November Update.
Hello you awesomely perfect Patreon people!
I hope all of you are doing exceptionally well, that everything you ever hoped for comes to fruition and that your advent calendar only features your favorite flavor of chocolate. (That is if advent calendars are a thing in America. Otherwise I hope that - starting on Sunday - some stranger randomly gifts every one of you a small piece of your favorite flavor of chocolate. Everyday till Christmas.)
The Echoes of Wisdom video is live and I’m quite happy with how it turned out!
Writing this one was quite an adventure because originally I had something completely different planned.
You see, this video started as an exploration on the state of the modern Zelda series - certainly not what it ended up becoming.
So how did an exploration about the modern state of Zelda turn into me dropping tables onto Link only to end on a point about accessibility?
Well, here’s the thing.
Most of the echoes in Echoes of Wisdom are redundant.
There are several beds doing similar things, there are several pots and rocks and statues and whatnot that all serve a similar function.
There are many enemy echoes that are just slightly tweaked variations of the same enemy, like the different birds or moblins.
But worst of all it’s not just that a lot of the echoes are look-alikes they also fulfill similar functions.
For example: the table fulfills the same function as the bed, or the trampoline and later the waterblock - they are all used for horizontal or vertical navigation.
If we cut out all the redundancy and only look at what different functions the echoes truly fulfill then we end up with a bit over a dozen different things they can do.
(Horizontal/vertical movement, hit something close, hit something far away, freeze something, burn something, electrocute something, explode - and so on.)
A traditional Zelda game usually features about a dozen different items.
So the argument that I was originally building towards, was that Echoes of Wisdom gives us an illusion of having a hundred plus different Echoes, but in the end those echoes only fulfill the exact same twelve functions that most Zelda games featured since A Link To The Past.
The idea was, to first argue that the Echoes actually do not provide more freedom then normal Zelda items do since the beginning of time and then to argue that Nintendo is misunderstanding what made Breath of the Wild so great.
They are replicating the game's weaknesses instead of its strengths.
They seem not to understand what it actually was that made Breath so great.
And that would have been a fun video.
It is however obviously not the video that made its way onto YouTube.
What happened?
Here’s the thing.
I was looking for an interesting angle to make the argument that most Echoes are redundant.
And then I had an idea.
“Huh! I bet it’s possible to solve a surprising amount of the problems in the game using only a table.” I was thinking naively.
Fast forward five hours and I was in the middle of a heated battle against Link, jumping off of my table platform trying to hit the little guy with furniture.
Things escalated quickly.
Meanwhile the part about options and accessibility was actually written ages ago.
The part was originally part of the video on Resident Evil 4, but ended up not making the cut, because I felt that this is something better brought up when discussing a Nintendo game.
So I was sitting there in front of the script juggling the “Nintendo is learning all the wrong lessons from Breath of the Wild” part, the “Let’s drop furniture on Link” part and the “Nintendo doesn’t provide options and we are all going to die” part trying to fit all of them into a cohesive script.
Usually I’m always up for a fun little writing challenge but even I have to admit things were getting a bit out of hand here, which is how we ended up with the video we got.
But what about the part about modern Zelda?
Well honestly, no idea!
We’ll either have a video about this in the near future or we will discuss it when we talk about Breath of the Wild (or - knowing me - about pac man).
It’s been fun doing something on the gaming channel again and I got a lot of questions on what my further plans for it are.
So first, our next video will be over there as well.
My working title for the next video is “the Mario/Bollywood video” and the premise of it is a bit out there.
I’m not entirely sure yet if I manage to tie it all together into a cohesive script but if I do, I think the video is going to be quite interesting and about something seldomly brought up.
Afterwards I want to tie up some loose ends on the Perspective channel and do two videos on the DLC’s of Outer Wilds and Elden Ring. (I have plotted the outlines for both videos a long time now and want to produce them befor I forget what I actually wanted to talk about. Both videos are going to be quite philosophical, pretty interesting and insanely difficult to write.)
And then?
Well, honestly I’m mainly waiting for Nintendo to finally show us the Switch successor and the next Mario game - things that I plan to cover over on the gaming channel.
There are also a couple of ideas for a new format on the gaming channel that I want to give a try soon but that’s too far into the future to already waffle about.
I’m hopeful to have the next video out before Christmas - though, even if something goes wrong, you’ll certainly hear from me again before New-Years-Eve.
After all there is a demon-blood-pact forcing me to share my Game-Of-The-Year with you.
I hope all of you are doing better than fantastic and want to say a huge and gigantic thank you for your generous support. You are really making a difference here!
PS: I had a typo in the title and only a single person noticed it. (Echos or Echoes, it’s all the same.)
Comments (11)
I'm glad you decided to release the rest of your point about modern Zelda in a second video. It was a great watch and the overall idea of mistakes being perpetuated from one game to the other landed perfectly.
Sorry to hear about your thumb! I also am battling a right thumb injury and you're right I never really realized about how much a thumb is used in just about everything until it started to hurt. Now I have learned to use a mouse left handed and I type on a phone with my left thumb and right index finger. Even had to learn a new way to hold a dang book to read it.
"Our weekly reminder that we are all going to die" LOL
I actually noticed the same thing about most echoes in Echoes of Wisdom being redundant. It becomes super apparent once you find certain strong enemy echoes, at which point there's never a good reason to use any other echoes for attacking again (except maybe for the occasional airborne enemy). Same goes for traversal. Once you've acquired certain traversal echoes (the water block being one of them), practicallly every other traversal echo becomes pointless. In order to use any of the weaker echoes in a playthrough, you really have to go out of your way to deliberately do a challenge run (kinda like you were attempting with the table run). The more you look at it, the more you wonder "how is this better than just regular upgradeable items like in classic Zelda?". At least with classic Zelda items, you didn't have to bother with the horrible UI, which was really the worst aspect of Echoes of Wisdom. So yeah, there's certainly enough material to talk about regarding this topic and I do think it would've made for an interesting video (albeit probably not the most original one, since I reckon a lot of people have already come to the same conclusions as us). I totally understand why it was left out, though, as the connection between "table challenge" and "Nintendo accessbility" was already a bold one, anyways. Admittedly, it did feel slightly forced to me while watching that video - and that's despite being rooted in a very real annoyance you were dealing with while making it. My guess is the two topics were just a bit too different to add up to a fully satisfying, coherent narrative in my head - it was still a very entertaining watch, all things considered. I'll certainly never get bored by one of your videos. By the way - and I am slightly shifting topic here: Are you interested in getting constructive criticism for your videos here on Patreon? (Specifically on technical aspects/craftsmanship). There are one or two things that I feel could at least be interesting to you, but I also respect and understand that not everyone is necessarily seeking for criticism (let alone on a platform like this).
Sure! I'm always interested in hearing thoughts on the videos!
I am very intrigued about this mario/bollywood video. Will this be on the perspective or gaming channel?
I honestly don't know yet. Depends a bit into which direction the script ends up flipping.
I was (and really I still am) debating whether to get Echoes of Wisdom because from the gameplay I've seen it looked rather unsatisfying to me. You have a few echoes that trivialise half the game, you only ever use the same couple trustworthy, reliable echoes and there's no real challenge in the gameplay either unless you decide to restrict yourself to a specific challenge run. I was expecting either something about the illusion of choice, with the illusion being stashed away in a dusty cardboard box somewhere in the echoes menu that takes a few minutes to rediscover, or something about just embracing the lack of challenge and treating it as a fun sandbox to carefreely play around in, like a Mario Wonder experience or something that's just there to be fun and not to be thought about too much. In the end I got a reminder that there's a very real chance I won't be physically or mentally capable of replaying my favourite games a few decades from now and I'll take that as a push to replay those games sooner rather than later, so thank you nonetheless.
I've seen lots of interesting takes on Echoes of Wisdom. I heard someone say that it's pretty much a return to the classic zelda style in how it operates which was something this person wanted. They enjoyed BotW and TotK but they wanted a return to classic zelda. So it's interesting to hear the same point about the echoes be used positively by some and negatively by others. It makes sense though, because even as a classic zelda game the redundancy of some echoes is definitely something I could see being annoying. I really enjoyed the video, I think discussions of accessibility always get muddied by people who at heart only really care for their own gaming experience, so putting the perspective of age into it I think is a great argument for accessibility. The only issue I can see is that now this valuable discussion on accessibility is hidden in a video disguised as a challenge run, meaning people who need to see it probably won't end up seeing it. But hey, I do love the twists and turns that make up a fair amount of your video style, it's part of what can keep a long video engaging! I look forward to your next videos of course, I LOOOOVE your philosophical analyses so to hear you say you plan on writing two heavily philosophical videos soon gets me very excited. I hope the algorithm treats you well and!
“Nintendo is learning all the wrong lessons from Breath of the Wild” is something that really resonates with me considering how Tears of The Kingdom turned out. The amazing exploration that defined the first game took a backseat because of the new towers and flying vehicles, and Nintendo instead made a sequel focusing on the world and characters of Botw (the... less stellar parts of the game in my humble onion). I would be quite curious to hear your thoughts on this topic!
I feel no desire to play Zelda games so long as they don't fix the UX. Since they fixed the OoT iron boots and SS item popups I thought they learned that constantly pausing the game is bad, yet they keep replicating this system that's so much worse.