupid amount of high-damage/level consumables but can't use it on anything anymore. Players horde this gear throughout the game saying they'll use it when they need it only to overcome most challenges with using more of the weaker gear. There's no "benefit" to using higher tiered gear which is the issue. You kill things 10% faster only once.

I loved how cinematic the breath of the wild section was! Excellent camera work, as always, Zullie. And excellent points too -- I started using exclusively the Master Sword and specific weapons I farmed from Lynels for their high damage modifiers and durability. Never saw a reason to use any other weapons aside from elemental ones.

I honestly don't know why i didn't mind the durability i BoTW, but when i got the Master Sword i almost exclusively used that. my biggest gripe with the game is that there is never any REAL incentive to explore. you always know what you're gonna get, spirit orbs... every time. That along with there not being any real dungeons or temples is unfortunate. i hope that in the second one they really go all-in and make alot of armour, weapons and other thing that makes the world more interesting to explore. I also feel like they could've made more cool "rare" weapons with high durability that you can buy back when they break or something.

Botw was originally conceptualized to be similar to camping/pioneering/living off the land. Nintendo really wanted rhe player to focus on what the land/setting itself had to offer. They wanted players constantly looking around saying, what in this area looks cool? What should I approach, grab, investigate? I think finding weapons HAD to be part of that. Think of the boat oars buried upright in the sand, or mops at stables. That's a really unique way to INTRODUCE looking for weapons. But it then requires that the player needs to want to look for weapons, so weapons need to be impermanent etc. I agree with others that keeping durability was important, but introducing repair and improvement mechanics that used up resources would have improved matters.

I liked quite a bit about Zelda’s system, as it led to creativity and experimentation, with tense moments, but that wore out in late game when you’re just throwing away powerful weapons for another or are more easily able to avoid combat. I think they should do a dual approach. Once you get a weapon it’s registered in your Sheikah slate. You can then go to designated locations across the map to reforge that weapon with weapon parts. Weapon parts are a blanket resource you get whenever your weapon breaks, but may also be available for purchase at certain places. Weak weapons cost less the reforge, but give few weapon parts when breaking. Strong weapons cost a lot, but give more weapon parts. This way you’re always getting something when you engage in combat, even if a weapon breaks.

The questions that immediately spring to my mind are: -will the Ashes be permanent alterations to weapons or interchangeable? -if they are permanent, can you get multiple copies for multiple weapons? -do they have different effects on different weapon types? -will they have unique interactions with enemies/elements/upgrades/npcs/etc? Almost every video leaves me more hungry to get my hands on the full game.

Honestly it kind of reminds me of the dungeon system in Bloodborne, there’s so many valuable items in those dungeons the lower you go that either help you open up other dungeons (like certain hard to find materials like red jelly), better or different versions of a weapon that can only be found there (uncanny saw cleaver), and the upgrade materials for your weapons that are hard to find in the base game (blood chunks, blood rocks, cursed blood gems). Now that they’ve added ashes of war and it’s in open world, I can’t imagine all the hours I’m gonna spend just riding around like a maniac trying to find everything the game has to offer lol

BotW pro tip: The better your weapons are in your inventory, the better the weapons are that will spawn in the world. Also the harder the enemies will be. Want nothing but royal weapons to show up? Throw away or use up the soldier weapons and even the knight weapons as soon as you can. Replace them with royal weapons. Easiest way to do this is find a Hinox, climb up high, put on all your stealth gear, and glide down onto it while it's sleeping. Grab the weapons off its necklace and then either run away or teleport away. Boom, upgraded with zero effort. "But I need a hammer and that's a low grade weapon" Either get a better hammer in the Goron areas or just use the Master Sword for that. Once your weapons are better, you'll also start finding better weapons that also have good features, like upgraded durability, quick shot, upgraded damage, etc.

For most of the game I didn't even have the option.. either was using Meteorite Staff or a weapon which was locked to the one Weapon Art it came with. The only point I even used Weapon Arts was once I finally got Rivers of Blood and then before that Hoarfrost Stomp pre-patch when it was amazing.

This was a surprisingly insightful dive into open world game design, Zullie. I’d love some more development/game design-based videos. I think you have some interesting things to say!

i never had a moment where i was running out of weapons while playing botw, it was quite the opposite most of the time where i had to throw the worst weapons i had away. Lets also not forget that alot of the chests in botw have other types of resources not just weapons in them.

Another thing that I think definitely helps is that there really aren't that many chests in elden ring, most equipment is dropped from enemies in the world, which somehow makes the chest loot and most of the random drops both feel more rewarding.

These videos are like little treats into the world of game development. Love these.

My favorite part of BOTW was finding a shrine, being made to fight the same 'guardian' enemy I would have to fight at least 30 times, and being rewarded with an orb that equated to 1/40th of what I'd need to max my stamina.

This finally puts why I had such a tough time with botw into words. I love the combat in that game (I'm pretty combat-focused in general), and the durability system discouraging combat meant that a major reason why I would enjoy the game is gone (or at least drastically reduced). Seeking out powerful enemies and challenging myself in combat is a big part of my enjoyment in more open-ended RPGs; I love running to an enemy I shouldn't be able to realistically take down yet, overcoming that challenge, and being rewarded with some crazy ahead-of-the-curve reward that lets me flex on the cannon fodder enemies as a reward for my victory. But when every encounter is essentially just a resource trade-off, nothing I pick up really matters, and so the reward incentive to take on challenging encounters or optional fights disappears. Every cool weapon I obtain is just a metaphorical Phoenix Down that I'm too afraid to actually use unless it's absolutely necessary.

This problem was already solved decades ago though. Generic weapons, a few uniques sprinkled throughout the world, durability and repair all existed in Fallout 3 in 2008 (IIRC STALKER may have done all this in 2007 actually). DeS did it again in 2009, then DS took it a step further by allowing the player to make even generics feel distinct via infusions-while still using a reasonable durability system (granted From had the benefit of reusing some assets). My personal opinion: BoTW just reflects how Nintendo is persistently 20 years behind the rest of the industry. Once I realized the optimal way to play the game was to avoid battle, I lost interest personally. And generally speaking, character animations are more taxing on devs than weapon models. So, the Ashes system didn't alleviate any development challenges, but rather it was an even bigger challenge From took on because they're so damn good. I appreciate the vid though. Gave me a new perspective on Nintendo's design intent here, which had puzzled me for a long time.

I can't express how much an improvement it is to switch your infusions on the spot rather than fast travelling to the Hub to do it

I honestly expected I'd hate the durability system in BotW at first, but after playing that game for a bit and getting a feel for how frequently and where you tend to find certain weapons, it ended up clicking really well for me and had me use all weapon types all the time. The way BotW has you improvising on the fly against groups of enemies is a type of encounter design I hadn't seen before and haven't seen since, at least not to that degree.

Another excellent video Zullie! You're one of my favorite content creators. I'm definitely looking forward to Elden Ring, and I'm hoping BotW 2 changes the weapon durability.

Subscribed, solely for that amazing "energetic-but-relaxed" background music. Me gusta.

I personally like the Gatcha approach wherein you have a bunch of the same weapons lying around in all sorts of different places, but collecting the same weapon can upgrade the base power of that weapon. So let's say you get a royal claymore that might start out at 15 might but increase to 40 as you collect each version of it. This way you don't have to vary up the loot pool as much and your weapons still have purpose

I feel like BotW could have done two things (one small, one large) to really help with this issue The small one is just...give us ONE melee weapon (not bombs) that doesn't have durability, buy deals shit damage. Even if it's just punching bokoblins, it gives us an option to at least try to save durability The larger change that I'd love to see some version of in the sequel is to draw inspiration from Dark Cloud. In that game you can find multiples of weapons, upgrade them, then break them down into a magical material that can buff another weapon. When you level up a weapon it absorbs all its buffs permanently, and if you can get weapons to certain stat requirements you can evolve them into more powerful weapons. I think something like that would be huge in BOTW and make it worthwhile to find new weapons - your weapons will eventually break, but you still get a permanent benefit from having used that weapons

I really hope Nintendo listened to criticisms for BotW and fixed them for the sequel. I want a game with more story, better rewards for exploration, and a proper difficulty curve. None of that every reward is a shrine and a breakable item or a wonderfully difficult early game, but a piss easy mid to late game stuff. Spread out those Sheikah runes (Which they might do with the fancy new arm and abilities they showcased) and maybe add some more depth to combat. Not so much that it loses the accessibility it has, but definitely reward exploration with fun challenges and the like.

I am one of those that avoids conflict yet loves exploration in games. I played Witcher 3 and loved that your weapons could be damaged any time and it did happen to have the repair mechanic. But especially because it had the repair mechanic I used my other weapons only for the single fight that it breaks in. Although I did upgrade and use multiple weapons, at any given part of the game I genuinely equip the most powerful and use oils and potions and get into the battle and when it breaks I finish the fight and I immediately get it repaired and use the same one again till I find a more powerful one. This pretty much made the finding the gear pretty underwhelming even though the missions to gather the gear are fun because chances are I get the gear a bit too late. With BoTW, any wild goose chase and I find a weapon . I am happy to keep it. Because I know I absolutely will use it. And the fact that weapons are tools kinda nature makes any hunt for them ultimately worthwhile because you aren't gonna just keep it in your inventory or sell it. And also my friends who also avoided certain conflicts felt smart for knowing when to hold back and not annoyed for not fighting everything. So your input is pretty interesting and new to me. I do happen to do that in a few games where it makes sense for my player character to go after everything that moves, i.e, Prototype from 2009 and Just Cause because it makes sense to me from a roleplaying perspective. But I will definitely look out for Elden Rings handling of things. I am curious now, thanks.

little did you know that in the final game From would settle on a different solution: fill the chests with mushrooms and traps

I never ran out of weapons in my BotW playthrough. When I reached the end game, I just farmed Lionels until I was happy, then was completely free to do whatever I wanted. Lionels are a lot of fun to fight and track down too.

I think the limited durability on BoTW fits perfectly with the "wild" thematic. This link is the hero of the wild, he adapts to avery environment and battle so you must use what you have at the moment and some times improvise to overcome any obstacle.

I'd probably put in relics, that would have lore information as well as can be turned in to a location for special points that in turn can be used to purchase the weapons in question.

Games like Xenoblade X gave me WAY more reason to explore by bring able to not only find weapons and gear, but also a BUNCH of super unique locations, a BUNCH of super unique enemies, and a BUNCH of things that give the game world a ton of lore and history. BOTW picked like the laziest and worst option to the point where it killed any desire I had to explore the game. Looking up all of the secrets years later, I missed very little.