Back when the Wii U was announced, Nintendo launched a service called Miiverse. Designed as a sort of Twitter like social media site for console owners, the system was integrated into games in order to give players a way to share messages, screenshots and pictures about them with other fans. It was a pretty big part of Nintendo’s marketing, and ended up being one of the main hooks for the Wii U system.
Unfortunately, Miiverse didn’t make it over to the Switch. And now as Nintendo have announced, it seems the bell has finally tolled for the system at long last. That’s because on November 8th 2017, Miiverse will shut down for good.
Which in turn has various effects on Nintendo’s games. For titles like New Super Mario Bros U, it means that Miiverse messages don’t appear in game while you’re playing, nor can you leave your own after a level. This makes the games feel incredibly quiet for those used to the Miiverse setup.
And the effects don’t end with visual ones either. Oh no, while Super Mario Maker level sharing will still work (since only the comments depend on Miiverse), level sharing for Super Smash Bros for Wii U and Mario vs Donkey Kong will lose the ability for user level uploads in general. A full list of these affects can be seen here on their site:
It’s a pretty big loss for a lot of games really. One that’s going to wipe out a large part of the Wii U’s legacy.
But why is it happening? Why is Nintendo shutting down Miiverse anyway?
Well I think there are multiple reasons here. Firstly, Miiverse is far less popular than other social media platforms. It’s exclusive to people who own the Wii U or 3DS (hence already play the games they’re posting about), it’s not easy to find content from online and generally people visit it far less often than Twitter or Facebook.
Because of this, it doesn’t make sense to focus on it so much. Why advertise your games to a small community of existing fans when you can let your fans advertise them to millions on larger social media sites? And so that’s what Nintendo did. You can see a good illustration of the logic in Arlo’s fantastic video here:
Yet that’s not the only reason for closing it down. Oh no, there’s also the small issue of resources. Put simply, it’s a costly, time consuming process to run and moderate social media website.
Why is this?
In part, because Nintendo didn’t want to run a free for all like Twitter or Facebook. They wanted a heavily moderated experience where offensive content would be few and far between.
Problem is, that requires human moderators. Lots and lots of human moderators.
And given that Nintendo doesn’t trust volunteers to moderate its communities… that means paying people to do the work. Quite a few people actually given Miiverse’s size. Yeah, it’s not Facebook scale, but it’s big enough that a team would need to be working round the clock to monitor reports and remove rule breaking content whenever it pops up.
So, when you add the resources needed to host it and the technical effort needed to keep it up and running… Well, you can see that Nintendo would rather spend their resources elsewhere.
But still, every cloud has a silver lining here. And in Miiverse’s case, it’s that Nintendo is at least kind enough to let you take your work elsewhere.
Yep, just log in before it shuts down and you’ll be able to download an archive of your work. So, if you’ve got a great picture you’re proud of, or have used for various entertaining screenshots of whatever game you’re playing… well you now have the opportunity to host it somewhere else. That’s better than with a lot of social media sites or services. Most usually just close their doors and leave millions of people’s work to the abyss.
It also means Archiveteam may have a slightly easier way to get the content and make a whole archive of the site available too. Cause Miiverse is a site they’re likely going to be backing up too.
Still, what do you think? Are you disappointed that Miiverse is closing down? Do you remember any good times you had with the site?
Or is the site a relic that arguably needed to be replaced for Nintendo to move on?
Post your thoughts on the matter in the comments below!
As you know, we’re a big fan of a YouTube series called Boundary Break. This series (hosted by a YouTuber called Shesez) goes into detail about what goes on outside of boundaries of various game worlds, by messing around with the camera to take it out of bounds. It’s a great series, and one you should definitely check out if you’re interested.
However, one game Shesez won’t be covering yet is the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. There’s interest in it sure. But no one’s hacked the camera yet, let alone provided a way to setup zoom outs or see what’s outside of the world’s boundaries.
Yet just because that doesn’t exist means we can’t study it! Because while we don’t have a nice convenient magic camera mod, we do have glitches to go out of bounds!
So here’s our take on the game, complete with answers to all your questions about what happens outside of the game world and how it’s been set up on a technical level.
Starting with the Akkala Citadel, the giant fortress underneath the Akkala Sheikah Tower. As you may know, there’s a door you can’t ever open there, part of which seems blocked off by dirt.
So… what’s behind it here? Does it lead to a super-secret dungeon or something?
Hah no. Just empty space I’m afraid. Like so many other unusable doors in video games, it’s merely painted on the wall with no real effect on the game itself.
And the same also goes for the shed behind Link’s House. It’s never opened in game, so the developers never really rendered a room inside it. Why bother with something the player never has access to (legitimately) anyway?
That said, there are a surprising amount of areas where the game does work exactly as you’d expect with no trickery. Take Hyrule Castle for instance. It’s all too easy to assume the inside and outside are separate maps that don’t match up to one another. Or that the final boss arena is on a separate one entirely.
But no, that’s not the case. As anything who’s clipped inside the building walls knows, the entirety of Hyrule Castle exists in game exactly as it appears to the player, with all rooms and passages being connected into a logical way. Heck, even the final boss arena genuinely is underneath the Sanctum, and will load in as you make your way down to it.
That’s impressive given how easy it’d be to do everything the ‘cheap’ way.
Same with the final boss battle. As people who’ve used the final boss escape glitch have found out, the whole world exists in the final battle. Albeit, minus static NPCs, Guardians and enemies that aren’t randomly generated:
And this level of effort continues with the world outside of the boundaries. Why?
Because in a lot of games, the levels or worlds don’t really continue much past their visible edges. Instead, you’ve got a few trees, a bit of land or a few decorations (sort of like a hedgerow on a motorway). It’s very clear in Shesez’s videos.
This is not the case in Breath of the Wild. Instead, the world continues for miles past the boundaries, with what appears to be everything from rivers to mountains and whole mazes lying outside of the world’s end. Really, it’s insane.
So why is this the case?
Well let me explain. Basically, a lot of game developers like to store objects they’re using to build a world or level off to the side. By doing this, they can then copy and paste them to insert level geometry instead of having to go piece by piece.
And that seems to be the case in Breath of the Wild. Everything from Divine Beast placements to bits of the landscape is kept outside of the world so the game’s creators can add them to Hyrule at their leisure. It’s pretty neat really.
Talking of Divine Beasts, you may wonder what’s outside those as well. In that case, I have some bad news for you.
Basically, the Divine Beasts you encounter on the overworld are not the same as the dungeons you explore. The former are mostly static objects (albeit ones with a surprising level of detail), whereas the latter are maps located entirely outside of Hyrule itself. You can see this by looking at MrCheeze’s object map, where the likes of the Vah Nabooris boss is ‘RemainsElectric’, the mostly decorative version is ‘RemainsElectric_Far’ and the actual Divine Beast dungeon is nowhere to be seen.
Which means you can’t leave one except via the map. The land around them isn’t solid.
So we haven’t found a way to go outside the Divine Beast dungeon boundaries yet. The game voids you out the minute you fall off rather than just dumping you back on the overworld.
Additionally, it also means you can’t reach the Divine Beasts early, since at best they’re not accessible from the outside (no working load points to the interior) and at worst they’re not solid at all, like the version of Vah Medoh seen flying above Rito Village:
Vah Ruta also has a shield, but that’s because it’s easy to reach. The others are just impossible to get close to.
The separate map thing also explains what’s outside of shrines and the Trial of the Sword. For the former you’ve got an endless blue void, and for the latter you’ve got a giant alternate world with all the floors located in different parts of it. Hence in theory you could literally walk from floor 1 of the Trial of the Sword right to the last one, assuming you had a way to go through the walls.
This was presumably done to save space. Why have 45 different ‘maps’ when one can do?
Still, there is one interesting detail outside of the shrine boundaries in the game. Namely, the tests of strength have giant empty rooms underneath them:
Yeah, I don’t know what they’re for either. They’re not where the Guardian Scout is stored, since people have made it into the pit before the battle:
And they’re never accessed in normal gameplay either. Maybe they’re where the Monk goes between watching people get killed by the Guardian Scout? Or the tea room for the machine itself?
There’s really no answer here. Nothing in the battle uses this giant empty space.
Additionally, you’ll also notice above that the Guardian Scout doesn’t actually appear in the pit until the cutscene plays.
Not sure why that’s the case. Still, it does let you land in an empty pit and reappear next to a boss, so that’s something.
Moving on from shrines now, one thing a few people may be wondering is what happens in the springs or other areas where shrines are not currently accessible. Are the shrines always behind the doors? Do they exist underground before you activate them?
Well, the answer to those problems is ‘sometimes’ and ‘usually not’.
For the former, it really depends on exactly what doors you’re talking about. In the springs, the shrines actually don’t appear until the doors open, so clipping through with merely mark the non-existent shrine on your map and display its name in an empty room:
Whereas going through one of the snowball opened doors in the Hebra region will always lead you to a working shrine. Because those ones are always loaded, regardless of whether the door is open:
So why is like this? Why the disparities here?
The answer is because of the Sheikah Sensor. Put simply, the game doesn’t want the Sheikah Sensor to go off when you reach a spring, since it spoils the surprise of what’s behind the door (even if everyone’s probably figured out the obvious answer here).
As a result, the shrines aren’t loaded. To stop the sensor spoiling the surprise.
At the same time however, the snow doors in Hebra are NOT meant to be a surprise. So, it does load it early, as to tell you there’s a shrine nearby without spoiling where exactly said shrine can be found. Same goes with the one behind a cracked wall in the Hebra plunge area. Or the ones behind bombable walls elsewhere in the world.
If the challenge is finding a shrine, it’ll be loaded in early. If the challenge is uncovering a mystery, it won’t be.
As for underground ones?
They don’t load in early. Well, at least as far as I can tell. Again, it’s so the Sheikah Sensor doesn’t go off when you’re standing above where the shrine loads in, which would spoil the ‘surprise’ and clue people into the shrine quest inevitably found nearby.
However, there’s one weird exception here. Namely, the shrine you need to open with lightning. For whatever reason, that one always does load in. To the point the reset glitch would bring back the mound around it…
No idea why it’s an exception, but it is.
Either way, the tactic of not loading in things you’re not supposed to know about yet continues through much of the game. Yunobo doesn’t appear in the Northern Mine until you activate the Divine Beast Rudania quest. The Yiga guards don’t appear in the hideout until you speak to Riju (the door is also locked before then as well). Teba doesn’t appear at the Flight Range until you speak to both the elder and his wife.
In other words, almost every attempt at ‘skipping ahead’ will fail miserably here. The game is incredibly well prepared for almost every ‘trick’ the player may throw at it.
Still, back to the Yiga Clan thing now. Remember when you fought Master Kohga? Did you ever wonder where exactly that pit went?
Well if so, wonder no more! Because thanks to the good old out of bounds glitch, we’ve traced the pit all the way to the bottom, finding that it ends with what appears to be a spiky floor floating above water:
It’s… a pretty long fall, and you’ll void out instantly if you get too close to it from out of bounds, but it’s interesting to see quite how far beneath the floor it goes on for.
And that’s also true of a fair few other objects in the game. Those Sheikah Towers go down a long way for example:
Whereas things like trees and poles stick into the floor a fair bit too:
Presumably this is for convenience sake, since it means the developers can stick the objects on a slope without them appearing to be cut off along the bottom.
Speaking of stuff going below the floor, you might be wondering where the Stal enemies come from at night. Do they really come up through the floor as it appears in game?
Well to cut a short story even shorter… yes. They appear (as a complete model) about 4-6 feet below the floor, then burst through the ground with the usual animation. The opposite happens when they dig back into the ground, like when it’s nearing sunset or they can’t find Link:
Similarly, while we’re on that subject, you may be wondering what’s underneath Hyrule in general. What would you see if you fell through the floor while exploring?
Water. Or a bottomless pit depending on where you are in the world.
That’s because the entirety of the game world is either above water or a pit depending on how far north you are. Are you close to the north or west edges?
If so, it’s a bottomless pit that’s down there, which acts exactly like falling off the edge of the world would.
Elsewhere though (like even beneath the desert), you’ve basically got an endless ocean instead. Why is this?
Well, I think it’s because a lot of games use ‘water’ as a fall back for when the player ends up outside the world map.
And they do this because water limits how far a player can go or fall, depending on the game and its mechanics. For example, in the Mario Kart series it acts as a trigger for Lakitu to put you back in bounds near where you fell off, whereas falling into a non-descript pit may instead cause the game to freak out and plonk you back on the start line
In Zelda on the other hand, it basically acts as a way to force you to get back in bounds sooner rather than later. What do I mean by this?
I mean that because you run out of stamina if you swim too far, the game has a quick way to respawn you back on dry land later. This provides the player with a get out clause if they fall beneath the world (like the bottomless pit does up north), and prevents a softlock situation if the player ends up falling out of bounds while still on the Great Plateau without a Sheikah Slate.
That said, it’s not completely deserted down there. Occasionally you’ll find half a mountain underneath the floor, with certain areas having land you can walk on. Other times you’ll see weird ‘waterfalls’ with screwed up physics, invisible floors or even invisible combinations of slopes and ledges that seem like they were meant to be an earlier version of the world geometry.
It’s also got a few things you can’t normally see. Like these flowers mysteriously placed underneath the floor of the Yiga Clan Hideout:
Or the bottom to the lake the Gerudo Tower happens to rest in:
So yeah, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this look at what’s going on outside of the game’s boundaries in The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, and I hope Shesez takes some of this into consideration for his video when it finally goes online.
Post your thoughts on the article in the comments below or on the Gaming Latest forums today!
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As you may know, you have to get through the Yiga Clan Hideout to reach the Vah Nabooris Divine Beast in Zelda Breath of the Wild. And as you also might know, said mission involves stealth. Lots and lots of stealth, past dangerous enemies who can kill you one hit regardless of any fairies or Mipha’s Grace. It’s slow, it’s annoying and for people who don’t like stealth, might be torturous in general.
But luckily, there’s an alternative! Yep, thanks to an all new bug in the game, you can now skip the entirety of the Yiga Clan Hideout without ever encountering a single Blademaster or trap! Here’s a video showing the bug in action:
As well as a handy little text walkthrough for those who prefer it…
So first off, get to the hideout and climb onto the roof. You’ll know you’re in the right area if you can two slightly taller ‘mounds’ sticking out of a giant flat sandy surface. Or if you can see a giant pit in a decorative circle to the north of you.
Then, find a Stalmoblin. These enemies appear from the ground at night, and usually carry either a bow or a Moblin club. Make sure the one you fight has a Moblin Club (or another two-handed weapon).
Once that’s set up, wait until he swings the club horizontally. When he does, press X to do a backflip.
While still in the air, use the Bomb Rune to drop a bomb. Detonate it as Link lands from the dodge.
If done correctly, Link will plummet straight through the ground. Now, depending where you were standing, this is either going to end pretty well or extremely poorly for you.
What do I mean by that? Well, there are three possibilities here:
You land smack bang in the middle of the hideout, perhaps right in front of a guard. If so, sucks to be you. Your next of kin will be informed in due time.
Alternatively, you land in the room before the boss fight. If so, congrats. Maybe you should try your luck at the lottery or a casino, because fortune seems to favour you a lot. Open the door with Magnesis, and stroll on out to the Master Kohga battle.
More likely however, you’ll land just outside of the hideout interior, underneath where the floor would be. While you’re here, the guards have no way at all of seeing you or detecting your presence, so if you want to mess around (like by whistling constantly), go ahead. It’s cathartic.
But if you want to reach the boss… eh, that’s pretty easy too. Just walk around under the floor until you get to the room before the boss, then climb or fly up above the roof. Here, you’ll notice you’re able to use Magnesis outside of bounds, so use it on the door.
Once done, go around in front of the open door, and you should be able to sneak to the loading point and activate the boss battle. Either way, you’ve skipped the most annoying mini dungeon in the game, and you’re now free to fight Kohga and take the Thunder Helm.
It’s a pretty neat if you can pull it off. However, there’s one thing you may want to remember here.
This glitch… is damn hard to use. Seriously, bomb clipping is basically frame perfect in Breath of the Wild, and it’s necessary to use this skip at all.
So, if you can’t pull it off first time, don’t give up. Keep going and you’ll nail it eventually, with all the benefits that entails.
As you may know, WatchMojo is one of the most popular channels on YouTube. Covering everything from TV and films to video games, their videos are usually your standard top ten lists about various subjects. Like the top ten worst selling consoles or the top ten most expensive sci-fi movies.
You know, the typical stuff you find on Buzzfeed like clickbait factories. Poorly researched, minimal effort attention grabbers that often retread the same ground as legions of others beforehand.
But in itself, that’s not a bad thing. After all, top ten lists aren’t a crime against humanity. And hey, everyone does need to just switch off and watch something a bit more mindless every now and again, right?
Well, I guess so. Except there’s just one problem.
Namely, the info in the videos is stolen from other YouTube creators.
Yep, I’m not kidding. All the facts are straight from other people’s work with no credit given.
How do we know this?
Because Guru Larry has seen his whole video ripped off and reused as a WatchMojo list. Yep, they took one of his Fact Hunt videos, noted down the entries there and remade the entire thing as a video on their channel.
Normally, that wouldn’t be too noticeable. Unfortunately for WatchMojo though, Guru Larry was prepared.
That’s because Guru Larry (like many map makers and dictionary writers of old) is known to sneak ‘copyright traps’ into his work. These traps are very minor ‘mistakes’ that can then be used to prove someone stole your data and reused it in their own work. They’re quite common on maps, with ‘trap streets’ often used to prove a mapmaker copied one of their rivals.
And since WatchMojo clearly didn’t do any other research on the topic, they copied the fake information without checking. Good job guys! How lovely of you to tell us where you get your information from now!
Here’s Larry’s tweet about the subject going into a bit more:
Great thing to wake up to, @WatchMojo has literally stolen all the research from my Worst Selling Consoles episode!
As well as Top Hat Gaming Man’s great video about the controversy:
So either way, the cat was out of the bag and Twitter was talking about it. So what did WatchMojo do?
Did they apologise for their actions like mature people would? Take down the video to stop people being fooled by fake information?
Well, not quite. They took down the video sure, but actually admitting they stole someone’s research never factored into it. Instead they sent Guru Larry the following, rather hilarious letter:
As you can see, it’s filled with examples of questionable journalism ethics. For example, why don’t the organisation credit people for their findings?
Because they don’t know said people are the original finders. Yes really. They outright say they won’t credit anyone because they don’t know said people are the ones they should be crediting.
That’s just… wow. Can you imagine if someone did that in school or college?
Like, if they handed in an essay with no citations because they ‘didn’t know’ the researcher was the original discoverer? Or told the lecturer they didn’t credit anyone because they didn’t know whether their sources were the original ones?
They’d probably get thrown off the course. That’s an obvious example of plagiarism, no matter how you cut it.
Yet that’s not all the letter implies.Oh no, it also implies they’re rather terrible at research.
Why?
Well, isn’t the job of a journalist about verifying the information they’re posting about? Aren’t journalists supposed to hunt down the source of a piece of information before writing about it?
Yeah, I think they are. But thanks to the fact WatchMojo clearly isn’t finding the original source, it implies the channel’s ‘researchers’ don’t actually do much research at all. That they find whatever a few other YouTubers or writers have said about a topic, copy down the information and merely assume it’s accurate. Verifying stuff? Who has the time for that, right?
Additionally, they also seem to imply they don’t really check their videos for originality all that well either. That’s because their letter goes and says ‘their tool didn’t pick up the similarities to your video’, implying the only thing they do is put the information through an automated plagiarism checker and hope nothing comes up as a match.
That’s again pretty bad for a channel like this. It’s basically admitting that people can send in anything and they’ll post it so long as it doesn’t ‘look’ enough like the source it’s paraphrasing. It feels like one of those cases where someone assumes Copyscape or Turnitin is good enough on its own.
And when you add this to the clear mistakes the channel makes in their videos (Top Hat Gaming Man references the terrible ‘Jaguar sales data’ in his response), you’ve got a lazy, uninspired YouTube channel trying to cash in on other people’s work for their own gain. Which is a trend that’s all too common now. Giant clickbait channels spamming low effort videos based on other people’s work for quick views.
So don’t support these guys. They clearly don’t put a lot of work into their videos, they steal from other people and their journalistic integrity is virtually nil. Treat them like you would Brash Games or other thieves. Organisations you refuse to support for their complete lack of morals and sheer laziness.
Because WatchMojo doesn’t deserve your patronage. And nor do any other such channels who refuse to credit people for their work.
