The New Zelda

freakonaleash881 writes "IGN is reporting that the new Legend of Zelda for the Gamecube is going to be a cartoon...that's right, a cartoon! It's supposedly showing off the Gamecube's realtime cartoon shading abilities. I just don't know about this..." I think it looks sweet considering the general poor quality of the snapshots. I tell ya folks, the next few months are going to be really exciting for console games with the new Final Fantasy, and the release of 2 new systems.

Comments

Zelda

[Wind_Walker]

I have never really been a huge fan of the Zelda series but I do enjoy it. I played the SNES incarnations and they were good and I found them fun to play however when I bought the N64 Zelda's I just didn't and couldn't get in to them like how I did with the SNES games - I didn't like the seriousness of the game so I never actually got around to completing them as they just bored me.

When I first saw the The Legend of Zelda for the GCN, it was a picture, and I did think for a split second, oh my god, what on earth has Nintendo done (around this time I had only had about 3 hours of sleep as I stayed up for Spaceworld as I live in the UK). I could not picture Zelda to look like this after seeing last years Spaceworld footage and the N64 versions. However after a lot of thought I realised Nintendo is going back to their roots and that is when I finally understood Miyamoto's reasons for making the changes - he doesn't want to make rehashes of the same old game with just prettier graphics, he doesn't want to do what most other developers out there would be afraid to do and that is to try something different and go along the same lines that made the Zelda series great in the first place.

I believe that the reasons why many people are upset about this change in Zelda is because the videogame industry hasn't had a wake up call (I apologise if I offend anyone when I say this) and that the Sony Playstation has done something to this industry that Nintendo is trying to prevent from happening - and that (Playstation) is preventing developers from making new and original games and stopping them from making new ideas - instead they just release game after game after game which don't have any different gameplay in them and yes, I know you shouldn't fix something that ain't broke but Miyamoto knows that if he doesn't do something to the Zelda series soon, then that too will follow the path of say the Tomb Raider series.

People complaining should think long and hard and try and understand that what Miyamoto is doing is for the good of the Zelda series as Im sure none of you would like to see Zelda dry up, cause if it did, Im pretty damn sure you would be begging for a change in the series like this to happen.

The Legend will live on!

Ugh...

[kypper]

That cartoon looks REALLY bad.

It may be only to show off lighting and shading, but... you'd think they could design something enjoyable.

Now me, I'd like to see an anime Zelda if they really wanted to make a 'cartoon game'.

Can't wait

[Nerds]

I really want to play this game, too bad it's not supposed to come out until next Christmas. It's kinda funny that a lot of people looked at the new Mario title and said "It's disappointing because it just looks like Mario64 but prettier" and then complained when the new Zelda didn't look like Ocarina only prettier.

I've read all kinds of opinions on this thing and it seems that everyone who was actually at the show was apprehensive at first, but by the end of the clip they loved it. That, along with the fact that there is a year of development time left, and, well, because I just think it looks cool, has convinced me that Nintendo knows what they are doing and aren't afraid to try something because they think it would be fun. Sega and Nintendo are the real trailblazers when it comes to video games, the PS2 and XBox can go take a running jump.

Re:Cartoony? How disappointing!

[Junks Jerzey]

I'm wondering why they made this choice when developpers all seem to be converging towards more encompassing (and realistic) 3D worlds...

This is not true. The wall game developers are running into (and I am one, not just some lunatic fanboy), is that making encompassing and realistic 3D works takes a huge amount of time. We're talking months and months for one medium-sized level. And that's with 'old' technology, not all the new crazy stuff that's coming out in hardware (programmable vertex shaders, for example). So we're headed toward games that will take armies of people ten years to create. Wouldn't it be better to take a different approach and concentrate on fun?

Here's a link to an article that Slashdot ran last year on the subject.

Re:Cartoon Shading, and Dreamcast vs. PS2.

[Jerf]

I don't know the details of the systems, but the cell shading may have been done more efficiently using the Dreamcast hardware (clock for clock), or it may have been done more easily (in programmer-hours). However, both the Dreamcast and the Gamecube are Turing complete... with enough power and patience, any effect is possible on either platform.

BTW, somebody get Taco a DC, now that they're dirt cheap. Clearly his Playstation mania has left him out of some great gaming experiences if he thinks nothing has been happening the past year or two in the video game industry. (Then again, I should thank people like him. DC stuff wouldn't be anywhere near as cheap if demand was as high as it should have been...)

Cell Shading = Old News

[derrickh]

They're just using the age old method of 'cell shading'. 3D apps like lightwave have had this for ages. And the Dreamcast already did a game using cell shading(Jet Grind Radio) last year.

In fact, there's a good chance that cell shading is less intensive than regular texture mapping. You dont have to worry about moving huge textures in and out of memory and your color pallete drops from millions of colors to thousands.

D

Re:Cell Shading = Old News

[egomaniac]

True, cel shading has been around for a long time (what, ten years or so?). However, Nintendo's take on it is unbelievably advanced, with very impressive lighting and shading -- this makes Jet Grind Radio look like crap in comparison. I think saying that "they're just using the age old method of 'cell [sic] shading'" is doing them a tremendous disservice.

You might as well be saying that we shouldn't get excited about today's 2GHz machines, because after all they're just the same old von Neumann machines we've had for decades, while ignoring the fact that modern machines are millions of times faster and doing tricks John von Neumann never even dreamed of. This really is groundbreaking stuff, folks.

Article directly from the man, about the change.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://cube.ign.com/news/37687.html

That article explains it and I think does a decent job of getting his message across.

It's the logical move

[novarese]

It makes sense that they would go back to a more figurative representation of the characters instead of continuing to pursue photorealism.

Once you can do photorealistic images (or even get close to it), what do you do next? We already know the answer, because it already happend in fine art. The greeks and romans perfected realistic sculpture, and all sculpture afterwards became more figurative (see byzantine and gothic sculpture). The renaissance artists perfected photorealsim through use of perspective techniques etc, and what followed?

OK, so we're not yet at real-time rendering of final fantasy-quality movies on our desktop, but it's just a matter of raw computing power at this point; there's no new conceptual territory to cover. Hardware will continue to advance, and we will eventually have realtime photorealistic rendering, but expect the mainstream game designers to go back to figurative representations, at least until the next big technology comes along (holographic games, anyone?)

And over at Redmond..

[freeweed]

Nintendo, there better not be any annoying talking fairy following Link around the whole damn time!

Microsoft, following in the inspired footsteps of Nintendo, is adding Clippy(tm) as a sidekick to each of its game titles.

Their first racing demo shows just how much Clippy(tm) enhances a gamer's experience:

You have pressed the 'GAS' and 'BRAKE' buttons at the same time. Do you want to: go faster? go slower? drive into the fully 3d-rendered crowd of spectators?

When asked why so many gamers who have tested Tomb RaiderX have cramped thumbs, a Microsoft spokesman's only comment was 'apparently, some kids thought it would be funny to shoot at Clippy(tm). What they didn't realize is that our beta-testers had already done the same thing incessantly, so we've re-designed the game to make this feat impossible. After all, how could you complete any game without the aid of Clippy(tm)?'

Re:Well there's innovation.. and then there's lame

[SirSlud]

Sure, I'll get an offtopic for this, but what the hell:

"greatest cartoon of all time, Transformers"

ROFL, you're kidding right? Are you evaluating greatness by golf-score style cel-counts, and perspectives that look like the bastard love child of Dali and cubism?! The Transformers embodied everything that american animation stands for - get a good franchise, and the fans will be totally blind to brutal, shoestring budget art.