Why Tears of the Kingdom's physics are so mind-blowing (Polygon/Video)

[entremet]

So Zelda aside, I enjoyed this video since you get a lot of great inside baseball talk about game development. They even touch on game design labor, again super inside baseball, so Zelda is really just a table-setter.

Really good video!


View: https://youtu.be/xw56SG8UXNs?si=7Y1nq8kCRmp-U5nt

The physics in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are incredibly impressive. Footage of bridges over lava, and functioning chains, have been wowing game developers on social media. But how did the physics in a Nintendo Switch game get to be this good? Polygon's Simone de Rochefort talks to two devs and explores how TOTK's physics got so good, and what lessons the rest of the game industry can learn from Zelda's success.

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[Zen]

They are impressive, but it has been funny watching my wife play this and have to spend 2-3 minutes assembling wagons to get around or struggle to make a powered glider without blueprints

 

[Vigilante Joker]

Great video. Simone makes talking about physics actually fun, lol.

 

[Tendo]

Polygon gets dunked on sometimes for some goofy articles / reviews but their video team is ON POINT. Always love the stuff they put out, and Simone is awesome.

I miss the polygon show :(

Somehow I missed this in my youtube feed. Thanks for posting it!

 

[turbokacper]

It still baffles me how this thing runs on Switch.

 

[Tendo]

It still baffles me how this thing runs on Switch.

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And like... doesn't crash? I've never had a crash. People building strike bombers and gundams and the game engine is just like "ok cool we got you."

 

[mrmickfran]

It still baffles me how this thing runs on Switch.

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With actually decent loading times and no glitches

EPD/Monolith are wizards

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

I don't think i'll ever be as impressed by game physics as that first HL2 leak before a bunch of it became more standard. Zelda is impressive more in that it never crashes with all that's going on. It really feels like an evolution of Gary's Mod made into a single player game
Why is everyone in the video using such awful microphones lol

 

[Yoshimitsu126]

I never got that door in the video to work but that bridge in the shrine was cool to manipulate. Didn't know it was that hard to program but I can see why in hindsight. That door chain only working there and possibly being a flex for other game developers is pretty funny to consider lol.

I was impressed with much balance was important in building a stable aircraft.

But yeah someone posted in another thread how there are senior staff in ToTK that were credited in LTTP. That's pretty crazy.

If Switch 2 uses SSD or similar, I wonder if they will be able to finally make a seamless dark world/light world transition like in LTTP and Oracle of Time but for 3D Zelda instead of jumping down holes, flying up to the sky, or pulling out a master sword.

 

[404LinkNotFound]

I like how the end of the video touches on why worker retention is so important and how relying so much on contract labour can harm game development

 

[Spinluck]

The key thing here to me is their familiarity with the tools that made BoTW and the retention of talent.

I think for what it is it's the most polished open world game ever made.

 

[ToddBonzalez]

But I thought ToTK was a lazy iterative sequel.

 

[AgeEighty]

One of the most mind-blowing areas in the game for me, physics-wise, was when I reached the Spirit Temple and found simple things like doors and conveyor belts powered by the same Zonai devices you've been using all along.

 

[th1nk]

Great video, thanks!

 

[TonyBaduy]

I liked the part where they point this out as VERY important:

Nintendo’s new employee retention rate is 98.8%, well above the average in Japan of 70%

The Business Journal of Japan is reporting that Nintendo of Japan retention rate is currently 98.8% Nintendo keeps the statistics publicaly available on their website - Nintendo of Japan Employee Data Source: Business Journal It's not the first time that we have heard about Nintendo...

www.resetera.com

And like... doesn't crash? I've never had a crash. People building strike bombers and gundams and the game engine is just like "ok cool we got you."

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And literal drones lol

 

[Dr. Mario]

Yeah I remember that dungeon and thinking holy shit it actually works? It struck me as something game developers would normally cheat on (or rather I definitely would if I'd be making it). That the wheel would move the door and the rope would follow the wheel, not that actual tension of the coiling rope would move the door. I didn't think much more of it because maybe it was just my poor knowledge about programming physics. Funny to see actual physics developers were also flabbergasted.

 

[SupersonicHypertonic]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: TOTK is the single most advanced game I have ever seen and played. The physics system is the best ever and what takes it to the next level is user made builds work seamlessly withinin the world. Everything just works. I played for over 300hrs and I only experienced ONE bug and it wasn't even anything to do with the complicated systems in place - a bubble gem glitched through a wall and I couldn't get it, a quick reload and it's back.

 

[404LinkNotFound]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: TOTK is the single most advanced game I have ever seen and played. The physics system is the best ever and what takes it to the next level is user made builds work seamlessly withinin the world. Everything just works. I played for over 300hrs and I only experienced ONE bug and it wasn't even anything to do with the complicated systems in place - a bubble gem glitched through a wall and I couldn't get it, a quick reload and it's back.

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Across both games the only bug i got was being stuck between a chest and a wall in botw, and it was fixed by teleporting

 

[Kahhhhyle]

I cheesed that chain door thing because I couldn't figure out how to recreate it. I ended up just holding the door up for a second, letting go, then using recall to open it back up so I could cross

 

[McNum]

I cheesed that chain door thing because I couldn't figure out how to recreate it. I ended up just holding the door up for a second, letting go, then using recall to open it back up so I could cross

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And that's a valid solution, too.

Speaking of that, freaking Recall. See that physics object? You can rewind it. Yes, all of them. That's a pretty huge flex, too.

 

[xpownz]

I cheesed that chain door thing because I couldn't figure out how to recreate it. I ended up just holding the door up for a second, letting go, then using recall to open it back up so I could cross

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the fun part is it's no cheese, you're supposed to do anything you can so you hear the 'puzzle solved' jingle, and it's all good

 

[Mabase]

This game is a technical and immersive marvel.

The way all the seemingly "simple and natural" things work so well is astonishing the more you think about them. That you can fuse 10 completely different objects with each other, and the game will effortlessly calculate things not just in a "correct", but also "correctly feeling" way : the mixing of bounding boxes, buoyancy and updraft/wind resistance properties, new center of gravity, friction attributes, etc

Combine that with a holistic physics system that not only calculates intrinsic motion like controller input, but also ALL the externals: collision with the static environment, dynamic environment, enemy attacks, rigid body props and THEN add water forces, wind forces, heat updraft etc. that all determine the object's position and movement.

AND THEN add electricity + conduction, wetness/rain, uplift, burn resistance..

AND THEN add changing gravity..

AND THEN add spring forces to the ultrahand fusion, so that the fused connections aren't perfectly static, but actually buckle under external AND INTERNAL forces (like drag/weight) and that can be broken if over-stressed

AND THEN add super robust IK chains like the bridges in the linked video

AND THEN add complex zonai devices that add myriad of internal forces to your object

AND THEN make it all completely interactive, fully possible to manipulate while you're controlling your fused object.

AND THEN make it all open world, without breaking every second.


This game is fucking insane.

T H I S G A M E I S F U C K I N G I N S A N E !



EDIT: Ah yes, McNum is right, I forgot. ALL OF THAT SHIT IS REWINDABLE.

These guys are wizards.

 

[Raysoul]

I actually miss Brainchild's tech analysis of BotW physics, and there is so much to unpack for TotK.

Nintendo are programing wizards. Like, the physics system is so advance and it running on a DECADE old CPU. You can also build a vehicle out of anything, like a boulder, plank, rock, or even a korok.

 

[foxuzamaki]

Like how they really stress the beec for more senior programmers and designers

 

[Paradox]

And that's a valid solution, too.

Speaking of that, freaking Recall. See that physics object? You can rewind it. Yes, all of them. That's a pretty huge flex, too.

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I feel like Recall got overlooked slightly, perhaps because the things you can do with Ultrahand are much flashier and more 'physics-y', but it still boggles my mind how it works so seamlessly. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but on some level the game has to be constantly recording and taking note of the pathing of every single object visible to the player. And then, at a touch of a button, has to isolate the object and perfectly rewind its movements while the rest of the world continues moving forward. It's insane to think about.

 

[Zedelima]

Its amazing that this game just doesnt break

Its a tech marvel in a lot of senses

 

[behOemoth]

Isn't Zelda just using basic Havoc ragdoll physics with perhaps more emphasis on not colliding?

The video even points out that the rope collision in TLOU2 is more astounding, and you can see how the rope in that game is even more complex, bending like a rope with seemingly unlimited bending points, whereas in Zelda it's shown to be an obviously large chain(s).

 

[McNum]

I feel like Recall got overlooked slightly, perhaps because the things you can do with Ultrahand are much flashier and more 'physics-y', but it still boggles my mind how it works so seamlessly. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but on some level the game has to be constantly recording and taking note of the pathing of every single object visible to the player. And then, at a touch of a button, has to isolate the object and perfectly rewind its movements while the rest of the world continues moving forward. It's insane to think about.

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Try combining it with Ultrahand. Pick up an item, move it around in 3D space, let go of it. Then Rewind the item. It will follow the path and speed of your Ultrahand movement, but in reverse.

Except, since it's no longer controlled by Ultrahand, you can stand on it. So you can move something across a pit, then slowly bring it back to you, then drop it, get on it and Recall to move backwards the exact pattern you picked. This is excellent for launching flying wings, too. Just move it out into free air and move it back to you. Get on, Recall, and break it when it's in the air. You're now flying.

And the game just lets you. Doesn't even break.

 

[Superking]

i wanna watch the video but are there spoilers?

 

[TeenageFBI]

The key thing here to me is their familiarity with the tools that made BoTW and the retention of talent.

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This is a big part of Larian's success with Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[SmittyWerbenManJensen]

That was a great video. Definitely made me appreciate the physics systems even more in BOTW/TOTK. Incredible game.

 

[St. Eam the 3rd]

Awesome stuff, the system is so impressive and awesome details are constantly discovered:).
This channel post daily videos only covering new builds… almost at 90 episodes lol.
In the first couple of minutes they show conservation of angular momentum and a clever air resistance experiment.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saYBp9GSwFc&t=325s

 

[Glio]

Every generation we read that new CPUs will allow for more impressive physics and it is true...

But you have to work on those physics. That's the most important part.

 

[Kain-Nosgoth]

it's an amazing feat for sure, it's impressive to watch other people creations! But i'm just not that creative and only used efficenet machine to go around quickly...

Also i just wish they would have exploited that whole system better to make truly hard puzzles, but everything was way too easy for me, way more than in BOTW, never got stuck in a shrine at all

 

[julia crawford]

i really hope they build some strong physics framework they can pull into other games, this feels like the technical get of a generation

 

[bionic77]

I feel like Recall got overlooked slightly, perhaps because the things you can do with Ultrahand are much flashier and more 'physics-y', but it still boggles my mind how it works so seamlessly. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but on some level the game has to be constantly recording and taking note of the pathing of every single object visible to the player. And then, at a touch of a button, has to isolate the object and perfectly rewind its movements while the rest of the world continues moving forward. It's insane to think about.

Click to shrink...

Whenever I was too dumb to do a puzzle the right way you could always always find a way to do it in a janky and unintended way with some combination of ascend and rewind.

The freedom of what you can do in the game if you have

 

[Daddy JeanPi]

it's an amazing feat for sure, it's impressive to watch other people creations! But i'm just not that creative and only used efficenet machine to go around quickly...

Also i just wish they would have exploited that whole system better to make truly hard puzzles, but everything was way too easy for me, way more than in BOTW, never got stuck in a shrine at all

Click to shrink...

Truly hard puzzles would probably mean more compex solutions using physics, which not everyone may grasp. That would hurt the game imo

 

[404LinkNotFound]

it's an amazing feat for sure, it's impressive to watch other people creations! But i'm just not that creative and only used efficenet machine to go around quickly...

Also i just wish they would have exploited that whole system better to make truly hard puzzles, but everything was way too easy for me, way more than in BOTW, never got stuck in a shrine at all

Click to shrink...

They couldnt go harder because TOTK would run into the same issue that all immersive sims run into: Too complex for a mainstream audience they are targeting. Nintendo had to design the game puzzles to be beatable still by people who arent as good at building things and would go for the more simpler builds. If they had gone harder TOTK wouldnt be selling 10 million copies in 1 day.

 

[WhiteRabbitEXE]

Now just imagine the crazy shit they will be able to on the next gen Zelda. Because BotW was already crazy impressive, without all of the insanity of TotK.

 

[Unknownlight]

Isn't Zelda just using basic Havoc ragdoll physics with perhaps more emphasis on not colliding?

Click to shrink...

Uh, no? There's a world of difference between a game having physics, and a game having physics that unfailing work the way the player expects them to. The fact that you can cobble together random objects in the overworld in the shape of vehicle Flintstones-style, stick a steering stick on top of it, and then it drives the way that it feels like it should drive... that's goddamn magic.

 

[GreenMamba]

It really is impressive how it all just... works, exactly the way you would imagine it to. There's one shrine where you attach a big slab to a wheel on a rail that, when activated, makes the slab catch on the fences below as the wheel rotates, making the whole thing crawl up the railing. The entire interaction actually got me to laugh out loud in disbelief at how it worked exactly like I imagined it would.

 

[Pancracio17]

Try combining it with Ultrahand. Pick up an item, move it around in 3D space, let go of it. Then Rewind the item. It will follow the path and speed of your Ultrahand movement, but in reverse.

Except, since it's no longer controlled by Ultrahand, you can stand on it. So you can move something across a pit, then slowly bring it back to you, then drop it, get on it and Recall to move backwards the exact pattern you picked. This is excellent for launching flying wings, too. Just move it out into free air and move it back to you. Get on, Recall, and break it when it's in the air. You're now flying.

And the game just lets you. Doesn't even break.

Click to shrink...

It even works with "turned on" objects too. If you move a fan around, turn it on, and recall it, it will keep shooting wind and pushing other objects around.

It really is impressive how it all just... works, exactly the way you would imagine it to. There's one shrine where you attach a big slab to a wheel on a rail that, when activated, makes the slab catch on the fences below as the wheel rotates, making the whole thing crawl up the railing. The entire interaction actually got me to laugh out loud in disbelief at how it worked exactly like I imagined it would.

Click to shrink...

I didnt solve it like this lol. Pretty sure there is a second wheel and I tried building a "car" so that at least one wheel was touching the pillars at a time and so you could move foward.

 

[KezayJS1]

The physics engine this game is absolutely unreal. The way I've solutioned through challenges, both on purpose and by accident, is a highlight to how you can potentially have innumerable ways to overcome a situation.

The hardest part for me is that my mind is so hardwired to simply assume in-game limits that I would often forget to "draw outside the lines" when creating things to bypass an obstacle because what I had in mind was usually so game-traditional and expected.

There's a lot about the open air Zelda games that break tradition but as the player I had to also break my own conventional thinking to really experiment with what's given to you

 

[entremet]

i wanna watch the video but are there spoilers?

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Not story related. It does show a shrine mechanic to illustrate the physics.

 

[NaikoGames]

this game is full of genius mechanics on top of the physics as well, which i think is even more impressive, even if it doesnt have the wow factor of BOTW, ascend, ultrahand, recall, and the fact that it doesnt have loading screens between the 3 tiers (besides the shrines) makes it even more crazy, this thing is running on a Switch.

and it is also one of the few AAA games that i played for hours (330 clocked in) and i never encountred a single bug, and i did exploited the game quite a lot.

really my only complain, some framerate issues if you try to make a lot of crazy chaos, but i dont think it would be possible to fix this without new hardware.

i was playing Starfield and thinking "with ascend or even a hoverboard, this would be a much more fun game... but why i cant climb this?" so yeah, while TOTK doesnt ruin other open world games but it definetly makes me think about how much it offers that one takes for granted when you abandon it.

 

[PKrockin]

I respect how they really took the time to ensure #itjustworks, even though I personally just have little interest in Zelda: Nuts and Bolts.

Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but on some level the game has to be constantly recording and taking note of the pathing of every single object visible to the player.

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I've seen people say things like this countless times, but I don't know how people can get the impression that you can Ultrahand and Recall every single object in sight. In my experience I found myself surrounded by static objects that can't be affected by those powers all the time.

 

[Toxi]

I respect how they really took the time to ensure #itjustworks, even though I personally just have little interest in Zelda: Nuts and Bolts.

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You mean Zelda: Garry's Mod.

 

[Deleted member 8750]

i wanna watch the video but are there spoilers?

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No plot spoilers. There are clips of various puzzles and contraptions that people have made.

 

[Advance.Wars.Sgt.]

It still baffles me how this thing runs on Switch.

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Honestly, it just illuminates how much of a myth the "more power = improved physics" is.

 

[PKrockin]

You mean Zelda: Garry's Mod.

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I almost said that. I should just call it The Legend of Garry's: Mods and Bolts lol