Oh, there is a "Lens of Truth" . . . Complaining about Ocarina of Time

[+wongojack]

"Shoot what? The slingshot? hookshot? maybe the boomerang? Hmm, it didn't work, I guess I'll have to use Sun Song and then wait around until dawn again? Or maybe I just missed the target or the correct sun postion? Maybe I need to be up in this tree? Hmm, nothing's working. Do I need to be the kid? I guess I'll just keep playing the game and come back for whatever this is when they make it obvious that I need it."

 

Just another throw away line from your fairy companion would have been appreciated. Something like "Lighting these torches would be easier with the right arrow. Maybe there is something near Lake Hylia that can help."

 

It is possible that the actual manual mentions the Fire Arrows (I haven't checked). I would have read that when the game was new which could have helped me to look for more gear and perhaps circle back to this spot. That would have also potentially helped with the blue tunic . . . I had already looked at a walkthrough, but playing the challenge mini-dungeon in the Gerudo village probably would have tipped me off to the need for Fire Arrows BEFORE Ganon's castle, so they did put that in there. I just skipped it because I knew it was optional from the walkthrough.

 

@Atariboy - I read no walkthrough or spoilers for the game before getting stumped by not having the lens in the Shadow Temple, so I made it through the Fish -> Open Mouth sequence without assistance. At least I got some parts of this thing right. Of course that will actually block the story, so it stands out that you MUST figure it out which helps focus the player.

 

@leods - I think you've gotta play this one with history in mind. I'm not sure what exactly you found boring, but the character interactions are certainly not compelling. The plot of the actual story is only passable at best, and there is a sense that the devs actually wanted to slow you down, so you run between places seemingly unnecessarily. That being said, I think the dungeon design is very good and provides a nice balance of challenge and reward. I'd certainly compare this to the Tomb Raider games of the same era and acknowledge that I liked them both, but found the flaws quite easily.

 

One thing that I found interesting is that every game used to support a mode where you pressed a button and then would "look" around a room. For a while, this mode was actually just part of the game. If you needed a better look at what was happening, you stood there and looked around. Some games actually kind of hid things so you had to be patient and use this feature to make sure you saw all of the environment. That type of exploration is slow and pretty much absent from games now. When I think about current-gen 3rd person games, they seem to have completely eliminated this gameplay element. You just walk Batman around and the things you are meant to see basically jump out at you.

[+wongojack]

@tanooki - Even though I know people who own it, I've done no research into Breath of the Wild. I guess I had heard they made it different, but I didn't realize it was such a big break from the series' past? How would you describe the changes?

[Tanooki]

I would say that it's like if you took the base qualities of the Skyrim style of play, then merged it with many of the classic lore and gear pieces of classic Zelda it's a rough way to make a fair comparison.

 

Zelda starts you out basically in your underwear and you have a technological slate that helps with info and other basics, little at first. You must arm yourself with a stick and work yourself up from there much like a Skyrim type game. Kill stuff and take their gear to get better attack and defensive powers. You can not play it like Zelda, even if you have the classic 3 hearts, one hit you're dead, so it's tactical playing now, as running in swinging for a one hit death will be your one hit death. It's all about a vast terrain with a nice general pointer like Skyrim on where to go, or sub-quests to opt into. You just explore and explore some more, try and figure out why the land rotted and changed into what it is now then do something about it. You're coming back from a long nap, kind of like in Skyrim with one coming back as a lost member of the dragon callers. Skyrim has you falsely a prisoner almost sentenced to death, you start with nothing and build up. That's how this Zelda works. You grow, explore, take on jobs, harvest some goods to help craft(optional more or less) or trade for other stuff.

 

The game is the anti-Zelda. No long winded empty boring as hell wide open spaces that are a pain and annoyingly empty to traverse. The big dungeons are out replaced with total areas of the land fairly well being a dungeon(like Skyrim) and your mid-boss is some creature that keeps you from the classic Zelda dungeon special item (like a waterfall top Lynel to get Shock Arrows) and that special item basically is your 'big key' to pop open the divine beast which is like a big puzzle box dungeon before taking down the real boss. Like Skyrim it's so vast you can fast travel once spots are open, and you can find stables to get horses to use and pop back up when needed. You have various magics, some to manipulate environment or objects, and others to do some damage (bombs) but they're unlimited which is helpful. The game is quite tactical as you can find many ways to solve a problem in your way like a mob of enemies or some big gap. It's to me what Zelda has needed for years as it's anything but stale but stays happily in the Zelda lore too so you get the good stuff without the ancient save system and sparse annoying wide open walks of boredom that have plagued it since Ocarina of Time.

[Atariboy]

If my recollections aren't off, I don't think you can reach the island until you have the longshot as an adult? So it can only happen as an adult, which means that you can only fire arrows or the longshot towards it.

 

The instructions are pretty clear, so if you don't mind some speculation, I wonder if you thought you went back to try it after the lake was again filled with water and just didn't? I know that happened to me with a couple of the Skulltullas on Ocarina of Time 3D earlier this year, like one next to the frozen waterfall in Zora's Domain. I was certain I got that and even double checked it, yet I actually hadn't.

 

It wasn't until I went through the entire list off Gamefaqs four or five times that I happened to locate it. For some bizarre reason, it's only out at night unlike those in dungeons and such, even though Zora's Domain isn't in the open air with a view of the sun (And the day/night cycle is frozen in Zora's Domain just like dungeons and such where these spiders are always out regardless of the outside conditions).

 

So I never worried about if it was daylight or nighttime when checking out this location, and apparently I always just happened to wander in during the daytime when it wasn't going to be out. Yet I sure swore I had gotten it about 10-15 hours earlier, so it ended up just about the last thing I got when I 100% finished it a few months back.

Edited December 29, 2017 by Atariboy