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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.
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
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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.
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.
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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