Zelda code dives and Breath of the Wild shenanigans

December 26, 2021 4:56 PM

For Zelda Day 2021:

• Behind the Code looks into disassemblies of the code of NES Zelda games to explain weird behavior: Item Drop Manipulation in Legend of Zelda - Hit Detection in Zelda - Bugs in Zelda II.
• Here's some chests in BotW that are very hard to open,
• and Youtuber/Breath of the Wild expert Kleric shows us (with a great deal of effort) how to open an "impossible" one, as well as how to do a 'flurry rush' wherever you want, how to get the Master Sword whenever, finishes a Divine Beast (a dungeon) with only a pot lid, and presents a short and entertaining collection of moments from his other videos.

Also, among other things, here's Gamespot's 317 things you (probably) didn't know about Breath of the Wild.

For earlier posts, check out the tag zeldaday!

posted by JHarris (25 comments total)

I have played almost no modern video games, but I recently played through Skyrim with an “always look up the answer” approach, and this week I decided to start BotW without doing that. I feel like I have almost no idea what I’m doing, like, what the hell does amber do? There’s exceptionally little guidance from the game itself. I’m very torn between the desire to have a “pure” experience, and to just stuff my head with every spoiler in existence.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:24 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

I played Breath of the Wild when it came out, kind of frantically trying to stay ahead of my son, who was ten and didn’t get the no-spoilers idea. It was great. I highly recommend.

What does amber do? You can beat the game without knowing. Eventually someone will ask you for some, though.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:03 PM on December 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

If you want tips re: amber, let me know. I won't spoil it if you aren't explicit, given your stated intent to play without spoilers.
posted by JHarris at 6:17 PM on December 26, 2021

I played BotW without having basically any idea what to expect, and it was fantastic. Highly recommended. There were just one or two things that I genuinely couldn't figure out on my own that I ended up looking up, mostly due to things like an irrational reluctance to enter Hyrule Castle until I'd completed everything else. The game has great replay value, especially with Master Mode, so if you're tempted to look up spoilers so that you don't miss anything, I'd suggest doing it for your Master Mode playthrough, and enjoy your first playthrough figuring things out as you go.
posted by biogeo at 6:28 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

Breath of the Wild is best left spoiler free, but there is a very important side quest called "The Priceless Maracas" that is possible to miss. If you've left the great plateau and progressed the main plot a bit, but NOT found that side quest, then you should look it up.
posted by swr at 6:30 PM on December 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

Nice! I'm replaying it right now and will be enjoying a few of these glitches...

There are very few limiting factors in BotW, Horace. Just explore and follow the main story at your pace.

Some very general tips with only micro spoilers for the first hour after you leave the plateau:

- Climb towers as soon as you can, and look around from them in binoculars mode to mark nearby shrines and do them whenever it's convenient.

- Buy or get a basic set of armor (like the set you can buy in Kakariko), upgrade it once at the nearby fairy and it'll help you survive.

- Take a few minutes to cook up a bunch of basic food (2 or 3 apples, some mushrooms and chicken, etc) so you're not eating raw materials in an emergency.

- You can't do anything "the wrong way" in this game - do whatever works! I throw bombs at enemies, whack them with metal items, attack when they're sleeping, etc. The game won't judge you and neither will we.

- Pretty much everything in the game past the initial few main missions you can come back to later at your leisure. There's no rush and nearly no "key items" or whatever.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:36 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

If, like me, you have an absolutely garbage sense of direction even in video games, feel no compunction about looking up the maps. I spent an embarrassingly long time lost just trying to get to Kakariko Village. On the plus side, the game is so lovely and pleasant to ramble around in that this was no great trial. In general, it's a game that rewards exploration of all kinds and a big part of the joy of the game is exploring and figuring things out. It also usually rewards creative problem solving, and doesn't railroad you into one specific play style.
posted by yasaman at 6:57 PM on December 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

My one BoTW hack for older gamers with more money than time is to buy the Amiibo cards from Amazon or eBay or wherever and just religiously grind out those drops every day. A lot of bosses that might be more challenging to beat or tedious to collect all the materials to make the meals to beat get a lot easier when you have a few hundred raw steaks and hyrule herbs in your inventory.

The discovery of bow lift smuggling and the early master sword hack this year has been delightful. Watching the runners figure out which routes work better with smuggling and which ones are still basically faster with the good ol' BTB has been interesting these past few months. And the beauty of it is that BoTW runs are still mostly comprehensible runs (I think, anyway), even if they use glitches.
posted by Kyol at 7:29 PM on December 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I wish I could like Breath of the Wild but it simply didn't feel like Zelda to me. Give me top down Zelda any day. Link to the Past. Link's Awakening. I love those. Even the original. Breath of the Wild just didn't grab me.
posted by downtohisturtles at 8:02 PM on December 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I luuuurved Breath of the Wild.
For others who lived it, definitely check out Sable. It's kinda like botw but without any monsters; just cruising around in your hover bike climbing cool things and doing side quests when you feel like it. Totally beautiful animation, inspired by Moebius; it feels like wandering around in a comic book.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:01 PM on December 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

Just in case you missed it, to save you the faux pas of not knowing who Zelda is.
posted by signal at 6:20 AM on December 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

The shrines were my favorite part of BotW. I'd have a look around, and go "Oh, okay, I see what they want me to do here," and then I'd take my time solving the puzzle in a completely different way that often took much longer, but hey, it was my way. This drove my husband bonkers, (the ball is RIGHT THERE just go and UGHH) but I enjoyed finding my own, alternate solutions to the puzzles. That's probably why I enjoy Kleric's videos so much.
posted by xedrik at 7:20 AM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

I have beaten and dearly love every Zelda game. It's my favorite series! If you've never given it a try, I highly recommend the indie spinoff Cadence of Hyrule. It's a crossover between Crypt of the Necrodancer and Zelda and requires you to dance your way through Hyrule. They've added a fair bit of content to the game, and with 3 campaigns at $40, it's an absolute delight.

For a different take on the 2D Zelda formula, I've been playing Chicory. It's a delight!
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 7:37 AM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

I spent an embarrassingly long time lost just trying to get to Kakariko Village.

I never got there at all until I was halfway through the game. It's quite flexible enough to support such excursions.
posted by StarkRoads at 7:41 AM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

If we're recommending games, RIME is like the exploration, puzzle solving, vistas, and thematic music of Breath of the Wild, with no enemies and no combat. It's not as long, but it's well worth playing, and has a great story. It's one of those games with no dialogue; the story is revealed through images, gestures, and sounds, and the rest is left to your imagination to fill in the gaps. That kind of storytelling (see: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons) is not for everyone, but I love it.
posted by xedrik at 8:05 AM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

RiME has a pretty brilliant moment where it doesn't tell you what's going on, but you can feel it.
posted by StarkRoads at 8:23 AM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

I literally beat NES Zelda yesterday on the handheld game and watch, with 2 deaths. The first was the dragon on level 4 with me being a moron and the second was early on level 9 with me just getting eaten by the wizrobes early on.

That being said, I've had BoTW in my switch for literally years and just can not get into it. I've started it 3-4 times and the whole thing just feels tedious and unappealing. Like they were trying to make Dark Souls lite but all the equipment is crystal and what you really need to do is find the best way to roast apples.

Not sure why it never clicked because I've played just about everything else zelda, but it just felt mindless and repetitive with a lot of window gloss. Like there's lots of stuff to do, but none of it ever felt fun.
posted by lkc at 9:11 AM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Happy Zelda Day!

In kindergarten there was one bulletin board that every week featured a different kid's likes and favorite things as transcribed on construction paper by the teacher. Back then I had some slight speech issues, so when it was my turn and I told the teacher what my favorite video game was, it got recorded as "Zoda"

And I never owned the original Zelda. I would rent it from a local no-name VHS rental store and hope someone left a save file because I was five and could only wander around killing octorocks because the dungeons scared me. About the only thing I could do was find my way to the Old Man, get the letter, and bring it to the Old Woman so she would sell me medicine. And figuring out how to do that was the greatest thing ever and the journey from one cave to the other felt like the most epic quest.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:25 AM on December 27, 2021 [4 favorites]

RonButNotStupid, you might enjoy Zelda Randomizer, which I've posted about on previous years.

Or, a fairly new arrival, Zelda Overworld Randomizer, which can change the game map itself and be used with the original randomizer!
posted by JHarris at 10:04 AM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

I was planning on making a whole post for it when there are more episodes, but since JHarris mentioned the Randomizer:

Griffin McElroy plays Trial By Fieri
posted by curious nu at 10:07 AM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the mention of the Zelda randomizers. I'll have to try them one of these days. It also might make for a fun joke for my cousin who is a much more serious Zelda player than I.

Another original LoZ memory: For some reason I'd obsess about the White Sword. I'd set out from the beginning of the game to get to that waterfall, climb the ladder, try to make it past the centaurs (I thought they were weird looking dogs), and enter the cave, but I never could. It's a good thing too, because I wouldn't have understood that you need so many heart containers to get it. I probably would have been devastated.

Also just recently I watched a longplay for a larf and realized that there are enough non-dungeon heart containers scattered around the overworld to get the White Sword. I never thought about that, even as an adult.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:00 AM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

Give me top down Zelda any day. Link to the Past. Link's Awakening. I love those.

Give Unsighted a gander if you haven't already. I'm playing it on Switch and it's fucking great.
posted by lazaruslong at 11:34 AM on December 27, 2021

Re: White Sword, yep. Between those and the Blue Ring, you can go into Level 1 with effectively 12 hearts and double damage. It's a same younger you was too intimidated to enter the dungeons, the original Zelda does a great job of increasing difficultly gradually.
posted by JHarris at 2:37 PM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

Eh. Younger me would go on to rely on chance meetings with his cousin to make forward progress on Zelda II. There was a while when I'd bring the cartridge with me on the off chance I'd see him.

And then when I got to the point where he had completed the first two dungeons and got the fairy spell, I was content with just going to some sidescrolling location and casting that because I thought it was cool to hover just out of reach of the moblins and other monsters.

It would be a while before I gained the confidence to actually play video games.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:39 PM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is a thing, I think....

When I was a kid, playing NES games, I lost a lot. The original Legend of Zelda took me several months to finish. Much of that time was spent finding Level 7 in the second quest, which is hidden in a diabolical place. But also, struggling to clear rooms of Darknuts and Wizzrobes was a trial by fire. While I can finish it with no deaths now, no one finishes Zelda their first time with a 0 on their save file.

Zelda got me started on something of a tear, though? In the following years, it would become commonplace for me to go to a video store, rent a game, and beat it over the course of the rental. Struggling through a game like this forges one's reflexes and playing stamina. So, my count of finished NES games numbers over 100.

It can be easy for me to forget, now, that I can play games like that only because of that experience, and of a few other games like it. A cousin of mine was much more standoffish about playing games as a kid. When they got to a difficult part, or just an imposing part, they would sometimes stop playing rather than try to force through it, or if I was there, they'd hand the controller to me. I tried to convince them to try to do it themselves, but it would be of no use. We're talking like first chapter boss of Paper Mario here.

I don't take the attitude like "kids these days can't cut it." I know that it's my own experience playing, and losing, countless times that are why I can play fairly well now, and that was borne of a time when you got given or rented an NES game, and that's what you had, so it was play it or nothing, and so even if a game was very hard one did the best they could. Players now have lots of choices, so they can just play something else if they hit a difficulty wall, and as a result people are less likely to develop that kind of skill. This isn't a judgement, but it is an observation.

I think, to make up for it, games should be a lot more accommodating of failure. I'm not talking about, for games where it matters, abolishing permadeath (since it is an integral part of some games), but if a player fails, a game should take measures to get them back into it quickly, and not berate them for it. There are games that it seems actually try to make you feel bad if you lose -- I'm thinking of Zelda II's game over screen, or the many times Smash Bros. games will make players listen to "FAILURE!" if you don't pass an event. I would not put things like that into a game, especially since the act of playing and trying to succeed at a really difficult game is kind of intellectually and emotionally draining, and cutting at a player's psyche at that moment is kind of playing unfair, IMO.
posted by JHarris at 8:32 AM on December 30, 2021 [3 favorites]