After your recent post I thought you would be excited to hear this! Keep up the good work.
http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=13313
And thank god that the new Mario is awesome!
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I’ll probably buy Zelda Wii due to the motion plus controls (I would like to use my Motion Plus for something other than sports), but I have no faith in Zelda Wii.
Zelda Wii is going to be based around Super Guide which means it is going to have to be linear. When I hear ‘new structure’, I hear ‘plot centric story’ instead which increases the game’s linearity. There are way too many Nintendo developers who are obsessed over a game’s ‘story’ (even sneaking in a story in Mario Galaxy). The only check it seems to be on the ‘story’ minions is Miyamoto who vetoed a ‘dramatic story’ on Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario Brothers 5. However, Miyamoto says that Zelda is ‘about story’ which I fear is going to open the floodgates to Doodads-R-Us.
What is the correct structure to apply to Zelda? The answer is no structure. When we played the very first Zelda, we never thought of the game in terms of ‘structure’. Zelda defied the standard game structures at the time. Zelda II was a very different Zelda and it, too, had no structure that we understood. Sure there were dungeons and bosses, but all games had those. In Link to the Past, the same thing occurred. The Master Sword, the Mirror World, all of that was new and didn’t feel like a structure. Ocarina being in 3d got away with using a similar structure. It appears that all franchises get a one-time *boost* when the series goes to 3d. But that boost doesn’t sustain itself as the series enters decline afterward.
The recipe in how to make non-gamers or new gamers into Zelda fans is right there, in plain sight, with the earlier Zelda games. These Zelda games were more action orientated, contained very little dialogue, had practically no cinematics, and relied on mazes (for the dungeon as well as the overworld) and that finely tuned arcade-like combat. All of this is contrary to the natural instincts of modern developers.
The finely tuned arcade-like combat will already be present in the Wii Sports Resort type bow shooting and sword combat. However, I expect it to be minimized and used once every twenty minutes while you run around in circles and go through dialogue boxes as you engage in the “amazing story”. The fact that the Master Sword is that fairy means you have to talk to that Master Sword which means more dialogue, more text, more jibber, and less about kicking ass.
Improving the AI for the Zelda monsters, for example, would radically alter the experience. Instead of monsters that act like dumb idiots, they would be a little more clever. And you would feel you are actually defeating a nemesis rather than defeating an empty spawn. But the AI in Zelda monsters has remained dumb and stupid for decades because it is not fun for developers to tinker and improve. However, it is fun for developers to add “amazing story” to the game and “lots of text” and the “omg plot twists”. So we get that instead.
Would these same developers be hired by the movie industry to make movies? No. They’d be laughed at.
Would these same developers be hired by publishers to write their ‘amazing stories’ into books? No. They’d be left in the slushpile.
So why do they think that inserting unprofessional work into a game is going to attract people? To the contrary, it repels people.
If these developers have the talent of being hired by the movie industry or the book industry, then sure, go ahead and put movies and ‘amazing story’ into your game. But such talent is very rare just as game making talent is rare. The odds that such talent of movie making or story writing exists alongside the talent needed to make games is yet even more rare.
Above: Arcade like combat used to be the gameplay skeleton that was the core of Zelda.
Nintendo has an opportunity to return to arcade like combat in Zelda Wii with Motion Plus. However, I expect Nintendo to totally blow it. You will only do the *combat* in sprinkles in the game. The bulk of the game will be ‘Amazing Story’ and ‘OMG Plot Twists’ (e.g. “The fairy girl becomes the Master Sword! OMG!!!”).
Playing Zelda used to be an intense experience, something that you had to keep on your toes. Now, playing Zelda is like a sedative experience. You just sit back and watch the ‘cinematics’ and ‘Amazing Story’ and you do not do much except to go into one room after another.
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