Breath of the Wild Looks... not much different.

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

I figured the graphics would be even more improved than they were last year, but from what we saw it doesn't look like much was put towards the graphics. Now I'm not saying it looks bad, it looks great, but I was hoping maybe they'd be improved if they could be.

So what exactly do you think was done over the last year?

 

[Dio]

I cant tell exactly if they had changed anything as some of the texturing on the rocks looked a bit strange during the gameplay demo last year. I hope they have been working on minor things like that.

I noticed the lava streams now coming down from death mountain. I dont know if it erupts dynamically or if this is a constant feature they added.

 

[Lozjam]

The overall artstyle is the same, yes. It is clear that they are a ton of small improvements made overall though. The lighting system is even better than it was.
The lighting even covers even the most simple blade of grass. Speaking of the grass, the wildlife, such as birds, and butterflies are now present as well.The sky is much more rich and dynamic. The most noticeable thing is frame rate however. It was very clear that there was some stuttering last year, and that was noticeable.

This makes the animations silky smooth, making up for the inevitable clipping that the game has at certain frames.
Like @G-King mentioned, I really hope they cleaned up some of the rock textures, and I think they did do it.
Take a look at this. Look at the right side of the picture. It is hard to tell, but it looks like that instead of the rocks being a flat texture like they were last year, they are now involved in the intricate lighting system.

The rocks look a lot better I think.

I think the main focus with Zelda U however, the reason it was delayed, was for content though. I think also we will get a better grasp of the graphics of the game once we see more areas such as Death Mountain, seeing the new Water realms and streams, ect. I think that is where Zelda U will shine the most. We could see some water in the distance from the teaser, it is hard to say, but I think that the water effects may be improved as well. Only time will tell however.


So yeah, I think the game definitely looks better. Even if these are small tweaks, it still looks really good. They showed so little of it that it was hard to get a grasp of the graphics. Yet once you slow it down, you can see a lot more, and I think that it is beautiful.

 

[Deleted member 14134]

Looks lazy in my opinion. Yes it's colourful but there's not much detail. Look at Epona, she looks like she's made of playdoh.

 

[Lozjam]

Looks lazy in my opinion. Yes it's colourful but there's not much detail. Look at Epona, she looks like she's made of playdoh.

Lazy?
I mean, there are many descriptions of those not fond of this artstyle that make sense. But lazy definitely isn't one that makes sense at all. I mean, you can see pretty much every single strand of epona's mane, and it all moves separately. You can see that each blade of grass has a shadow, and that the bloom lighting is hard at work. You can see birds and butterflies scattering when you ride by. You can see the world with a huge draw distance at the same time!
I can get the criticism that the game could look a bit washed out(I like it however).
I can see how some people wouldn't like the amount of color in the game.
I can see how some people aren't fond of the bloom lighting.
However, this game, by no means looks "lazy", no matter how you can put it. This is clearly a huge technical feat for Wii U hardware. I just don't see what is "lazy" about it.

 

[Ronin]

I'm a little bit weary of the motionless teasers. So Link can stand in one spot and take in the view, that's cool; what I'm less than enthusiastic about is how the game looks with this artstyle in motion. Whenever the "gameplay" trailer came out, I could hardly tell what was going on. The biggest problem with the aesthetics is that there's an oversaturation of cel-shading, and although the landscapes are stunning that doesn't account for how it'll run.

 

[Moonstone]

I think the world is looking pretty good. I'm not in game design, and I tried to look up the process of making games but have been getting a lot of information going over the very broad parts of the whole process, but didn't really go into detail of the actual world and character building. In my ignorance, I think that it would make more sense to design the world of the game and later design the characters that belong to that world, and keep switching which you put more detail into as you add more and more textures. So Link and Epona in that picture might just not be as textured yet because detail was added to the world first.

I have hope that the finished product will look great, and I hope it's worth the wait.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Looks lazy in my opinion. Yes it's colourful but there's not much detail. Look at Epona, she looks like she's made of playdoh.

Spine looked the same in TP too, lol.

 

[Spirit]

I'm fine with it 'not looking much different' because I like what I see.

Plus, who said that this was new footage? We haven't seen it before but this could be unused 2014 e3 footage for all we know.

Anyway, as with what has already been said, I would like them to concentrate on textures etc like the rocks since they looked squiffy during the gameplay vid, even though we can only manage fuzzy footage at best with that trailer.

But I think the smaller things like rock textures will make all the difference.

What id really like them to fix though is the clipping. It bugs me how much clipping we've seen in this game. I know clipping is hard to fix but gawd it bugs me and I always see something clipping something every time I see something new of zeldaU

 

[Derek Francis]

The first area of the game they showed (bottom right corner of the map) looks great. They really didn't need to add anything to it. It's still a game in development and they likely need to work on getting the other 90% of the overworld up to that standard.

 

[Kingwobbly]

Since the entire fan base went crazy about the idea of a female protagonist, maybe they delayed it a year just to put that in. That would be funny.