“The Four”

April 2, 2020 7:04 AM

Four Of The World's Best Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Players Create Epic Gameplay Montage [YouTube][Cinematic Combat Montage] “RinHara5aki, Kleric, CHC Yu-Da, and Peco are, on their own, some of the most technically impressive The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild players on the planet — their videos showcasing advanced and obscure combat methods have accrued millions of views on YouTube. The four of them getting together for a single video is almost too much to handle. “The Four” is a combat montage that is the result of four months of work, and it is meant as a last hurrah for Breath of the Wild. With a sequel on the way, group leader RinHara5aki thought it would be a good idea to make a love letter to the game before saying goodbye.” [via: Polygon]
posted by Fizz (20 comments total)

• BotW Glitches & Tricks: Bullet-Time Physics, & "Spaceships" by Kleric [YouTube]
posted by Fizz at 7:13 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

The physics engine in BotW has led to some of the most bonkers wild shit I've ever seen in a game. I love how the community has come together to just embrace the fun weird side of Zelda. I need to go back to this game. I get the same sense of calm I get when playing Animal Crossing (even when I'm dying). The environment is so beautiful to just exist inside of.
posted by Fizz at 7:20 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

I love seeing the Japanese tropes in games like these and how they differ from western ones. For instance, the sleeping Hinox blows floating bubbles while sleeping. I've seen monsters do this in Monster Hunter World, and it took me a while to realize that's a symbolism showing a "sleep state," similar to our animations/cartoons showing "Zzzzzz"

Weirdest one I read about in Anime is characters bleeding from the nose when seeing an attractive woman! I don't think I've ever personally seen that in a game, but... a violent nosebleed upon seeing a person you find attractive? I guess it's akin to Lenny from Laverne & Shirley biting his wrist when a hot woman walks by, or Garth and Wayne from Wayne's World yelling "Schwing!" but I can't think of any other parallels... Perhaps a heart beating through a character's clothing from a 1940's Warner Brother's cartoon qualifies as well.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:26 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Weirdest one I read about in Anime is characters bleeding from the nose when seeing an attractive woman! I don't think I've ever personally seen that in a game, but... a violent nosebleed upon seeing a person you find attractive?

A million years ago I worked on the American import of a children's anime show and this baffled me there as well, but it's definitely a common trope.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:29 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

The music in that Zelda game is perfect, too. Fits the environment, and somehow manages to fit pretty much any of the zillion activities you can do.

Is it always a male that bleeds from the nose in Anime?
posted by SoberHighland at 7:30 AM on April 2, 2020

Who THE HELL figured out that if you put a limbless guardian on top of a raft it floats into the air?! HOW?!

But adding to previous comments, there was a lot I didn't like about this game, but the general feel of the world and the music did make me love it.
posted by KirTakat at 7:37 AM on April 2, 2020

I'm super late to the party, but I just got a Switch and this game last week. I now remember why I don't have gaming systems in the house during normal times, because I've ended up playing it for like 3 hours a day. But I agree - it is a gorgeous, huge game. It's nice to just get outside in the virtual woods.
posted by Fritzle at 7:37 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

I kinda thought I was done with BOTW but my friend and I thought of a quarantine meta-game:
- go to interesting spot in Hyrule
- pose
- take pic with phone
- send to other person
- they have to figure out where it is and take a pic in the same spot

It's actually been quite entertaining.
posted by daisystomper at 7:37 AM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

This puts a serious exclamation point on the "Gremlin Jesus" theory of Link. Lynels wandering up to this bored-looking ninja-fop rando who might be 130 lbs soaking wet, who suddenly just blurs out and now they're in a fight with four different kinds of god.
posted by mhoye at 8:05 AM on April 2, 2020 [9 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments removed. If all you've got to bring to a post is unrelated complaints about the platform the game is on, just skip the thread.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:10 AM on April 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

Man, I hadn't seen the BTB MIRV at 4:30, that's.. Wow.
posted by Kyol at 8:42 AM on April 2, 2020

(Also, I salute the "advanced and obscure" gag.)
posted by mhoye at 10:50 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

A longer form challenge - The Ultimate Eventide Island Challenge, although it is a bit of a spoiler if you haven't been there yet.
posted by Kyol at 11:09 AM on April 2, 2020

What I really appreciate about BotW is, you can get up to all this insanity, but it really is optional. You can beat the game and basically do everything with pretty straightforward combat skills -- throw a bomb here, shoot an arrow there, maybe lock on and hop aside and hit a guy. But if you want to, you can be fuckin' Time Lord Legolas/Aragorn/Gandalf hybrid and then rain MIRVs down on the landscape, terrorizing all Bokoblin-kind.
posted by tocts at 11:27 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh, and how - I was afraid of buying a Switch and BotW because honestly I play most games on their easiest setting and I still have difficulty with some of them. Bad hand-eye coordination, old age, slow reflexes, whatever. And yet, although Breath of the Wild is a bit challenging early on when you don't have a lot of hearts or a lot of stamina, the joke is that if you play through the game and then through the DLC and complete a lot of shrines (many of which are more cerebral than action driven), by the time you get to the end of the game you can steamroll through the final fights no problem. Some people don't like that, but I loved it. I kind of hate games where the enemies scale up in proportion with your character, but by the end of the game Link is a tiny walking god if you spend enough time tooling around Hyrule. I can still go out and find a hard fight if I want to, but Guardians are mostly a solved problem for me.

Honestly, if you're looking for something to do during coronatine, you could do worse.
posted by Kyol at 11:34 AM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Learning the guardian parry trick was a game-changer for me. And I'm still a hack-n-slash fighter, I don't even properly use my shield or even basic dodging. I just love how huge the world is, even if Link seems like a big douche.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:25 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I played this for my son, who's a huge Breath of the Wild Fan, and he was delighted by it. Thank you for posting!
posted by shirobara at 7:01 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Seems like a good place to brag about my accidental discovery (that probably everyone else knows about. You can drop bombs from the glider!

Now I greatly enjoy tiny, inaccurate bombing runs on poor unsuspecting bokoblins.
posted by fizban at 12:32 AM on April 3, 2020

I played BotW for 100 hours before bricking my Switch with a bad 3rd party dock. A couple of months passed before I found a UK shop that was able to repair it. I was overjoyed and transferred my saves to the replacement Switch I'd already bought by then. This was in late 2018, I think. I haven't been able to get back into it.

Even with those 100 hours behind me, I have no idea what is going on in this video. I felt like the combat in BotW was difficult and awkward, and I still have no idea how to reliably fight Lynels or even Guardians, but I gotta say this is impressive as hell and reinforces the fact that I'm just bad at the game.
posted by jklaiho at 11:48 AM on April 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

The cinematic bits in the video honestly I could do completely entirely without, that kind of string-laden pompus dramatic nonsense gives me a rash, but I do like the demonstration of ridiculous gameplay tricks.
posted by JHarris at 3:56 PM on April 4, 2020