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Grumpy Gamer Disappointed By New Zelda Footage
Ron "the Grumpy Gamer" Gilbert has up an opinion piece discussing his frustration with the new realistic footage of Zelda shown at this year's Game Developer's Conference. He makes some excellent points counter to most opinions I've seen up so far. From the article: "If you look at the trailer, it's filled with creatures, textures and buildings that could be seamlessly exchanged with any other 3D boy-mass game, which in my opinion, is the real failing of 3D games. This crazy quest to attain realism just serves to water everything down until it is all indistinguishable from anything else. An off-white paint that covers the walls of cube-like apartments in cookie-cutter neighborhoods."
God filled the world with creatures, textures and buildings of all color and shape. And he saw that is was good.
All I hear is one grumpy man bitching about graphics, graphics, and more graphics. I thought The Legend of Zelda was best known for innovating GAMEPLAY.
I for one am looking forward to Zelda getting the realistic treatment.
The last Cell shaded effort, although fun to play was kiddied up too much for me. I prefered the ocarina over the windwalker.
Bring it on I say.
Damn he is a grumpy gamer, get over it Ron.
First off, that was barely an article and nothing at all for the masses to be made aware of.
His complaints are more with the inherent nature of realistic games, but Zelda still isn't at that point. It's pretty clear that despite a more realistic look, almost everything in the game is stylized to a degree.
Some people complain just to get attention, the least he could have done is have a decent arguement.
Nevermind...
From Wikipedia, "Ron Gilbert is a computer game designer and programmer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Gilbert
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
That was what I had said upon viewing the most recent Zelda trailer. And I said pretty much the same thing after seeing the first one. I have no doubt that it will be an amazing game, and I have no doubt that I will very much enjoy it, and I have even less doubt that it will sell very well.
But I still feel like I've lost a very good friend. Zelda was never about giving the vocal fans what they wanted. It was about taking a journey through the very imaginative mind of Shigeru Miyamoto. To remember what it was like to be that child walking through the forest and finding a lake. To be the child who overcomes all perils and finds buried treasure and saves the princess. For me, Wind Waker captured that perfectly and completely.
The new Zelda just seems to be Nintendo's way of showing that it listens to its fans. But that isn't why they became successful in the first place. Nintendo got where they were by hiring designers with vivid imaginations and a natural sense of what was FUN. If Nintendo listened to its fans, Mario would be stealing cars and killing hookers. And I want no part of that.
The current trend in thinking that every video game should carry an M rating needs to stop. I have way more fun playing an E rated Zelda game than a cut and paste M rated FPS.
Well to me it just looks like an updated version of the style in Ocarina of time ,
I mean seriously the graphics are just like they were with adult link (obviously with 7 years tech improvments).
I think the zelda games are some of the best made , and i dont think this new one will disapoint , the main problem here is people have gotten used to the ultra cutsie windwalker type zelda , Ocarina of time had some rather dark graphics in places.Funny to think that i was hearing a great hoohaa about the windwalkers graphics being too cute just a few years back and now were moaning about this being too adult , It looks great and its sure to be a grand game , so lets not judge till we have seen the final trailer(also i think this new trailer looks a bit like the tech demo for the gamecube which i belive was the origional windwalker graphics)
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
...and if you try, everyone will think you're stupid. Then again, sometimes pleasing some people some of the time gets you in hot water too. In Nintendo's case, with the kind of insane, impactful legacy of _relevance_ that they've created for themselves, that's just inevitable.
Look, guys. Nintendo is held in such high regard in the industry that they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. This guy just happens to have a loud mouth and plenty of people around to listen, just like all the people who bitched about Wind Waker looking _not cookie-cutter enough_.
So yeah, this person is unimpressed. Marvelous, really - the most notable event of my young life. I gave a damn about what the naysayers were yapping about while I was enjoying Zelda II, I gave a damn about what the snobs said while I was enjoying Wind Waker, and I'll give a damn about this guy's opinion when I get the chance to evaluate Zelda 2K5 for myself.
And just a note to anybody with a long-term memory worth a damn....I seem to recall sprites from the 16-bit era being interchangeable across pretty much every game with the same perspective angle, too. As in, take any character sprite from any top-down grid-based RPG and stick it in another one, and almost nobody would be able to spot anything anomalous. How many ways does this guy want to see a forest rendered, anyway, to the degree that he WOULD be impressed? These are not artifacts of Zelda being dumbed down to mass appeal, or of 3D technology's introduction of blandness. This new Zelda, like all games worth talking about, is _ART_. Not all groundbreaking art is beautiful, and not all beautiful art breaks new ground.
I look forward to playing this game, because as much as I may have seen trees rendered in similar fashion before, or as much as I may have seen enemies move in almost the same way, damn it, this is a Zelda game from EAD. All signs point to good things, including (IMO) the two trailers released so far.
What did you expect from the Grumpy Gamer? A happy review? Sunshine?
-- $G
What's wrong with realism? Ultimately, what's wrong with every game made using exactly the same graphics engine? All it would mean would be that content would replace technology as the distinguishing factor between games. Nobody complains that live-action movies all look the same!
Indeed, where has the mind gone?
Just 20 years ago there were folks who spent hours engorging fantasy from the source(hint, not a CRT). After playing WoW for 3 weeks I decided to fire up another rogue-like ASCII game...because writing is such a fine art. It's almost as if the greatest part of the old starwars films had nothing to do with visuals at all, or even acting...it had to do with music and writing. The dialogue and screenplay and music were just so masterful and rythmic.
It's strange how things become cheapened with accessability. Maybe it's struggeling that adds to the realism of the experience...being spoonfed fantasy makes it feel so plastic and unreal. Don't get me wrong, I love the new graphics and eye-candy....but the effect of that stuff wears off very quickly. I suppose it's like the love the Linux zealots have for their operating system, it takes a kind of genius to really dig-in and 'know' it. It's not something that can be sold.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I don't care much whether the graphics are "realistic". What worries me about this trailer is that the graphics look crappy. The designers seem to be trying quite hard to create a "beautiful" Hyrule, but the result is artificial. The characters look boring (though a few of the monsters are interesting). The animation is just awful. And I see nothing interesting gameplay-wise.
For reference, I thought A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time were awesome. And I loved Wind Waker's graphical style but hated hated hated the gameplay.
It's about time Nintendo comes up with some interesting new gameplay elements. Fludd (in Super Mario Sunshine) was brilliant, the stupid boat and the boring sea in Wind Waker were not.
We played Monkey Island upto version 3, which was simple, clear and immersive. Sometimes 2D is so much expressive than 3D, especially the faces of the characters. Unless we're talking movie-class 3D, its unrealistic, shiny, roundish and bland, compared to 2D drawing and paintwork. Most 2D art is made either on paper and scanned, or 2d tracking devices for games...
They screwed up Monkey Island, and other adventure games similarly. How about sonic the hedgehog? The only 2d-3d success story I can think of is Duke Nukem, which itself has stalled for different reasons.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
After reading the Grumpy Gamers sensible and well reasoned complaints, Nintendo have taken his comments on board, returning the Zelda franchise to a stylish and retro look. You can see a screen capture from their recently rereleased trailer here.
Let's wait for the game, eh?
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
When Nintendo showed WindWaker for the first time, there were idiots who were saying "hey, it's not realistic, ergo, it sucks!".
Now, when Nintendo shows a realistic zelda, idiots complain that "it's too realistic!".
Windwaker was great, by the way. It had three problems:
-It was too easy.
-It was too short.
-It had too many maps search in the main quest.
Other than that, it was a great and beautiful game.
I don't see how the characters/objects in Zelda can be considered realistic. They certainly don't look like anything I've seen in my life. I suppose what he means is that a more typical approach was taken to use a more natural color pallete for textures as well as a visual style that is higher in detail than the bright, water-colored, cell shaded Zelda that is Windwaker. Personally, I am looking forward to the new (or old depending on how you view things) visuals in the next Zelda.
SIGFAULT
The last realistic effort, although fun to play, wasn't really fun to watch. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask represent a big step back in the Zelda graphics. Wind Waker is great, it's a 3D Link to the Past!
Link to the Past is my favourite Zelda game, as I think it represents a good balance. All the GBA and GBC (even the original GB Zelda verison) sport the graphics design of LTTP. Only the N64 ones are bad. Unspurisingly, despite me owning several copies (N64 carts + the GC bonus disc versions), they're the only Zelda games I haven't beaten.
I bet you like FF7 more than FF6, too, just because it was 3D.
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He can just do what I did (do) ever since Ocarina came out. NOT PLAY. Personally I only liked the original Zelda and A Link to the Past. That was the style of Zelda I really liked. Four Swords was "ok". So instead of trying to jump on the "I hate fancy graphics" bandwagon... why doesn't he just.. umm I dunno.. STFU and play games he likes.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
When Windwaker came out, people griped endlessly because it wasn't photorealistic. Whether it was as a reaction to the reception of Windwaker or not, we will soon have a more realistic-style Zelda. And everyone is still bitching. This particular fellow has no comments about Windwaker, but plenty of other folks bitched. So it's only fitting someone does now.
Though I agree with him for the most part- I really am not interested in attempts at photorealistic games, not until they start to look really nice. So far, I've not seen anything anywhere near this level. Something that looks like the Final Fantasty movie, but maybe a smidge better.
Am I the only one who sees this as the succesor to Ocarina? The graphic style is very similar, although much improved. Many of the same characters, etc. If anything, this seems to be the same Link as lived in the Ocarina time, though that's yet to be seen for sure. But what was so disturbing about the "photorealistic" Ocarina of Time?
No matter what, whatever new Zelda game Nintendo puts out won't be just like the original NES game. Nor will it be like just like Ocarina of Time or a Link to the Past. A lot of folks seem to have a hard time coming to grips with that.
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"The only ones that have been met with shock or disapproval are Zelda II and Wind Waker."
It is important to note that Zelda II wasn't developed by Miyamoto but by another team entirely. He just gave them a general idea and let them run with it. Interestingly, he considers Link to the Past as the real sequal to the first.
As for Wind Waker, it boggles my mind the backlash that games receives. I loved it (not as much as OoT, but still a lot). In fact, you remove the cel shading, OoT and TWW are extremely similar, down to how the attack system works and one uses tools such as the hook shot. To be honest, I loved that fact that I was playing a live cartoon. I can't think of any other game that can make that claim!
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....