Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Legend Of Zelda - Evolution Of A Franchise

Posted by simoniker on from the two-dee-three-dee-four-dee dept.

Thanks to Nintendo Power for its transcript of "Zelda guru" Eiji Aonuma's speech at last month's GDC conference. Aonuma, who's "been doing work related to a game known as Zelda... for roughly eight years", from the N64 through the current GameCube iterations, discusses his pre-Zelda influences ("What kinds of games did suit me? Those would be Text-Based Adventures"), the "three-day system" in N64 title Majora's Mask ("[done] to make the game data more compact while still providing deep gameplay"), and the essence of the series ("Zelda is a game that values REALITY over realism.")

5 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Reality over Realism ... by SuperRob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This comment right here is why I love Nintendo's games. Everyone cried foul when Nintendo moved to cel-shading for the Zelda: The Wind Waker, saying that they wanted a more realistic Zelda. Some people are STILL saying that.

    As it turns out, The Wind Waker is probably the most realistic Zelda game I've played. But that has more to do with creating a world with logical rules, and then living by those rules. You can practically feel the wind swirling around you, things in distance fade out of view, but are still there (you can see FOREVER). The game may look cartoony, but it's a "real" world. It feels real, things react exactly as you'd expect.

    The problem with "photorealistic" games is that we know so much about what the real world is like, that anything that doesn't jive with our expectations is JARRING. We all immediately notice when a realistic human character doesn't look or move right. Developers have to become slaves to perfection as opposed to creating art. Complex physics, ultra-detailed textures, flawless motion capture ... it's all required, and VERY expensive!

    The new Zelda was free from those constraints. The only expectations they had to worry about was their own, and as a result, the world feels more realistic than anything I've played before, because I was able to suspend my disbelief and keep it suspended ... a rare feat in gaming today.

    1. Re:Reality over Realism ... by kisrael · · Score: 3, Insightful

      An interesting point, but one thing struck me as jarring: it doesn't escape from feeling like a contrived world, a world that was pretty much assembled just for my gaming pleasure. Almost no island existed just for it's own sake; it held some kind of treasure or dungeon or puzzle. There were no seafarers who were just sailing around for the heck of it. People in town felt like they were pretty much wandering around waiting to be interacted with it. And, just like Metroid, so much is arranged so that I won't run into it until I've sufficiently leveled up with certain gizmos.

      The Grand Theft Auto series are the only games that I've played deeply that shake this. Their cities seem to exist for their own sake, not for the sake of the player--the adventures are overlaid on this (interesting enough to be fun just run around and do random stuff) persistent world. Sure there are some problems, like the way cars disappear when your back is turned, but overall it has a certain type of depth I haven't seen in any Nintendo game.

      I think being set in a "real world" helps with that...it's easier than making a consistent universe from scratch, and then my own preconceptions help round out the missing details. I don't know if the "realism" of the graphics (i.e. straightforward and not particularly stylized or artsy) aids that as well.

      --
      SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
    2. Re:Reality over Realism ... by MilenCent · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, I loved Wind Waker too. Boat travel felt epic. And say what you want about the time it took to go places. Here's the secret: The Great Sea is much less monotonous than Hyrule Field..

      It's true. Wind Waker's overworld has more monsters, more places to visit, more secrets (including at least one significant treasure in every sector), and nifty little mini-games to do like hit barrels for rupees, feeding the fish to get your map filled in, and just checking out each sector's island.

      Hyrule field is smaller, but there's much less happening in it. It's probably Ocarina of Time's biggest flaw, unless you're in Young Link's time at night the monsters are barely worth discussing. Peahats can be scary opponents if you only have three hearts, unless you just stay the hell away from them that is. And say what you want about Ganondorf -- he cleared the Peahats and Stalchildren out of Hyrule Field. The Evil part of his alignment is regrettable, but the Lawful part has its advantages.

  2. Re:Zelda is the best game of all time! by R2P2 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If Nintendo was smart they would bundle the new Zelda with the Game Cube. I'm sure a lot of people would by the System.

    They bundled the Zelda Collector's Disc with the Cube for the holidays. That had Zelda 1, Zelda 2, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and a demo of Wind Waker.

  3. Re:Zelda is the best game of all time! by Mighty+LoPan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I always found it hard to pin the Zelda games into a genre. A good way to test it is to try to find another game right after you finish playing a Zelda. If you're thinking "I want another game like that"...well, good luck to you. The closest you can get is probably Metroid (which is every bit as good, IMO). It's common now to have a growing toolset/powerset throughout a game - you could even say that about getting bigger guns playing through an FPS. But most games either go full RPG, like Final Fantasy, or very heavy on the action, like Metroid Prime. It's a fine line that Zelda walks, and I can only imagine how hard it must be to design a game like that.