Email: Open challenge to Zelda fans

My email account looks like a bomb went off in there. But I was able to save this email that, for some reason, automatically went to the spam folder. The email came before E3…
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Hey, Malstrom.  With E3 just around the corner and an open challenge coming straight from you, I can’t think of a better time than now to send my first email to you.  I was almost going to do this last year, but I ended up writing a document that turned out to be the equivalent of a rage-filled hate letter directed at…no, not you, I don’t have a problem with you–but at Nintendo.  Of course, all hate letters are better left unsent, so I ditched that old document and instead wrote up my own little “fanfiction” design document regarding what I wanted to see in the then-untitled Zelda Wii.  That document was supposed to be nothing more than a list of bullet points but ended up becoming a twenty-page thesis that I didn’t even get done in time for E3, when Skyward Sword was unveiled and everything was ruined when Nintendo did pretty much exactly what I did not want it to do.

Sigh.

Anyway, I’m going to send you an email, partly as a response to your challenge (although, I won’t be arguing with you all that much, but rather with the Zelda fanbase, who I hope to have read this email through you posting it on your blog–you’re famous, you know; I hope I can be as famous as you someday…), and partly as a way to help me finish my own grieving process, since I believe this upcoming E3 will be the like a funeral of a long-departed friend who first went MIA a few years ago….

It’s gonna be pretty long, though, since I’m saying my good-byes to video games, and I have a lot of thoughts I wanna express…
I agree with most of the things you’ve been saying about Zelda for the last year or so, and slightly disagree with some others, although some of our disagreements could amount to nothing more than a difference in perspectives. I absolutely, positively do not want Aonuma to continue managing the Zelda teams. I’m not even sure why he is still allowed to do so. Every time I’ve ever read anything by him he seems to express deep doubt in his own abilities. He’s openly admitted he’s a bad planner. His games are always years late. He gets his game design ideas from his five-year-old son. Every time he makes one game, he spends most of his time in public interviews apologizing for the deficiences in the last game he made. Why in the bloody hell has this man at least not been demoted? Is he just there so people can criticize someone other than Miyamoto for the games’ failings?

I also dislike the idea that we now have “franchises” and development teams that are dedicated to making continual installments of these “franchises.” Actually, I do not dislike this idea—I hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Ever since Nintendo began looking at these games not as stand-alone epics but as just a franchise to keep making installments of, the game quality has sufferend, and it’s pretty noticeable. They keep thinking, “Well, if something goes wrong this time, we’ll just fix it next time.” Someday, though, there will be no next time. This mindset seems to have settled in around the N64 era, or at least, that’s when we first start noticing its effect in Nintendo’s output.

Another thing about the Zelda games that has bothered for many years is how the series is so heavily gimmick-based. All of the games, at least since A Link to the Past, have centered on a gimmick, which is usually the subtitle of the game. I’ve been screaming this to anyone who would listen since about the year 2000, but I’m sure you know what I mean when I say that the Zelda fanbase is very, very resistant to change. Just like the games themselves. Seriously, the only difference between nearly all of the games is each game’s gimmick—and even the gimmicks frequently repeat themselves! A Link to the Past started the dual-world gimmick, which has also been seen in OoT, TP, and each of the Oracle games. Even Wind Waker—and I’ll get to Wind Waker again, trust me—has a trace of the dual-world gimmick in it (the ocean and the land underneath) that probably would’ve been more emphasized had the game actually been finished. I’m not a big fan of Majora’s Mask, and I really don’t think a lot of people are, even if they say so, but it does use what is probably the series’ single most unique gimmick, the clock, so it’s become rather significantly overrated in the last ten years because of that. There’s nothing else like it anywhere in Zelda.

This “gimmick” problem overlaps with another problem I’ve been having with the series—there are simply too many of these games nowadays. Again, Nintendo has a dedicated Zelda studio that does nothing but make Zelda games. When they get one Zelda game done, they start making another.  They rarely even shuffle personnel around. They refuse to take ideas from outside sources, presumably because Zelda is one of Miyamoto’s babies and he refuses to let anyone else touch it. (Speaking of, I think it’s really interesting how none of Nintendo’s series other than Mario and Zelda have reached this sort of “untouchable” status—Metroid and Kirby, I guess, are other people’s games, and I don’t know what happened to Star Fox, F-Zero, etc., but only these two series, which are uniquely Miyamoto’s games, have this sort of “aura” about them—an aura that I’m not even convinced has to do with sales as much as it that they’re Miyamoto’s babies.)

My question is, how was it not inevitable that this series would get oversaturated? Things got really crazy in the Gamecube era, when they made three separate Zelda games for one home system! Three! And they only made one Mario-but-not-really game in the same time! People may not like hearing this, and I’m not sure what you’d say about it, but I truly believe that Zelda should be a once-every-system type game, like it was in the past. There should always be more Mario games than Zelda games per Nintendo system. Always. A ratio of three-to-one would be best, I’d say. In the N64 and Gamecube eras, this balance was screwed up, and I believe that was symbolic of those system’s failures. It cannot be stressed enough how important Super Mario Brothers really was and is to Nintendo’s success. There is no good reason why Nintendo hasn’t been making a Super Mario Brothers game every other year since 1991. None. I’m like you—I got a DS in I believe it was 2005 (?) solely for the promise of Super Mario Bros DS. (I have always and will always refuse to call those games “New.”) I even picked up Super Paper Mario in 2007, because I believed it was the closest we would get to a Super Mario Brothers game on a home console again.  If they had never stopped making these games, no one ever would have touched them. Not Sega, not Sony, not Microsoft, not anyone.  They blew their own biggest shot.

And if the Mario games should have come out three times on any given machine, the Zelda games should have been seen once each. I’ll give the NES both of its Zelda games because Zelda 2 was so stylistically different from Zelda 1 (yes, I know what you mean when you say it’s an evolution of the arcade/adventure to the RPG/adventure, but I don’t believe most people ever saw it that way), but from the SNES on, when it was clear A Link to the Past was the style those games would use from then on, there should have only ever been one. The N64 had two. The Gamecube had three. The GameBoy ended up getting three, and the Game Boy Advance had two (although one was not new). While I don’t acknowlede the existence of these games, because they sully the Zelda name like nothing ever has before, officially, the DS now has two. The Wii, at least, will only get one (assuming—and hoping—that it doesn’t get moved over to their new machine), which is the correct number, but that game should have been out in 2009. I’ve been saying since 2007 that 2009 should have been Zelda’s year. There’s no good reason for it not to have been. They finished TP in 2006, so that would have given them three years to make one game, which is more than reasonable. If a high-profile development studio like EAD’s Zelda team cannot make one game in three years, it is time to start seriously examing the decision-makers at top. At E3 last year, Aonuma himself said the game could have been released in 2009 had they not run into difficulties. Well, who was responsible for those difficulties?

Another thing I agree with you on is Wind Waker’s legacy. I don’t think many people realize just how much damage that game did to this series. I want to express some things about this game, both from a personal perspective and from a far-reaching, general-purpose point of view. For me, personally, it was the first time I’d ever played a Zelda that I legitimately struggled to finish. I didn’t play Majora’s Mask or the Oracles games when they were first released, but when I did play them, I finished them all reasonably quickly. I first played Wind Waker in March 2003. I finally finished it in February 2004. I would play it every so often during the course of that year, and finally managed to get it done within a year of first starting it. Worse yet, I gave the game away to somebody after I finished it! Me! I did that! I gave a video game away!

I don’t sell my games. Ever. Not to a secondhand store, not to a pawn shop, not to some online site, not at a garage sale. I. Never. Sell. My. Games. It is fundamentally against the very nature of my being to do so. And I gave Wind Waker away! Someone who hadn’t played it was talking about it while I was nearby, so I said “Here, it’s yours.” That was it! That was all! I gave a video game away—I gave a Zelda game away! And I didn’t even feel upset about it!

I will add, for reference, that a couple years later I decided to buy the game back. I did this so that I would be able to experience the game again and be better able to defend my viewpoints on it. I have since finished the game completely about five times—I don’t buy games very often anymore since most games suck, so my time spent playing games is devoted to old games—and am much better able to express what it is I do and do not like about this game. I have also read others’ opinions on this game ad nauseum for the last eight years. I believe it is important to know exactly where, why, and how this game failed, because this game, more than any other, ended the legacy of Zelda as we had always known it before.

First off, its appearance. Now, my problem with the way the game looks is not centered on its style of graphics—I believe a storybook appearance is very appropriate for Zelda, and this is the only thing I’m not currently concerned about with Skyward Sword. But I do not believe the characters should look they way they do, and Link most definitely should not have been done the way he was done. People do not want to play a fairy boy. Ocarina of Time was fine, since the young Link in that game did not look or act like the Young Link in Wind Waker, and he grew up and spent most of the game adult-sized anyway. Majora’s Mask is also fine, since that Link is just the OoT Link, and no one has ever had a problem with him. The Wind Waker Link, though—believe me when I say that I, and I believe a fair number of people, did not want to be Wind Waker Link. I do hope Skyward Sword addresses this issue, since it is a significant one.

Wind Waker was also the game that fundamentally broke the Zelda mythos. I’ve noticed a lot of people pay almost too much attention to the Zelda games’ storylines. I’ve come to believe they’re looking for the right thing—i.e., consisteny and continuity in the in-game content—in the wrong place—i.e., the timeline. I’ve noticed a tendency for fans to take each game almost too literally, and hold the creators’ words as gospel too much. The appeal of the Zelda fiction comes not from each game fitting tightly into a timeline with all the other games, but for the way the history of Hyrule reminds us of ancient countries from our own world history. Hyrule reminds me so much of Old Testament Israel that it’s very hard for me to believe that that wasn’t the real-life model Nintendo used as the premise for its own idea, right down to the enemy desert nation to the west, which is clearly Egypt. Wind Waker, however, was self-aware of its own existence as a Zelda game that happened before other Zelda games and after still other Zelda games, to the point where whatever in-universe consistency that might once have existed is now destroyed, and can never be rebuilt.  Seriously, ask the fans—before Wind Waker, was it possible to make sense of the entire Zelda mythos? Yes, it was. Since Wind Waker, has it been possible to do that? No, it has not. That game is the dividing line between sense and nonsense.

Wind Waker also messed up the series’ entire premise.  Link is just a guy. He comes in, cleans up the mess, and then leaves. He does not need to have a family or a backstory or anything like that. Once the series began focusing on Link as this destined Hero and made the story all about him, the entire focus of everything you’re doing got reversed.  It is The Legend of Zelda–it is not The Legend of The Hero.  Nothing about Link should be extraordinary at all.  All of the in-game universe’s attention (i.e., Hyrule’s history) should be focused on Zelda and her need for rescue, and the Triforce and its need for balance. Nothing should be focused on Link.  This might also tie in the series’ relative lack of challenge in recent years, which started, coincidentally, with Wind Waker.  If Link is this destined hero who cannot fail, it would make thematic sense if none of the enemies ever posed a threat–and indeed, in both WW and TP, they do not.  This is part of the reason why so many people view both these games as unfulfilling, or “lacking soul,” which is a term that means nothing, but we hear it all the time.  It’s usually directed at TP since WW is so cartoony and childish that people have a hard time labelling it as “soulless.”  Well, that, and it has better music.  Regardless, I believe a big chuck of this “soullessness” is directed at the games’ complete lack of challenge–NOTHING is trying to stop you from beating the game.  All of the enemies seem to throw down their weapons and want you to hit them.  When you do defeat them, it doesn’t seem like a particularly worthwhile accomplishment, and the feeling of satisfaction is heavily stifled.  This probably came about when Nintendo heard that most people who start their games don’t finish them, and they freaked out and came up with this as their response.  But the problem, like it always is with Nintendo, is that they gave the wrong answer to the wrong question–as far as I can see, they have never correctly diagnosed the problems this series has developed over the last decade or so.

I do disagree with some of your points about the Zelda games, though. I know that I, personally, never viewed them as arcade-type experiences. The overworld, of course, prohibits that, and even if you just look at the dungeons as levels, my arcade days were spent almost exclusively playing beat-’em-up games, so I never saw Zelda’s style as an arcade style.  I also never played Zelda itself for arcade-style combat. A Link to the Past is probably the closest the series has to offer in that regard, because there are so many enemies on the screen at once, and the enemies can do serious damage to you. It’s about the only Zelda game where, to this day, I still have a better-than-zero chance at dying everytime I play.  I replay these games all the time. All the time. At any given moment in history I may be playing a Zelda game, or thinking about playing one. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t just play a game once and then get rid of it, so I tend to think I speak about some of these games with a little more firsthand knowledge than a lot of people do.  I also have been playing the games since the very beginning, way back in 1987 (actually, I got it in 1988), and have seen the series evolve over time with each release ever since, so I’m not part of the crowd that played OoT first.  It is this audience, and its reactions to certain things, that has caused Nintendo to respond the way it has with the way the games have been made ever since.

I also appreciate a lot about TP. TP is a very interesting game to cross-examine. What it does right, it does really, really right, but it does just enough wrong in the process to make the whole thing fall flat. I’ve always summed it up like this: TP takes the Zelda games three steps forward, then two steps back.  We end up farther than where we were when we started, but not as far as we should have been, so it seems like we haven’t made any progress at all—or worse, gone backwards. TP has a very bad beginning. This is indisputable, and fixing this problem should be near or at the top of Nintendo’s list of priorities for SS. The handholding is insulting, all the stupid stuff you have to do to get out of that damn village (like fishing—which the game doesn’t explain how to do, unlike everything else where the game goes out of its way to litter the screen with text explaining how to do everything, so it ends up being even more confusing—finding a cat, saving a baby’s cradle for a pregnant woman, etc.) is annoying, and the length of time it takes for the player to arrive at the first dungeon is inexcusable. I do like the Hyrule Castle portion of the beginning, but I still believe the wolf was poorly-implemented, and, in all honesty, not altogether necessary. This would be another example of Aonuma’s poor handling of the Zelda mythos—I want to be Link. I want to save Zelda. I want to fight Ganon and reclaim the Triforce. I do not want to be a wolf carting around a rider who is fighting her own enemy, while the presence of these three elements causes the main components of the Zelda games to disappear. This is one of the main points of fan backlash regarding TP, and it is still the biggest problem I have with the game. Nintendo must recognize how important it is to get the focus back to where it belongs—Hyrule, the Triforce, Ganon, and Zelda.  Ocarina of Time, more than any other Zelda game, did this correctly, and it is one of the main reasons why that game is still so fondly remembered, even if there are a lot of other reasons why it shouldn’t be.

TP does harken back to the original Zelda game in some positive ways, though—it’s the closest we’ve come to seeing a 3D game where Hyrule is already conquered like it is in Zelda 1, which to me is a big deal.  It’s not really any fun if the land you’re saving is in no danger, which all too often has felt like the case in Zelda games.  Nintendo seems unwilling to let the games these days really scare you.  Maybe they’re too children-oriented, or maybe they’re afraid of lawsuits if they put stuff in their games (such as actual enemies) that could in any way be construed as upsetting a kid.  TP also has, by far, the best landscape of any Zelda game, and the dungeons are the best we’ve seen to date.  I still wish, however, that the dungeons wouldn’t resemble convieniently structured obstacle courses that are designed in just such a way that Link, with his trusty tools, can manage to get through them all in order.  I also wish the game wouldn’t force you to do each dungeon in order, but that’s necessary because of those damn tools.  The tools themselves need to be rethought, since all they really do is form a giant game of paper-rock-scissors wherein I use Tool A to Break Obstacle B to get to Area C so I can reach Dungeon D.  It’s really annoying and far too much time is spent on concentrating on these stupid tools and not about the task at hand–beating up ferocious monsters who have taken over the country and chased all the people into caves where they shudder in fear at the thought of their beloved Princess in the hands of the leader of these vile beasts.  This is an extremely basic formula to dissect, but Nintendo has shown a typical human tendency to overthink a simple problem and come up with a needlessly complicated solution.

Sigh.

Well, I’d better let you go.  I don’t know if you’ll post this email, but I do hope you at least read it.  I’ve needed to vent my spleen for a good long while now, and I feel better after having done this.  Maybe someday, when the world becomes perfect and we all join hands in community, you and I might meet face-to-face and spend the rest of eternity playing each other in Smash Bros. or something.  No, wait–we’d team up to take out all NOOBS (isn’t that how kids these days speak?  I wouldn’t know–I’m in my 30’s and I’ve never learned Internet language).  You’d be Mario and I’d be Link, and we’d mow down all these pretenders that have popped up over the years….

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This is a fantastic email. And much was said. It will be difficult to reply…

-The invention of ‘franchises’ I believe occurred in the 16-bit generation. No one used that word in the 8-bit generation. There were sequels, but they were not called ‘franchises’. I’m not sure the origin of how video games came to use the word ‘franchise’, but it is incorrect with the broader use of the term. Franchise means someone selling a business model such as McDonald’s selling you one of their stores where you sell McDonald’s hamburgers. The business model is already designed for you. With video games, franchises refers more to an intellectual property than an actual business model. It would be like calling the Big Mac a ‘franchise’…

-You said, “I’m not a big fan of Majora’s Mask, and I really don’t think a lot of people are, even if they say so…” This is a good observation. To put it in perspective, when I see a young man going out on weekends and getting drunk, I tell him, “You think you are having fun. But you aren’t. And you’ll realize that soon enough.” It has also been my observation with the typical ‘hardcore’ gamer (the one who buys into the hype, all the time, and buys the game day one, talks about it for a couple of weeks on their gaming forum, and then sell it) THINK they are having fun, but they are not having fun. You place the ‘hardcore gamer’ in front of old school games and watch how their face brightens. They begin to have fun.

-“I think it’s really interesting how none of Nintendo’s series other than Mario and Zelda have reached this sort of “untouchable” status…” They tried to do that lately with Metroid with Sakamoto and Other M. In an interview, Retro was saying how Nintendo (which we knew had to be Sakamoto) would be telling them all this stuff which Retro would ignore (haha). Retro saw Samus as a ‘Boba Fett’ type character meaning she was a bounty hunter. Retro said, “We couldn’t understand why Nintendo (Sakamoto) was so opposed to it…” hahaha. I believe inside the company, what Miyamoto says about Mario and Zelda is law. And what Sakamoto says about Metroid is law. It is like the company culture is some twisted cult of creativity.

-“It cannot be stressed enough how important Super Mario Brothers really was and is to Nintendo’s success.” It cannot. I agree that one ‘truly epic’ Zelda per console is enough. Zelda I was so epic, it had two quests on it. Zelda II was extremely differentiated from it so there was no overlap. And in the SNES days, we were fine with just LTTP. I prefer Nintendo invent new games such as Super Mario Kart.

-“There is no good reason why Nintendo hasn’t been making a Super Mario Brothers game every other year since 1991. None. I’m like you—I got a DS in I believe it was 2005 (?) solely for the promise of Super Mario Bros DS.” You must have thought, like me, that Nintendo was ‘restoring’ itself after the company lost its bizarre way during the N64 and Gamecube. A new Super Mario Brothers was one of the ‘signs’ we old school gamers were looking for. Another big ‘sign’ would be a brand new classic Zelda (for handhelds at least).

– “I even picked up Super Paper Mario in 2007, because I believed it was the closest we would get to a Super Mario Brothers game on a home console again.” I actually bought that game too and then proceeded to sell it. Can you actually believe Nintendo thought this was a 2d Mario game? And note how many puzzles are in the game. 2d Mario is not about puzzles! Mazes, sure, but not puzzles!

-“If they had never stopped making these games, no one ever would have touched them. Not Sega, not Sony, not Microsoft, not anyone.” There is truth there! SNES opened up big with Super Mario World but Sega began to creep up. Nintendo knocked out Sega, during the 16-bit console war, with another 2d platformer of Donkey Kong Country. And we saw how Super Mario Brothers 5 sold out the Wii during December 2009 which went against the ‘natural decline of game consoles’.

-“And if the Mario games should have come out three times on any given machine…” I’ve been thinking much about this. I figured there needs to be at least two Mario games per system. One should come out when the console launches (but doesn’t necessarily have to be bundled with it as it wasn’t with Gameboy). This first Mario game should be simple. The second Mario game should be more like Super Mario Brothers 3 or World, be for the more advanced Mario gamer. It’s hard to admit since I am such a fan of these games, but World and 3 did overshoot the market. Many adults who played the original Super Mario Brothers found concepts like ‘flying’ and all to be ‘too complicated’. The top selling Mario games of all time is Super Mario Brothers and NSMB DS. Both are easy to introduce to people who have never played Super Mario Brothers.

-“I’ll give the NES both of its Zelda games because Zelda 2 was so stylistically different from Zelda 1..” I think that because Zelda I had the Second Quest, Nintendo felt they had to do something drastically different than just a standard ‘sequel’.

-“While I don’t acknowlede the existence of these games, because they sully the Zelda name like nothing ever has before…” Exactly. It would make sense if they made this many Super Mario Brother games (because those always sell), but the world didn’t need this many Zelda games. You remember when Zelda was the revered gold cartridge game. It was special. Now, it has lost all status and is considered average at best. Even the Ocarina of Time diehards know Zelda is no longer as special as it once was.

-“At E3 last year, Aonuma himself said the game could have been released in 2009 had they not run into difficulties. Well, who was responsible for those difficulties?” I don’t understand how the hell it takes so long to make these Zelda games. I mean, they revolve around simple puzzles which can only be solved one way. They don’t revolve around arcade gameplay elements or RPG gameplay or other forms of gameplay that needs balancing, testing, or tweaking.”

-“I gave a Zelda game away! And I didn’t even feel upset about it!” In your consciousness, you think you love Zelda. But then you go and give away the game. It’s as if your body knew you didn’t like the game before your mind did!

-“People do not want to play a fairy boy.” Very true or the more recent Final Fantasy protagonists would be more popular. People want to feel like a badass in a video game. If you look at the old school game heroes, they are all John Wayne type characters. Link was a badass. Like Mario, he may not appear like He-Man, but he definitely kicked ass.

-“Hyrule reminds me so much of Old Testament Israel that it’s very hard for me to believe that that wasn’t the real-life model Nintendo used as the premise for its own idea, right down to the enemy desert nation to the west, which is clearly Egypt.” Interesting. I haven’t looked at it from that angle.

-“Wind Waker, however, was self-aware of its own existence as a Zelda game that happened before other Zelda games and after still other Zelda games, to the point where whatever in-universe consistency that might once have existed is now destroyed, and can never be rebuilt.  Seriously, ask the fans—before Wind Waker, was it possible to make sense of the entire Zelda mythos? Yes, it was. Since Wind Waker, has it been possible to do that? No, it has not. That game is the dividing line between sense and nonsense.” We still have no explanation for the flood. One thing I cannot but help notice is the similarities between Wind Waker and Aonuma’s previous games in the setting and characters. While other Zelda games appear to be using some ancient myth as the source material, Wind Waker lacks this gravity as do the following games in the series.

-“It is The Legend of Zelda–it is not The Legend of The Hero.  Nothing about Link should be extraordinary at all.  All of the in-game universe’s attention (i.e., Hyrule’s history) should be focused on Zelda and her need for rescue, and the Triforce and its need for balance. Nothing should be focused on Link.  This might also tie in the series’ relative lack of challenge in recent years, which started, coincidentally, with Wind Waker.” This is an excellent point. Zelda was always the true ‘link’ in the series. There was always something special about Zelda and the TriForce which made the series revolve around them. In this way, the Zelda games followed the pattern of ancient myth. Ancient myth starts off with a Natural Order where a monster invades and messes up. A hero then arises to defeat the monster and correct the Natural Order. Zelda is the Natural Order of things, Ganon is the one who messes things up, and Link is the one who sets things right. Ancient myth, which is a subject of great study to fantasy writers, revolves around the Order, not on the Hero. Why? It is believed that ancient myths were a way to calculate and measure the heavens. The Order that must be restored in Zelda is the Tri-Force (which the Zelda family line is connected). The Hero is not PART of the Order, the Hero’s role is only in RESTORING that Order.

-“Order of the Hero”, the reason why everything went awry has to be due to people in charge of the Zelda series not respecting or understanding the source material. What is likely is that they believe their creativity is the source of all things which explains the downward slide to mediocrity. Ancient myth is a subject that fantasy authors take Very Seriously. Think of Tolkein’s attitude toward ancient myth. If you told Tolkein that ‘Lord of the Rings’ was the fruit of his creativity, he’d be greatly offended and set the record straight.

-“Regardless, I believe a big chuck of this “soullessness” is directed at the games’ complete lack of challenge–NOTHING is trying to stop you from beating the game.” Right. How can you be a hero if there is no danger? Beating Modern Zelda feels like I’m in first grade getting a gold sticker for attendance.

-“This probably came about when Nintendo heard that most people who start their games don’t finish them, and they freaked out and came up with this as their response.” Interesting that Nintendo heard this complaint first with Ocarina of Time. I, myself, haven’t finished Ocarina of Time because I just got bored. I know many people in the same boat. It’s not the game was ‘bad’, it was that in the middle of it you ask, “What the hell is the point of any of this?” and you forget to come back to finish the game. I absolutely didn’t have that problem with, say, Link to the Past or earlier Zelda games.

-“I know that I, personally, never viewed them as arcade-type experiences.” I came to the NES from home computers which is where all the RPGs were. One thing arcade games had, over computer games, was sizzle and pop. They had Vegas style flash. The games were stimulating. Computer games tended to be more cerebral. Zelda did have that cerebral aspect of the CRPG but equally had the stimulating sizzle of an arcade game. Since RPGs were invented in the West, I think Miyamoto, Tezuka, and others are misinformed in confusing RPG elements for ‘puzzle elements’. CRPGs had ‘puzzles’ as well as many other things. Nintendo of America even advertised Legend of Zelda as an arcade/RPG hybrid in the Nintendo Fun Club. NOA understood the game.

-“A Link to the Past is probably the closest the series has to offer in that regard, because there are so many enemies on the screen at once, and the enemies can do serious damage to you. It’s about the only Zelda game where, to this day, I still have a better-than-zero chance at dying everytime I play.” Are you serious? I found LTTP to be easy. Zelda I Second Quest and Zelda II I find to be much harder (especially when you get hit into a bottomless pit in Zelda II. Ooohhh, I hate those flying eyeballs!).

-“It is this audience [OoT], and its reactions to certain things, that has caused Nintendo to respond the way it has with the way the games have been made ever since.” Quite true. But there is a good reason for it: OoT is the best selling Zelda of all time. Although, I think that is inflated since unlike previous Zelda games, there were no competitors to OoT (because Nintendo bought marketshare with that game) as there were very little adventure type games on the N64 (unlike the SNES or NES). There was also the market of Europe that was more readily available (which wasn’t there during the 8-bit days). And Nintendo spent a ton of money on marketing OoT (which they didn’t do in earlier Zelda games, the cereal notwithstanding).

“I also appreciate a lot about TP. TP is a very interesting game to cross-examine. What it does right, it does really, really right, but it does just enough wrong in the process to make the whole thing fall flat.” Exactly.

-“This would be another example of Aonuma’s poor handling of the Zelda mythos—I want to be Link. I want to save Zelda. I want to fight Ganon and reclaim the Triforce. I do not want to be a wolf carting around a rider who is fighting her own enemy, while the presence of these three elements causes the main components of the Zelda games to disappear.” It may not be Aonuma. It could be Miyamoto.

-“Nintendo must recognize how important it is to get the focus back to where it belongs—Hyrule, the Triforce, Ganon, and Zelda.  Ocarina of Time, more than any other Zelda game, did this correctly, and it is one of the main reasons why that game is still so fondly remembered, even if there are a lot of other reasons why it shouldn’t be.” I couldn’t agree more with this. What’s the next gimmick for Zelda? Link riding a tricycle?

-“TP does harken back to the original Zelda game in some positive ways, though—it’s the closest we’ve come to seeing a 3D game where Hyrule is already conquered like it is in Zelda 1, which to me is a big deal.” Hmm, interesting point.

-“Nintendo seems unwilling to let the games these days really scare you.” As Nintendo developers like Miyamoto get older, the less they understand about children. In Donkey Kong, the big ape falls to his death. In Super Mario Brothers, Bowser falls into the molten pool of lava. Children understand death far more than adults think. In Mario 5, Miyamoto intentionally put in a cutscene that shows the Koopa Kids dragging Bowser away so no one thinks he was ‘killed’. It is as if Nintendo caught the disease of being worried about offending anyone which is causing stupid things to appear in the games. The old Zelda games used to be SCARY. That, I remember quite well. It was a very dangerous world. Look how in LTTP how villagers would turn you in to the guards while they would run into their houses and lock the doors! Nintendo would never do something like that today.

-“This is an extremely basic formula to dissect, but Nintendo has shown a typical human tendency to overthink a simple problem and come up with a needlessly complicated solution.” You’ve actually hit on something profound here. Nintendo prides itself on ‘great thoughts’ about games before they move a game to development. But this can be a bad thing. You can run into a situation where the game design ends up becoming more important than the person who is playing it (Other M is a great example of this). What makes a game great is not because they had a ‘great design’ but because they saw the player as the most important thing. More important than the ‘gameplay’, more important than the ‘graphics’, more important than the ‘business model’. I listened to a Nintendo employee describe Skyward Sword’s gameplay and he BRAGGED that ‘there was no mindless slashing’ that ‘everything was puzzle-like, including the combat’. Less recently, Miyamoto was trashing Super Mario Brothers 3 by saying, “That is ALL there is?” when playing a level. Yes, that is ALL there is. I think 2d Mario went in decline with Super Mario World when midway points and multiple exits appeared. We don’t need all that. Great thinkers know that thinking is overrated. A good game designer knows that ‘game design thinking’ is overrated. I would like some more slash and dash in my Zelda instead of this oversaturation of puzzles.