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Next Zelda Title Delayed Again
John Callaham writes "Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime has officially confirmed that the long awaited Gamecube title Zelda: Twilight Princess will be released this fall." From the article: "File-Amie also said that the game would be a Gamecube title and that there were still no plans to turn it into a game for Nintendo's next-gen Revolution console." He also took the opportunity to mention that the original DS will be phased out in late autumn, in favour of the DS Lite.
Its not a crappy reason if it can be played on a Revolution and use the new controller for new gameplay.
firestream.net
Even if they don't add Revolution-specific features it's a smart move on Nintendo's part as a lot of people are going to buy Revolution who don't own GameCube. Given that it is one of the "most anticipated games ever" it's a no brainer to release it when there are more people who are able to play it without buying a system that they'll never play another game on.
Though personally I wouldn't be getting too excited about it unless they've made some serious changes since last time they showed it off. So far it looks like more of the same for the ever more tired 3D Zelda formula. I can't wait till the first Revolution Zelda since Miyamoto has promised that Twilight Princess will be the last Zelda in this mold.
The Farewell Tour II
I think the official explanation is they realized as the game was nearing completion that it played too much like "The Ocarina of Time 2", so they went back to work on it to include some new gameplay to make the experience feel more fresh and original.
Seriously, while I will eventually buy Twilight Princess, I really pine for a new Zelda game on the DS. Minish Cap was the best single player experience I have had in a long, long time!
Monstar L
I think the problem he's refering to is that when you go and hunt for the triforce pieces, there's no dungeons. You just go in and get them. Extemely boring and repetitive. I don't know if this was the way Nintendo wanted it, or whether it got cut short and they had to release it without the dungeons. Either way, it felt like it was missing a whole lot of levels. Had they added actual dungeons to find the triforce pieces, the game would have been about 3 time as long though. Other than that, I have to say I really enjoyed the game.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Even reducing the ocean by 15-20% would've made the game less tedious.
I personally really enjoyed the game, but I have no problem wishing that they had added the dungeons and gotten rid of the triforce hunt and reduced the vast, vast ocean.
"Though personally I wouldn't be getting too excited about it unless they've made some serious changes since last time they showed it off. So far it looks like more of the same for the ever more tired 3D Zelda formula. I can't wait till the first Revolution Zelda since Miyamoto has promised that Twilight Princess will be the last Zelda in this mold."
:)
Ocarina of Time was simply epic. I can still go back and play it for hours on end. Sure, Majora's Mask wasn't as exciting, but if all they did was change the dungeons and such in Ocarina of Time, it would be a worthwhile game. I might add that my son is interested in having me buy an ocarina for him... I wonder where he got that idea from.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Second off, changing direction was a pain, you had to stop, pull out the Ocarina of Time^H^H^H^H^HWind Waker and play that song. EVERY TIME.
Third, because of the implementation of the sailing itself (the "sail" being an item you have to have out), you could do only two things while sailing: jump, and rotate the camera. Wooo. It would be much more bearable if you could pull out your bow and perform sail-by shootings, or pull out your telescope and sightsee (which is otherwise a completely useless item who functionality is actually duplicated by the camera you get later.) And the chance of coming back to a shark munching on your ass was just barely high enough to make getting up and getting something to eat/going to the bathroom a bad idea.
The vast, vast ocean was to mask loading times.
Which is a fundamental problem, when it comes right down to it. If you load between islands, that means that each island needs to be far apart that you have a full loading time between them. You also need to have enough time that if the player turns back around, they don't see empty space but rather the island they were just going to. So you need twice a single island load's worth of time between islands. And remember that the island needs to be loaded by the time the player can get a reasonably good look at it, so that's another 1x there...
Now tripling your island's load times is bad enough, but the game frequently has you traveling halfway across the map to get to somewhere... As such your current island unloads, the next one loads, that one unloads, the one after that loads, etc, etc. For a reasonable jaunt around the map you may be hit with 21x the basic load time.
And so you have to give the player something to do during all of that time. Unfortunately, this means more random island encounters you must find, more wind to change the direction of, more underwater treasures to dredge up... More junk to do that slows down the travel further.
I probably would have bit the bullet, shrunk the ocean 80% or so, and added a load pause when the player was within a few feet of the shore. It would have broken immersion, but it would have been a heck of a lot less tedious.
The ______ Agenda