The Great Plateau VS. The Great Sky Island - Tutorial Showdown!
Vložit
- čas přidán 27. 05. 2023
- A battle between tutorial giants kicks off as we dive into the ups and downs of both starting zones, but in the end, only one of them is coming out on top!
► Do you enjoy my content? Please subscribe! - www.youtube.com/@GossipGeist?...
► Be a Bonafide Legend by becoming a CZcams Member! - / @gossipgeist
► Be a Bonafide Legend by becoming a supporter on Patreon! - / gossipgeist
► Interested in free use, No Commentary 4K gameplay videos? - / @game_geist
#zelda #breathofthewild #tearsofthekingdom #nintendo #nintendoswitch #tutorial #versus #comparison - Hry
Oh wow, I can't believe this video has gotten over 10K views! I'm already almost at 150 subs as well! That's incredible to me! Thank you so much everyone for watching!
Edit: 43K views?! 447 subs?! What on earth!!! You all are genuinely amazing!
because the editing is so good!!
The fact u only have 200 subs with a video this good is crazy. Amazing work man
@@Sturben-qn7ph Thanks a ton, I appreciate that!
@@Sturben-qn7ph agree
You deserve more subs +1 for you
The only gripe I have with the great sky island is that no other sky island comes close to it in regards to magnitude which caused a bit of a let down for me
I was hoping they'd be bigger and more tied to the "element" of the area they were hovering over. A few are unique but too many of them are the "bring the crystal" variety with the same general look and shape.
Yeah, the sky islands are kinda dissapointing. Most of them are just a square with a chest on
Funny how the sky islands were the focus of most marketing for the game, yet they ended up being quite disappointing. The depths, on the other hand, were kept secret and they ended up being much more fun to explore than sky islands.
@@bringthecheese9504 True.
Well, there's always hope DLC can add more in.
In defense of Rauru being there just gives the sense of melancholy and is effective story wise
If you read everything he has to say in all locations, it helps paint a somber picture of what it must feel like being in his position. It does help with story building, but he doesn't guide or tutor you like the Old Man in BotW did, which is Rauru's only flaw in TotK. His presence is still very appreciated for those juicy lore tidbits.
@@GossipGeist He does guide you, just less than the old man. Rauru Was the person that told you about using the purah pad to Mark locations and taught you everything about the shrines and gave a basic explanation about the story and each of your new abilities
I also want to add, for myself personally, with there being just robots reading from a manual, even though we're aware that Rauru is just a spirit at this point it helped me feel less lonely when I spotted him.
@@GossipGeist I think a large change that Totk did to it's tutorial island is it really focused a lot more on story as did the whole game overall compared to Botw which was focused on player freedom. I'm also not saying one is better than the other story wise on these tutorial islands, they were trying to achieve different things in the story department
@@patrickcandelaria4745i think Rauru and his cryptic nature helped cement the atmosphere. Link is technically alone on the sky island, but with the friendly constructs and the ghost missing the past that shows up occasionally, it doesn‘t feel as lonely as BOTW did at all. that lines up with the general „you are not alone“ theme in the game, and also with how much more alive and supportive (and numerous) the NPCs are.
In my opinion the Great Plateau was better, simply because I found it more fun. It was a better experience. As a tutorial however, The Great Sky Island is better like you said, because it did far better in actually teaching and forcing you to practice the mechanics. I honestly found it tedious, but it was a necessary evil because Totk is more complicated. I just value the Great Plateau far more.
Exactly. Giving the player the tools to train themselves is important, but giving them too many ways to use those tools can start to feel overwhelming. Breath of the Wild gave you just barely enough ways to use your tools while TotK gave you just barely too many. Strictly speaking, tutorial wise, having more than enough ways to learn is a better tutorial. However, the enjoyment and immersive factors sometimes get forgotten about, which is why Breath of the Wild still beats TotK in many other ways.
@@GossipGeist this is facts, i just think about my gfs little nephew who couldn’t figure out the great plateau 😭 i think the sky islands are a lot more straight forward when it comes to certain mechanics like making cold resistance food plus the pants can be easily found
in my opinion they’re both GREAT!! get it get it!? 😅I’m sorry 😣
I'll give it to the great platuea. The sky Islands took quite a bit more time, I found it somewhat tedious You have to remember that this is a sequel, so most of the player base already played Breath of the Wild, and were familiar with most of the mechanics. I'm also somewhat disappointed by the temple of time. I was hoping for an early dungeon given its size. But it's just a big ugly, upside down pyramid. That's pretty empty.
I completely disagree. I honestly find the great plateau a little bit boring to explore
I actually consider the entirety of the Great Sky Island its own dungeon. Its deceptively linear, with lots of hidden goodies around for you to find. You can't get past certain areas without doing certain puzzles (the shrines), and there are even points you can't backtrack from until later because of the physics you're working with.
The only thing it's missing is a proper end-of-dungeon boss fight, but thats fine.
You could say the construct fight you can opt in to later is the culmination of the mechanics you learned in the shape of a gratifying boss fight, at least far more than the Plains' Talus which is a showcase of the options provided to you in combat, though a more basic one and not using the sheikah slate nearly as much, perhaps because it is the first open world Zelda game.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219isn't the very first Zelda ever an open world game?
Actually you're wrong. You can do any shrine in any order and you can backtrack to any previously visited place aswell. It takes both ingenuity and finding the secret passageways that lead to a previous area
i thought i was the only one who think that the great sky island being very linear. people kept saying that you can complete the shrines in any order to say that it's just like the great plateau. but what i did in the game was just to follow the path and it took me to all of the shrines. while yes you can force yourself to find shortcuts and go to different shrines, i bet the majority of people will also unknowingly follow the path that the game has laied out and get to the shrines in an order that the devs intended, unlike BOTW where they actually gave you a complete freedom. also, nothing can beat the heart attack that the stone talus gave you unlike the flux construct that's just standing there menacingly from afar.
@@macaronypizza9917 nope, its very linear
One of the interactions with Rauru actually has a key piece of info. He'll mention he's confused as to why the Temple of Time and other structures are in the sky, also saying in his time they were on the surface
I agree that it's an important piece of dialogue, but in the memories you find later in the game, we actually see the Temple of Time on the surface. If the player misses Rauru's dialogue about it, then the memory covers for that and then some. Instead of hearing about it, we get a chance to actually see it for ourselves and where it was located on the surface.
This also explains why king rhoam mentions that the temple of time being hyrule's birthplace is debated
Now I’m confused as to how it got so far away from where it originally was on the ground instead of just rising directly up
@@samboi123 I believe I saw somewhere that it was stated that the sages raised the temple. I believe when you talk to an npc after completing the dragon tears quest and get the final memory.
I just checked and it is after a side quest at the temple of time in the sky
I love how the beginning also explains why link is back to 3 hearts and 1 stamina wheel due to the fact that it’s the gloom that zaps his power from him
Botw seems to explain as he was so badly injured he was basically dead and his corpse was just placed there to recover
The Great Plateau felt more like a sandbox to explore and get used to the world around you before being thrown into the rest of Hyrule whereas The Great Sky Islands feel more like a focused tutorial like dungeon to get players used to the new building mechanics, refresh players on the controls, as well as set the pace for the game’s more melancholy storyline.
My least favorite part of Great Sky Island is that the Zonai Shrines cannot be teleported to until you finished all 4 of them. BOTW allows you to keep the Tower and shrine of resurrection even before going to your first shrine. So more backtracking is involved.
THIS!!!!! I thought I could teleport and backtracked all the way back to the beginning after getting all the way past the mine cos I missed the cave entrance that came next and assumed the beginning was the way into the snowy area. Then I realise I COULDNT teleport and had to travel the entire map back again.
It would have been SO MUCH less stress if only I could’ve had the teleport marks as checkpoints.
Mobility is so limited early on, why would you make it so difficult or come back to explore areas until after you’d jumped through a few hours of tutorial hoops? Made me feel like I was continuously missing stuff I’d left behind cos I couldn’t just go back for extra wanders whenever I felt like it- once I’d advanced past that was it.
they want to you learn mre about your abilitys by buiding railcarts and doubg small sidequests like the korok one
There's no backtracking, it is completely linear
@@dhv2852 Back tracking is kind of a pain. Let's say you unlock the Ascend Shrine which is a long walk, you cannot teleport until all 4 shrines all done. This is a nuisance if you want to revisit that shrine for a vantage point or you want to revisit the surrounding area with another unlocked ability.
@@Daxterbeer that's what I meant, great sky island was not designed or backtracking. It is a very straightforward experience with chance of exploration. At least that was for me it took me 4 hour to finish it .
Rauru would make so much more sense if you could find him sitting around the world in various ruins and sacred places where he would tell you important information. It would make him less of a tutorial character and more of a story character (which fits him better)
This actually would have been cool and given us a great means to explain more history of the Zonai. It's kind of like King Rhoam on The Great Plateau but all throughout the sky.
About to watch the video, but IMO:
Plateau definitely felt like what the Zelda team would do with an inch of freedom (they took a mile, lol), which gave it an almost novel feeling. The Sky Isle feels like the Zelda team taking a step back and telling the player "there is much more freedom, but we're saving that for after you've earned it". Plateau is a better experience, but Sky Isle is definitely the better tutorial.
I really love the Great Sky Island because, as a whole, it kinda feels like a dungeon. Like, an old-school Zelda dungeon. The Great Plateau really demonstrated the openness and freedom of BoTW, but the Sky Island does a great job showing us that TOTK, while still open and free, provides some more linear threads.
Also, aesthetically, I really love the aesthetic of the Zonai structures. Good stuff.
Would have been great if they topped it off with a boss fight at the end. I really thought we were going to fight a giant construct at the end
@@adamkahmann2937There is a construct you can fight right away
@@owenlupton9180 Yes, but a unique required one would have been cool
How tf is TotK more linear??
As much as I liked the beginning of ToTK, the sky islands were kind of overwhelming. I definitely preferred the great plateau, but both were great.
I don’t like how linear the sky islands were compared to the great plateau
I feel like the sky islands were a red herring to the depths. The depths are the actual draw of TotK in my mind.
"The player likely won't be missing [the flux construct]"
To be quite honest, I completely missed it. Had no idea it was there. 💀
I actually felt like it was pretty easy to get list and miss stuff on the sky island in general - I never found the tunic you're supposed to get there either. Or maybe I'm just terrible at being aware of my surroundings? Idk 😅
There's a small cave entrance where the 3 friendly Constructs are building with logs and fans near the 3 zero gravity platforms and the small lake. Rauru is also right next to those 3 Constructs. The cave entrance is very small so it's hard to notice, but it takes you straight to the Tunic chest. There's a ton of distractions on the Great Sky Island, I almost missed the Tunic myself.
Same. I encountered the Talus in BotW but completely missed the Flux Construct. I saw it at some point in my trek, but didn't have a way to get to its platform at the time and just assumed I'd come across it again later. By the time I got to wherever it is you're supposed to reach it from, I'd forgotten about it and never went back.
Yeah, I missed the Flux Construct on my first pass, too. I didn't notice it until later, when I returned to the island to look for the Bubbulfrogs in the caves that I didn't know I was supposed to collect.
I have over 150 hours in this game already and I'm just finding out now that there was apparently a flux construct on the great sky island? What? I've even been back there multiple times... Oh my god.
I missed the flux construct, the tunic and some caves, guess I was too excited to get back into Hyrule
15:27 "The fact that it can be missed at all is not a good start" Which implies a player can't miss the flux construct on the great sky island, which is something I only learned about (60+ hours in!) when this video brought it up xD
Yeah I missed it too. I didn’t do any real glider exploring in the sky island either. Only when necessary
The same could be said for the shirt as well. When I found the pants at the start I was confused as to where the shirt was, but never found it. I literally had to go back for it way later after finishing the tutorial already.
I even managed to find the cold resist pants the first time, before I went to find the shirt. I missed the entire mining cave where they tell you about Zonaite too.
In my opinion, The Great Plateau was less of a tutorial for Breath of the Wild and more of a tutorial for the era of open-world Zelda. It let you figure out the level of freedom the games now came with, how enemy encounters now worked, how grounded the physics engine was to reality. The Great Sky Islands were a great tutorial for Tears of the Kingdom, grounding the player and /then/ letting them go hog wild once they've left the sky.
While I definitely think Tears of the Kingdom is the better game, I actually prefer the plateau by a lot just due to the linear structure of the great sky island. The ability to tackle any of the four shrines in any order, and the freedom you’re given on how to reach each one much better reflects the nature of rest of the game.
EDIT: Due to Link’s abilities being much more complex in TOTK the linear approach makes a lot of sense, but I still prefer the immediate freedom of BOTW’s tutorial.
After the first shrine, the other 2 are able to be tackled in any order, but the 4th shrine is locked until the first 3 are complete if I "recall" correctly. It does take away from the feeling of freedom that BotW's Great Plateau had, I definitely agree.
@@GossipGeist You might be right, but if you can get ascend before fuse it is not very easy to do so. I tried doing it in that order but couldn’t figure out how to get to the snowy side of the island without building a boat and heading towards the fuse shrine. The whole tutorial is shaped like a circle and if it’s not a requirement, it definitely nudges you to explore it by going in a big linear loop.
@@GossipGeist BOTW also nudges you to do them in a certain order, and if you value your time you might as well, but something about having the freedom is fun to me even if more often than not I explore linearly anyways.
@@nuh-uhbro765 I have a playthrough on my second channel where I got to the Ascend shrine before Fuse. There's a very small section on the snowy mountain that's climbable by the second waterfall to reach it.
@@GossipGeist Ah nice that is great to know.
I honestly really loved seeing Rauru on the great sky island!✨It added so much to me. Sure, he didn’t teach us anything, but the vibe was just so immaculate for me. I loved seeing him gazing so somberly, it gave me the feeling that he missed being alive. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it and being emo tho
fun thing i noticed. the great sky island on the map is pretty much the same shape as the great plateau, and even the void in the middle of the sky island matches the bodies of water on the great plateau. seeing as the depths and surface mirror eachother VERY heavily, i see this as an intentional reference
I think the reason people don’t really talk about how great the plateau (ha) and how great the sky island (ha) is, is because they blend perfectly into the game and don’t even come across as a tutorial to a lot of first time players
ha
@@lasercraft32 ha
The pants only thing totk did confused me so much that i actually went back and climbed up every part of the opening building thinking I had accidentally walked past it-
As a game dev myself, I really approve this. We really need more game devs to think like this. I can’t make a game as big and good as TotK, but we should try to have the same quality.
I milked the Great Plateau for all it had but with the Great Sky Island, I knew it was a tutorial area and it felt like BotW DLC so I kinda wanted to leave immediately. I actually didn’t know if the surface was going to be accessible and didn’t know what was next so that was another reason I rushed through it which made the bits and pieces of it feel very tedious. I wasn’t hooked and it took me a week to get off since I was only playing a few minutes at a time. Once I got off, then I got hooked on the game. I recently went back to Great Sky Island and explored it a bit more and appreciate it more now.
I found and beat the stone talus in BOTW and never knew about the flux construct in TOTK until I went back 50 hours later. Additionally, I felt extremely lost with the whole world ahead of me in BOTW yet in TOTK I felt like I had more freedom exploring caves and shrines even without the paraglider (I didn’t notice Lookout Landing either!). Just shows how vast even the tutorials are in these massive expanses of games and how different first experiences can be depending on how you handle these tutorial areas!
Interesting. I had the opposite happen. I didn't run into any Taluses at all(in BotW) until I stumbled upon the one near Lurelin Village. Totally missed the one on the Plateau until much later in my gameplay. I saw the Flux Construct about halfway through my traversal of the GSI, and fought it and won(after dying a couple times lol).
Me tooo. I had no idea there was a flux on the great sky island lmao. It’s probably because I was eager to get to finish the tutorial so I don’t think I spent as much time on it than the great plateau
Opposite for me
Though it's obvious to go straight to Lookout Landing right after landing on the ground, there was just so many things surrounding me. Caves, seeing the new camps, shrines, ect. It was super easy to get distracted. Another factor was that I really wanted to take my time on the game's story so I wanted to avoid going to the next destination point as much as possible. But like you said without the paraglider the world isn't your oyster yet. Once I realized that you NEEDED the paraglider in about 3 shrines I came across (as well as completely missing the body of water when falling off cliffs) that was only when I finally decided to go to Lookout Landing. I think I was incredibly dumbfounded when I realized that's the moment you get the paraglider. Still dont regret waiting a bit though.
I think this is probably my biggest problem with TOTK's opening. You absolutely should have been given the paraglider before you left. It's just such a vital mechanic that it shouldn't be possible to miss it for hours and hours worth of gameplay (as I saw happen with multiple other players).
Whats interesting is that certain NPCs will comment on you having the paraglider even if you dont have it. If it wasnt for teleporting, there would be potential for a soft lock too. It really seems like a big oversight.
I missed the bomb runes too at first but then I got incentivized by the game to combine a rock with a weapon to create a stone breaking hammer which you can even throw to shatter rocks above.
The best part is that buried rock sections provide you with rusted weapons and rocks hidden in there to combine as you progress. They knew exactly what they were doing there❤
16:10 Allow me to introduce myself. I completely missed the flux construct the first time, but I found it upon revisiting the Great Sky Island. I have no idea how I missed it. Also, I had no idea there was a stone talus on the Great Plateau.
Me literally finding the talus and missing the flux
A long time ago, I once thought I lost the can of pepsi I was drinking. I looked for it for a solid 20 seconds until I realized I was holding it the entire time. Don't feel bad, because sometimes, it do be like that.
I like the plateau quite a bit more. It’s smaller and clearer. And the most important: you want to explore. While in TotK you just want to get it over with to see how the world has changed, in BotW everything is new to you.
This, while the Great Sky Island was enjoyable, it's biggest weakness was that I played BotW. In the back of my mind was a constant reminder of, "When do I get to the unlimited freedom part?"
@@calebsmith7179 100%
I disagree on the Talus point, in front of the bomb shrine of BOTW, there's a guardian. You try to fight it at first, and then you get OT like a noob so you understand guardians = danger so you slowly develop a fear of every disabled one. This is a lever way to make players understand that 100 years ago, they didn't lose for nothing and that beating your first guardian is a huge milestone. The Talus offers an experience of a rude fight, but winnable. The Construct on the other hand is also hardly winnable, but it is, so when the player gets out of the GSI, he hasn't developped a "gardian syndrom", which makes the player fearless. Gloomy hands are the equivalent of guardian, so I think putting gloomy hands somewhere around GSI would have been a great idea. The first time I met gloomy hands was terrifying and after that I didn't want to approach any red ganondorf stuff ( I don't remember the name tbh ). I think adding that to the GSI on somewhere that the palyer must go would add much to game experience. Amso, in BOTW, what makes GP brilliant is the trial-and-error system. For example : Jump from the tower -> die -> never again / Fight guardian -> get obliterated -> never again. In BOTW, they let the player die to make it understand what's wrong, where you can easily no death GSI. Also, I think GP > GSI because when Rauru tells you to go to ultrahand shrine, you can besically tell what path you will follow. So, you don't really feel that freedom, as in GP, they just make you go to the tower and "good luck bye bye" which is really good because the payer doesn't feel to follow a predetermined path. One final point is the "meet me at the cross that the 4 shrines form". This was pure GENIUS from the devs as you ( obviously ) went to the Temple of Time before going to the tower. Once you understand the trial, the feeling of "Yes, I understood" feels way cooler than "go back to temple of time". I got to admit that the moment you see the coils in the Temple of Time and you remember them from the first 10 minutes of your gameplay is cool, but it doesn't feel as good as the cross trial. That why for me Great Plateau is a way better tutorial than Great Sky Island. ( I ain't reading allat )
The reason why I didn't include the idle guardians outside of the Bomb Rune Shrine is because they're able to be easily one shotted by parrying their laser with even the weakest of shields. Your initial encounter with them leaves you stumped. You figure out that shooting the eye stuns them and you rush in to chip away at its health bar only to find out that none of your weapons are hardly doing any damage to them, they're breaking left and right, you begin to doubt yourself being able to defeat it, so you back off and are now probably saying to yourself, "Almost all the weapons and arrows I had are now gone and for no gain. Well that sucks." You might also try repeatedly throwing bombs at it for 15 minutes until it dies, only to be rewarded with an Ancient Screw or two. You're basically being punished for fighting them instead of rewarded, which isn't what you want in a tutorial. Guardians also aren't considered an overworld boss, technically speaking. They're a huge menace, absolutely, but like I said before, they're only a thorn in your side until you realize that standing still and parrying their laser makes quick work of them.
The Great Plateau doesn't teach the player how to parry lasers, so the idea of a brand new player knowing how to do it during their first encounter with an idle Guardian isn't realistic, I realize that, but I just couldn't bring myself to include them just because of the fact that once you know how they work, they aren't even remotely a threat to you anymore. There are no mechanics in defeating a guardian other than parrying. You can destroy their legs while they're stunned, but it's not really necessary or worth losing another powerful weapon you've been holding on to just to deal some quick damage to them.
There are mechanics in fighting a Stone Talus, although admittedly few, there's still more involvement from the player when dealing with them compared to a Guardian.
The Old Man in BotW does actually point you towards the Magnesis Shrine in the same way Rauru points us towards the Ultrahand Shrine, so the sense of freedom is still on equal footing between the two games at this point. After the Magnesis Shrine, he also then tells you to climb back up the Sheikah Tower or warp to it in order to give you an idea on where to go next. Rauru doesn't tell the player to go anywhere after the Ultrahand Shrine, you're already at the vantage point he wanted you to be at. On this note, TotK actually gives the player slightly more freedom than BotW does. It's a small detail, but worth its weight in gold when you want to save time.
The cross idea after the final Shrine was pretty cool, I'll give you that, lol. I appreciate your thoughtful comment and I enjoy discussing Zelda with people, please don't take this reply as me being negative or anything, I just really like debating Zelda stuff!
I don’t think the “hell hands” should be in the sky island. If you’ve done the side quest for the Zonai fabric the steward would tell you that the island rose to avoid the monsters revealed in the upheaval. It’s supposed to be a safe space that’s gloom free. But if you’re like me and went straight to the great plateau as soon as you got your freedom you would’ve been terrorized by the hell hands right away.
@@GossipGeist "worth its weight in gold when you want to save time"
BotW didn't make me feel like I was wasting time, TotK did.
And when it comes to the pointing at the first shrine, BotW was more free. The shrine had the introduction of first the tower, then a shot of the castle, and then said "Hey, mysterious thing over there." The direct path to the shrine is blocked by a pond/lake, and there's a monster camp right next to it. It's also much closer.
Totk had just a single archer soldier, a beam with a board and a hook (which you couldn't use yet) and a spiral staircase. Much much more linear and boring. That actually felt like wasting time.
@@GossipGeist actually you can get more ancient stuff from destroying the legs which can help
@@samuelault4723 Yeah the Sky islands are supposed to be completely free from Ganon's presence. There's rarely, if ever, any monsters on the Sky Islands, let alone Gloom. There's only constructs, and sometimes in very specific locations, a Gleeock (which can fly), the only of Ganon's monsters you can find up there.
It's funny when I first played totk and landed on the ground I didn't go to lookout landing cause I got distracted by shrines and forgot about the objective
I ended up at the first Geoglyph and when I was in the hot air balloon with impa she told me to just use my paraglider to get down
From that moment on I went to lookout landing
I wonder if recall would have worked, but lol.
Same here. Ended up going splat on the floor just as I realised I could have just teleported to a shrine 😅
@@user-hf6vy8xc4i I ended up making it to the water barely
same thing happened to me but i had an opal weapon and used it to put out the flame of the balloon. impa actually had special dialogue about the balloon falling LOL
@@leafcritter smart
after the great sky island final cutscene when the camera pointed to lookout landing, I somehow completely missed it and had no clue where to go. I wound up going to kakariko village and after some npcs told me to go to lookout landing I had to look up where that was cause I didnt even know where it was.
How'd you manage to miss the big yellow quest marker telling you to go there?
@@lasercraft32 I don't think I realized that was there until like a day after that
@@Yeetmaster982 lol nice XD
Going a bit beyond the Great Sky Island, while diving into the lake below, I didn’t notice the Lookout Landing… so I went exploring instead. And it was fun getting around without the paraglider. But your criticisms are still valid!
I'm actually interested in seeing just how far we can get in the game without the Paraglider! Would be a fun challenge.
The surface really is hard to make out any details when you're falling down, though.
@@GossipGeistI made it to the final boss using the airplane zonai thingy right after I got off the island (although I died a lot so I didn’t actually win), but the more impressive thing to me was-
I beat the wind temple with no paraglider. Now THAT was a challenge.
@@whitebeans7292 this needs to be a speedrun category. Like wind temple of all things?? Just how?
@@ventusse You need a lot of gliders, fans, and a few hot air balloons. Also when you’re fighting the boss you’ll need about 50-70 keese eyeballs cause you can’t fly up to him, and the arrows often don’t reach high enough to target him.
I didn’t have any control sticks yet and only 1 battery when I went up there, so I needed to land every so often so my plane didn’t disappear. Also I used a TON of zonai energy balls!
I loved how similar yet different they were. It was a rare and special thing Nintendo gave us.
I truly felt like I was playing the game for the first time again. I was so happy.
I didn’t even see Rauru chillin’ in the sky island in my first hour of play. That’s because i kept exploring the areas without any order at all. It was only when i came back to the starting point that I found the “correct” flow of the great sky island.
18:45 I actually completely missed lookout landing in the beginning. I think I accidentally switched the active mission from the normal „starting mission“ to the mission of Impa and the Geoglyphs. And yeah, this lead to two preventable problems: First I was on a little sky island (with no paraglider) and afterwards I was in Impas balloon (with no paraglider). Two preventable deaths.
But other than that (which was my fault) I think TotK did a better job in introducing the game.
same thing happened to me lmao
How is this channel not larger??? You deserve to blow up. (Comment so the Algo boosts this video)
Actually i am one of the „I REALLY wanna know the story“, but i‘m also one of the „Oh, what‘s over there? Oh what‘s over there?“ type of player that constantly strays from the planned path, because of some other stuff that‘s interesting. At one point i think it took me about six tries to finally go to the Rito village, only to start the Main Quest and immediately abandon it for another collecting Quest and tumble around the land for another ±10 hours. 😂
Back them in BotW it took me AGES to finally finish the damn plateau, cause it‘s just so filled with random stuff to investigate.
The Sky island was more linear in that regard, which i personally find better, but we also gotta remember, that at that point the whole climbing and jumping was already familiar to me, so a lot of testing and playing around with these mechanics had already been done previously, which makes the whole thing much shorter and helped me concentrate on the shrines more.
This was a very well done comparison. Overall I very much enjoyed the Great Plateau much more. I honestly didn't even realize the whole plateau was a tutorial before I left the plateau. The sky island felt much more like a tutorial and much more linear which left me feeling less satisfied and I still feel like the overall design of the environment of the plateau is better. But this video gave me more appreciation for the sky island
Amazing video. It baffles me that you have less than a thousand subscribers, you deserve 100k at least!
Another important factor of which is better is which one has more replayability. I'm curious about which one is better in this way, because the sky island is longer and more linear than the plateau, but the tricks you've learned with your abilities can probably help you progress much faster if you're clever enough.
I liked the great sky island but it makes all the other sky islands look small when I first played I was like wow I hope all the islands are like this but they aren’t even 1/10th of the size
10:02 keeping our mines CLOUDED?!? 10/10 word choice
Great video, but I would like to add context to one point you made. After botw, people complained that the lack of driving story in the game was sorely missed compared to it's predecessors, so to fix this, Nintendo drove the player to get rewarded more heavily for following the story, leading to the lookout landing situation. I think it's a fine way to coerce the player into at least starting the story with the reward of a paraglider, and in fact in my first playthrough I actually missed lookout landing for a solid 2 hours before wondering where the paraglider is, as I immediately started making my way to kakariko based on my knowledge of the last game without noticing lookout landing. For returning players, you know something is missing when you don't have the paraglider right away, so it helps guide you into the new norm this game sets by directing you towards the new base of operations for the game.
Great analysis, but I've got a couple issues with your metrics regarding which tutorial was better.
You gave Tears of the Kingdom a point for allowing better utilization of the Zonai powers in the Sky Island than Breath of the Wild's utilization of the Slate powers in the Plateau. Cryonis and Magnesis especially are entirely restricted to water and metal whereas the Zonai powers are all universally useful. I don't think that necessarily means that TotK has a better tutorial, it simply has better and more useful powers. BotW also needed an area for hunting boars, cutting wood, cooking meals, and preparing for the weather. Totk kinda shoved these spots into tiny corners early on to get it out of the way, likely on the assumption that most of us already played BotW and knew about spicy peppers and cooking pots.
I also think you overlooked a very big difference between the Plateau and the Sky Island. The Plateau is massive, and largely open. The only real barriers are the cliffs that surround it, a frozen river, and a mountain. Players are forced to explore, which is the central foundation of the game. Players are taught that they can get their powers in any order they like. TotK on the other hand has a very linear tutorial. Without some silly speedrun strategies, every player is going to get the powers in the same order. If you feel like exploring, you might find something neat like a korok, but you're also just as likely to find a 4 mile drop to the surface. For a game about exploration, TotK does a poor job conveying that its a very good idea.
I strongly, feel that the Plateau was a better introduction to the game, and it was actually one of the first opinions I'd formed. I really didn't start enjoying TotK at all until I'd left the sky long behind.
Still, good video and looking forward to seeing more.
Thanks for the comment, your feedback is appreciated. I'd like to elaborate a little on some points you've made.
The reason why I gave TotK a point over BotW's Rune usage on the Great Plateau isn't because the abilities are arguably worse than TotK's, it's because the developers seem to have forgotten to add more instances where you're interacting with them. Magnesis and Cryonis like you said, both suffer greatly due to their strict applications, but it doesn't excuse their lack of utilization if they're going to be a part of our major toolkit. For example, they could have added a split in the waterfall in the icy river area with a small portion of land jutting out that had a treasure chest or Korok "puzzle" sitting on it. Players would have to figure out how to reach it since the water is so damaging, falling from somewhere high up wouldn't be an option, so using Cryonis on the Waterfall would have been an amazing additional way to implement it into the Great Plateau.
Magnesis in my opinion is even more hindered in the usage department, and honestly, they really should have done more with it like allowing the player to manipulate the orientation of objects like TotK's Ultrahand, but considering what we currently have to work with, I'm finding myself struggling to even come up with ideas to use it in more places. Something simple like a bunch of metal boxes stacked up but missing the final piece at the top and you'd have to pick up the final lone box somewhere nearby and finish the pyramid for a Korok Seed, or maybe even finding the lost metal doors for the temple of time and putting them back on. My point is, if you're going to give us tools, then give us projects as well. Just because they might have poorly thought out some of our tools doesn't excuse the lack of usage we're getting out of them. Outside of the Divine Beasts, 95% of the time, our tools are being relegated to Korok Seeds and it shouldn't be that way. Magnesis truly shined in Vah Naboris. The player could make an electrical circuit by lining up metallic weapons from one point to the other, thus skipping a puzzle entirely. Creative ways to use these abilities do exist in the rest of the game, but why didn't we see even a fraction of this type of creativity poured into the Great Plateau? There's Sheikah tech everywhere, I'm sure they could have done something with electric related puzzles scattered here and there. TotK just straight up gives player the ability to make their own ways to use the abilities thanks to the Zonai Device Dispenser on top of the Great Sky Island naturally being filled with ways to put them to use. This is why I mentioned the abilities in TotK feel like they were designed to be used for exploration and survival first and foremost, not just for Korok Seeds like BotW's abilities seem to have been designed for.
With all that extra space the Great Plateau has over the Great Sky Island, you'd think they could have squeezed in another puzzle or two here and there, which is why I came to the conclusion that TotK did it better. I don't disrespect the Great Plateau in the slightest, I, like many others in the comments have a great fondness for the feeling of openness that the plateau conveys. It's a marvelous experience without a doubt, but strictly speaking, tutorial-wise, the Great Sky Island does some things a little bit better.
20:04 totk has essentially the same amount of devoted area to dealing with environmental conditions as botw. The cold area serves the same function of teaching the player to cook to survive cold conditions and both areas even have puzzles relating to tree cutting. The sky island gets a lot more use out of the tree cutting due to the ultrahand puzzles and the the area is much harder to navigate so you have to prepare better for the cold too.
The reason the sky island is so much more linear is definitely because they already did their lesson about open exploration with the great plateau. The sky island is much more about teaching the player about the new mechanism and familiarizing them with the new approach to creative puzzle solving that totk leans into. Its also reflective of totk having more linear areas (with caves and a couple much more linear dungeons) than botw ever did.
I really enjoyed slowly progressing through this big island, getting a new ability and using it to move on. It felt cool to loop around to the beginning and see how far you have come
I find that tears of the kingdom tells much more to the player while breath of the wild lets the players discover those early steps by themselves.
So, I can't speak for everyone obviously, but since you brought it up in this video, I have to mention the fact that I COMPLETELY missed the boss fight on the Great Sky Island, lol. I thought I had explored everything and was surprised I hadn't come across any bigger enemies. It wasn't until I watched a video later that I realized I somehow just never encountered the Flux Construct.
In general though, I do agree that Tears of the Kingdom's tutorial is just a bit better. I think it edges out BoTW specifically because of the way it teaches players to use abilities. The game still allows you to tackle things with a fair amount of freedom, but it's a bit more structured. Which I think is fair, given the fact that the abilities in ToTK are a lot more complicated and the game wants to make sure you understand them fully before you leave. I've heard some people say they found it too restricting, but personally I enjoyed trying to figure out how to solve the various puzzles on the Island. And imo, solving them felt more rewarding than most of what BoTW's Great Plateau had to offer.
It's really interesting how many possibilities there are for players to have different experiences in both starting areas, I should have at least mentioned that there's still a chance for the player to miss the Flux Construct, my bad, lol. Great comment, I fully agree with you.
@@GossipGeist Oh, I wasn't saying I thought you did anything wrong! Lol, I just thought it was funny that, as you noted, the Construct is a lot more obvious than BoTW's Stone Talus, and yet I managed to miss it XD
When I first played botw I got stuck in the great plateau for FOREVER because I couldn't figure out the cooking mechanic to survive the cold. So much of the great plateau is so intuitive but all of a sudden I have to read a tiny book in a cabin to figure out how to survive the cold? I experimented with fire and torches but couldn't make it to the shrine on the mountain until a friend told me to cook the peppers. It kinda took the wind out of my sails for the game and I took a long break after that. I can see how the more hand-holding nature of the sky island could frustrate really experienced botw players but I'm sure Nintendo knew that the sequel would attract a lot of new players, so I'm glad it's a little more explanatory so new players don't have the frustrating experience I did with botw. That and the abilities are immediately useful. I think it's genius how they give you ultra hand first because you can start using it as soon as you finish the shrine, and using it leads you to the next shrines. Cryonis and magnesis feel especially useless in the botw early game so it feels like I'm doing chores just to escape rather than learning skills I can use in the game. I do think they could've streamlined it more by giving a better excuse as to why I can't leave tho. Even as an inexperienced botw player, I know about the paraglider, and the whole pre-title drop tutorial section is about how you can jump high distances into water and survive, so why can't I just jump off the island and aim for water on the surface? I think if there had been a lightning storm underneath the islands that you see when you fall off, that would've better portrayed the danger of jumping too early (and taught you about one of the dangers you'll encounter on the surface). Instead of the regular fall animation, the first time you fell there would be a slightly longer animation where the clouds get darker and you see there's a storm keeping you from leaving (and the only break in the storm is through the temple). Maybe even rauru is the one who explains it, which creates more urgency to open the temple doors. I didn't mind the paraglider being a separate mission, I still felt free to explore without it and it leads to the start of the main quest which is good. I just think the conflict of knowing you can jump but not being able to is a little confusing.
this video was so well put together and especially edited! you deserve every bit of recognition that you get
One thing I think the Island did better was sending you back to the beginning, now with all your tools. I felt it showed how much your world opens with those tools now at your disposal. And that view of the whole Island at the end when you are flying back to the temple of time! Made it feel so small after spending about 3 or 4 hours on it, made me feel like I was ready to tackle Hyrule now... Until the underground made ME feel small again
The fact that the paraglider is a separate mission after reaching the surface was all I needed to know that the great plateau is more tightly knit and well rounded. I wanted to stay on the great plateau and revisit it later on, the same cannot be said about the great sky island.
interesting. I find myself coming back to the sky island quite a lot since there’s actually like 3 new secrets i’ve recently discovered so it still feels fresh
I agree completely, and further to that, possibly skipping the Talus... Was the point in BotW, not a malfunction. It was guardians that were the true danger in the world, not bosses. You could technically skip every Talus in the game and not miss much other than a few Koroks, some cash and a way to wreck your weapons, maybe a side quest specifically about killing Talus., the tradeoff is resources missed, which further point you to exploration of the world rather than simply glancing at it and jumping that next cliff, which without the paraglider you don't really have time to enjoy.
That Talus was what taught preparation and the need to reassess and collect more weapons, the flux construct... Literally traps you on a resourceless hellhole with only one way out that is not obvious while under attack by a teleporting cudgel, you are rather screwed going there before Ascend or teleport when it is easily possible to get there, and the "boss part" mechanic is completely unclear despite it being in the tutorial.
Are Talus hearts or flux.... (Things?) Usefull for things outside combat I still see nothing in the game to support that but trial and error, hearts seem less useful than hammer or axe rocks for resources, maybe defense/element/glow, but otherwise less than spike balls outside monster damage, flux less than some things without a Zonite item to fuse to, which unfortunately you aren't given on the island to guarantee you get to do in the tutorial, not so much as a branch to carry away a lesser prize.
And the early food resource collection is much less rewarding in TotK as well, I went off-path everywhere and often it just rewarded with a long uncertain hike back from unengaging treks... You might get a Korok but you couldn't paraglide back, you had no temp clothing reward for mad dashing without it or a puzzle to get it cooking a good meal, most of the island is actually better to return to with the paraglider or bird at the end just to check off the list.
TotK is a fantastic game, but the tutorial is lacking compared to BotW.
I only went back for Koroks and treasures
@@pirategamer6630 I only go back for charges and pre-paraglider gliding to other high points on the map nearby.
Off topic but your commentating as a small channel and quality of videos is very good, God bless man!
Thanks, I appreciate that! I've actually struggled with verbal communication for a long time, I just plain can't spit out the words I'd like to say in my head properly a lot of the time. My mouth wants to say something different than what my mind wants to say. Making these videos has really helped with it and I hope it doesn't show through too much in my content but I'm definitely getting better at it little by little.
I was waiting for a vid like this. GOOD STUFF MAN
Man, Idk I love tears of the kingdom with all my heart, but the thing that I've thought the whole way through is that I loved the great plateau more more than the sky island. The great plateau's story was just so much tighter in my opinion, and instantly sparked a drive in me to complete the story. Tears of the kingdom didn't awaken that spark until later, after I had gotten a bit farther in the story. Also Tears of the Kingdom kind of teaches you how to use the basics then drops you in a sea of things to do right off the bat, it's quite overwhelming until you get into the swing of the game. The beginning Breath of the Wild is better at easing you into its vastness and takes you in a slightly more linear path- just enough to get you comfortable until you're ready to start your own unique path. Once tou get used to the intimidating scale of Tears though, it really starts to feel like this is how it was always meant to be.
Also the whole time through the sky islands I kept thinking "Man, I miss my paraglider!" So that's wasn't as fun haha
Amazing video. Can't believe you only have 470 subs. Amazing production quality and overall a fantastic video.
Can't tell you how much I appreciate this, thank you!
Amazing video! I watched the whole thing and dropped a like 👍
It’s so cool that we can compare these 2 masterpieces!
Keep up the awesome content!
Well done on your audio! Surprised to hear it sound so crisp for such a new channel. Very solid video and I hope the sub train ride is long and prosperous (:
Hey thanks! I have had the biggest problem with audio for years and I finally managed to find just the right settings half way through my Ethereal Arm theory video. It's crazy how much impact audio quality can have on an entire video. Really appreciate your kind words!
How do you only have 100 subs? Great video, much higher quality then I expected.
Thank you very much!
Very high quality content from a small channel. Keep it up dude!
One thing I’ll add to what others are saying is that the TotK tutorial didn’t make me bored or frustrated, it made me want to finish it so I could see the world below. Knowing that this was a sequel set in the future, I was eager to see how the world had changed
Great video comparing two games that are similar and fun to debate. I like your channel a lot and I hope it continues to grow.
I was getting ready to sleep and that open your eyes scared the shot out of me
didn't realize until after the vid that i saw you only have 335 subscribers! i expected you to at least have 50k!
I personally think the Great Plateau is focused on teaching you the main gameplay mechanics of exploration, combat, and everything else in between, then puts your four runes as a sorta secondary thing, while the Great Sky Island puts the runes or whatever they're called in totk (I forgot lol) front and center, THEN teaching you the other things as a secondary thing. Personally, I think it was a good idea cause it definitely is a lot better to play through something that isn't teaching you the basic mechanics of a game that's supposed to be a sequel, and instead giving old players a tutorial that matters more to them and newer players don't miss out on a ton as well. If we're considering it standalone, without the context of it being a sequel, however, I think botw does it a bit better. Either way tho, very fun tutorial area in both games. Also, if you said this in the vid, I wrote this before watching sooooo yeah lmao
Edit: Okay so it seems you mentioned the runes thing, and yeah, I agree. I think botw should've had a little bit more stuff to use, with the stuff, but I also feel like the fact that all of the ground is all connected on botw's Great Plateau, it makes it feel way more open even if the Great Sky Island is around the same amount of area, and it makes it feel more exploration based than totk's. However, I could've been the type of player you brought up that wanted answers, and wanted to rush through the tutorial, making me not really want to explore and thus making my exploration not,,,as fun. But either way, I think they're incredibly equal, and I'd have to play through both again just to make sure my opinion is still how I feel since the last time I played botw's was like a year ago or so. Anyways, this was a great vid, and it def made me think more about two of my fav games, and I really enjoyed it!!
700 subscribers and his videos are professionally crafted such an underrated creator
What a great video! This channel is so underrated! You earned a sub.
I hope you enjoy your stay and thank you for watching my content!
Just wanted to say, very high quality content! I subscribed, but it’s pretty surprising you only have 270 subscribers with this level of content. I can see this video did get a lot of views (well deserved).
Thanks a ton and welcome aboard! Before I started this channel, I've never made content anything like this before. I've barely even touched video editing before this. If you watch my very first video, you can see an actual increase in quality the longer the video goes on. Then, in my Ethereal Arm video, I increased the quality of my voice overs. I'm literally learning as I go and I feel like with my latest video, I guess I've finally hit the mark in quality people appreciate. I'm still not even close to being done improving my content though, not by a long shot. Still a lot left to learn and ways to do better. I hope you and everyone else will stick with me along the ride and see how this channel evolves!
@@GossipGeist I definetely will stick with you
You make a lot of great points and I tend to agree with all of them except one. I’m not disagreeing per se, it’s just that I’ve never felt more free than the moment I dove off that first Sky Island. I mean that as in irl and in game. It was a truly unrivaled breath taking moment. And even after that first jump I still have these moments of disbelief when I’m standing at the edge of a Sky Island as the sun rises over the horizon. It’s completely awe inspiring. The Switch isn’t my favorite console but Zelda BotW/TotK are my favorite games.
This should go without saying but this is a ridiculously impressive video especially given how small this channel is! Easy subscribe :) nice work!
Thank you so much!
When I did the great sky island, I went for the snowy mountain first before I go for the lake. I had to do a lot of weird things to get to the lake at the very end, and once I got there I realized the sky island wasn’t designed for you to take that route at all. I just couldn’t find a way to cross that lake. It was pretty upsetting realizing I took the wrong route on a linear path, especially after the expectation s botw set in general.
My first great plateau experience was probably the best experience I had in a video game. Botw was the first “real” (as in not the littlest pet shop video game) game I played all the way to the end. I was amazed in the great plateau. When I was given the first objective to go to where the first tower would sprout from, there’s a “peak” of a little hill thing, that the objective is sitting below. I approached it from the wrong side and went to the peak, didn’t see anything, and ran around the great plateau for two hours unaware of any real goal or objective, and it was actually really fun. I never saw the old man because instead of following the path I went for the woods, and I just kept wandering, because I was so excited with how big and feee it felt. You have no idea how excited I was when I saw the great plateau on the map, and realized how small it true my was
Down the stairs in front of the Fuse Shrine, there's a small hole in the ground that takes you underneath the windy lake section. I took the exact same path you did on my first playthrough and the developers made sure you were still able to go in any direction. Don't be disheartened!
One of the best totk vids I’ve seen! Great work man
Wow, I really appreciate that! Thanks a ton!
honestly thought this was a high production video that took a team to make! amazing work :)
Thank you! It's just little old me cranking these videos out, but it's incredibly fun to do it all.
One reason I like the Great Sky Island is that there is a lot to do/keep you entertained. My little sister actually plays TotK but has never left the Great Sky Island sense there is a lot for her to do there and she either knows the rest of the game will be a bit too hard for her or just doesn't know what she's spose to do now. Either way she still is able to enjoy the game despite being a bit too young and easily frustrated for some parts of it, such as fighting monsters
When i saw this in my recommended
I thought for sure that it was part of a series
This is a fantastic video and there should be more like it!
I like totk’s tutorial much better, because i think its so much better at actually introducing the mechanic
i completely agree with the last comparison. TOTK is easily the better game but the feeling I got from leaving the Great Plateau for the first time paragliding into Hyrule Field in BOTW was indescribable.
incredible video, I love deep-dives into game design like this. I've seen another comment say this, but I'll also say that I was disappointed when I found out that there weren't many other sky islands the great sky island, because this tutorial area was just so beautiful and exciting! Idk if this is recency bias (probably is) but I had a lot more fun exploring the great sky island than the great plateau, and I'm really looking forward to be there again on my second playthrough.
Also, this doesn't really matter or anything, but did you up the contrast for the footage you used? It looks a little different to how I remember
Thank you for the compliment! The footage has slightly been enhanced with an auto color tone preset I use. It helps make colors pop a little better and in scenes with a little fog or mist, it helps reduce the blurriness and pushes the obscured colors to the front. Colors are all that were enhanced though. The footage is all raw footage recorded from my Switch.
When I played BotW, I was excited to play through the game and it wasnt until two hours in that I realized the actual map was so much bigger than the great plateu. I could do it in any order easily and exploration was rewarded either with the koroks or bosses like the talus. In TotK, I did a linear cutscene for 30 minutes before being shepharded through the sky island like if it were an IKEA. In theory I could do them in a different order but the game clearly wants you to get ultra hand, then fuse, then ascend, then rewind and force you to get a heart piece. The tutorial also doesn't want you to explore either, as the use of the sheika towers is locked off until you do the main quest line to get the glider.
Very well put together video. Thank you sir. They were both heart fluttering, but the great plateau brought a new system with it (switch) and a whole new dimension/combat/graphical scheme. When i was on the sky island, i knew how to control link. It wasnt "brand new" feeling.
Wow I didnt even realised you were a small channel. Awsome video!
Thank you very much!
I prefer the Great Sky Island. Great Plateau is a basic area thats great for tutorials but the Great Sky Island feels more immersive and my favourite Sky Island in the whole game. I wished all other sky islands had more variety too
Super awesome video. I really enjoyed it.
Also only 850 subs this video sounded like it was from 100k subs channel it’s well produced and the video concept is clear and concise
Watching your description of the Flux Construct fight, it never even occured to me to use ascend on its flying form. I always used recall on the cubes it launched to get up top. I love how versatile this game is.
To be fair, Ascend only works on the Level 1 Flux Constructs. The higher level ones require that Recall method to reach them as their height is much higher. Shooting them with a bomb arrow also makes them come back down to a level where Ascend works on them again.
In terms of teaching the player, I think TotK is the better tutorial. But the beauty of BotW;s tutorial is that it really doesn't feel like a tutorial. The main focus of the game, exploration, is core to the Great Plateau's design, and you immediately get to experience the joy of picking a place to venture to and finding your way there. The moment you step out of the Shrine of Resurrection, the player immediately gets to start making those decisions that make the game so fun. TotK, on the other hand, really feels like a tutorial. There's an obvious developer-intended path through the Great Sky Island, and I didn't really feel like I was free to go wherever I wanted until I had the paraglider. For comparison, TotK feels like a tutorial for the first hour or so, meanwhile BotW feels like a tutorial for the first 2 minutes. Even if BotW was less effective at teaching (which I'm not even really sure of), that tradeoff is worth it in my eyes if it means the player gets to immediately do what makes the game fun: exploring. Both great tutorials, but BotW feels like a novel approach to tutorializing that I don't think I've seen elsewhere.
While everyone’s allowed to choose favorites, I think that the Great Plateau would be weaker in TotK, and the Great Sky Island would be weaker in BotW. The Great Plateau was made to show the player how to interact with the open environment and just mess around with simple tools, which wouldn’t work in TotK, with complex Zonai devices. Meanwhile, the hand-holding and linearly obliging Great Sky Island forces you to understand the ins and outs of the Zonai Runes like Ultrahand, Fuse, the battery, etc. It wouldn’t work in BotW, with a lot more focus on simpler tools.
My personal fav is prolly the Great Plateau still, but I probably need to play the Great Sky Island some more
Holy crap this video was awesome. You deserve so many more subs
Glad you enjoyed!
I vastly prefer Great Sky Island to the Plateau. It’d be sweet if they revamp it in DLC, or add more equivalents considering there is room to house it in the sky.
I think as games that push explorability and freedom, the Great Plateau is a much better tutorial that blends into the rest of the game more effectively. The Great Sky Islands felt much more linear in comparison, especially the (I'm pretty sure) only path up to the Ascend shrine.
There are 2, my friend ignored Rauru at the beginning and went up a different path
I play this game twice. Never got raura advice and went to different path’s. First play through I missed the arctic tunic. Second I got it
“Great” analysis! Haha I appreciated this video :)
15:24 Yeah I totally missed the first time I played the great plateau
Personally, I enjoyed the Plateau much more. I think both places perfectly encapsulate their respective games, but in terms of just looking at them individually, the Plateau is a bit better.
I loved the sense of wonder from it, how you were so secluded for the time being. You know absolutely nothing of what’s happened to Hyrule and what it’s like. It very much goes along with the Old Man’s sentiment, that being to slowly introduce you as to not overwhelm you. It’s big enough to be your own open world adventure, but small enough where you get mentally lost.
I think the Sky Islands are a beautiful thing to see off the bat, but my god are they huge. EVERYTHING is huge. The shrines do functionally the same thing, but I appreciated the Old Man stepping in from time to time to talk to you about something as you tried to get to a shrine more than the constructs explaining everything. The Plateau, in my opinion, feels much less like a tutorial. The Sky Islands are a fantastic first area, but it’s just too big and it feels like the game is trying to throw a bunch of stuff at you all at once where the Plateau was very much about easing you into it at your own pace
I think the great plateau was better but the great sky island is still good. I like how it didn’t try to be another great plateau. It gives more of a linear direction and does some other things different that I liked
I didn't actually find Lookout Landing at first when I landed. The first settlement I found was Wetland Stable. I even explored Kakariko & Hateno before eventually stumbling upon Lookout Landing & learning that it even exists.
awesome video dude you deserve more subs :)
in defense of the great sky island, a lot of the lessons the old man taught you in botw is remembered by the player in totk, which im assuming the devs thought of so they only made the constructs. for a player who hasnt played botw, they might learn from the constructs and be intrigued to learn more, making them talk to one when they see one...but for the botw veterans, its the same old story so they end up being ignored
16:10 “The player likely won’t be missing this enemy”
WHOOPS
Stunning video! Really lovely to see these two openings compared very fairly.
ps are you… Bird Person?
Either way, both the Flux Construct and Stone Talus are amazing bosses that really work for showing off the combat you’ll be experiencing in their respective games as well as showing how cool and interesting the overworld bosses can be. The Talus was a genuine shock to me when it rose from the ground after I approached it thinking it was an ore deposit and it led to one of my most memorable fights from BotW. Meanwhile the Construct I saw as I approached the snow area and I was so anxious crossing the gap as I worried what I was getting myself into only to find one of the most intricate overworld bosses in the game and it was an extremely enjoyable fight. Tbh, I can’t really decide which I would give the point to since the surprise factor the Talus gave me makes up for its hidden state.
The Stone Talus and Flux Construct are both really good at teaching the player the mechanics. The Stone Talus was something you battled by climbing, aiming, and sometimes even blowing up... since Botw was the game to introduce climbing, it makes sense. It also teaches the player that ore deposits are more easily broken by clubs and blunt weapons.
The Flux Construct, however, lets the player learn the Ultra Hand ability, occasionally Recall, AND Ascend. You can even use Ultra Hand directly on the core to disassemble the Construct and make it vulnerable. And of course, the reward is an item you can only use for Fusing to a weapon, and Zonai devices that are used with the games main gimmick.
I really don't see the Great Sky Island making the abilities more important than natural discovery a positive. I honestly got very sick of Ultrahand at one point that getting Ascend felt like finding an oasis in a desert. Having the tutorial being in a sky island thematically makes sense, but there were parts that felt ham-fisted, especially with Ultrahand (not sure if that's an unintentional pun or not). As a result, some areas don't feel necessary to check or look like a headache to check without the paraglider. Whereas with the Great Plateau, I didn't think I needed the paraglider to explore it. But, the paraglider was a better item to reward me because it felt necessary to traverse the greater world beyond. I know this wouldn't make thematic sense (not sure if this is a spoiler), but I feel like a good section of the depths would've made a better tutorial area than the sky islands.
You know, I think I agree that the Depths would have been more interesting as the starting area.