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Does Zelda Need an Overhaul?
CVG has up a piece noting the fact that not much about Zelda games have changed since the move to 3D. Chalk that up to the greatness of Ocarina of Time if you will, but the same mirror moving, fire-arrow switch activating puzzles have been in the last several titles. Is it time for some kind of radical change to the equation? "People generally don't like to accept change. But change doesn't always spell disaster. Final Fantasy introduces a totally new cast, setting and theme with each sequel and continues to please fans. Resident Evil 4 completely revolutionised Capcom's horror series and is now viewed as one of the best games ever made ... We still totally adore Zelda but eventually the appeal will tire and the series risks bombing. Nintendo needs to take the bold step and inject something totally new into Zelda. We're not talking about a couple of new items, or a new location - that's been done. We mean a significant change that affects the whole structure and gameplay."
The Zelda style of gameplay is what the fans keep coming back for. Perhaps a spinoff from the series would be best suited for this idea.
Twilight Princess was, IMO, the best game in the series, because instead of concentrating souly on new gameplay elements, they actually gave the game a SOUL. In fact sometimes it felt like they transplanted it directly from the Final Fantasy series, which could explain the lack of soul in FF12 (as good as that game was). Every game is evolutionary, and they try expanding on a new area... this one was in story telling and character portrayal, and they get an A+ on this one. Wind Waker tried to experiment with a number of new gameplay elements, and while I applaud them on that, their new efforts were more like a B-.
To me, this sounds like an artical written by a disgruntled gamer who wasn't able to see TP for what it truly was, and while I respect his opinion, its hardly a reason for a call to arms. Does the series need an overhaul? After how good TP was... absolutely not.
TP was an evolutionary step in terms of gameplay, for the series. It added a few new elements (of which it did very well, I might add), but its main concentration layed elsewhere. The gameplay fanatics can probably look forward to Phantom Hourglass and the next Wii Zelda title for a boost in gameplay elements.
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I've been saying this for years! Zelda's formula has gotten old in 3D. Especially the combat. Despite enjoying Twilight Princess a lot (a huge surprise to me) they really need to do a full refresh of the formula.
The Wii controls helped keep the combat feeling fresh, where the GameCube falls flat. But the advancements other games have made in dynamic since the release of Ocarina just leave the series feeling like something of a dinosaur.
With their vast resources (even before DS and Wii started printing money) and huge talent pool I except more from Nintendo. I seem to remember Miyamoto saying that TP would be the last Zelda game "as we know it." So hopefully that's a sign of big things to come.
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To be honest, not much changed even with OoT. It was the same "mirror moving, fire-arrow switch activating" puzzles even in the earlier 2D Zeldas. OoT translated the gameplay so well into 3D that the series continued to be extremely popular.
There shouldn't be any reason to change the style of game Zalda has always been, in fact Zelda-type games have, in a way, become a kind of genre all of it's own. As long as people keep enjoying the gameplay and Nintendo keeps the character's, stories and enviroments fresh it will sell.
Zelda 2 was radically different and radically sucked. It had side-scrolling action and RPG-like features that were totally alien for Zelda.
Change isn't necessarily bad, but Zelda 2 is the poster child for what can happen if you deviate too far from what makes your series fun.
I completely disagree. If you add voices it changes the characters.
Take for example Link, he got a new voice actor for Twilight princess. The new guy is mostly known for playing Dearka elsman from Gundam SEED Destiny, the old ne was mostly known for Guy from Gaogaigar. The two characters are complete opposites and I personaly felt Link was diffeent in feel because of his voice more than the way he acted.
Apply this to the entire game but removing Japanese voices to English, it'll completely change the world from the original. So until American companies grasp that we don#t want crappy American voice actors replacing the Japanese voices I, for one, am glad for text only games.
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Bullshit. People seem to approach voice-acting as if it's simply the next step in gaming... as if it is inherently superior, and those who fail to do so are akin to developers who failed to move to creating 16-bit games after the SNES was released.
No. Voice acting is an aesthetic decision, and greatly alters the feel of the game. Some games definitely benefit from voice acting, but others call for a little more abstraction, and thus voice-acting can chip away at their charm, no matter the quality. Zelda definitely falls into that catagory.
Notice that Zelda already has plenty of voice actin. But in this case, "voice acting" isn't about content but expression of emotion. Instead of actually speaking content, the characters make noises that reflect their current state of mind. This splits up the emotion of the voice from the dry content. It is part of Zelda's greater abstraction, which I feel is key to its overall charm. Traditional voice acting would completely distroy that.
IE: Voice acting is an aesthetic decision on the part of the creators. It is not "missing", it was not included because the creators feel (as I feel) that it would partially destroy the games' charm, moving it toward the realm of cinema rather than the animated storybook quality they wish to portray.
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Final Fantasy introduces a totally new cast, setting and theme with each sequel and continues to please fans.
I'm pretty sure that's not a sequel as much as just reusing a trade mark for new games. There have been a couple of sequels notibly, X2 but for the most part each new FF game is just that and Not a sequel.
Sequel - a literary work, movie, etc., that is complete in itself but continues the narrative of a preceding work.
I am having a blast with the game, and yet, I still agree with you.
The beginning of Twilight Princess was slow and boring. The start of a game should be carefully paced to avoid this.
I personally agree, with Twilight Princess, even though Midna talked random nonesense, I found the nonesense made her a much more endearing character than the others where at most you got some random sound. It doesn't mean that Link has to stop being silent or anything, that probably would be a holy cow too much for the fans, although I do somethimes find the whole "blank slate" bit a little annoying as well.
I also sortof agree with the article, recycling the same themes gets annoying, some more variety would be nice (although I haven't played Majora's Mask much, which does seem to be a bit more experimental).
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
Isn't it time Master Chief's helmet came off? Or Gordon Freeman talked (or we saw his face in-game)?
Either of those would completely change the character, and depending on how pedantic a fan you are, could kill the series for you.
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Isn't this pretty much what Nintendo attempted w/ The Wind Waker? Not just the graphics--though those did seek to create a new level of emotional expression unseen in the previous games--but also the obsession w/ the sea and expansion of the world? That wasn't a massive overhaul, sure, but everyone cried foul and begged for another Ocarina-style game. Just a few years later, they got it. Make up your minds, critics.
Broadly true, although later dungeons had rooms that were impossible to get through unless you had the Ladder, which IIRC was found in a dungeon you needed the Raft to get to. You could play most of the dungeons a bit out of sequence, but it was rarely a good idea (except that I always left dungeon 6 till last - Bubble, Like Like and Wizzrobe in the same room equal pain.)
My main complaint along these lines is that you get to know the game design, and think 'Right, I picked up this item in the last dungeon, it must be what I use to get into the next one, and it must be essential to solve the puzzles inside it and then probably will never be used again.' Which got me in trouble at the end of Twilight Princess - I'd completely forgotten I had the boomerang and got slaughtered repeatedly by Zant until I finally caught on.
Sidequest nonsense: Newer Zelda titles have too many sidequest. In the original Legend of Zelda, I actually cared for finding all heart containers, but with the inflation of fractions of pieces of hearts in current games, it's just a pain. Things get worse when you have to find 100+ spiders or ghosts. It doesn't add to the game and the reward that you get out of these quests is never worth the effort. My recommendation: Integrate sidequest into the storyline and have one single meaningful artifact as reward.
Sidequests I like, but keep the rewards coming at regular intervals. I'll hunt Skulltulas because every so often I get something cool. Bugs and Poes don't seem to work quite the same way.
Difficulty: Zelda has gotten too easy. Without even going through the pain of getting all bottles, I only died once before completing the game for the first time. Especially the dungeon bosses were too easy.
Dungeon bosses, yes, trivially easy. I never was once threatened by them until (as I mentioned above) I forgot I had the boomerang :-) Those bloody Ironknuckle-descended beasties, though, they were a bit of fun all right. Especially once you'd got the armour off them and they suddenly got very, very quick and good at blocking.
To be fair, though: how hard were the old games? Really? The puzzles were obscure because the graphics were too basic to give subtle hints, and the old crones whose job it was to deal out the hints had to be translated from a language where one character can be a whole word, but with no extra space. The combat, though - how hard is it to beat the two Dodongos in the second dungeon in Legend of Zelda? How hard was it to beat them in Ocarina? Go back and play the old games today - they're on Virtual Console if your NES doesn't work anymore. Are they really as hard as you remember, or have twenty years of experience made you really, really good at Zelda games?
Don't reinvent the wheel: It's true that fans of the Zelda series don't want to see everything changed. So new items are always fine, but not too many. Instead, how about bringing back some items from the previous games: sword throwing, magic wand, rings, etc.
Wasn't the dual hookshot great, though? I loved that in the sky city. Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can...
Sword throwing really works better in 2D, I think. It's still there in the Gameboy games. The Blue and Red Ring roughly correspond to the different tunics you get nowadays. A magic wand would be nice, and could work well on Wii, but it would probably end up being a re-heated Ocarina. Learn spell gestures as you travel around Hyrule. SHIELD, JUMP, LIFE, FAIRY, FIRE, REFLECT, SPELL, THUNDER...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Collecting items doesn't make for an RPG, but getting getting experience and gaining levels some people might call an RPG. Not in the same way Final Fantasy is, but in the way that Diablo is.
(Is it just me, or does Zelda II just like the newer Castlevanias?)
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Not always the same princess. Zelda's just a traditional name in the royal family of Hyrule. I make it at least four Zeldas through history. Ocarina Zelda, Twilight Princess Zelda, Link to the Past Zelda (who may or may not be the same Zelda as Sleeping Zelda), and Original Zelda.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This article, if it were a post on /. would be modded down to -2 Troll. It has everything any troll article has: a popular subject, whining about how things "should" be, and total avoidance of anything that could counterpoint what he's writing.
I RTFA, but I didn't see anything about Minish Cap in there at all. That's a post-OoT Zelda game that broke out some nice twists that didn't play like every other Zelda. What of Four Swords with its rupee-collecting fun? This "article" does nothing but take up space.
This is the worst kind of navel-gazing. The un-entertaining kind.
It's slow to start. That's Twilight Princess's biggest flaw.
But the first horseback battle was probably the most intense experience I've ever had playing a video game. There are some absolutely amazing moments in this game.
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