Next Zelda Title Delayed Again

It will likely work for both by solidtransient · 2006-02-20 04:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

It will be a Gamecube game, but from what I hear they want to release it when the Revolution ships because of the backwards compatibility that the Revolution should have. I mean why not? right? New Zelda, might as well get that cool new system to play it on. I'd do it.

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Re:It will likely work for both by solidtransient · 2006-02-20 04:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

Its not a crappy reason if it can be played on a Revolution and use the new controller for new gameplay.

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Re:It will likely work for both by aichpvee · 2006-02-20 04:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

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Re:It will likely work for both by (A)*(B)!0_- · 2006-02-20 05:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Nintendo is not adding any Revolution-specific features.
See - it's easy to just make statements without any proof to back them up. There's a difference between "they might be adding features" and "they are adding features." Speculation is fun but you should use language that reflects the fact that it is speculation.
Re:It will likely work for both by strikethree · 2006-02-20 10:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

"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. :)

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Re:It will likely work for both by solidtransient · 2006-02-20 10:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

Backwards compatibility is a reason NOT to buy the revolution.
Really, I think you should say that backwards compatibility shouldn't be the only reason to buy a Revolution. I would rather it be backwards compatible than not. If it is, I can sell my GC for $40 and put that towards the new Zelda AND a Revolution.

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firestream.net

Short timeline by the_demiurge · 2006-02-20 04:44 · Score: 2, Funny

The game was originally planned to be released in fall 2005.
Then the release got pushed back to April of 2006.
Now they say it's coming out fall 2006.

Maybe this will be like Half-Life 2, coming out almost exactly a year after it was supposed to.
Did Nintendo got their code stolen too?

Re:Short timeline by Joe+the+Lesser · 2006-02-20 04:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

Probably just the typical production-manager-has-no-clue-and-is-guesstimatin g syndrome.

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Re:Short timeline by tukkayoot · 2006-02-20 05:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

I don't really mind... by oahazmatt · 2006-02-20 04:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

...During a time when consoles and games are both rushed out the door before they're ready, Nintendo is taking its time with their products. Sure it may aggravate some people, but only the hardcorest of the hardcore gamers.

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Re:I don't really mind... by Spleener12 · 2006-02-20 05:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yeah, better they take their time than release another Wind Waker (before you say anything, I had no problem with the graphics, but the game *desperately needed* at least 6 more months in the cooker to finish the obviously cut dungeon(s) and fix things like the horrendously flawed sailing system.)
Re:I don't really mind... by EggyToast · 2006-02-20 09:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

Sailing was fine. It was just that there was way too much of it in the early game. If they had shrunk the ocean so that the little teeny islands were closer together, it wouldn't've changed the game at all, but it would have meant less time holding one direction on the joystick for 5 minutes.
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.
Re:I don't really mind... by Spleener12 · 2006-02-20 11:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

First off, it took forever to get anywhere. This itself would be bearable if it wasn't for the other two problems.
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.
Re:I don't really mind... by cgenman · 2006-02-20 17:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

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In his immortal words... by wilgibson · 2006-02-20 04:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever." -Shigeru Miyamoto

Damn them! by Anonymous Coward · 2006-02-20 04:56 · Score: 3, Funny

Damn them for not releasing a half finished game like Wind Waker, which everyone adored from start to finish!

Re:Damn them! by LordKronos · 2006-02-20 08:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

Please. Wind Waker was an awesome game. They did an incredible job with the graphics, and an even better job with the game engine and game play. However, a bunch of thick skulled people apparently were feeling a little insecure about their masculinity, and thought they couldn't play something with cartoon graphics (even though the fact that you are portraying a kid in the game fits well with the kid-cartoon style graphics) and some fun/creative puzzle solving (yes...not EVERY "puzzle" requires chopping someone's head off or doing a hooker) made them feely a little too much like girly men.

As a result, Nintendo had to scrap a brand new rendering engine which had just been written from the ground up for Wind Waker. The process of rewriting it from scratch AGAIN probably accounts for a significant portion of the delay of this title.

But OOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!! This ones going to have realistic look graphics. What a totally new concept. Not like we've ever seen that before. Heck, the coders could take a dump in the box and everyone would love it as long the poo was photorealistic.
Re:Damn them! by CastrTroy · 2006-02-20 08:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

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Re:Damn them! by Chris+Burke · 2006-02-20 10:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

I pretty much agree with you, and I loved the game, but it is also pretty clear that the entire Triforce search aspect was tacked on to increase the number of hours in the game. Remove the necessary sailing around to the islands, and then to the locations where you grab the Triforce pieces, and you've probably knocked 20% of the length of the game off.

Not that you can't spend a lot of time trying to find everything if you so choose, and not that a shorter game is really that bad. Beyond Good and Evil was fairly short, and I think it was better than Wind Waker in pretty much every way. Forcing the game to be longer by adding in a non-optional time-sink was a bad decision, imho.

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The enemies of Democracy are
Re:Damn them! by rohlfinator · 2006-02-20 11:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

"However, a bunch of thick skulled people apparently were feeling a little insecure about their masculinity, and thought they couldn't play something with cartoon graphics..."
Right. Everyone who finds any fault with Wind Waker is insecure about their masculinity. My favorite game of the generation is frickin' Pikmin, and I was underwhelmed with Wind Waker after a bit. The graphics were not its biggest problem.
"...and some fun/creative puzzle solving (yes...not EVERY "puzzle" requires chopping someone's head off or doing a hooker) made them feely a little too much like girly men."
Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask had fun/creative puzzle solving. Wind Waker's puzzles were mostly rehashes of the puzzles from those two games, with a few exceptions. Nothing in WW even compares to the Water Temples in either of the N64 Zeldas, or the Forest Temple from OoT. Dungeons in WW felt like a series of independent rooms, rather than single coherent structures. Wind Waker also had too few dungeons, and the (arguably) most boring one was repeated twice. While Majora's Mask had only four dungeons, even the first one was quite challenging. The trading sequence was much more interesting in OoT, and the NPC interactions were better in MM, compared to WW's "sail all over the planet to talk to the same three guys over and over". Finally, WW's combat was painfully simple (I didn't die once on my first playthrough).

As a disclaimer: I don't hate Wind Waker. I highly enjoyed the game, and it's a lot better than most third-person adventures. But there were noticeable gameplay flaws with the game, and it was a bit of a letdown after the excellence of OoT and MM. To suggest that anyone who finds fault with it is a "graphics whore" is just plain shortsighted.

I for one... by MorderVonAllem · 2006-02-20 04:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

...am glad it will be delayed. Usually this means that the game will be that much better. Going by Nintendo's track record, it will be true.

Give me more portable, 2d Zelda goodness! by antifoidulus · 2006-02-20 05:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

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!

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Monstar L

Re:Sigh. by steveo777 · 2006-02-20 05:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Honestly, this is nothing compared to the wait of Ocarina of Time. That game was pushed back again and again for over a year. What we got ended up being one of the best gaming experiences of all time. I'm not one to get too angry with Nintendo about these kind of gripes as long as they deliver a solid product... and Nintendo almost always does (Mario Party 26, I'm looking at you here).

Honestly, if they're delaying the game, then it's probably 10% P.R., 90% Game/Technical. Zelda has always (yup, even Wind Waker) been worth the wait.

So, Chin-up RyoShin! Cloudy skies are going to clear up, put on a happy face!
Turn that frown, up-side-down!

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Misleading Headline - "Again?" by HarvardFrankenstein · 2006-02-20 05:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

The headline is misleading, saying that the game has been delayed "again". Saying it was delayed again implies that they had delayed it, set a new date, and then delayed it one more time. They never set a date after the first delay. A better headline would have been "Delayed Zelda Arrives in Fall".

Re:Misleading Headline - "Again?" by rmccann · 2006-02-20 05:38 · Score: 3, Informative

It was meant to come out for Christmas 2005. It was delayed to about April 2006. It has now been delayed *again*.
Re:Misleading Headline - "Again?" by jeffasselin · 2006-02-20 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

No, they said it would be pushed back "after March 2006". They never gave a date beyond that, and the April date was simple speculation.

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Re:Two Zelda Titles in 2006? by tukkayoot · 2006-02-20 05:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

I remember hearing that a Zelda title might be a launch title for Revolution. I assume this would be different than Twilight Princess? Anyone have any information on this?

This seems very unlikely to me. Two AAA Zelda games being released within 1 year of each other? It could happen, especially if Zelda Revolution is radically different from Twilight Princess and is being worked on by completely seperate development teams, but I would think that the Twilight Princess delay would at least somewhat push back the release of the next Zelda beyond the release of the Revolution, unless the Revolution is delayed into 2007 (I don't even want to think about that happening).

Twilight Princess will likely sate our Zelda craving for a while, so releasing a new Zelda game soon after almost seems like a not-good idea. I may still be striving to unlock everything and do all the miniquests when the Revolution comes out, so I won't be starved for a Zelda game the same way I'm anticipating the next real Mario platforming game (which the GameCube rather lacked -- I thought Sunshine was a let down), a Super Smash Brothers Melee, a Mario Party (the type of game that is just perfect for the Revolution) and a Metroid, which seems like a franchise that is evolving in such a way that it also is an ideal Revolution title. Give me all or most of these games at our near launch, and I'll be perfectly content to wait a year for a new, awesome Zelda game.

Obligatory Zelda quote by Spy+der+Mann · 2006-02-20 05:37 · Score: 4, Funny

Crushed my little Nintendo-fanboy heart. How could they do this?

Well excuuuuuse me princess! ^_^

The sailing got old... by 7Prime · 2006-02-20 12:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

It was really cool for the first few hours, and then after a while, it became a total chore: play the wind song, wait 20 seconds for the wind song to play, point in the right direction, put down controller and wait 5-10 minutes, pull up to island. After a while, when you get that song of gails, or whatever the one is that gives you warp spots, it becomes a little faster, but it's also one more song you have to play. After doing this 40-50 times, it gets old really fast, especially in a series where you traditionally have to go back and forth across the map just to figure out what you're supposed to do next, it really killed the joy of adventure.

I don't mind having to go all the way across the map all the time, from one task to another, that's what the series is based on. But give me some terrain, give me something to do, something to look at while I'm doing it. It's difficult to make endless blue ocean, "exciting" or even interesting after you've done it for 10 hours.

Another problem was the abuse of the song playing system. In Ocarina and Majora, the system was near perfect: you only needed to play a song every once in a while, there was something "quick and simple" about it. I found myself having to play the wind changing song, like, every 2 minutes while I was searching out my next objective in WW, and the sequence of playing + animations just seemed to take forever.

The dungeons were on par with the rest of the series, especially the last two regular dungeons, the storyline was fun, the puzzles were great. But I hated the saling, which made me not want to explore, which really sapped a lot of the enjoyment out of the game for me.

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Re:Not a "3d Zelda"? by KDR_11k · 2006-02-20 19:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

That'd be nice, all that 3d stuff is hurting the games.

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Re:Total rumor here... by Bobsledboy · 2006-02-20 22:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

Here's another rumor I heard.

People that work at game stores are full of shit. They definitely don't have any industry connections. Treat their insider knowledge the same as the idiots from Best Buy/Walmart and you'll go far.

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Next Zelda Title Delayed Again

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