The assets are all meant for 480p. Tastes and all but I feel the same way about most upres-emulations and HD remakes, they just look better in their original form. Often the changes I like the most are things like Wind Waker HD’s swift sail & inventory changes, not adding more pixels.
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Glad I’m not the only one.
there are dozens of us.gif
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I agree but also did you guys see the HD assets from the recent leaks? They definitely make stuff much higher res than needed for the time.
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Easier to have higher res than needed that can be adjusted down than lower than needed and made up. Like if they found a way to get better resolution on it, if the originals are above that, it’s simple to make them fit than having to work a way to adjust lo-res to a higher.
Hope that makes sense, I’m feeling very sleepy right now
Yup I know what you mean, sorry I wasn’t clear. I meant I agree that things look best at their intended res but the assets are often so much better that if you could access them it would eliminate the issues sometimes encountered when you up the rendering res but are stuck with lower res assets.
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I didn’t see those but I’m aware of emulators running 3DS games hires and he assets and games look phenomenal.
You can find it all online now but just for example here’s items from the menu in OoT, pretty impressive compared to what we saw in-game IMO
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Oh! Have seen those. Very cool indeed.
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This is pretty much standard MO for any good game developer. You always make your assets at a higher level of detail than you need and cut down. There is a thing where if say I render an image at 4k and then downscale it to 1080p for final output, itll be sharper and cleaner than if I had just rendered it at 1080p. So you do that alot for textures, hell even character and prop models are typically modeled at really high polygon levels and then brought down to where they need them for in game.
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We’re talking about the actual assets that shipped in the game, not the working files that were turned into game assets.
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Looking at 854x480p TVs, there were 15" and 22" LCD panels that did widescreen 480p over component. From Panasonic and Sharp.
So not just 37" and 42" plasmas.
This is lovely, Back in the day I marvelled at the in-game 3D models when they’d rotate over Link’s head. They must have lowered the poly count for their appearance in-game but it’s still impressive how much detail they retained.
Worth noting that for the 3DS remakes they redrew all the icons with pixel art, resulting in a more precise look on the handheld’s LCD panels.
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Pretty sure these aren’t polygonal assets - they’re the inventory icons at the artwork resolution (or close).
Yeah, exactly, what I mean is these models must have been used as the basis for the polygonal assets in-game when Link gets an item and holds it over his head: https://youtu.be/if9sb7uLCo8
You can see visual effects employed are generally what the N64 was capable of, e.g. with the potions and the Zora Scale.
They didn’t reuse these pre-renders for the icons in the 3DS game, but had pixel artists redraw them from scratch
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Beat this one this morning. It was so epic. Really loved the last boss fight and what followed.
I loved nearly every second of this play through. It was even better than I remembered it.
Even the stealth sections are good. The combat was some of the best in the series. And the dungeons were top notch.
A very fitting swan song for the Ocarina of Time formula that Breath of the Wild shattered to take the series to even greater heights.
I freaking love Zelda games.
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At the time I have avoided the Wii and its silly and hazardous motion gaming. Videos of Skyward Sword didn’t convince me. I’ve always disliked the visuals, following the wave of criticism about the ridiculousness of the game with Link in the toilet, the crazy motion gaming, Aonuma and his puzzles (remember the Aonuma Style video). This summer I started it, intro + first zone just before the first dungeon and I found it not good, reminding me of WW for the wrong reasons (I don’t like this one). But an invisible force, surely my love for the Goddess Hylia, pushed me to start it again a month ago and after two consecutive runs it’s the BGE that I kindly place next to OoT in terms of pleasure and qualities from today perspective. What a twist.
Everything in Skyward Sword is neat with craftsmanship, the swansong of the old 3D formula for me.
The motion control requires an investment that is worth it. I’ll dare to compare it to an arcade stick, I mean that not everyone will get used to it, that you have to work on your posture, your movements (you have to play straight without a backrest as if you were going to play tennis sitting down, as mentionned by Peltz, arms relaxed and free with wide movements to be precise in the direction input), that in the end it works very well when you get used to it (it takes time yes) and the sensations turn out to be so pleasant and unique. I started with the small Motion Plus add-on at the bottom of the Wiimote and then I quickly invested in a last generation Wiimote with the integrated system: better ergonomics (original shape not modified), no assembly whose plastics can crack and even better sensitivity to acceleration (it’s better here) due I think to the higher position of the accelerometer. The thrust attack is still the most touchy in combat because you tend to move the other hand which makes a different move, you have to relax and stabilize the left arm. I hear that if you don’t take it as a game it can be painful.
Generally speaking, the sword move is triggered after a certain acceleration that you don’t have to force too much or you’ll get another acceleration when you stop, and you need a clear arm movement, which fortunately looks like casual sword moves, CQFD.
The combat gameplay behind it is well thought out, it’s pretty simple at first glance, which isn’t a bad thing, but there’s plenty to try in real time (without going through a menu and materials…), it’s unique, it’s classy. The game isn’t hard overall, but the difficulty curve shows up anyway (it’s better than TP, less telegraphed too) and for those like me who loved it there’s a flawless Hero mode, enemy damage x2, zero hearts to recover. It’s just a shame that they don’t offer it on the first run. I had a blast on the boss rush in Hero, the shield mechanic to use only in parry is well integrated.
The final boss battle would have deserved a harder final phase, but it’s still cool.
An often heard criticism, the fight against The Imprisoned that you have to play three times: let me desagree, it’s too well designed, a kind of reverse Donkey Kong where you have to prevent the giant boss from climbing in a vertical spiral environment with several interactions and strategies to discover over the course of the confrontations and constituting tools depending on how it goes, having certain consequences to test that can turn out to be punishing, contrary to the modern design of everything smooth to always keep you in the feel smart area, sorry (all this experimental and strategic side of the game in the fights is never chewed or explained and is entirely left to the player to discover by experimenting in a sometimes unique way given the controls, contrary to what may be implied by the critics on the admittedly numerous interventions of Fi but in other circumstances), over the course of three encounters that obviously introduce variations. This boss having an important place in the story. The first time I went through the central geyser and swooped down on its head, so epic. By the way the freefall gameplay is used intelligently throughout the game, in small touches that are fun.
How well designed this place is on all levels of the game… Even its descent against the Bokoglin Horde is good.
From an immersion point of view walking around positioning the sword in 1:1 to place the next backhand to a bat without even locking it, guilty pleasure.
On top of this combat gameplay focused on the noble sword, comes its story: trippy, solid.
The Skyward Strike B|
The tale around the original plans of the goddess Hylia has a pleasant relief, the story of our two heroes being intertwined with it.
I tried the HD version at a friend’s place, the right stick controls are off, even if technically it can work, with motion control it’s fine but not as cool as the nunchuk: you have to constantly recalibrate with a button (on Wii, the sensor bar does it automatically), not the same shape, joycon ergonomics… not the same weight, and according to some tests, it’s a bit more capricious to get the right angle of the sword strokes. Otherwise it responds well to acceleration recording, that’s the most important.
Graphically, the style is unique, made for the CRT with the famous filtering of textures like an impressionist painting with a crazy organic look for this console. In the HD version on a modern big screen however it’s more blurred than impressionistic. Not only for the obvious reasons of HD imagery but also because this version doesn’t use real time filtering anymore (which originaly can sometimes make the result vary depending on the angle of observation) it’s just become a simple big blurred and static texture, it looks overall flatter. Lazy decision I think. By the way, the original lighting of the characters is crazy in its volumetry and its total absence of artifact at all times. On Wii, amazing… On the HD version the lighting is just as good, we are just less surprised on recent hardware (however the shadows are less soft than on the CRT).
The other impressionistic filtering for the objects in the landscape realizes color and lighting changes, superb. Much less pronounced in the HD version unfortunately.
The exploration is special, it is not the noble and only big map OoT-like with a starting point: there is the sky area which contains the city and leads to the three big areas of the game on Earth, separated. These areas offer a particular progression because less in the dreamy ride, with a level design of mechanics and obstacles more dense and tortuous. In which we will return to progress and discover more deeply. I was very skeptical at the beginning, but everything falls into place and works well throughout the adventure, without teleportation and delivering the expected magic and mysteries. The evolution and use of the zones is excellent (especially Faron).
The frontier with the dungeons, while totally distinguished as usual, is thinner in terms of gameplay since there are many mechanics out of dungeon. At one point I found myself looking in the Faron area for one last cube (with dowsing, well thought out and optional, I rarely used it), cubes that bring up chests in the sky area. This leads me to the entrance of the first dungeon already done which is indicated to me. Inside, no more detection possible, I instinctively make my way straight to the end and find myself in the boss room, oops too far away. But then I see another door and I remember that the boss’s den, synonymous with exit in the previous games, had given me access to another small area once the fight was over, which is an important sacred source for the story and a place more of outside the dungeon (the detector works again) but within it, at the very bottom, with its little life, its atmosphere, and finally also a hidden cube that I had missed. It was unexpected, that is adventure, in a universe with a mastered and dense design.
I also stopped to notice all the things that were used in BotW, I didn’t think there were so many, like the materials to collect, here to upgrade some items, but present on a smaller scale of course. Less invasive, a bit more arcade (in the noble sense) and in a less catch-all way.
It’s great to see how much care and attention is put into every interaction, so that it rarely disappoints. When you try something, you are almost always rewarded: go back to the Sand Ship? (fifth dungeon) They put two or three nice things there just for the coherence and the pleasure of discovery, etc.
In terms of pure gameplay, it’s also well designed, from the Silent Realm tears collecting events, this time kind of 3D Pacman, surprisingly well designed, balanced and fun to play, to the mini games full of personality and fun.
Splendid music:
Maurice Ravel in Hyrul:
Angelo Badalamenti in Hyrul:
This sax:
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