#botw2 edition

(wip) totk rewritten botw2 edition

rough ideas for the reworked healing system- bottles+potions are back and must be used in real time, cooked meals are not storable but better than potions, different types of portable pots?

wasnt sure if the portable pot should have different effects or just have designs you can change, but decided to add a few different types for roughly different types of players without too many options that could overwhelm but still add some variety to any gameplay AND a more meaningful reward for bigger quests!

-my goal with this is avoid the pausing to spam apples into links mouth to heal problem, to readd some difficulty with more limited healing in general (bottles must be found or gained as a reward, usage in battle like in skyward sword via wheel menu and then used in real time) and adding more variety via the design of the pots, a neat new item since they are portable (set up a campfire, then option is added to add the pot for cooking), and make cooking a lil more interesting besides it spamming your inventory even more with healing stuff AND add some meaning to bottles and potions again bc imo they were one of the most useless things you could get when playing botw/totk- which is why cooked meals are not storable but with better effects, think of it like a bit more customizable and zeldafied elden ring mechanic with the usual heals and the one time physic buff

so if you got into a bossfight and lost it, you could set up a cooking spot before the arena to give yourself a temporary buff via a meal and restock your potions for in battle healing and/or effects depending on how many bottles you have, if you have trouble dealing damage for example you can use the firey pot to add some extra attack dmg (and yes it stacks if you do attack effect in the firey pot it adds extra attack damage, maybe even with a hidden bonus)

(got similar planned for the parasail .. like dif types with dif effects like faster gliding speed but more stamina usage- one used like koga does in aoc that lets you glide fully soundlessly ...)

(legend of zelda)

today i give you .. yet another wip for totk rewritten (botw2 edition) concepts, tomorrow? who knows :)

corrupted/dark satori boss? still unsure if it should be corrupted satori or a dark counterpart for satori that got out of control ..... or a merger of the two which resulted in it going nuts

wanting to make interesting places in botw into ... interesting places in botw2 (instead of .. nothing .. or a chest with a useless reward that feels more like a cruel joke at the expense of you having cared about it in the first place- )

so the satori mountain has been damaged by the cataclysm, splitting part of it up right at his lake, which now pours down into the underground (since the underground is much smaller and unique and every entrance is much more hidden now) hinting at you being able to go down there, theres small and narrow caves of broken things and traces of satori, until you reach it and it breaks through to the surface leading to a horseback chase (very much inspired by some of the bossfights in 'the pathless')

at the end it splits them back into two (going by the merger idea) and both satori from the surface and its dark counterpart are now friendly and return to their realm (im wanting to give them both another purpose after this but i still need to think of one, perhaps freeing rumis (the lil rabbit ones) for satori and collecting souls for the dark one in the underground- each being limited collectables with rewards like armor sets or access to special challenges- instead of just being a currency to pick up lol)

everyone loves the hookshot, i have never heard anyone say they didnt like it

in a world like botw it would be a perfect fit- it adds a unique and different movement option while-

it does not destroy the world design (like the building aspect does, though the towers also need a different function, letting you fly anywhere and skip everything everywhere all the time, including puzzles in both shrines and dungeons, something like that in a world thats build around climbing and gliding WILL end up destructive to the world design without really careful changes and balances .. that absolutely werent done in the game)

opens up a whole new way to think and do puzzles in a way that wasnt there in botw

preserves the feeling of dread when high up or in the sky, since falling is still a danger even with the parasail ( bc removing almost all warp points up there makes the danger being loss of progress rather than the fall itself- removing the parasail as a whole for the entire game is not an option and it will always be a security to not die by fall damage, so there should be a different danger even if im usually not a fan of loss of progress pressure, the bird mechanic i mentioned in other post would also help you not lose everything even if you make a mistake)

it makes climbing easier WITHOUT making it obsolete or skippable, especially with adding the main way to get up to sky islands as islands to climb up via the hookshot, its just adds another way to interact with the terrain instead of .. not interactign with it at all, the range is still limited and you still have to cling to the wall and get down to shoot it again

it being built into links prosthetic shiekah arm makes it more unique both in looks and mechanic/narrative aspects so i dont think it would be boring to have an old 'item' reused in a new way, especially together with the rest of the abilities- like it being not an instant 'pulls you to the thing' but a reactivatable one instead (so you can grab things to move them if lightweight enough similar to ultrahand)

bosses can benefit from it too, imo one of the coolest things in twilight princess was grabbing onto a boss to pull yourself to and onto them, being able to do that even to smaller ones shadow of the colossus style would be so neat

grabbing onto something moving and not pulling yourself immediately to it opens up not just fun but also funny scenarios aka you being flung around by whatever you grabbed (grab on a dragon ...weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee- on a lynel ...'ragdoll chaos')

(with the removal of building and thus the majority of all the puzzles being fly thing from point A to point B not being a thing it also makes way for cool kinds of ways to get to the next sky island for example- a thought i had was making the reason they fly and are practically invisible from most angles being that they are swimming in a special kind of cloud that hides them due to breaking of light in certain ways withing them- thus hiding it from below most of the time, eliminating the problem of 'sky too full' which was apprently a reason why they removed alot of them too, and it would be incredibly fun to be able to poof into little clouds (they look a certain way so you know which ones you can swim in) also! lil cloud bridges between islands! a boat to surf on them high up in the sky! mario galaxy vibes!

probably more im forgetting

it gives a zelda an interesting conflict, pitting her interest in research and history against her status as a princess of the ever ruling empire is a pretty good idea imo

her discovering/realizing what her family has done through her own research, her complete belief of the kingdom of hyrule being only a force of good against her belief in archeology and history and making her discover it on her own? her being confronted with the evidence of all the oppression her own family has perpetuated in past and present that is less deniable than one off hand comment and one tapestry? her being the first one to discover all that via the ruins and remains in freshly opened caves no one has stepped foot into in thousands of years? forcing her to accept it is real and cant have been fabricated? her having to convince others of it and them doubting her in turn bc surely that cant be true can it? her arc being learning to accept it and perhaps learn from it to try prevent it instead of perpetuating again?

i can quite remember if i had this idea for the mid game fight with ganondorf or the end one (i think it was mid?) but the part where you the player aka link get captured and seperated from zelda, who has been your companion from the start and vital for support both in knowledge, combat, and (weapon) crafting- and here gan does the puppet trick

you get seperated and are left alone in the sunken hyrule castle, now severly weakened without zelda at your side, and have to find a way to survive/find ganondorf, and once you find the arena for the fight shes able to get through and find a way to you, but as you look around and turn your camera away from her she suddendly starts attacking you, literally out of nowhere, after her appearing and acting normally cutscene there is nothing that hints at her being a fake one, to really and actually blindside you while also perhaps being not completely non sensical, since you were seperated in the enemies stronghold

it would also be another way to emphasize how knowledgable and skilled ganondorf is as he is able to imitate her perfectly until the right moment to strike arises, tactically seperating the two and get you where you are the weeakest

more weather types (like fog, storm)

specific enemies tha only spawn in certain weather (so you dont encounter all the enemy types constantly, everywhere)

underwater swimming returns! since im removing the building (so it can shine in its own game, ACTUALLY made for it) and added the hookshot as a main movement option i feel like its reasonable to include it (hookshot underwater like in tp is cool!!)

underground (which is more a rly big cave system, and more unique, with few access points) can be filled with water (creepy! cool!)

zora dungeon is absolutely the ancient water thingy (that serves only as single stupid button press for a nonsensical waterfall thing in canon ?????), its a giant structure in part like an aquedukt (? the roman water thing) and the bossfight is in a mostly empty reservoir (bc those things are freaking scary AND cool+ i know there is one where the ones who built it used old statue heads as foundations so ... what if they used botw sonau ruins similarly?)

bosses dont drop any crafting material (so they wont just have ... duplicates stomp around like its normal) and can be refought via an NPC (sort of like its worked in skyward sword) unsure if i should add a new one (like an ancient shiekah monk that just kinda chills in a special place you have to unlock first) or an existing one (impa? koga?? ngl i kinda like that idea lol .. he has funny dialog to each of them that may or may not be true, if you choose one of his fights he is very touched)

Like, sure Building was fun, but as you said before, it really doe not fit this game/world and just broke to many parts of it.

To get to my actual question, would the Hookshot be aimable in slow-motion while falling, similar to how Bow & Arrows work?

Because I am now imagining Sky-Islands surrounded by lots of small floaty rocks, some of them so far from each other (or moving) that the player has to hook to the closest one, climb up, get a run up, jump, glide towards the next one, and then let go of the glider, whip out the hookshot, and hook onto the next rock.

Heck, you could have an entirely airborne Gleeock Bossfight this way, similar to som of the Bosses in Twilight Princess!

Thanks as always for sharing your ideas with us!

yeah! its not too hard to imagine right? and i feel like it would have fit so well and be much easier to balance for botws world

maybe you have seen it before but i did make an ability concept for it before (some info on this wouldnt be for the botw2 style rewrite im focusing on now bc i made this originally as part of the villain rauru idea, but the abilities and how they work remains the same)

maybe the way to pull yourself towards somethign or it to you wouldnt be a single button press but instead a holding one, so if you wanna hook and immedaitely be pulled there you can just streamline it via holding the button until you are there (i know holding down a button can be rly straining but botws control scheme doesnt have a lot of it so i think using it here wouldnt be too bad .......... less painful thatn the totk arrow menu thats for sure lol)

(can i just say i really like the the infusion idea for abilities too, like ... wouldnt it be so cool to find broken shiekah tech and using it just because and then it WORKS, like theres a guardian wreck and you get on top and use infuse and it springs to life to move out of the way of a doorway for example, other structers you could use similar to twilight princess copy-staff but in a more modern interpretation??)

the building jsut breaks the game too much, and imo not in a fun way like cheating in a way definitely not intended or glitched, its like a 10 piece picture puzzle but you are also given a button that assembles it for you and you get the same reward anyway, that doesnt count as multiple solutions like it worked in botw, its like they gave up and just gave you (multiple) skip buttons, since not only rocketshields but also the 'move thing and reverse it' are like that, and you cant tell me they didnt realize that (also id argue that even without skipping puzzles, alot of them arent fun either, like its mostly either insultingly simple building tasks the game tells you outright what to do .. or just hands it to you .. or you know what to do immediately and the puzzle part comes from you having to deal with clunkily glueing stuff together until it works, which i found pretty frustrating)