Remember when we thought star field was going to be a $60 role-playing game coming out in 2022? Good time. While we have to wait until September 6 to gain heightexplore its 1,000 worlds, and listen to its 250,000 lines of dialogue, we now have a much better idea of ​​what you’ll actually be doing in the game. And at today’s Xbox showcase, Bethesda pulled back the curtain again further, giving us our best look yet at what will likely be one of the biggest games of 2023.

There will be a more Starfield-focused show later on Sunday, but for now, you can check out a fully in-game trailer that…sounds like Fallout?

Official Starfield Story Trailer

And here is the longest deep dive in the Starfield Direct:

Starfield Direct – Deep Dive into Gameplay

What we know about Starfield

As you may already know, achieving liftoff seems to be a key concept in all of this. Unlike most portrayals of space travel, it looks like Starfield will show a grittier, more dangerous approach. This is not futuristic Star Trek. Humanity travels through the stars, but in a precarious way.

Much like other Bethesda games, the focus is on player choice. It has a classic Bethesda dialogue system, as well as a persuasion system influenced by your stats. You can choose a career background for your character as well as personality traits that will influence your build, but Todd Howard assures players that the system is pretty relaxed when it comes to allowing for different playstyles. traits that give you advantages, but each comes with some type of disadvantage to balance it out. It’s very convenient, but in many ways Bethesda wrote the playbook to begin with. And if nothing else, one reason to be excited is that this isn’t a re-release of Skyrim and it’s been a while since Bethesda released an original game!

Learn more: Everything we know about Starfield, from its world to your companions

In an interview with IGN, Howard said the developer has put off its next fantasy RPG for a bit in favor of exploring a new world, which it hasn’t been able to do in a long time. Unfortunately, this vast expanse of space not going to have a lot of sex in it. Boo.

Also, Starfield will have a very sleek controller it’s probably one of Xbox’s finest accessories to date.

Todd Howard pointed out that Bethesda didn’t have the technology to create something like this until now, allowing them to “realistically” generate the world around you.

Highlights of Bethesda’s Starfield Showcase

During Starfield’s longest showcase, Bethesda’s gameplay of a character arriving at a base, where they quickly began gunning down enemies for some XP. And then the looting began. There seems to be plenty to collect and customize, with a particular focus on food. They call the vibe of it all “NASA punk”, which you can do whatever you want. Oh, and there’s a photo mode.

The space gameplay, meanwhile, was very reminiscent of No Man’s Sky. We see a ship land on a planet, where the biggest city Bethesda has ever built (according to them) is. Their hope is to try to tell as many stories as possible in one area. We also got to meet some of the factions, including the obligatory humanity-focused one.

However, just because we’re in space doesn’t mean we can’t embrace a different aesthetic. There is civilized space, and then there are things beyond, where everything goes. We got a glimpse of a city that looked straight out of a western, and moments later something that looked like cyberpunk. Each planet will have its own gravity, and sometimes this gravity can affect you while you are shooting.

“We are pushing our cities and settlements further than we have ever done before,” Bethesda said.

Each time you level up, you get a skill point that you can use to rank up skills. You can do challenges to earn skill points. One skill, for example, lets you control the minds of aliens while another lets you boost your jet all over the place. Another skill lets you hit really, really well. But you can also sneak through the world, crawling through air vents if that’s what you prefer. Or you can blow things up. There seems to be a skill tree for almost every approach.

You can buy a ship, customize that ship, and even hire a crew to operate it. Some teammate interactions can turn into romance, although the conversation that was shown did feel a bit wooden. I guess it’s because the dialogue isn’t as fleshed out as a full-fledged companion. Just like companions, most crew members can lend a hand in the field.

Space game in Starfield

During space combat, you can redirect energy from your shields to your weapons to boost them. After destroying ships, you can loot them in the air. You can turn them into scrap metal or board enemy ships themselves. The gameplay revealed that enemy ships will often have things to shoot inside them, but if you prevail you can take control of the actual ship.

What systems will Starfield launch on?

In related news, you should know that Starfield is an Xbox console exclusive, though it will also release on PC and Steam. by Bethesda Pete Hines wants you to know he’s so sorry about itbut hey: that’s what happens when you’re bought out by Microsoft for billions of dollars.

Kotaku covers everything about Summer Game Fest, from Thursday’s main show to other events happening throughout the next week. Whether you like larger-than-life triple-A games or intimate, offbeat indies, you can follow all things SGF here.

Wicca Phase Springs Eternal—Adam McIlwee, 34-year-old songwriter who set precedents for emo music since 2005— has spent the last few years playing Red Dead Redemption 2. Well, that, and Fire Pro Wrestling World, which is “just, like, a wrestling simulatorhe tells me on Zoom.

But Rockstar Games’ Wild West simulacrum is what drove much of McIlwee’s fantastical and introspective self-titled album (out June 2with tour dates scheduled for this summer). It also opened him up to the stoic splendor of nature.

Immediately he was drawn to the parts of Red Dead that didn’t feel like they had soot of humanity on them – the “west side of the map,” he says, so “[near the settlement] Strawberryand north of Strawberry.

“If you’re listening to the record and you want to know where it’s set,” he says, with some embarrassment, “it’s mostly in that area, the western side of the map. In the game, these areas are naturally beautiful. It’s not like you were in AnnesburgOr Van Hornwhere they are depressed mining towns.

From his shyness, I can tell that McIlwee doesn’t necessarily consider himself a “player.” Really, he insists, RDR2 is what he’s been stuck on for years. It has a cold open world and what feels like endless playtime (physical copies have come with two discsand runners-up can expect to stop play after about 179 hours), and, at first, it overwhelmed him.

“I just thought it was huge and intimidating,” he says. But after a round of encouragement from friends, “I went through the first two missions on my first playthrough, then I felt comfortable enough to start exploring on my own, and it That’s really where the fun of the game is for me.”

Otherwise, RDR2 “is provocatively slow, rambunctious and unamusingly slow,” Kirk Hamilton wrote. in Kotaku Review 2018; it has “the most beautiful representations of nature […]and is happy to juxtapose that beauty with the ugly, violent human ambition that will eventually subjugate and destroy it.

Learn more: 18 months after Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar has made some big cultural changes

This tension, the gum between aggressive catharsis and splendor, has permeated Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, but it’s also been present in all of McIlwee’s music since high school.

Early Tigers Jaw, the pop-punk band McIlwee founded alongside current member Ben Walch in 2005, is imbued with the same gourmet sadness of dark chocolate. Goth Boi Clique – emo rap collective McIlwee started nearly a decade later, a temporary home for an eternally influential musician lil peep– also carries a shimmering synth in their songs like a scythe, with words consumed by dream, scars and ghosts.

Amid the luscious black plumes of campfire smoke and the all-natural iris of its butter-colored sun, Red Dead, too, invokes things beyond feeling and sight. Sometimes cloudy ghost trains panting in the middle of the night, and incomprehensible taxidermy hanging on the walls of a stranger’s cabin.

“Deer all have names and cats are soul-aware,” McIlwee decides on the hazy, trip-hop song “Twilight Miracle.” “I am human and I want what I want.”

Like RDR2, McIlwee enjoys unlocking the box and unleashing the hot breath of the occult on his music, which is otherwise rooted in painful reality, as it “lets you know that some kind of weirdness exists in the world, but that’s not what it’s about.”

You can Google anything you want to know, he says. But “stuff like the occult” – “Libra, my rising sign / […] The romance of the riverbank,” he sings in the mission statement “Mystery I’m Bound to You”-“the answers […] require an understanding of human nature that cannot be Googled,” he says. “There’s a lot of room for questions and interpretations, but no definitive answers, and that’s so appealing to me. These sorts of things are like forms of escape that exist in our reality.

And, like the music, Red Dead is an ideal pocket of life, selectively representing and emulating it. Nonetheless, like an area of ​​rugged forest, a digital environment is still one you could “get lost in,” McIlwee says.

“I basically do electronic music,” he continues, “you can think of it as the ‘graphics’ of a song. The content is the story of the lyrics – you can print any type of lyrics to shape the environment of the song, and it creates […] a struggle.

Sent in search of things big and deep by the sublime microcosm of Red Dead and his own intrinsic commitment to locking pinkies with the unknown, McIlwee hopes Wicca Phase Springs Eternal expresses that “under the right circumstances, we can go beyond- beyond the limits of […] what we know as reality […] and live life in a more wonderful way.

“The other takeaway might be, you know, you can be a city boy and find joy in riding a horse,” he says.

I can’t imagine how daunting it must be to start creating a Diablo-style action RPG. Not only are they so few in number, but those that are known are behemoths. Diablo, obviously, then Titan Quest, Torchlight, Grim Dawn… Who would deliberately want to step into its shadow, especially with Diablo IV coming out next week for a chorus of stellar reviews. Now imagine trying anyway, when there are only two people making the game. It’s Ghostlore, which just came out on Xbox Game Pass, and wow, it succeeds.

To be a Diablo-like, there are a few checkboxes. You need an isometric perspective, thousands of enemies to attack with an ever-increasing number of skills, portals to shops, and most importantly, a nearly endless amount of loot. All of these demands are incredibly difficult for any developer, requiring not only a frightening sheer volume of content to create, but also a cobweb of aspects to balance perfectly. I can immediately see why most wouldn’t try. And that only adds to my respect for developers Andrew Teo and Adam Teo (unrelated), who were undeterred.

Ghostlore achieves all of the above, only slipping slightly in difficulty, and even adds a few unique twists to the format. This is largely due to a lot of common sense when it comes to range.

Bringing action RPG to Southeast Asia

Described as an “Eastpunk” game by its creators, Ghostlore draws inspiration from South Asian folklore, including the mythologies of Singapore, Malaysia, China and Indonesia, set in a particular blend of the modern world and planes and forests infested with monsters. Rendered in beautifully drawn sprites, the world has a smart 90s look, while playing like a classic ARPG, delivering all the enemy- and loot-busting antics you’ve come to expect from the genre. Ghostlore then adds unique enemies, including an intriguing bonus system and the ability to combine classes to create new sets of skills and attacks.

For the most part, you know what you’re getting here. There is a central town with quest givers, merchants and that person who will remove the gems from your gear or the gear from your gems. You then go off to different grayed out regions, exploring, attacking and looting, leveling up, changing speed, getting mad that you just found a better shield just after spending all your money and gems to upgrade your current one, and blowing health and mana potions like a tense wizard.

Screenshot: Andrew Teo/Adam Teo/Kotaku

But between these familiar aspects lie some really interesting ideas. (Don’t hate me if you’ve seen them elsewhere – they were new to me.) The first is the Glyph system. Glyphs can be found among the loot in large quantities, each with a boost property, such as, for example, “+12% increase in minion HP” or “+81 MP”. These are placed in a tiled grid next to your inventory, in which new spaces unlock as you level up. (By the end of the game, I had 49 of the total 60 open.) However, you can also find Compound Glyphs, which are five-tile shapes, pentominoes if you will, which then enhance the properties of all other glyphs that fall into their tiles. It’s a mini-game in itself, trying to fit your best compound glyphs into the best possible arrangement in the grid. And for min-maxers, it’s manna from heaven.

Another fantastic idea that I want to see copied everywhere is the way Ghostlore handles classes. At first, you choose from one of six – Sentinel, Feral, Exorcist, Hashashin, Geomancer, and Adept – then unlock slots in another grid that allow you to choose from their selection of skills. You can swap them whenever you want and quickly unlock more slots to include more skills. Or, you can choose to insert a skill modifier or class bonus, the former empowering other skills on that grid row, the latter being unlocked for every four filled tiles of that class. But it gets much more interesting when you reach level 15.

At this point, you can add a second class to your character and thus also access all of their skills. But in a splendid feature, if you place particular skills from either class next to each other in the grid, they combine to create a third ability, unique to that specific class combination. Place Summon Sentinel Crows next to Feral Unleash, and the two combine to create Summon Sunbirds. They are more powerful creatures, used to help when attacking enemies. Or place the Exorcist’s Exorcise next to the Dervish of Hashashin, and the result is Summon Taming Sari, and a collection of possessed blades fighting alongside you. Reach level 30 and you can add a third and final class, and start making even more combinations in your skill grid.

Screenshot: Andrew Teo/Adam Teo/Kotaku

The trouble with Diablo likes

So many aspects to tweak will delight those who play Diablo-likes to meticulously hone their characters. But also, for those who just want to hit stuff with a stick, anything is possible to use with a more sloppy attitude and I just hope that helps.

This brings us to Ghostlore’s big problem: difficulty. There’s not enough. It’s important to read this knowing that I’m usually the person who advocates for better easy modes, or is furious at the difficulty of spike-shaped bosses, so it’s not about bravado or elitism. It’s been way too easy for way too long, so much so that for the first 25 levels I never used a health potion. (I’m level 39 now, playing post-game content.) In this genre, it’s not necessarily a terrible problem, given how many players play ARPGs almost like idle games, something to click while listening to a podcast. But it’s definitely more fun once it starts to get more complicated. (It should be noted that there is a permadeath mode, however.)

Complete the main story, however, and you’ll gain access to entirely new areas that offer a much higher degree of challenge, which is beautiful. There’s also local co-op, and of course the replayability of trying out different class builds.

Ghostlore clicked for me just like Titan Quest, but on a smaller scale. But that’s also a selling point here – it’s not going to take over your life like Diablo IV might next week, but rather give you a shorter burst of fun and for a fraction of the price.

I rarely watch a video game trailer more than once. Still, with Bungie’s Marathon reboot/sequel/whatever, I found myself looping its sleek, sleek trailer. It’s not just because the trailer slaps, but because Bungie teases seems to be one of the coolest shooters released in years.

On March 24, shortly before a Spider-Man 2 trailer set off an all-new “puddle“, Bungie (Halo, Destiny) has revealed its next great first person shooter: Marathon. If that name sounds familiar, that’s because it’s actually Bungie returning to one of its oldest franchises, the Mac-only shooter trilogy, Marathon. You can read more about these ancient games, their beloved lore, and how it connects to Halo and modern extraction shooters in this piece from our very own Claire Jackson.

However, I’m not here to talk about lore, history, Marathon fandom, or anything related to the Bungie mythos. No, instead, I just want to gush for a few paragraphs about how refreshing and impressive the look and trailer of this game is compared to most other shooters and games available today. And I don’t seem to be the only one loving this trailer as it has already reached 18 million views on YouTube.

PlayStation / Bungie

Marathon has one of the best game trailers of 2023

From the moment the the intense electronic music of the trailer starts at the beginning, I was engaged. Then we see someone in a radiant-looking sci-fi outfit running through a tunnel, while shots of brightly colored robot insects create complex android-like beings. What’s going on here? I don’t know, But did you just hear that sick piece in the music?

Either way, the running character exits the darkest tunnels and enters an incredibly bright world where we see he’s also sporting vibrant colors, including a glowing neon pink helmet. The music builds as the camera zooms closer and closer to the runner. Things seem tense as the music turns into a digital mess, then BAM! That’s all she wrote for this racer as they are pulled from afar by a slick, paper-white looking android. Our now-dead runner is seen collapsing in slow motion into what appears to be a milk-like substance, their inky blue blood mixing and swirling in the water around their corpse. As the robot sniper snatches something from the dead runner, the music plays back, fades out and BAM! Bungie Reveals This Vibrant Trailer Was For A New Marathon.

“Vibrant” is really the key word here. Everything in this trailer pops in a way that I haven’t seen in most other shooters released in recent years. Many modern shooters seem focused on realism, which can be beautiful, but also a bit lackluster. The popular color scheme that we typically see on shooters is also starting to mix up shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield. Or they all look a little too much like Fortnite, which, while colorful, is no longer visually distinct. I really appreciate these modern shooters despite everything. But with Marathon, things are different.

In fact, it’s more than colorful. It’s almost garish with all of its pinks, yellows, greens and blues clashing in almost every image. Yet everything is balanced by hyper-realistic lighting, materials, textures, and models. The color palettes are amazing to look at and a few of us at Kotaku couldn’t help but watch the trailer.

Marathon’s new art style is fresh and bold

Bungie calls Marathon’s art style “graphic realism,” as mentioned in a recent behind-the-scenes video about the rebooted shooter. Bungie developer Emily Katske expands on the game’s art further, saying it’s “bold, colorful [and] stylized.”

Game director Christopher Barret, in the same video, also says that the team wanted the art to be “beautiful” and “vibrant”, “mysterious” and “familiar”, “but also weird”.

Bungie

Normally, I’d roll my eyes a bit at this kind of conversation, but after seeing the trailer and concept art for this new version of Marathon, yes, I get it. Balance is key, however. Bungie needs to carefully balance when and where to “compose [things] up to 11 inches and when to step back a bit so people don’t get overwhelmed trying to play.

It’s a risky option, taking a beloved franchise and reworking it into something bold. It’s also quite different from the original Marathon games, which featured more sober or grimy textures and Doom-like sprites. I’ve already spotted longtime Marathon fans upset with this more colorful and stylized new direction. And until we actually play the final game, we won’t know if any of this will actually work. Was it a big, costly mistake? Or a huge bet that lands perfectly? No idea!

But the trailer, concept art, and overall style of Marathon have me more excited than I thought to play this upcoming extraction shooter. I’m not even a fan of this kind of online FPS, but I want to see more Marathon so badly that I’ll give it a try. As long as I can waddle around Bungie’s amazing new world for a few minutes before I get killed, I’ll be happy to play and explore Marathon on every outing.

Ever since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released on May 12, fans have been obsessed with the game’s new crafting abilities. With Link’s new skills, including Fuse and Ultrahand, players are build nonsense like planes and tanks to commit war crimes in the kingdom of Hyrule. But there is one thing people can’t help but create: dicks, dicks, shlongs, penises, wangs; you understand.

Learn more: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Players take forever in the massive tutorial area

Critics called the sequel Breath of the Wild a certified classic, which makes excellent use of the Switch’s aging hardware. And with Link’s many new rune abilities that allow him to combine items or rewind an item’s place in the world, people are letting their imaginations run wild. Like, really wild.

Hyrule Kingdom can’t escape the dicks

Link gets a whole new suite of runic abilities in TotK that replaces his old BotW abilities. So say goodbye to things like Magnesis and Stasis and instead say hello to things like Ascend and Autobuild, two skills that allow Link to glide through solid surfaces and instantly build previous creations. respectively. Fuse and Ultrahand are mixed together, abilities that give Link the power to combine items to create anything from giant mechs to pickup trucks. And while people are totally building these things, many players here are flooding Hyrule Realm with dicks. So many cocks, in fact.

You’ve got flamethrower, thick cocks, cars that look like dicks, cock rockets, cocks with rocks for balls-The list goes on and on and on. Hell, Twitter user HKSIcabb even had our Hero of the Wild ride a dick…a raft.

Meanwhile, hideyopo made a wheeled mecha monster that sprayed a patch of hyrulean grass with his water-squirting dick.

What is going on? Why are TotK fans just days after launch stuck on dicks? There are some interesting theories, like a Freudian fear of castration or the idea that it’s all a dick measuring contest. Glamor wrote in 2017 that dick drawings are actually about toxic masculinity– which is not so surprising. Even Kotaku pondered this question in a blog from 2013, speaking to developers and psychologists about why dicks are everywhere in games. And even though we’ve come to the conclusion that drawing a dick is “pushing the limits”, there’s another simpler answer here: dicks are fun.

They are (mostly) hairy and (sometimes) curved. They come in different shapes and sizes and more often than not function as if they have a mind of their own. They are bizarre, serving both comedy and sexuality. And as Maxim wrote in 2015, dicks are fun for “despite what they mean, there is no real place for them in the world, and yet they are there”.

Learn more: Tears Of The Kingdom Could Include The Zelda Series’ First Gay Character

These are facts. Because no matter where you look online, from TikTok to Reddit to Twitter, there’s a TotK dick. They are almost unavoidable now. At least Autobuild’s other abilities, Fuse, Ultrahand and Link can be used for something other than genitals –although players use them for torture. I guess our weird code nature hero is actually nature’s war criminal. Whoops.

It’s May 12, 2023, and on this beautiful day, Nintendo’s much-hyped sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, finds itself in the eager hands of gamers around the world. But you: Maybe you stand out. Maybe you didn’t end up playing the previous game, 2017’s hit Breath of the Wild. Or maybe you touched it and fell for some reason. I won’t judge, I’m here with you.

Now here you are, seeing all those cool trailers and…interesting things you’re jumping into the new Zelda game and wondering, “Should I play Breath of the Wild before Tears of the Kingdom?” Should I?” Well, that’s what I’m here to help you understand.

A series purist will always say to go back and play the games in the correct order (which, if you’re considering how long Zelda has been around, you might want to be careful with that line of thinking). But here I will lay out some pros and cons for each action plan. There are valid reasons for either approach, so let’s go.

By the way, this article is a spoiler-free zone. So feel free to keep reading even if you haven’t touched 2017’s Breath of the Wild.

Is the Breath of the Wild story worth living before Tears of the Kingdom?

Breath of the Wild tells a very average fantasy story. Hold your farmer’s pitchforks; I’m not saying that to put him down. In general, the overall story beats are very familiar to almost anyone who has experienced a joint from Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. You have your dark lord, your threat to peace, your amnesiac protagoboy, your magic items of power, rinse and repeat. Watching a short recap video would be enough to give you a general idea of ​​BotW’s plot, and you won’t be missing out on an all-time great epic if you do.

Learn more: Catch up on Zelda: Breath of the Wild before the sequel in under seven minutes

How Breath of the Wild tells its story, however, is something you might want to consider living through, not just via synopsis. Link’s journey to regain his memories has led him to meet countless charming and memorable characters along the way, which will get you much more emotionally interested in Hyrule’s bigger story (as simple as that is) and the people who live there only if you just blow. through a summary.

If you’re just interested in a SparkNotes brief overview of Hyrulian history, a wiki or video will do. But if you enjoy the experience of meeting interesting characters and gaining a greater emotional investment in a fictional world, jumping into Breath of the Wild first will be time well spent.

Does Tears of the Kingdom make Breath of the Wild gameplay obsolete?

We’ve all been there: first you play a sequel, then the original just seems old in comparison. Some sequels improve on their predecessor so much that it’s hard to go back. Mass Effect 2 is an example. Skyrim may be another.

First of all, no: Tears of the Kingdom certainly has its share of quality of life improvements, as in fast travel and cooking– but nothing as earth-shattering as Breath of the Wild suddenly feels Neolithic in comparison.

Tears of the Kingdom does not make Breath of the Wild gameplay obsolete. Image: Nintendo

As for whether or not they feel too similar, never fear. While very similar in some ways, Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild are distinct enough that going back to the old game after Tears of the Kingdom would still give you plenty of new experiences to enjoy.

Learn more: Zelda: Tears Of the Kingdom fixes some of BotW’s failures

As my colleague Kenneth Shepard told me after his early hours in Tears of the Kingdom, the sequel’s gameplay is “less of an evolution and more of a sidestep.” Link’s new abilities, especially the crafting and new Ultrahand abilitymake it a distinct enough experience that if you play them in reverse order, you won’t feel like your abilities have been greatly reduced.

Tears of the Kingdom is a looker – and it won’t melt your Switch into plasticky goop. Image: Nintendo

Tears of the Kingdom looks graphically daunting for the old Switch, so should you wait for future hardware?

It’s no secret that the aging Wii U wasn’t too kind to Breath of the Wild. And basically, anyone who saw the first footage of Tears of the Kingdom was a little nervous wondering if the humble Nintendo Switch, released over six years ago, might be able to keep up.

Learn more: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Switch performance feels like a minor miracle

Well, I have good news. Or rather, Digital Foundry has good news: Tears of the Kingdom will work damn well on your old Switch. You can expect a very close to solid 30fps with a few drops here and there, especially when using Link’s new Ultrahand ability. Fast loading times are also quite fast, around 30% faster than in BotW.

Nintendo / Digital Foundry

I hear you thinking, “surely there’s another Nintendo console on the way, isn’t there?” The Switch has been out for a while, that’s true, but as we reported on tuesday 9th mayNintendo has no plans for a hardware refresh or follow-up to the Switch in 2023.

Learn more: Nintendo says it’s not expecting a new Switch this year either

And no, I have no idea what a “You Zoo” is.

How long is Breath of the Wild?

Say you don’t mind waiting for the game everyone’s talking about right now and that you’re cool to jump into Breath of the Wild first. Can you expect to knock him out in a weekend? Well no.

Breath of the Wild is a long game, and every moment is worth it. Image: Nintendo

According Howlongtobeat.com, the main story of Breath of the Wild is around 50 hours long. What if you want to do all the side quests? You’re looking at just under 100 hours. If you’re a completion fiend, HLtB estimates 189 hours. Our own experiences confirm these numbers.

Breath of the Wild is a game of massive proportions. The world is huge and there is so much to do. If you haven’t played it yet and you’re really interested in seeing the release of Tears of the Kingdom to see what this whole Link thing is all about, expect to have to set aside some time for BotW if you’re jumping in first.

Even if you’re not a finalist, stepping into the world of Hyrule in Switch’s first Zelda title is an experience best enjoyed at a gentle pace, and you won’t feel worse for taking time to let everything sink in.

So yes, BotW is long. Which is good, because it’s a great game.

While some franchises can enter at almost any time, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild offers compelling reasons to give it a shot first. The plot consists of standard fantasy concepts, but is told very memorably and in a sight-rich open world that is a joy to explore.

But, if you decide to jump straight into Tears of the Kingdom, a brief summary or two of BotW’s story beats will get you up to speed quickly. And with the differences in gameplay, playing the two games in reverse order shouldn’t feel too strange.

Order aside, another question is whether you should play the old game. You may feel differently, but my personal view is that Breath of the Wild is a truly wonderful experience, from the well-told story with satisfying gameplay, and a truly vibrant and beautiful world to explore, that you owe it to yourself to play this modern classic if you haven’t already, even if you’ve already spent a good few hours in it. Tears of the Kingdom.

Twitch streamer and YouTuber Simply attempted the unthinkable: giving himself just 12 hours, he set out to learn the tricky speedrun from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and nail one as quickly as possible. . The speedrun challenge was insane, full of death and glitches to make for a hilarious and entertaining watch even if the feat wasn’t exactly accomplished as expected.

Learn more: Breath of the Wild’s hottest new Speedrun is getting all the hoes

BotW speedruns are absolutely cracking. According Speedrun.coma site that tracks speedruns for various games, the fastest time for Nintendo’s 2017 hit was set earlier this month and currently stands at just under 24 minutes by BotW speedrunner Player 5. This was for the any percent challenge, an achievement in which a player strives to roll credits as quickly as possible without worrying about completing any main quests or side activities. There are other speedrun categories that add extra stipulations to the bet, like hitting all dungeons or shrines, but sometimes you just want vanilla, you know? (Unless you’re a Limcube speedrunner, which recently collected all the hoes strewn around Hyrule in less than 30 minutes because he was just bored and desperate.)

All this to say that simply, a speedrunner who ran a few Super Mario 64s categories over the years, wanted to see if he could beat BotW as fast as he could, vanilla. In other words, he attempted a run at any percentage of Link’s latest adventure. However, to give this vanilla a bit more flavor like a French vanilla or a vanilla bean, he simply added an extra challenge to the mix: achieving a solid time in the open-world action-adventure game as newcomer to the category any percentage of 12 hours or less. The results were fun and have now been edited into an entertaining half hour video that really makes you feel the struggle of Simply.

Simply’s quest to become “the best speedrunner ever”

In April 18 YouTube video, Start simply by explaining how BotW works with any percentage of speedruns. You start by collecting Link’s Runic Abilities like Magnesia and Stasis from the four main shrines of the Grand Plateau so you can grab the Paraglider for air travel. From there you book it to Hyrule Castle to cheer the four Scourge Ganons of existence before taking down the big bad himself, Calamity Ganon. I simply had to learn a plethora of glitches, shield clips to enter shrines faster For the BLSS technique to fly over the Grand Plateau, to complete his timed challenge, all with the goal of becoming “the best speedrunner ever”. But learning was the hardest part here.

Merely

Simply died a handful of times trying to skip the intro section of the game. However, using scope clip And whistle– two issues that lock the game into its day cycle and preserve Link’s stamina, respectively – he was able to leave the early shrine and skip the first cutscene. From there, Simply picked up their first gear (after a few more kills, of course) to continue cracking BotW with glitches. With the help of the aforementioned BLSS technique and shield clip issue, alongside the movement of the wind bomb which launches Link several feet into the air, he simply gathered all four rune abilities to then grab the old man’s (aka King Rhoam) paraglider at the Grand Plateau tower. It was already about three hours into his 12-hour challenge. So he sent it back to see if he could do that sequence of events in under 35 minutes. The movement of the wind bomb made him back up a bit. So, too, made a death. Unfortunately, he didn’t finish in less than 35 minutes, but he was still having a good time. Just four hours into their 12-hour challenge, Simply had plenty of time to beat the game.

Limcube entered the chat to help Simply with his speedrun

Limcube, the noted BotW speedrunner responsible for March’s all hoes challenge, sought to give Simply some pointers to finish his speedrun, which only gets more difficult as you fling yourself to Hyrule Castle and the fight against Calamity Ganon ahead. After collecting mushrooms to cook up some Mighty Mushroom Skewers, which buffs Link’s attack damage for 13 minutes, simply used the BLSS technique to infiltrate Hyrule Castle, dodging all the guards patrolling the area. He picked up weapons with higher durability in hopes of making future fights a little easier. Unfortunately, they weren’t easy enough, because despite the coaching he received from Limcube, including how to perform a glitch to easily kill Windburn Ganon, Simply dead. A lot.

Now, normally, casual players would have completed all four Divine Beast dungeons to halve Calamity Ganon’s health. At this point, you’d probably also have more than three hearts so Link could survive more than one hit in the final encounter. But Simply was learning the all-percent route, which, in the interest of going fast, does none of that. So not only did he have to fight all four Blight Ganons in a row, but he also had to defeat Calamity Ganon at full health, a tall order for even the most skilled BotW players. I’m sure you can guess what happened. If you can’t, then let me tell you: just dead. Again and again and again, each attempt slightly better than the last. He simply completed the challenge, of course, but not in 12 hours or less as he had hoped. Instead, Simply’s last time to learn and complete a run at any percentage was around 12 hours and 40 minutes. His total speedrun time? Just under five hours. It’s not the fastest BotW speedrun, but hey, at least it did, and it’s probably faster than most of us could have too.

Kotaku has reached out to Simply for comment.

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I love stuff like that. The determination it takes to push through despite the insurmountable, if self-imposed, challenge before you. It’s amazing to see, especially considering that Simply could have given up on the feat once the going got tough. But he did not do it. It’s a good reminder that anything can be done if you try hard enough…and get a little coaching from a speedrunning master.

Big changes are coming to Destiny 2 this year and some of them fled earlier in the month. Bungie now thinks it knows who is responsible and has taken action, banning popular Twitch streamer Ekuegan Teko-Agbo from the game he plays for a living. The content creator says he’s innocent, though, and no one really knows what to make of the whole episode.

Every once in a while, Bungie hosts a secret meeting with star players and content creators from around the world. Destiny 2 Community to preview upcoming changes and get feedback on the state of the game and its future. These summits are invite-only and strongly NDA, but that hasn’t stopped apparent screenshots of a PowerPoint presentation from the most recent from being leaked to Discord on April 5 by a user called Freezing Dart. The slideshow apparently revealed upcoming content, weapons, and gameplay changes. A week later, Bungie took the unprecedented step of publicly acknowledging the leak.

“Community interaction and engagement is at the heart of Bungie and our games,” he tweeted April 14. “For years, we’ve invited creators and other community members to confidential summits to provide their input on the future of Destiny. It’s a beloved part of the process, but one that relies heavily on trust.

The studio continued:

Breaches of this trust could prevent us from organizing more summits. We take these violations very seriously and are taking steps to reinforce our policies with those invited to these internal meetings.

He didn’t mention Ekuegan by name, but the streamer later confirmed that Bungie chose him as the source of the leak in an interview with Paul Tassi from Forbes. The veteran player known in the community for his skills and achievements in the game said he won’t be playing it again after the ban and proceeded to remove some VODs from past Destiny 2 streams. Yet he says he is innocent and has no knowledge of the leak, despite practically attending the summit in question.

What seems to have singled out Ekuegan as the leaker are desktop icons in the leaked computer screenshots that match his own. He told Tassi that was the explanation Bungie gave him, and he even suggested that he might have been framed. “I’m in so many NES [at the moment], why would I violate it? It’s part of the job,” Ekuegan told Tassi. “I spent 14,000 hours on this game, many hours helping people in Grandmasters.”

One possibility is that the leaks were expertly photoshopped to incriminate Ekuegan despite coming from someone else. Another possibility is that someone else used their computer to produce the leak. It’s Tassi’s theory, and that would reconcile people’s perception of Ekuegan as an honest and dedicated figure in the Destiny 2 community with all the evidence Bungie has. It would still be a violation of his NDA, but it would make more sense for Ekuegan to blow up his career to momentarily and secretly impress a small Discord channel.

Ekuegan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other big Destiny 2 streamers and content creators were also in disbelief. I saw Ekuegan as nothing but kind to me and the community,” wrote Gladd. “It’s a pillar. I trust him; take it for what it’s worth. At the very least, Bungie needs to take a closer look at this. Destiny 2 Lore YouTuber Byf was more concise“No idea what to think. The whole situation sucks.

It is not known when or if answers will be provided. Bungie didn’t elaborate beyond its first two tweets and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the meantime, Ekuegan is still streaming other games and said he was working to clear his name. “I’ve come to a place where I’m happy with who I am in life,” he tweeted. “I personally know the truth, I know who I am and I am happy to know it. Only God can Judge Me.”

Update 4/17/23 10:24 PM ET: Bungie released a new statement late Monday night saying it had “irrefutable evidence” showing a pattern of Ekuegan leaking confidential Destiny 2 information for several years now.

“We are very disappointed to have learned of this information and wish things had turned out differently with this individual,” the studio wrote. “We do not take these steps lightly and we are confident in our decision. This is our last communication on this subject.