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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.
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).
You just answered your own question. The people that were waiting for the game controlled his timetable.
It's funny how when developers wait to get something right and people complain about it taking forever and then when they release it early people complain about patches and things not being finished.
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
...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.
Yeah, I'm SO glad they waited onm Daikatana until it was perfect! And Duke Nukem Forever is going to be awesome!
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.
What I find even more annoying is that he said the same thing about Super Mario Sunshine, which started out as easily the best Mario title, and was on it's way to being one of the best video games of all time, when you suddenly realise it's not actually complete and less half the way through they ran out of time to complete it and instead stuffed it with stupidly difficult jumping puzzle levels (which should have been left in, but purely as bonus levels) just to drag it out.
I was very disappointed, particularly after having so much fun with Mario initially (exploring, playing with water, discovering areas and new ways to play in the environment). Comparions with "Sonic Adventure" on the Dreamcast are hard to ignore - it managed to be bursting to the gills with features beyond any reasonable expectations and also felt complete and balanced from start to finish (a real masterpiece). I would have considered it a complete game even if it only had one playable character and a single story line, never mind six!
I wouldn't want to discourage developers from being critical of their past titles, but I would not purchase another Molyneux or Miyamoto game in future without seeing favourable reviews from sources I have faith in, as they have both, on multiple occasions, abused the cachet their names carry by not ensuring the sort of quality expected from finished products that have their names attached.
By jumping puzzle levels, I'm assuming you mean the ones with the remix of the original SMB theme playing in the background. Those levels were the best part of the game. They felt like the old 2D Mario games.
The problems with Mario Sunshine came down to two things:
1) The various coin hunts made up something like 1/3 of the shines in the game.
2) By placing the game on a vacation island, they really limited what options they had for level design. The levels weren't nearly as varied as in Mario 64.