Finally someone actually playing the game and….
…
Oh!
I feel asleep, I’m sorry.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/sdcc-11-zelda-skyward/717908
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/sdcc-11-zelda-skyward/717906
What exactly here took five years to develop? Blurry textures (oops I mean “”artistic water color”” textures) they use the same model as twilight princess, all the animation are exactly the same, the enemy’s don’t bother to even try attacking Link and when they do they use the same animation overhead attack animation. Enemy’s are just smaller puzzles which takes away the excitement of fighting so what is the point of giving the player such a diverse use of attacking when enemy’s are just going to repeat themselves?
The person playing game just keeps talking about in the videos is puzzles and timeline nonsense. How can anyone get excited for this? Its just so…boring.
My money is going to Batman Arkham City instead. That game is developed in one third the time of Skyward Sword and seems to deliver on improving Arkham Asylum gameplay while skyward sword looks like its stuck in the past. This is suppose to be the Wii dammit! I want Zelda to stop trying to be a Nintendo 64 game!
I remember before Twilight Princess came out. Twilight Princess had major hype. Skyward Sword has none. No one is excited for this game. I remember everyone’s complaint with Twilight Princess was people tiring of the Ocarina of Time formula. Nintendo’s did not respond to this very visible and widespread complaint. So what can we expect of Zelda on the Gamecube U? Same formula but with ‘touch screen’ and ‘camera’ elements for the puzzles?
Skyward Sword feels like a third rate game with first rate polish because it is. If this game was truly exciting, you would sense it.
I have to laugh at the Nintendo memo telling previewers and all to talk up the ‘puzzles’ and ‘combat-like-a-puzzle’ (not mindless slash and bash) as if it were a plus. Nintendo knows they’ve screwed up big time here. It would be as if the game was Windwaker, and many people weren’t feeling the visual style, so Nintendo gives the command for people to declare the visual style a ‘plus’ (where everyone knows it isn’t).These ‘slash and bash’ games outsell Ocarina of Time by miles. It’s like saying Portal is ‘sophisticated’ but Modern Warfare is ‘caveman’ (even though Modern Warfare’s sales trample over any other game).
In Dragon Quest 1, you would start off with a bamboo stick and go ‘whack whack’ against those evil slimes (and they were evil despite their happy faces). You would make enough money to then buy a copper sword. And then you eventually bought, or found, other gear to make yourself more powerful. This is what the CRPG largely revolves around. Zelda never had Link go up in levels (except in Zelda II which proves Zelda was imitating the CRPG), but Zelda did revolve around replacing gear and getting new gear. Getting a new item from a dungeon didn’t mean ‘puzzles’, it meant Link was becoming more powerful. In Dragon Quest 1, those happy looking slimes (which are the epitome of ultimate evil, do not let those smiles fool you) were somewhat deadly early on in the game. But as you leveled up, got gear, those slimes became a joke. You felt powerful. You felt like you were growing. And this is what Zelda was largely about. This was the progress of Classic Zelda. Not ‘story’. Not crappy npc characters congratulating you.
One game I keep thinking about is WoW. What does this game revolve around? It revolves around getting better gear and feeling like you are ‘growing’. That’s it. Some people do this through raids. Other people do this through making countless alts where they level up to max level. But it is the same feeling. WoW has, what, around 14 million subscribers? So not only has the game doubled the sales of Ocarina of Time, people keep ‘buying’ the game with the monthly subscriptions. The feeling of growth, feeling you are getting stronger, through new gear is such a great feeling that fourteen million people are willing to pay a subscription just keep that feeling going.
Why do I replay classic Zelda? I know where everything is. There is no ‘eureka’ moment of knowing where a secret passageway is. The reason why I play it is because I become very entertained and comforted by the feeling of growth. I like how I start with just a sword, begin puny, but then I end up being a badass. Strangely, I still find myself replaying early Final Fantasy games for that reason as well. It is very fun to get better gear. It is very fun to get the feeling of growth.
Do you know another game that has this feeling? Metroid. Metroid keeps being defined as ‘backtracking’ and looking around for ‘secret passageways’. I actually don’t think that is accurate. You always start off puny in Metroid. I liked how in NES Metroid, you were so ridiculously puny your little gun wouldn’t even shoot across the screen! But you ‘grow’ by getting new weapons and items. At the beginning, Samus Aran is carefully planning her jumps, slowly moving forward, trying to avoid enemies very carefully. At the end of the game, Samus Aran is a force of nature as she screw attack jumps across the room, wiping out all monsters, without batting an eye with incredible speed. This might be a reason why it is fun to keep replaying Super Metroid over and over despite the player knowing all the ‘secrets’.
The reason why Skyward Sword will fail is because the combat is positional. Instead of using the tried and true CRPG way as classic Zelda and classic Metroid did, Skyward Sword is just using ‘positioning’ of swinging the controller. How boring. There is a reason why CRPGs such as Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy to WoW do not use ‘positioning’ as they do with actual gear.
The soul of Zelda is not an adventure game like a PC text adventure (like Shadowgate). The soul of Zelda is a computer RPG. While Nintendo never made a RPG like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Zelda filled that void. And Zelda was more popular in the West unlike FF and DQ because Zelda combined the RPG soul with arcade-like action.
Any idiot can make a text adventure game. That is why indie games are overflowing with them. But an arcade/RPG game is extremely rare and far more difficult to do.
So long as Zelda is designed as a hybrid Puzzle/Adventure game, it will remain broken. Once Zelda is designed as a hybrid Arcade/CRPG game, you will see great excitement and infusion of new gamers.