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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - TotK really makes Switch feel dated

Wman1996 said:

I just started playing Tears of the Kingdom last night. It looks even worse to me than Breath of the Wild. But I think that's a few reasons...
1. I'm playing it on a 50-inch 4K TV. I played Breath of the Wild on smaller 1080p TVs.
2. It's the year 2023. Even if Tears of the Kingdom does have slightly better graphics than Breath of the Wild, that's a generation of gaming right there in time.
3. I got a PS4 Pro and later a PS5 after getting a Switch. When I have played games that have much higher fidelity than Switch, it becomes pretty noticeable.
I understand Switch is a hybrid and they weren't going to to spend a lot of money to make the tablet more powerful or create a more capable dock. The Switch really could've used a Pro, since even the DS had the DSi and the 3DS had the New 3DS.
Unless Nintendo is going to have a very long life with the Switch before replacement, a Pro died from 2022 onward.

Same here. Starting the game on a quality 65" 4K HDR tv was a rude awakening. I played BotW on a 1080p SDR projector, which already looked pretty soft with 900p resolution as input. Now I'm used to 1440p upscaled to 4K, much cleaner sharper image regardless of whether it's an indie game or AAA blockbuster. But most of all, I'm used to the much better color and contrast profiles of HDR gaming. TotK looks faded, bleached, lacks depth in its visuals.
Even VR has moved on to HDR and simple indie games like Synthriders look much better color image depth wise.

Switch doesn't feel like a hybrid to me. It feels like using tv out on a psp compared to what ps3 produced on tv at the time. It's clear it wants to be a handheld first, the dock is just a convenient charging stand with tv out. The Switch really could have used a standalone version for TV with at least native 1080p output.

Anyway it might be a great game but I have only completed the very first shrine so far. Got too much on my plate and the game didn't grab me yet. So no incentive to make time for it. And that's the same with my kids. Tried it, but not playing it... So different from when BotW launched. We were all instantly hooked and the Switch was running non stop. TotK release date was unfortunate, right as the weather turned here to sunny blue skies after weeks of cold rain and grey skies.



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Can't relate. Luckily for me I found visual performance and photorealism absurdly overrated.

Having a blast of how vast and charming the world is and how much it improved from BOTW



 

 

We reap what we sow

The gameplay loops in TotK>>>>>>graphic fidelity of a fricking tree!



Looking at TotK right now.

The grassblades move beautifully in the wind. The landscapes look gorgeous. Random boulder drops from the sky. A grasshopper is jumping the grass. The sunlight bathes the world in a soft yellowish hue. A huge dragon flies slowly across the sky.
Soft piano tunes complete a peaceful image that is just utterly beautiful.

But there are not enough polygons in that random grassblade #27534418 so my immersion is broken and my eyes start to hurt. I think I'm starting to feel sick. I need more polygons and 4k tectures! There are not enough useless tiny pebbles on the ground!

If they had to make the game with far more advanced graphics, that don't make the game in any way more fun, it would take 20 fucking years to finish.

Last edited by Kakadu18 - on 17 May 2023

I'm playing it and the opening sequence with Zelda in the cave definitely stroke me as retrogamming. Playing a little to much on PS5 make the difference look really jarring. I think people who don't bother by the difference do not play much AAA western games

It's not enough to make my impression of the game worse in any sense, but definitely makes me feel like it's time for a new console.



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IcaroRibeiro said:

I'm playing it and the opening sequence with Zelda in the cave definitely stroke me as retrogamming. Playing a little to much on PS5 make the difference look really jarring. I think people who don't bother by the difference do not play much AAA western games

It's not enough to make my impression of the game worse in any sense, but definitely makes me feel like it's time for a new console.

I love that I have no idea what “retrogamming” is. It’s like blissful ignorance and it’s such a sweet thing. 



160rmf said:

Can't relate. Luckily for me I found visual performance and photorealism absurdly overrated.

Having a blast of how vast and charming the world is and how much it improved from BOTW

Who is talking about photorealism?  I don't think anyone wants, and certainly nobody expects that from Nintendo games like Zelda. But, there's a lot more to graphics than that.  



Kakadu18 said:

Looking at TotK right now.

The grassblades move beautifully in the wind. The landscapes look gorgeous. Random boulder drops from the sky. A grasshopper is jumping the grass. The sunlight bathes the world in a soft yellowish hue. A huge dragon flies slowly across the sky.
Soft piano tunes complete a peaceful image that is just utterly beautiful.

But there are not enough polygons in that random grassblade #27534418 so my immersion is broken and my eyes start to hurt. I think I'm starting to feel sick. I need more polygons and 4k tectures! There are not enough useless tiny pebbles on the ground!

If they had to make the game with far more advanced graphics, that don't make the game in any way more fun, it would take 20 fucking years to finish.

The graphical fidelity is fine, the output is not though. Maybe it looks better on the Switch OLED, but on my 4K HDR tv it looks washed out and blurry, next to a lot of judder when panning the camera. It kinda feels like Nintendo doesn't care about tvs anymore at all.

I don't need more polygons nor 4K textures, I need a stable sharp picture that doesn't have me wondering what's wrong with my glasses :p So maybe give the option to dial the detail down to get stable 1080p30 output when docked. At least 1080p scales well on 4K screens and 30fps is perfectly fine for 3rd person action adventure.

My wife and kid are currently playing Ratchet and Clank again after playing Snipperclips on the Switch. Can't get them to play Zelda either lol. I'm gonna play some Humanity on PSVR2, easier to see what I'm doing.



I'm honestly so glad my brain doesn't work this way.
I can't imagine having a game this magical ruined for me because the trees or Link's hair aren't advanced enough. Those are the last things on my mind when I'm playing.

It's like when Mario Galaxy came out on the Wii; sure, it was a generation behind PS3 and 360 graphically, but that didn't matter when it was one of the best games I'd ever played.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 17 May 2023

IcaroRibeiro said:

 I think people who don't bother by the difference do not play much AAA western games

It's not enough to make my impression of the game worse in any sense, but definitely makes me feel like it's time for a new console.

Or people who aren't bothered about it, simply can't be bothered about it? I can notice the difference, but it doesn't flip any sentiment about wanting to have a better visual performance. If in the future they decide to rerelease the game for switch 2, great, but what is available visually now is more than enough for me.

If I look for it, yeah I can definitely see the low quality texture, but while immersed in the game, the world setting is so beautifully executed that I can't be bothered with thoughts about Nintendo needing to step up in the graphics department 

VAMatt said:
160rmf said:

Can't relate. Luckily for me I found visual performance and photorealism absurdly overrated.

Having a blast of how vast and charming the world is and how much it improved from BOTW

Who is talking about photorealism?  I don't think anyone wants, and certainly nobody expects that from Nintendo games like Zelda. But, there's a lot more to graphics than that.  

When you talk about the game needing a better foliage, isn't like craving for realism in a sense?

Btw, I know that. That's why I have listed visual performance and photorealism as 2 separate things 

Last edited by 160rmf - on 19 May 2023

 

 

We reap what we sow