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More Details on Zelda Emerge
Cube.IGN has more details on the upcoming Legend of Zelda title, gleaned from Spanish gaming publication Hobby Consolas. From the article: "From screens printed in the magazine, the new outfit looks to blend peasant clothes of different cultures to achieve an altogether unique style. These same screens show the Triforce emblazoned on Link's left hand. Cool indeed. Link himself looks different from any other Zelda title. Eiji Aonuma wanted Link to sport a manga-inspired look, partly because the Link shown in the Space World 2000 looked like a lifeless puppet." Commentary on the single-mindedness of the fanboi rumormill available on Press the Buttons.
Let's just hope the game meets them. I want WW's climactic ending, but with less fetch-quests (they can be added as side-quests, whatever. I just don't want to search for triforce pieces again), and more dugeons. Eiji Aonuma looks like the kind of guy with a new vision that could accomplish this quite well.
Jumping in Ocarina of Time wasn't totally automatic. You could use Z-targeting to backflip, jump to either side, and jump attack forward. That was enough to get to a few places you shouldn't have. For instance, you can get onto the roof in Kakariko and talk to the guy who gives you a piece of heart without a hookshot -- or the Master Sword, for that matter -- by climbing the watchtower at night (when no one's there) and side-jumping to the left.
I take it from your Z-targeting comment that you don't know much about Wind Waker. Aside from changing to "L-targeting," that game fixed what was most annoying about auto-jumping from ledges by making it harder to do on accident. (Actually, they switched to L-targeting with the rereleases of OoT and Majora's Mask, but that's beside the point).
Honestly, it wouldn't make much sense for Link to jump much. He really shouldn't be able to jump very high at all with all the equipment he lugs around (speaking of which, does it amuse anyone else that the iron boots weigh less in his pack than they do on his feet?). Let's face it, a button that just makes him hop a few inches off the ground wouldn't be any use. If they did make him jump higher, then we'd have a Zelda game full of Mario-style jumping puzzles. Nuts to that.
Jade Empire being better than Wind Waker maybe, but Kingdom Hearts is miles behind even Zelda 2. The real-time battle system of both Jade Empire and Kingdom Hearts still do not compare to any Zelda. All mentioned games are still not as majestic as Ocarina of Time though.
By the way, never compare anything Square Enix to anything Nintendo. Square Enix is the equivalent to Dell in the video game world. They've got their blindly loyal fanboys, but everyone else knows they make crap (even though their old stuff use to be good).
Translating the original Zelda to the new graphics wouldn't be that hard if they made just one 3D model for each tile (e.g. bush, brown bush, rock, pier, etc.). Imagine all of those rectangular rooms of exactly the same dimensions rendered in glorious 3D.
My only worry is that they would purge all of the religious references from the original Zelda. Burning bush, prophet in a cave, stone cut out of a mountain without hands, mystical pipe, being given a new heart, baptism by fairy sprinkling, etc. That would be like Castlevania without crosses. Or a Unabomberman game without bombs.
I have NO IDEA why people love this game so much. Calling Wind Waker nothing more than fetch quests and fedex missions, but then mentioning KH? You HAVE to be kidding.
EVERY damn level in KH was the same. Get to area A. Find character B. Talk to character B. Character B moves to new location. You have to fucking find him AGAIN. Then he tells you to meet his friend C, so, omg, is under attack by...demonic monkeys and fat balloon clowns. Sonuvabitch it was boring. By the time I got to Tarzanland and had to go from the forest to the treehouse to the cliff outskirts BACK to the treehouse BACK to the campsite and BACK to the cliff outskirts and BACK TO THE DAMN TREEHOUSE, I'd had it. The entire game functioned on this principle of finding some character, having some dialogue, and then finding them again down the road.
The animation, the settings, the graphics, even the music. It was all top notch. And the battle system itself was fun, if a bit random in terms of an attack working or not.
But GOD was the actual "game" itself nothing more than a lot of random encounters all leading up to a boss, and then moving on to a new area and doing it all over again. The NPCs were terrible at pointing you at exactly where you needed to go, so most of the time you just wondered around aimlessly until you found another door or some character to talk to or some enemy to fight.
I respect the game and I hope to get KH2 when it comes out, but not if I find out it's little more than an upgraded Secret of Mana, minus a lot of the things that made SoM great. I had better find out the gameplay is more engaging than some weak puzzles and a lot of hide and seek.
In fact, that's pretty much how any Squaresoft game has been lately - a weak attempt to live up to past greats, but by doing so by stripping away vital elements and upping the graphics to try and make up for it.
I'm not scared of anonymous cowards.
I agree. Beyond Good and Evil is probably the most underrated game this generation. It deserved far more exposure and recognition than it received. Like you said, an excellent story with characters you actually care about, top notch visuals, lenghty and well designed dungeons, and some unique gameplay elements. I paticuarly enjoyed how they worked the stealth gameplay in there. It's sad that the game probably wont ever spawn a sequel. BGAE was easliy one of the best games I've ever played and I encourage everyone to go pick it up (it was released for every platform including PC, so you should be okay no matter what your gaming prefrence is). I'm not sure if it "out-Zeldas Zelda", but it is excellent in its own right.