NINTENDO CONSIDERED AND TESTED THE HOOKSHOT FOR ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD, THEN DECIDED AGAINST IT

>The following comes from an IGN interview with Eiji Aonuma. Aonuma was asked about why the hookshot wasn't included in Breath of the Wild.
>“We did consider using [the hookshot] to climb, and then you’d parasail down, but initially when we had the hookshot [in previous Zelda games], it was always that you target something, and that was a game mechanic of itself. But that kind of defeated the purpose of what we wanted to accomplish in Breath of the Wild. With the hookshot, we always had to give it towards the end of the game, or else players could just go anywhere. But in this game, you could do that by climbing and parasailing."
Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi also chimed in on the matter.

>"In the early stages of development, we did actually do some tests with double hookshots and just being able to kind of go anywhere, like Spider-Man. Your mobility and your speed was just kind of incredible. We did do some tests like that.
>Honestly, the hookshot kind of completely breaks the climbing mechanic. There's lots of fans in the staff, even at pretty high levels, who really like the hookshot and they kept bugging me about it. I eventually just had to say ‘No! Hookshot is gone. There will be no hookshot in this game. If we put the hookshot in this game, it’s not going to work.’ We were just going back to what we did before, and [Breath of the Wild] is all about doing new things.”


I think it's settled that Aonuma just hates fun. Even his own staff were like "why the fuck is this not in the game?" Can we just fire his ass and put someone else on the series who loves games?

Maybe it wasn’t a good fit for the game.

Much as I love the hookshot they aren't wrong. No one would ever climb again.

>Honestly, the hookshot kind of completely breaks the climbing mechanic.
He's right though. Unless it was an endgame reward ala that motorcycle it would've broken the entire game.

It's okay, Breath of the Wild isn't canon anyway

Then you just make a more interesting level design to make the hookshot more of a choice rather than the end all thing, like games with good game design.

OR you don't include something that'd break everything.

This.
You could make a hookshot thats a magnet and only attaches itself to certain things you can't climb.
It can also be used as a way to traverse a vertical shortcut once you've unlocked it, making long paths shorter.

>BotW level design is bad because an item that's not in the game can break the game of used.
Ok?

So you're telling me the entire game's level design should've been changed so you could use one item?

Your weapons break in game anyway, so I dont know why you would dislike having anything break anything.

>replace hookshot with grappling hook
>similar effect but now incorporates the physics and climbing of BotW
Done, add it to the next DLC

Botw has no level design. Downside of being a shitty open world.

Same to you.

>completely change your design philosophy to accommodate one item.

you know what you're right

>Same to you.
elaborate.

You can even have the grappling hook / whip work in combat, too.

I don't know why all this shit got removed. I thought Botw was about allowing you to do anything. From what Im seeing, this game has a lot more restrictions than openness like its fans claim repeatedly. Playing the game makes me feel like the devs wanted to make everything feel as slow as possible.

Except Nintendo use to have the design philosophy of having good level design until they realized there's fans willing to eat up anything.

does it really matter if they would have just packaged it right at the start like every other tool

There is no point to have the hookshoot in BotW.
None.
The hookshot was implemeneted in previous games because you could jump or climb higher walls.
So they designed the dungeons that included him in this way to get there with the hookshot something the climbing and gliding mechanism resolved pretty good

So fuck off with your shitty opinion

You should write a letter complaining that you should start with a Jetpack that allows you to quickly travel anywhere.
Then you can follow up that letter with another complaining about how everything is trivialized because why did they make a big game if you could just jetpack everywhere.

THIS would be interesting to see in the next Zelda though. Instead of complaining you could have proposed an idea like this, OP.

The hookshot could have been balanced easily by putting select areas where it can be used. Maybe having it where using it uses up a certain amount of stamina. I mean, why couldn't we have Just Cause: Zelda edition? Is it because the hardware has a streaming problem? Or was it because Nintendo really doesn't want players enjoying themselves with high mobility. Even the motorcyle is slow as fuck on the new DLC

jetpack =/= hookshot

What a wrong ass comparison.

Why stop at hookshot you la la baby man. Go all the way.

>The hookshot could have been balanced easily by putting select areas where it can be used.
Doesn't that just make it like the old hookshot then? That just seems like an excuse to shoehorn it into the game as a gimmick more than anything else.

Nah he knew what he was talking about while you're a retard.

Everything in Botw is a gimmick.

That's not an argument.

>Hi, I'm a Nintendo fan and I love sucking their cock reaaaaal hard! All their games are perfect!

Why are you guys acting as if it would ruin the game just by being there?

The grappling hook could have restrictions just like stated.

If you think the game wouldn't work just because of a grappling hook then you're downright retarded, it doesn't have to let you traverse everything, just certain things that you can't climb.

They should have given you the wild armor earlier in the game and had the hookshot be the reward for all shrines since you would have explored 99% of the map already anyway.

The thing people wanted from a grappling hook when the game wasn't released was an endgame sort of thing where it would let you grapple on to things, letting you get to places really fast and easily. Sort of like what this user is describing.

Why not give it as a late game item to dick around

Cause climbing is so much fun!

>Game built completely around exploring.
>Mechanic that completely trivializes exploring and makes getting anywhere completely effortless.

Boy you don't really understand game design well do you OP?

I dunno

On one hand, no one would ever climb again, but on the other hand, who cares; give us a hook!

>haha I sure love climbing and walking everywhere for ten to thirty minutes! Sure is fun. Oh! It's raining! Well, better warp to tower or town, make a fire, and sleep to the next day. I hope it doesnt rain again later!

He's right you know. BotW sucks for other reasons than your plebeian first thought that comes in your head reddit rage.

>haha i shitpost about BotW and i haven't even played it lol

Did you not use the warp songs in OTT because it trivializes traveling?

Or you could find another way up the structure, like finding a walkway up there.

>you can fast travel to any shrine you unlocked

how does it feel to be retarded

OOT wasn't designed around traveling large spaces, it was the dungeons and the puzzles inside them.

Fucking this, I love pressing up on the control stick for hours on end while absolutely nothing interesting happens.

>OOT wasn't designed around traveling large spaces
...what?

>Hookshot would make climbing obsolete
>Lol here's Revali's Gale

>you unlocked

Yeah notice that little important difference there?

>would've broken the entire game.

If they were so concerned why do they make it so easy to boost your stamina to the point where climbing anything at all becomes trivial? In the scope of the whole game it really doesn't take long to do and you don't even need to be close to max.

Sorry, I should elaborate. Ocarina's best moments are in it's dungeons, not its overworld. The opposite thing could be said for BoTW, where the dungeons aren't all that interesting but the overworld has a lot of stuff to find.

>"We found that playtesters were having too much fun with the hookshot, which was not what I was trying to prove, so I decided to remove it anyways. It won't work because I say so!"
Someone needs to gut this guy

Okay, buddy, let's explain something real quick. Whats the difference between going up a mountainside one time vs two times?

Also you never used a car in an open world game right? because it trivializes traveling.

See where I'm going here?
It can be used with restriction or in late game. It's a very easy thing to design around.
You're just making excuses for a game not having something that had the potential of being fun, because your mouth is full of small asian cock.

Or you're too much of a dumb fuck to understand that things can be designed around a game without breaking it.

He's right.

>why do they make it so easy to boost your stamina to the point where climbing anything at all becomes trivial?
That's called progression. If you want to max out your stamina meter you'd need a total of 10 Stamina upgrades, or 40 shrines. That's not really trivial, that's 1/3 of the shrines, and I'd assume you wouldn't be pouring all of those orbs into stamina exclusively.

>all the drones defending this itt

This

I hate climbing. It sucks. At least make it fast like assassin's creed. nintendo can't do a thing right.

He's making the assumption that climbing is fun.

It really pisses me off when someone like that is a game developer. It's not like Botw is a game intricate with design. The game is about being able to go where you want when you want, so why would he suddenly be against people using a hookshot to go everywhere? And then there's the weapon breaking thing that also goes against the idea of fun. I don't understand how this got through development.

Like, I remember a time when Nintendo would get on its devs for shit like unfair treatment to players

Did anyone enjoy climbing mountainsides for 5 minutes? It's cool for a while, don't get me wrong. Gives an amazing sense of scale and accomplishment when you just barely leap up over the edge. But after 30 hours, when your stamina bar is maxed out, they're just a chore. You know you're going to make it and it's only a matter of time. I tended to do something else while holding up on the analog stick. Wouldn't that be the perfect time to introduce something like a hookshot?

I see you've got a ton to add to the conversation.

literally who gives a shit

>max out
You don't need to max it out. With just 3 upgrades, I found myself able to easily climb just about anything other than the walls in a maze.

Remember how big Hyrule Field was back when you played OTT for the first time?

Man you know what would have broke that entire section? A horse o travel faster from one point to the other, especially after you've traversed the entire field hours ago.

So glad my gaming experience was not ruined by such a simple feature.

Just make it hard to get

Botw is the complete opposite of the game design Nintendo has followed all these years. I remember GDCs where they said they make their games about keeping the game from getting boring or from being inconsistent. Then here comes along Botw.

>Annon never broke the physics using the tools given to him.

I wonder how it feels to play the game with such a mental handicap.

What about dungeons and temples? Didn't they fit either?

...

>Our playtesters asked us where the temples were like past games. I told them adding them would take away the thrill of exploring the land. No temples for you!

When was this? I remember growing up playing smb3 and what bullshit that last world was. Not sure what nintendo you're remembering.

I got sick of climbing after I scaled that mountain between the plateau and the white haired ninja village. It was enjoyable until then when it made itself repetitively tedious.
Having a weaker version for Bionic Command's grappling hook would have made climbing fun as fuck. God forbid we do something other than just hold up in 10 second increments all the time.

>glad a game is shit

oookay. Then I guess you wouldn't mind if the next zelda is like skyrim in first person, just like shiggy always wanted. with a more realistic artstyle too, because that's "innovative" or something.

...

Wouldn't that be the perfect time to introduce something like a hookshot?
Revali's Gale is literally what you just asked for. It'll let you scale a vertical surface much much quicker.

You're referencing a completely different concept. That last world was to test everything you learned from world 1 to 7. It was bullshit if you skipped levels or was a low skill monkey.

You're using that image wrong

we got korok seeds instead.
that's almost as good.

Based Aonuma. Hookshot would have made climbing pointless

Whoops, meant to greentext that top line.

>would have made climbing pointless
I don't see anything wrong with that. Climbing wasn't fun.

>20€ DLC
>you just fight the bosses again

you cant use the gale if you're already climbing. Not until you find another horizontal plane, which is not a common feature of most vertical walls in this game

>everything you learned
>in a mario

Except the entire game (and series) is built around the concept of extremely context specific powerups/items.

also
>beating the entire game from start to finish without warping
>in one sitting

no thanks. and I doubt you have. and even if you have it's nothing to be proud of. it's just playing through the game normally. and I'd rather just have fun.

>add hookshot
>make it so that it doesn't pull you up and can only be used for swinging

Problem solved

Climbing is already pointless. Nothing obstructs your climbing other than the stamina bar, and getting stamina potions is easy as fuck.
It's such a pointless game mechanic once you leave the plateau

It revolutionized the series, and videogames in general.

But user if that were true there wouldn't be anything for is to bitch about. Nintendo obviously just hates fun.

>>Annon
Uh-huh

>no thanks
found the pleb

>and I doubt you have

Except I have multiple times cause I'm likely much older than you and came from a time when concepts like learning from your mistakes was a good thing. Nintendo wore that as their mantle for a bit, but then casuals like yourself invaded and showed them that you dont need to follow good game design to sell a game these days. Thank you for destroying the industry with your meddling shit standards.

>beating the entire game from start to finish without warping
>in one sitting
>reddit spacer thinks this is hard
You're shit at video games. Who the fuck has trouble with mario games?

Can we complain about this instead? This is a much bigger problem than anything OP had to say.

How about YOU fuck off with YOUR shit opinion

Yes.

The problem is...?

Hookshot only sticks to wood (including ripping wooden shields out of enemy hands)

There. Problem fucking solved.
You get a piece of utility gear that's really powerful sometimes, but doesn't trivialize climbing because there isn't necessarily a tree at the top of every hill.

>Nintendo obviously just hates fun.

They really do. For this series at least. Where were all the fun ideas they had from SMG in skyward sword? They're always weirdly conservative with this series for no good reason.

the climbing mechanic is already easily broken

wtf i hate nintendo now

Climbing is not a revolutionary idea nor should you be praising it for being in a zelda game. The moment I saw you could climb anywhere, i knew Nintendo threw away any concept of a structured game design because the only level design they'd be able to do with climbing mechanics was either to lock out most areas with a ceiling on everything, or to make some walls not climbable at all. Then there's the whole stamina limitation that just outright discourages you to climb for long periods of time unless you somehow farm fro stamina. So this idea you have of them wanting climbing to be this fun thing never happens at anytime of the game. It's literally just a cool thing during the first ten minutes then you realize how stupid it is.

It loses value after the second time.