A brand new patch has arrived for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild bringing the critically acclaimed game to version 1.1.1. A number of users who have downloaded the patch on both the Nintendo Switch and Wii U state that they’ve seen framerate improvements especially in areas where the game gets bogged down slightly. Here’s the vague patch notes:
Version 1.1.1
Adjustments have been made to make for a more pleasant gaming experience.
Thanks to those who sent this in.
It’s noticeable, but they still have a ways to go before making the game full smooth
It won’t ever be fully smooth. It’s an open-world game and I don’t know of a single open-world game that’s running perfectly smooth on a console. It’s already perfectly playable as it is right now, though, and it’s certainly one of the best performing open-world games out there. After this patch, it only has very minor dips left here and there and they aren’t too terrible.
Xenoblade.
You’re right, Xenoblade truly did run very good. But considering the lack of interaction, it just made sense that it did.
Even Xenoblade Chronicles had dips. Admittedly, they were quite rare, but they did exist. I remember that one room in Galahad fortress where like eight Mechons or so came running your way. The game really had a huge bottleneck there. Xenoblade Chronicles also isn’t fully open-world (unlike Xenoblade Chronicles X). While it does have gigantic areas, technically, they’re still enclosed areas with loading screens separating them, unlike Xenoblade Chronicles X or Breath of the Wild, which have no loading screens on the overworld and stream all of their overworld data. While this may not sound like much, this alone allowed Xenoblade Chronicles to use a bunch of performance-saving tricks. Just check out the Boundary Break episode on Xenoblade Chronicles to see what I mean. Basically, thinks like that wouldn’t work in a fully open-world game like XCX or BotW.
I was referring to X since the article is about Switch and U.
In that case, I’m not sure what exactly you mean. I certailny did have dips in Xenoblade Chronicles X. It didn’t run any better than Breath of the Wild. Of course it had great performance and ran on a very stable 30 FPS, but I still wouldn’t claim that it ran perfectly or that it ran better than Breath of the Wild.
From my experience vs this, it ran better. I had the downloads.
Are you talking pre-patch BotW or post-patch BotW, though? I’m still talking post-patch, and at least in my experience, post-patch BotW doesn’t really run any worse than XCX. Of course BotW also has some extra technical shenanigans that XCX didn’t have, like lots of physics, spreading fire particles etc. For those reasons, even if it did run slightly less stable than XCX, I’d say it would be reasonable.
Why should it be reasonable on a more powerful system and its first party software.
Because “more powerful” doesn’t matter when you’re also using that power for more things. You can pretty much compre this to cars. A truck, for example, has a stronger motor than a regular car, but it also has to carry more weight, so it doesn’t drive any faster than a regular car. Games work in a similar way. The Switch may be more powerful than the Wii U, but BotW is also a more complex game than XCX, so it doesn’t run any faster.
As for the “first party” aspect, I don’t quite get why you’re mentioning that. What does that have to do with anything? Not to mention that XCX and BotW are both first party titles.
This year’s truck is more powerful than last year’s. We’re comparing home game consoles, not home vs PC. Also this is a ported title, further emphasizing why it should work and it’s not more complex as XCX easily has more elements on screen.
XCX is more second party. Therefore Zelda should be able to run better as it’s an internal product.
That first argument is completely besides the point. It doesn’t matter what type of gaming device a system is, nor when it was released. I’m neither comparing a car with a truck, nor a console with a PC, I’m comparing one system with a system that’s slightly less powerful. For this comparison, it’s completely irrelevant whether named systems are consoles, handhelds or cucumbers. And when a system is only slightly more powerful than another system, yet a game is also more demanding than a game on the other system, it’s only logical that you’re not going to see a major performance boost. Since we do know the specs of the Switch, saying that the Switch is only slightly more powerful than the Wii U a truth we can easily confirm.
As for “elements” on screen, that barely matters. I work as a game programmer, so I can claim to know some things about this stuff. First of all, that statement isn’t even necessarily true, as the number of rendered elements can’t that easily be deducted from the number of elements on the final image, only estimated. Secondly and more importantly, when done right, adding elements for rendering to the scene mostly adds overhead to the GPU, not the CPU, yet most bottlenecks in games (and especially open-world games) are caused by the CPU, which likely also applies to Zelda. And yes, CPU-side, BotW does have more to do than XCX. BotW uses an actual Physics simulation, which is quite expensive to process, and it also uses more particle effects (for fire and stuff), which are also processed on the CPU before they’re rendered. This isn’t to say that XCX isn’t a complex game, but BotW does have a few complexities that XCX doesn’t have which easily makes it more demanding for the CPU, which, as I said, is likely the bottleneck here.
As for the fact that it’s a ported title: if you worked in game development, you would know that this doesn’t matter at all. Especially not when the power boost between the two consoles is so minimal and especially not when the game is rendered at a higher resolution and with slightly more details on one of the consoles.
As for the final point, not quite. Nintendo owns almost 100% of the Monolith Soft shares which means it pratically owns Monolith Soft, making it a first party developer. Monolith Soft may not bear the “Nintendo” name, but that’s not the definition of “first party”. The definition of first party is that they’re owned by Nintendo and only develop games with Nintendo’s permission. Not that “first party” means much for this discussion, anyways. Being a first party only allows you to work close to the source and get access to help and devkits early. It doesn’t magically make development of a game so easy that all games should run at a stable 60 FPS.
Slightly less powerful is debatable especially given the fandom and Nintendo’s secretive ways.
You could’ve just said I develop games so I’m assuming. You didn’t develop this specific title nor do you work for the respective studios.
Did you develop for the Wii U, do you for the Switch, have you ported titles? That’s specific to the topic, but even so still anecdotal and not relevant.
I did work on two Wii U titles and we do have two Switch devkits. So yeah, I do know the official specs and have first-hand experience with both devices (although only limited with the Switch).
So being an actual game developer with tangible, hands-on experience on certain game engine features counts as “anecdotal” in a discussion about the implementation of certain game engine features? Well, fine with me. Though in that case, why are we having this discussion in the first place? If my game programming experience is “anecdotal”, then what are your claims?
Well then you win the tangent argument in that regard.
I just expect more from Nintendo, that’s all.
And there’s not much wrong with that, really. ;)
Though having played through the majority of the game by now (with maybe around 90% of shrines found), I still don’t think they could have done much better in regards to performance. After the latest patch, there are only like two or three areas left in the game with notable (but very bearable) frame drops, whatever mode you’re playing in. Before the patch, at least in docked mode, it had a few areas with critical drops and a bunch of areas with minor drops. Now, after the patch, the minor drops are pretty much gone and the critical drops are down to minor drops. Not to mention that the Switch version out-performs the Wii U version in both modes, so there’s also that. I have seen much worse from open-world games, so personally, I’m actually quite amazed at what Nintendo has accomplished.
Wind Waker HD or OoT were also not really smooth and noone cared. I haven’t played the updated version of BotW and I gotta say so far it was just noticable enough to be a bit annoying here and then. From what I have seen from the patched version, it should just be smooth enough so I wouldn’t have to care anymore.
Sure, constant 60fps would be great, because of course they would. But there’s a difference between a superlinear Zelda game like Skyward Sword which run failry supersmooth all the time and BotW which just happens to be the biggest open world environment Nintendo has ever done. And even superexperienced companies like Bethesda and Rockstar don’t manage to create an experience free of dropdoens, pop ups or glitches. The real art here is just to keep those things as low as possible and if you look at how insanely buggy Bethesda’s games usually are at launch, Nintendo should get some award just for how polished BotW was when it launched. Especially considering that it wasn’t even tailored to run on the Switch.
I have noticed more problems in many games in the past than BOTW. I was actually expecting a lot more with all the talk about it. It barely happens (Wii U version btw) and it certainly hasn’t lessened the experience.
Glad I put off starting this. Hope they make further improvements before I get a Switch.
Honestly, the framerate issues in Breath of the Wild are a relative non-issue.
I never personally thought they were an issue, based on gameplay videos I’ve seen, but the fact that my first playthrough of the game will be with an improved version of the launch version is definitely a plus.
Is this for both versions?
The article says Switch and Wii U.
I did experience my first crash the other day with this game. For some reason the game lags like crazy during one of the side quests near Death Mountain (I think it’s called “A Brother’s Roast). It’s a pretty difficult side quest, which made the crash even more annoying. I haven’t experienced any other crashes in my 30+ hours of playing, which is good (and great for a giant open world game). Heck, it might even be fixed now with this update.
You can buy something from the night vendor to make that mission much easier if you’re still struggling.
Who is still playing this easy cartoon 10hours for 100% game on 2017? jesus grow up people
Yea Fps Fix from 15fps is now 20fps !!
hmmm, i am sure i have seen you somewhere (irl and more than one time)..
if Breath is so easy as you claim, show proof, i mean: try to entertain the good people on this blog with your hardcore gaming skills.
Mate, I think he’s just trolling with us.
I know, dude :)
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Did this fix the issue with the aiming controls on Switch? Probably not. :/
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