Slashdot Mirror
Miyamoto Says Wind Waker Was Boring
Eurogamer has a talk with Shigeru Miyamoto, maker of the Legend of Zelda series, where he reveals frustrations with The Wind Waker. From the article: "At the end of the production we fought against the clock and there were parts that I was forced to approve even though it didn't feel complete...I apologise that we didn't fix the triforce hunt at the end of the game. It was slow and dull." Seems like designers slagging their old games is a growing trend.
In his own words, "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever."
English is easier said than done.
Who exactly is controlling the schedule of Miyamoto? I can't imagine he's being bossed around on a timetable, he's kind of important...what forced him to end dev at a certain time? It's not like Nintendo is big on fast release schedules *cough*metroid skipping an entire console generation*cough*
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
I think my brain just exploded.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Eiji Aonuma said it was "dull", and that was in reference to the Triforce hunt late in the game. Miyamoto only said that he's heard the complaints and they're working to make Twilight Princess the Zelda game everyone wants it to be.
No sig for you!!
I have to admit, I don't play the Zelda games for the storyline! What I love about the Zelda series is that there are so many side-quests to play with.
What I loved was all the little islands that each had something to do. I also loved the towns, where there were little side stories to get involved in. There were people in love, the shop keeper, the auction house, the schoolhouse, etc, etc. Despite the "boring" storyline near the end of the game, there was plenty to do - and almost all of it was carried out brilliantly.
This is why Majora's Mask is one of my favourite games ever. Despite the "weak" storyline, the sheer number of side quests made it an absolute blast to play. I worked 80% of my time to fill out my journal, especially figuring out the marriage side quest (which in itself could be a huge chunk of the game).
I thought Windwaker was one of the best zelda games yet, its extremely fun to play, and even just sailing around in the Windwaker world was fun. A lot of people saw cartoony graphics and got turned off, but really once I started playing, the cartoony graphics made it seem more like the original zelda's I loved so much. I'm actually kind of sad they are going back to the Ocarina of Time format.
The important thing is that he's apparently learned from this so that it doesn't happen again. Considering that the Revolution (I think they decided to produce this for their next gen console instead of the GameCube, or at least it seems possible) probably won't be released until around this time next year or even later, there should be plenty of time to polish the game.
Personally I wish the the big companies would realize developers need time to create a game worth selling. A game like Wind Waker could have easily been pushed on hype alone even if Nintendo crapped in a box and shipped it out as quickly as possible. As a gamer I'd much rather wait for a quality product than a rushed one that gets here three months earlier.
In the past there have been countless things that I would have loved to have coded into game X but just didn't have time. From the publisher's point of view: Adding this neat little feature isn't going to sell any more copies, so just fix these crash bugs and let's ship it. The bigger the publisher the worse you see this. Sad but true.
Also I agree that Windwaker was boring. It got cut a lot of slack just because it was a Zelda game. Anytime I actually put down the controller to wait for my guy to get where he's going in a game is a bad sign. The dungeons were cool in Windwaker, but the rest of the game was dull.
All the little sidequests I found resulted in more and more rupees. My bag was always maxed out and I had no idea what to spend them on anyways. Wow a 500 rupee reward! Sounds great right? Well I get 0 of those because my bag is already full.
The actual dungeons were fun enough, I really wish there were more of them. The sailing was incredibly tedious and the triforce quest was the most tedious task I've had in a game for quite some while.
Hopefully Twilight Princess is more focused than Windwaker was.
The graphics were the best thing about that game; they were a great gimmick, but the game sucked.
The triforce quest was terrible, the side quests were awful, and the ocean was bullshit.
I didn't mind the triforce hunt. I suppose I was already used to sailing around and dredging things up out of the ocean. My biggest concern was that there weren't enough dungeons. I hear that there were going to be two more, but they had to push the game out the door. I would have preferred a later release with more stuff, but then again I'm the kind of person who waits a year after release to get the game at a cheaper price anyway.
-- $SIGNATURE
Seems like designers slagging their old games is a growing trend.
1 entry found for slagging.
slag n.
1. The vitreous mass left as a residue by the smelting of metallic ore.
2. See scoria.
tr. & intr.v. slagged, slagging, slags
To change into or form slag.
I guess it all depends on your opinion of the games. I liked Wind Waker a lot more than Ocarina. Link to the Past was great and worth buying on GBA for Four Swords, and Four Swords Adventures is an excellent game to play with friends (who doesn't have a GBA by now)? I also enjoyed Minish Cap a lot.
Their track record re: LoZ looks good from where I'm standing.
e2 | LJ
Everyone knows it. Windwaker was great. It's hard for a Zelda game not to be. However, there were not enough dungeons at all. And the triforce hunt was indeed boring.
I hope Twilight Princess has lots of big dungeons. The dungeons are the best part of Zelda games.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
...that the day after I beat it, I played it again all the way through.
the cosmos in 20 words or less: thumbuki.com
The end of The Wind Waker was boring as all hell - I stopped playing halfway through the triforce hunt, and haven't picked it up since. That's unfortunate, because the game was quite excellent. I prefer cartoon-Link to "realistic" Link, and The Wind Waker is the first, and likely only, 3D Zelda I will ever appreciate. Just to rephrase that slightly, my favorite 3D Zelda is the one Miyamoto is poo-pooing on for being boring - yet it's the least boring of the bunch thus far.
As for the trend of developers trashing on their old games, I'm just glad that developers are finally realizing that many of the games in the recent past have been complete shit. The Wind Waker is probably my favorite 3rd person 3D game to ever be created - yet, I agree that it gets insanely dull. I've been itching for a new game or two, as I haven't bought any in quite some time, but I can't find a single game for any of the three consoles that I really want to play. Virtually all 3D games are the same - you run, you jump, you fight, and you collect cleverly hidden things that let you advance. About 90% of the games that have come out on consoles in the past several years are damned Tomb Raider clones, and I didn't like that game to begin with.
What am I playing to get my gaming fix? Currently, I'm playing Super Mario All-Stars, Super Metriod, and Zelda III: A Link to the Past. All are about 10-years old, all are completely dated in terms of graphics and gameplay, and I've beaten all of them several times. Yet, these games are far more fun, and far more interesting, than any of the garbage gaming companies are spewing out today.
Nintendo's money-makers have been Mario, Zelda, and Metroid - their 3D counterparts have not impressed me in the slightest. Mario and Zelda fit the run, jump, and fight cookie-cutter 3rd person game, and Metriod is now Yet Another First Person Shooter(tm). The rise of 3D graphics has basically taken all creativity out of gameplay - you have a 3D world, you do stuff in it. Without any limitations, all of the games kind of blend together... and, well, they pretty much all suck.
If Nintendo made modern games based on their old 2D counterparts, they'd probably be the #1 console within a year. Just imagine a side-scrolling Metriod with modern graphics, and absolutely huge worlds to explore. Or, a Mario game or Zelda game along the same lines. Sounds good, doesn't it? Right now, Nintando is struggling to produce more 3D crap to compete with the rest of the 3D crap... I wish they would wake up, and make the games that made Nintendo the best.
-agent oranje.
My biggest complaint about Wind Waker was the wind changing cut scene. It was cool maybe twice and then just annoying, and then I had to watch it roughly a thousand times before I beat the game. Majora's Mask let me skip through the mask changes if I so desired, why couldn't I skip the wind changes. Why do any games do this? If I don't want to watch the cutscene, I should be able to press a button to bypass it. In Lego Star Wars(a great game), the pod race level had a cut scene where Sebulba knocks another racer into a column... that I had to watch everytime I failed to complete that section of the race. And when you are trying to complete the race with a 4 year old racing along with you, that guy died at least 50 times before I finally told my son to drop out for a minute. Why not let me press a button to bypass? One of the Medal of Honor games had an insane cut scene that I had to watch everytime I died. I realize graphic artists put a lot of time into some of these cutscenes and like to show off their skills and the "Wow!" factor of what they can do. But sometimes I want to just play the damn game.
"At the end of the production we fought against the clock and there were parts that I was forced to approve even though it didn't feel complete..."
I hope Blizz will confess to the same thing about WoW once its expansion is released.
I think this happens to most large video game companies with popular products. They have a reputation to live up to. The small ones, on the other hand, have a smaller mouth to feed and won't hear much gripe if their games are delayed. One exception is ValvE, they delayed HL2 for numerous reasons, but it was ultimately worth it.
Even though a self-described "boring" game, it still ended up on most websites' top 10 lists, and was chosen game of the year by others. That guy has the highest of standards.
Don't believe me? Read the reviews from Metacritic.
I find that alot of the button pressing challenge has been lost in zelda games. Zelda 1 and 2 were very difficult games to pass. Link to the past was more puzzle oriented, but still had many difficult areas to pass. Full 3D immersion in Ocarina made the game sooooo easy to play; it was more or less just a puzzle game. There was never an occurance where I lost all my life. The water level was utterly boring. Although I havent played windwaker, the claims of boredom lead me to believe that Nintendo has forgotten what made this game series great. I want a game where I die often and am genuinely challenged. I know many people who can't pass zelda 2 because it is really that difficult of a game.
I was never able to beat Zelda II as a child, but with my honed fps/platformer/rpg skills I decided to revisit it and found it laughably easy. It's not "that difficult of a game", certainly not by today's standards at any rate. However,I realize it's unfair to compare Zelda II to the X-Box Ninja Gaiden so let's compare apples with apples and look at the nes Ninja Gaiden. Which is harder? NG, and by far. You want to be genuinely challenged and die a lot? Play fighter plane shoot-em-ups like Graedius, R-Type or U.N. Squadron. Those are challenging (the later less so, but it's also an RPG of sorts!)
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Shouldn't this be the type of thing he tells me before I buy the game?
All the 6 year olds are too busy playing San Andreas and trying to hide the Hot Coffee from their parents!
Gadgetoid.com - Gadgets & Games Journalism
If you are known for producing a great game then produce a sub par game THAT hurts you. Look at the Final Fantasy Series. It use to be the big name for RPG games. but the resent release of Final Fantasy X-2 really tanked them. Bizzard is known for taking there time with games and 90% of the time its worth the wait. If you make it GOOD they will Wait and will BUY!!!
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for the GBA is an absolutely wonderful example of classic gameplay systems with modern production values. If you like A Link to the Past, I highly reccomend it. There are also an abundance of side scrolling games from the Mario, Mega Man, and Castlevania series.
I completely disagree with your trashing of all 3d games. Mario 64 and the two Zelda games on the N64 stand as three of the best games of all time, an opinion I share with a great majority of the gaming community. To claim that these games are all just clones of Tomb Raider is... just inconcievable.
You're about seven years too late to start complaining about the ubiquity of 3d games.
"Wind waker" that's when you wake up your girlfriend by farting really loud and then fluffing the covers in her direction, right?
There seems to be a growing trend with dev's apologizing that thier games suck (I.E: Peter Monolioux)
It's hard to tell who to balme nowadays, the Dev or the publisher.
If you ask me, Wind Waker was a damn good game, and if anything, less dull than, say, Ocarina of Time. I just seemed a lot more. . . spacious, not just the ocean mind you, but the dungeons and towns also seemed bigger, even if there weren't so many of either. Riding that Deku Leaf, hiding from guards, lots of good mini-games. Beautiful game.
I'll accept the apology for the triforce treasure hunt though. *yawn*. And to tell the truth some of those side-islands could have been a little more involving. And don't get me started on how long it takes to change the wind. Not to mention the tedium of only being able to give one picture a "day" to the sculptor of the Nintendo Gallery. Well I better wrap this up before I start to ramble.
But if you trust what those guys are saying, it sounds like Twilight Princess is going to be super-good.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Not to mention the Metroid Prime games were made by an American company, and were released in the US first.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Wind Walker should have been called Zelda: FedEx! I mean all you did was sail back and forth getting this piece of something for someone in order to deliver something to someone else all in the effort to collect 8 of something else so that you can get something for yourself to fight the final boss!
Don't get me wrong, Wind Walker had a lot of novel and innovative ideas, but after about the 3rd cross world FedEx mission, it got a little dull quite quickly.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I've played Wind waker, and let me say that the "dull" part is only a small part of the game. It doesn't take more than 1 or 2 hour to do (of sailing), and during those 2 hours, there are a lot of small dungeons, the way Zelda uses to be. But just after that, when you get to the last castle, it was really great, and the last fight (Gannondorf), is, IMHO, the best "last boss fight" in all the zeldas!
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
Am I the only one who's not particularly pissed off at the triforce hunt? I spent more time on random miniquests that got me a peice of heart than I did collecting the triforce (Espically the photograph miniquests).
I played the WW all the way through, and came out thorougly dissatisfied.
* Relatively few puzzles and easy boss fights marred the game. This is the biggest problem I had with WW. A game cannot be fun without being challenging.
* Sailing the ocean was enjoyable at first, but became tedious very quickly.
* The stealth bits in the game were just plain obnoxious.
* The swordsmaster minigame where you had to land one thousand hits was equally terrible.
Personally I liked the Ocarian of Time far more than this. Which is great, because a Gamecube version of the game (along with a more challenging adaptation of it) came with my copy of WW.
If slagging off old games is a new trend, then I am waiting for Hideo Kojima to apologise for Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty. Okay, the tanker part was foine (but too short), but the oil platform? WTF?
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
You must be new here. We don't use the word "super". Your last line should read:
But if you trust what those guys are saying, it sounds like Twilight Princess is going to be ubergood.
I really liked the ocean in Wind Waker. I loved the idea of just sailing off into the middle of nowhere, and searching. I love Zelda, and this may sound weird, but I've never really like the Zelda dungeons, whith a few minor exceptions.
WW was the first Zelda I played with my daughter, who was not even born when Majorie's Mask was released. It wasn't as long or "indepth" as I remember OfT was, but was perfect for the understanding of my now 3 year old. For all the complaints of the cell shaded look, she loved it. One benefit was that the nastiest of bosses (mostly the first one) still looked comic-y enough that she could go to bed without nightmares about a giant whatever-that-thing-was hurting her.
I think the story was beyond her (especially not having played OfT), but she stayed interested until the end of the game, which I thought pretty good for an age where attention span is not the highest.
So while WW may not have lived up to the expectations of a lot of people (including Miyamoto it seems), there's one 3 year old who absolutely adored it and hopefully will have the same pleasant memories of it as I have of some of the games I played when I was her age (Adventure on the 2600...viva la difference!)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who wrote the article submission? The quotes in the article are attributed to EIJI AONUMA, who was the director, not the producer of the game. The only quotes from Shigeru Miyamoto:
... was slow and dull").
/. writeup.
"[We want Twilight Princess] to contain all sides of what people think of the Legend of Zelda series."
"I have absorbed the criticism we got from The Wind Waker, that the sea was too big and the number of dungeons and caves were too few. The new game will have more dungeons. Many more."
Miyamoto only "echoed Aonuma's comments;" it does not say if he actually repeated them or acknowledged the criticisms (Aonuma said the "Triforce hunt
While the submitted article title is also misleading, at least it's not as bad as the
All of this was pointed out years ago by some places. Funny how time makes the obvious... obvious?
-- Aderack. Usually.
Its a good thing that developers admit where they went wrong in the past. It shows that they've identified mistakes and won't make them again, it reassures the community that the company is full of real people and that they actually care about the gameplay and not just profits.
Next up: Derek Smart! Admit it you bastard!!!
That review fucking sucks ass. It totally has this "I've read more books than you" attitude. It uses all these big words. Why can't the writer just say what he wants to say?
I've read the first paragraph so far and I still have no idea what the writer is trying to say. I still have no idea what kind of game this game is supposed to be.
Where are the screenshots?
In closing, that site's layout fucking sucks. My eyes! My eyes are burning!!
Tell us how you really feel.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
They tried to make some innovation in the zelda series. This was the first cell shaded zelda game. It was also one of the first to so directly tie a previous zelda game (Oot) into the storyline. It was also one of the first games to not have the princess be a helpless entity that is there for 0.001 seconds before being kidnapped...
Personally i thought the whole "tag team" dungeons with the sages was a neat idea. A hero can't do everything himself right?
Beyond that, WW had many little nuances that helped you get dragged into the game. The changing weather, the sheer amount of npcs and critters running around the world, the wind blowing through grass and trees, all just made the world seem very alive even though it was rendered in cell shading.
I though the best part of WW was the music. omg, don't even get me started on the soundtrack.
Anyhow, i'm not a nintendo fanboy, but i'm sure as hell a zelda fanboy.
Ironically, Ocarina of Time gets consistently ranked at #1 or thereabouts precisely because it wasn't a "generic 3D world" experience of the sort you're bemoaning. That game's not graphically amazing, and wasn't when it was released. It's just got years worth of deep, rich gameplay, period. The thing is chock-a-block full of quality experience. My daughter bought an Ocarina based on the one in the game, and learned countless songs using a songbook and by ear. When she plays one of the themes from the game somewhere, inevitably a teenager significantly older than she is (11) will come over and they'll have something in common to talk about. That is not another generic 3D world game.
Meanwhile, again ironically, you appear to be arguing both a) that the games that sell today are popular because they're worthless clones; and b) that the PS1 became incredibly popular and sold well because it had better games than Nintendo's. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance involved in holding these two positions is contributing to your dismissive attitude?
There's at least one baby in that bathwater, friend. I loved Windwaker, personally; it's the only one I've actually played with the kids. Given your tastes, I really think you should try Ocarina again.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Troll? Jesus, you guys have no sense of humor. It's my favorite Cube game!
Digital. Crack.
That game is just that good. It is more than able to hold the Metroid name. I hope Metroid Prime 2 is just as good, as I'll be getting it soon.
That's what you get for cloning Skies of Arcadia instead of coming up with something new.
Sorry about that. Why is it you only see your scrw up after you hit submit.
The last fight/ending was jaw dropping and kick ass. To me it was worth it. It really didnt take all that long to do IMO.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.