Breath of the Wild How useful do you think the handglider is going to be?

[Spirit]

I'm liking the look of the handglider in BotW, I hope it makes the game feel a little WW-ish with it looking similar in function to the Deku Leaf.

So far we've seen Link glide on it and ... Well, just glide, its a glider...

But we've seen him use it to get the upper hand in combat like during his battle with the Guardian where he vaulted from Epona, used the glider to gain extra height and then arrow the Guardian In.The.Face.

Using it during combat was inspired, but do you think we'll be able to find out own unique uses for the glider too?

It'll be used for some puzzles of course, but how useful and present are you expecting the glider to be?

 

[Ventus]

Not very, we're here to climb and we've got the ipod with us so I don't think the glider will be used all too much. Maybe for a couple airborne bosses/scenarios but not for much overall.

 

[Dio]

I think it will be a pretty convenient method of getting down from high places. I don't think it will be essential a lot of the time. Only to get off the great plateau. In other instances like fighting guardians, using it will be just one of the multiple strategies to defeat the enemy.

 

[Lozjam]

You can also use the Paraglider to soar above your enemies undetected.

Not only that, but you can do an airstrike straight out of the Paraglider as well.

 

[Zonda]

Maybe Link is secretly an Air Bender, you never know

 

[Ambient Nomad]

I hadn't thought of this, but with hang gliding and climbing, it seems Nintendo doesn't want to force players to take the "long way" (of you will) when having to get to a place. Climbed a mountain to get to a temple? Take the hang glider to get back down. Maybe the hang glider exists to reduce back tracking somewhat.

Makes me wonder if the game features fast travel options (I don't mind either way). I haven't been super deep in to the coverage of the game, so I may have missed that.

 

[Vanguard771]

I hadn't thought of this, but with hang gliding and climbing, it seems Nintendo doesn't want to force players to take the "long way" (of you will) when having to get to a place. Climbed a mountain to get to a temple? Take the hang glider to get back down. Maybe the hang glider exists to reduce back tracking somewhat.

Makes me wonder if the game features fast travel options (I don't mind either way). I haven't been super deep in to the coverage of the game, so I may have missed that.

If I remember correctly from the treehouse live stream I think they showed you being able to teleport back to any resurrection tower you had previously activated. So any time you fast travel you will need the hang-glider to get down.

 

[the8thark]

Probably as useful as the leaf was in WW minus the wind generating part of it.

 

[CM30]

Great for shortcuts, sequence breaking, glitches and certain dungeon obstacles. Maybe also for landing on top of certain really tall buildings without a lot of climbing.

Less useful everywhere else.

 

[AncientPoe]

Simple, versatile tools are best tools. That way, it's easy to find many uses for them. The opposite end of that spectrum would be something like the Spinner. Very specific use, very useless item.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The trailers so far have shown a reasonable amount of the new climbing up things feature, so I expect using the hang glider to get back down off of things after climbing them will be pretty common.

Simple, versatile tools are best tools. That way, it's easy to find many uses for them. The opposite end of that spectrum would be something like the Spinner. Very specific use, very useless item.

Having specific use items like the spinner isn't bad. It's better to have a common core of a few versatile items and then have rarer use ones as peripheral stuff. That way you're swapping more rarely because you can keep a couple of the core ones available all the time rather than having to shuffle all your slots.

 

[Aku]

Probably you might be able to 'float' to really out of the way places while hanging on it. You are able to use the updraft from fires to get quite up in the air, maybe if some high areas have dry grass, you can use a fire arrow to set it alight, and then right while it's burning you can set a lower patch of grass on fire so you can float up to the second created updraft.

Basically it's second use could be to used to discover secrets, or it might even be a way to reach the floating island. Exept you won't be using a few small fires to get up there, you'll probably end up using Death Mountain's huge updraft instead.

 

[Djinn]

Judging by the cast amount of mountains we have seen in the demos already I would say extremely.

I assume the main method might be using it to get back to the main valley area once you are done on the mountains.

It also makes me wish we could have the Deku Leaf back, I feel like a really mountainous place would have a lot more utility for it than open ocean.

 

[Lozjam]

Judging by the cast amount of mountains we have seen in the demos already I would say extremely.

I assume the main method might be using it to get back to the main valley area once you are done on the mountains.

It also makes me wish we could have the Deku Leaf back, I feel like a really mountainous place would have a lot more utility for it than open ocean.

The hand glider is practically just a better Deku Leaf is it not?

Also, Deku Leaves have also made an appearance as a weapon.

 

[Djinn]

The hand glider is practically just a better Deku Leaf is it not?

Also, Deku Leaves have also made an appearance as a weapon.

But it's missing all the windy stuff you could do with the Deku Leaf.

And if the glider is what you use to float in the air then the little Deku Leaves probably do something else.