Daft

I hope so. I started Zelda on Ashley's Switch. And...I might have actually picked my own up if I knew I could move my save onto it. It'd be very tempting. Too hard to resist, me thinks.

That's great to hear. As much as I'm enjoying Zelda, I'm glad I held off a bit.

Any idea when we might be able to transfer saves from console to console? Is it on the cards at all?

They're both superb games. We should be so lucky to have both of them in the first place.

Well, I'd say that the finality of Final Fantasy games are fairly well justified; they're high-fantasy games with limited runs. Every 'run' has wholly unique characters and worlds (as far as I'm aware – I've only played FFXV).

It's only really ever in the back of my mind. It's a genuinely remarkable game but I think it's a fault worth bringing up. I was trying to steer the discussion back on topic. You can have a LOL if you really need it. LOL

Sure, whatever. That's a real strawman. It doesn't at all change my criticism that there is a lack of narrative around too many places and activities.

At least a fantasy (of sorts) is presented. Slavishly realised, usually. So your point doesn't really make much sense. Not to mention that all FF games are limited series. They may be a series of three games but they aren't designed to continue indefinitely. Except for FF Online. I have no idea what's going on there. But that FF11 and FF14 are different also speaks to the finality of each title.

You're different. Edit: Seriously though, for a game series titled The Legend of Zelda, it's severely lacking in legend.

I've not found any of the memories yet. Maybe they'll help change my mind. I'm not sure you can accuse audio-logs of being money saving when talking about a game that has incredibly limited voice-acting as it is. And it's not like any of those games with audio-logs eschew full voice acting and cutscenes. I don't think any of them do. It's not necessarily that BotW is empty, it's partly that there is – for me – a discord between certain activities or setting and narrative.

Part of building a compelling open world is realising its history. It absolutely elevates games and personally I find it increasingly key to the experience (maybe because it's become more prevalent in games). Mad Max had these wonderful little staged artefacts that you could find. And the area you'd find it would be dressed in a certain way. There would be a photo – maybe with a bit of writing on the back – a letter or a postcard. And once you read it Max would make remark on it. I found them personable and especially important because it contrasted the harshness of the world I was presented. Far Cry 4 does something similar. The Witcher 3 is steeped in lore an history, both general and personal. And it's often key to finding locations or secrets or an effective way to fight a certain beast. The towns (Oxenfurt, Velen, Novigrad) are all worth reading about and help realise the world. You can get swept up in a love story that turns into a ghost story, and when you go to exorcise the ghost the place is rich with detail; both visual story and written. And Horizon (which it's no secret I've been blown out of the water by) creates an utterly compelling world that feels like it's not just existing at a point frozen in time, but is instead a place that has gone through much and will go through even more once you've 100%-ed it and uninstalled the game from the HDD. Even Destiny, which has nothing going on in explicit story has absolutely wonderful (and stupidly inaccessible) lore about everything from people, to equipment, to world/levels/raids. The Vault of Glass raid isn't brilliant simply because of the mechanics, it's brilliant because the mechanics and the lore are one and the same. I actually think it's a massive cock-tease to create what appears to be a deep, rich world and then have no info about it. Like a supermodel who's got nothing going on between their ears; fun to play with but don't expect any profound conversations. And it might not have an impact on you but it most certainly made that epic bit I talked about in spoilers feel pretty empty. I don't really understand the 'survival' aspect. I don't remember a Zelda game where you could carry an unlimited number of health items...so there's no tension there. You never come close to using up all your weapons, there's always something lying around (does this change later on?)...so again, surviving isn't really an issue. You also have unlimited bombs that – if you switch between the round and the cubed one – you can use two at a time (and by the time you get the Bomb+ they recharge super quick, too). The fights aren't hard unless I'm getting one-shot by random enemies that I need to get one-shot by to realise that they can one-shot me...Which is incredibly stupid, if you ask me. I feel like I missed a tutorial about how certain enemies are stronger and that I should observe the weapon they're holding before engaging (except the draw distance is so poor that scouting the landscape isn't really possible...especially when the enemy is one of those centaur mother-fuckers who can see you a mile off). I guess the hot and cold environments add a certain level of survival to the game but like health items I can just stock up on lots of heat/cold resistant meals to get me through. So... Also, the lack of a proper dodge/roll button is really lamentable; that adds a certain level of fighting for survival because inevitably anything that limits movement does. Every fight basically turns into a fencing match. Reading this and my last post back, it sounds like I'm really beating down on Zelda but I am really enjoying it. It just feels like Nintendo threw everything that prototyped quite well into a box and made sure nothing was especially broken. It's unfocused. But it's more a shame that they could and should have done so much more with the narrative. Majora's Mask narrative run circles around this game. It's been 17 years since Majora's Mask. Why haven't Nintendo made progress?

Technically that would solve the problem.

I had the controller lose responsiveness while sitting back with my legs up on the table. It happened a few times before I realise that my knees being in the way was the thing causing the problem. I moved the switch from behind the TV, no change. I think I'm (at a max) 9-feet away from the Switch. Which is an absolute joke. I hope they sort it out by the time I get one for myself.

I sunk a solid amount of time into this over the weekend. Here are a few initial impressions. The Good Combat. It's a lot of fun. I thought I'd hate the weapon durability thing but once you accept it, it kind of just works. I do wish there was an item like a Whetstone that let you either repair your weapon pre-breaking or allowed you to up its durability a bit. While I appreciate weapons breaking forces you to switch up your play...I don't quite buy it; I end up just using anything and everything because the difference between a spear and a two-handed broadsword is...neither vast, nor a cause to change how I really play. The visuals. Forgetting the immersion-killing frame-rate drops, it looks good. The art style does wonders to cover up how sparse the detail often is. But having come off Horizon on a Pro, I feel like its a great looking game in-spite of the hardware, not because of it. The world. The interplay between all the game systems is superb. It's a lot of fun using the lay of the land to your advantage. The exploration. I feel like this could be a double edge-sword, but it's worked for me. When I stumbled across the thing in the spoilers below I was in awe. The food. Cooking is fun. I think it's much better implemented than in FFXV. The Bad The opening. It's a real damp-squib of an opening. Probably the worst opening of any Zelda game in memory, bar Skyward Sword which tutorial-ed me to death. The music. It's just not doing anything for me. The game is too...quiet. The world. As much as it works mechanically, narratively the world is dull. Before even meeting the uninteresting characters or being introduced to the over-arcing story, the world feels...empty. On the way to Kakariko Village, there's a little fire, with some equipment under a bridge. Any other game might have something to read, like a piece of a diary. There might be something scrawled on a wall. The item position might suggest something about that place. But there's just nothing there. Similarly, there are ruins everywhere, but they're never to realise any story, they're just...things that occupy a space. The dudes sitting at the end of each shrine...none of them have anything interesting to say (I think they all literally say the same thing). Why couldn't they impart some kind of lore? So it overwhelmingly feels like I'm playing a game and not role-playing a story.

I stopped playing Fallout about 15 hours in. There was something strangely not compelling about it.

Play Horizon while we're all playing it.

Completed it. So much to talk about. The story, what happened, where it's going. What they could add. One thing I'll say before going into spoiler territory is, it's been a very long time since I played an endgame that was this smooth and enjoyable. There was no dumb Uncharted 2-like end boss. There were no random quicktime events (*cough* Uncharted 4 *cough*). In fact, from the beginning to the end, the game didn't dip in quality at all for me. It just kept building; everything I learned and everything I did just filled out this bloody wonderful tapestry. In terms of gameplay and narrative it's one of the most laser focused games I've played – it might not do anything revolutionary but what it does do, without hesitation, it does better than everything else. I really didn't think Guerilla Games had it in them. Sony have owned this studio for 12 years now and it has finally paid dividends, this is a game worth of Naughty Dog. Now onto spoilers...

Mass Effect is going to lose out. After I'm done with Horizon, I'm going to give Zelda a go hopefully. And then Persona 5.

Bias to what?

Soooo...I wasn't as close to the end as I thought. Got a few more things to do. I did however get the Power Armour thing...which is making everything a bit of a breeze (which I'm enjoying).

I'll get one in a year or so. It's not cutting edge technology so I'm not seeing anything new in that respect. The longer I wait the more games there will be, the better idea I'll have of the support it will actually get and there's a chance the price will come down to something reasonable. I'm kind of waiting for Pokemon...

@Choze are you allergic to spoiler tags or something? I think I've got to the final mission. Going to do it tonight. Can't wait.