Discussing the consistent theme of "hiding in plain sight" that I noticed throughout playing Tears of the Kingdom Site: jiikae.com Twitter: / jiikae Bandcamp: jiikae.bandcamp...
I remeber when Aonuma said in an Interview he hoped people who played TOTK would become more creative and try to think about how to apply creativity in their daily lifes. The concept of hiding in plain sight may also play into that concept, in the sense that sometimes we'll face struggles whose solution is right under our nose, we just have to properly stop and assess it.
This is a GREAT way to look at it. It definitely makes sense too. Sometimes figuring out the solution to things in our day to day lives means looking at things from a different perspective. And sometimes that can mean taking even the most basic things into consideration. The simple things can be the easiest to overlook
It's sad that this is one of the only positive totk videos as of recently. Anytime a new totk video is trending, it is about how bad the game is. It's nice to see a positive video like this for a change.
What is also always in plain sight are some elements of the ending... You fail to catch Zelda during the opening.. The game tells you right at the beginning that you won't take damage if you fall into water... It shows you how to fall faster to reach something... You often catch things mid-air (Koroks, star fragments, dragon parts...). And it all comes together at the end when you have to catch Zelda! Love it! Also... On my second run I noticed so many things I haven't noticed during my first... For example: Whenever you watch a memory, the light dragon is right above you afterwards. She's always there!
“Hiding in plain sight” is the theme from the moment you step out from the room you wake up in on the sky island. When you take that first leap of faith and trigger the title animation you see the Light Dragon. She’s the only dragon you see until you get off the Great Sky Island and she’s the one that clears the cloud barrier so you _can_ leave the GSI. The developers are whispering to us from the very start: “Hey. This is important.”
Yeah, I really don't understand the pure hate... I mean if they say they are disappointed it would understandable but just hate the game like it's the bane of botw? Really? it's that bad huh?
I feel like the hate is a cars 2 situation a RU-vidr called Skitty Bitty created a good review of the game saying it’s sucks and I agree on what they said however is still think totk is a good game Both Totk and Cars 2 and not worthy sequels to their predecessor but stand-alone they’re pretty solid and are just fun
**MAJOR SPOILERS** Another example of how the developers hide things in plain sight can be found in the diving platforms. These are introduced extremely early on, even before the title screen, and the player will continue to encounter them all over Hyrule. The platforms are usually an elongation of a larger platform as a whole or, in the case of the smaller platforms, resemble a crumbling circular structure that now appears more triangular in shape. I didn't think much of it until I reached the grand finale and Link is standing on the head of the light dragon suspended above Hyrule...you look out across the light dragon's snout and it just so happens to be a similar shape to the diving platforms and it suddenly dawns on you that the game has been subconsciously training you for this exact moment this entire time. The feeling of clarity when that moment hit just blew my mind.
What’s funny about the Zelda thing, on the “find princess Zelda mission in the beginning the marker on the map Lowkey is where the dragon is before you even know she a dragon
first thing I noticed on a replay, as soon as the words "Find Princess Zelda" first appear on the screen, the light dragon comes into view. First quest and the answer is literally right in front of you!
Dude, when you give away the ending to something, use the word spoiler (In all caps) to warn people not to read your post If they don't want someone to spoil the ending for them
We are so used to look for hidden locations to find goodies, that when they put in plain sight we barely noticed them, like we are so used tose the forest, that we do not look at the tree, it is like focusing in what is far, when what we wanted was so close all the time, such a brilliant way to change the pace .
awesome analysis! didn’t occur to me as a common theme in the moment but now that you’re saying it it makes total sense. you could argue the zelda reveal as the central hinge-point of the story makes it explicit. the theme itself was hiding in plain sight…
Thank you! And yeah the Zelda reveal is definitely what made me go “Hmm” It really does feel like it’s a theme that they sat down and talked about deliberately. And if not, I still find it interesting because it still gave me the same feeling regardless lol.
I actually stopped playing the game for a while after I found out. I was lured back eventually (and thoroughly enjoyed the ending), but for a little while I was kind of gutted. Not a reaction I expected to have with a video game, but I guess I was indeed that invested in the characters of BotW and TotK 🙈
I think Tears does a great job at subversion. The skyview towers are clear landmarks, but often you can’t just walk inside, you have a puzzle. You visit Gerudo Town and it’s empty. The bridge to Rito Village is broken. The player has to reassess what they thought was familiar. The player is taught to question, since playing this like Breath of the Wild will cause the player to stumble a bit. The Master Sword requires STAMINA instead of health. You learn to adapt and the game encourages and rewards it
This is one of the many things I love about Zelda games and even Nintendo by extension. The way they use simplicity challenges our ability of overthinking and complicating things against us is something that has kept my mind open and I find that really applicable to other titles, especially something like Ace Attorney in their logic puzzles. So I definitely think to some degree that hiding things in plain sight was intentional because allowing the player to approach problems from any angle encourages them to explore, at least personally, because they want to exercise that ideology over and over since it doesn't have a point where it gets tiring.
It’s a very meta way of designing a game for sure. In my mind, it would seem risky to intentionally EXPECT players to overthink. But they somehow go for it anyway.
Great video! The entire overworld is like this too. Look around from some vantage point and it all looks pretty similar to BOTW. Actually explore and you discover caves, wells, chasms, so much new stuff
As someone who has been playing botw constantly, weekly, since the month it released and now doing the same alternating through botw and Totk, I LOVED THIS VIDEO! You put how I felt into words. I struggled with the exact sky tower & the lost woods. The way Zelda is flying in front of us the entire time we’re on the sky island, it really shocked me when I played it the second time. This was an amazing analysis.
Another thing about glyphs is that you can figure out where the tear drop is by looking for something out of place in the pattern while floating in the air. It could be a filled in circle that isn't filled in for the other circles in pattern or something similar. I didn't notice that until I found one of the last glyphs on the map.
I think this idea has been there since 2d zelda games. Oftentimes the solution to enigmas in dungeons doesn't require finding a mysterious object, they just requires us to carefully look around, the room, the inventory, the map, and to think. Botw was also known for its visual clues to feel where you had to go more than to see it consciously. These ideas look similar and traverse the saga.
5:00 I felt so smart realizing this was the solution. An All-timer game for sure. Edit: I do agree that most of TOTK's game design choices are to subvert our expectations (especially all of us who played BOTW). The run up to Hyrule Castle chasing the doppleganger was a nice touch as well, given the end result of that mini dungeon.
Yes! I think what makes it doubly interesting is that some of the subversion only works for people who have a history with the IP. Stuff like that is more common with story telling stuff, but to do it with gameplay-related things is SUPER interesting to me
Korok puzzles! esp. the one where you make the pattern with the rock. The puzzle appears on the map, completely solved (even before solving it yourself). Loved this video :)
I like your concise, direct manner of speech. Prior to finding the skyview tower, I had already discovered the mushroom cave quest, so I stupidly went back to it after taking a whole day to remember where it was. Looked for that damn special mushroom faithfully! I EXPECTED to find a shroom that would make Mario big. Ugh. So they really got me with that one. But the second I observed the Light Dragon I knew it was Zelda. Nintendo didn't get me there. They did with everything else though. You have some keen observation skills sir.
Nice video! I've got a couple of examples, one being the hidden koroks and how in a way many of those are hidden in plain sight. The other being where Ganondorf is located. The game gives some hints (both subtle and unsubtle) on this, but only tells you the answer on completing the Master Kohga quest line. I myself didn't really put it together until that point (despite previously going as far as the gloom spawn bit), but once I was told it felt obvious! I do think it's an intentional choice on the part of the developers too - it feels like a clever way of getting players to engage with the same world but in different ways
Awesome video, I subscribed!!!The hidden in sight aspect of this game is also one of my favorite parts about it, it makes the world feel so alive. I remember being so shocked when l saw trees move on my first play through lol after that I knew that this game would be full of way more surprises
I actually got jumped by the trees 2x before realizing they were what killed me... I had walked near one in the overworld and looked away thinking about where to go first knowing BotW's map.
I think the shrine/lightroot pairings, Phantom Ganon moveset, dragon/Zelda, living trees, talus bases and the tower are all excellent examples. I do think it was intentional as it keeps the player engaged in the world itself, learning its peculiarities. I'd disagree about the first blupee example because the actual armor still seems to be hidden "conventionally" while the blupee substitutes for a standard navigation overlay (similar to birds and foxes in Ghost of Tsushima or the glowing "dust" trail in the Fable games). If you remove the blupee, I don't think the treasure location would make you kick yourself for not seeing something obvious in the way you would for the tower example. I was initially going to disagree with the Lost Woods example as well, but then realized it is also spot on. Once you realize the relationship between the topographies of the surface and the Depths, you can easily figure out when you're under the Lost Woods, but before you know that connection, you just treat the areas completely separately. Another example is the Yiga clan masquerading as trees or baiting you with bananas. The latter is more obvious, but they both reinforce the idea of paying attention to your surroundings.
I totally forgot about the Yiga clan’s disguises. And funny enough. The Lost Woods example was less about “hiding in plain sight” and more to just give another example of misdirection in general. Even though both can apply like you said, I think for The Lost Woods it leans more towards misdirection. And I’d say misdirection is kind of like a “sub-genre” of hiding in plain sight. For lack of a better word.
@@jiikae Ah, yeah, that's my bad. You did specifically label the Lost Woods example as one of misdirection. I guess I let the title of the video misdirect my focus. The idea of misdirection being a "sub-genre" is a good one since in both cases the puzzle solution is subverting typical expectations we develop from playing similar games.
It was intentional I watched a video about the devlopment of Breath of the Wild and the had a designe rule the followed which I beleive they called the triangle rule. And that was that wherever you are on the map if you look out toward the horizon you will see at least 2 points of interest you might want to walk to. (In places like a forest it requires you to climb a tall tree or a tower to meet the criteria.) Then various other points or interest are hidden behind other triangles (example mountains). And as you get closer to the chosen destination new points of interest that were hiding behind them will be revealed to you giving you new choices. The obstacles were also metaphorically triangle shaped because it let the player choose whether to go over or around the obstacles. They also used cues to hint at different types of things. As you played you learned that smole signaled NPCs. Mountains meant ore deposits. Watch towers meantap awareness. Shrines glowed to signal themselves. Etc. Tears of the Kingdom inherited a lot of that design. And if I had to guess probably reused that design philosophy. Because Nintendo with LoZ reuses what worked in the previous game and throws away what didnt work well enough. And the triangle rule was wildly successfully. It was reaponsible for the things the fans loved about the feel of playing the game.
Side note - there are many ways to farm those Keese swarms, but my absolute favorite is to hop on my "Hydro Skipper" to chase them down and take them down with Yunobo. I got like 15 Keese eyes in one shot by doing this!
I think tied to this is a level design concept seen a lot on Mario (GMTK has a good video on Mario level design). Basically you learn concepts and they get teinforced through repetition and gradually growing in difficulty and variety. The fusions are a great example. You start small but eventually you start needing to think outside the box to build things to solve puzzles based on previous simpler builds.
Dive on all dragons and receive no fall damage even at max height...Nintendo/Devs love the dragons so much they just wanted Link to just literally dive in and face plant the dragons...cheeky but sweet...in a way ...yes you can face plant the last dragon too even land in the bubbling spots and no fall damage shall be occur...it makes it more cinematic? dynamic?...oh target practice!
7:11 thanks for the spoiler...! You should avoid to talk about key moments or at least you could say something like "spoiler alert" before the spoiler itself... There's still so much to talk about! Thanks again 😢
Great video man…but the current trend is to hate totk lol I can’t wait to see if echoes of wisdom use this hiding in plain sight concept…the gameplay seems open air too but in a 2D plane
@jiikae Yes. That's correct. I've completed the depths. One of my favourite places in TotK. There's only 120 lightroots so every light root does have a shrine above, but not every shrine has a lightroot as there are 152 shrines.
