Someone has decided to take up the challenge! Let me unfold this letter, and we shall read it together reader.
I shall respond in red as we read the letter, reader.
I’ll sum this up here in two overall points (I have played the game, btw, so take that how you will):
1) Skyward Sword’s problems.
Ya know, I’m not overly enthusiastic about the changes here either. I miss the overworld. I’m not cutting my wrists at its loss, but I’m not very pleased to be missing a vast Hyrule field. Additionally, there is a lot of text in this game. Too much for a game that I have difficultly classifying as an rpg. Those are both valid points. However…these are very subjective gripes. Hyrule field for example. You, a friend, and myself may lament no overworld to really speak of, but some people may not even notice (I speak specifically about kids who may be playing this game for the first time). Or like in Twilight Princess, some people raised the issue, “You have this huge field…it just takes forever to ride through it. Isn’t there some sort of warp feature to avoid this? Fun once, but try 30 times and it gets old.”
Who are these people that had ‘problems’ with Twilight Princess’s overworld? Were you one of them? I wasn’t one of them. You conjure up these mythical complaints that didn’t exist at the time. No one has ever wanted to remove the overworld from Zelda except Aonuma because ‘it is inconvenient’ for his tunneled puzzle formulas. Removing the overworld isn’t Nintendo trying to make a better game but trying to see if they can get away with it because it is not fun for the developers.
And objectively, I have to point out that Wii Sports Resort, specifically sword fighting, is what we wanted from the Wii anyways (those of us who saw that teaser trailer at the beginning of the Wii’s lifespan with some kid slashing his wiimote like he was actually fighting). Who’s going to say, “Well, that’s a problem. Zelda is incorporating the controls of WSR into it.” That’s what’s idiotic. We wanted that! Or at the very least, I wanted that. And Skyward Sword has that going for it.
Wii Sports Resort gameplay was never puzzles based. Does Skyward Sword gameplay match the guy slashing with the ‘Revolution’ controller in the 2006 TGS trailer? No.
Presumably, Nintendo doesn’t quite understand yet where to go with this. Because motion controls like 1:1 sword mechanics are so new, they don’t fully understand just how far to go with it.
It’s five years after the Wii has been released to public and Nintendo still doesn’t know what to do with motion controls? Get out of here.
They accentuate it in SS by making you attack enemies with specific arced swings. Timing, precision, and puzzle solving. Well…yeah…so the older Zelda’s lacked the puzzle solving aspect (to some degree). In Zelda II, there was a platforming element. In other Zeldas, there’s strategy elements. I am not going to be so presumptous as to suggest that this aspect is not overused in modern Zelda games (and its really obvious in Skyward Sword), but I challenge whoever this person is to really quantify the combat in all of the Zelda games. Modern Zelda games recently have been basically about timing, and that’s it. Enemies are little more than filler. Skyward Sword is dialing it back, imho. Its making the enemies closer to the original games in the series, but has not lost the puzzle elements of games like the handhelds. Its not perfect, but combat and control – especially in Skyward Sword – are far closer to their kin than Twilight Princess, or even the vaunted Ocarina of Time.
I will quantify the combat of Classic Zelda: arcade. Combat in Classic Zelda is arcade-like which is why it is so much fun to play and replay. Combat was the point of Classic Zelda. It is only seen as filler by people like Aonuma who thinks the only proper game is an adventure game with puzzles like the crappy Japanese PC adventure games no one buys but keep being made for vain developers to express their ‘creativity’.
Skyward Sword is not dialing it back or getting it anywhere close to the Classic way if there are puzzles in the combat.
2) This isn’t a Zelda game/death of Zelda series.
Melodrama makes me roll my eyes. If you had asked me what the worst thing to happen to Zelda has been (aside from the fabled CDi games), I would have told you the recent handheld games. Specifically Spirit Tracks. There ain’t an overworld in that one either, lol. That game removes combat, mobility, and even basic ideas from the franchise and replaces it with small puzzles interspersed with a train system. And none of it is fun. I’ve played through SS, and although its heavily dependant on puzzles and the typical formula reaching as far back as Ocarina, it ain’t got nothing on a game like Spirit Tracks. I sort of get the feeling that the Windwaker boat, the Spirit Tracks train, and now the SS flying are similarly related in the idea that the developers want new methods of getting place to place, but if we’re picking out the worst of the series, the flying is by far the most enjoyable. Screw boats and planes. Flying mechanics are different in the fact that although its taking you away from an overworld in which you crawl on the face of the earth exploring from place to place, you still have a sense of freedom in flight. You can complain about the lack of overworld. Heck, even I do that. But I’ll submit to you that I would not be sorry to see the flying return ALONGSIDE an overworld. That, imho, would be cool.
If anything, I think I disagree with you most in the fact that you believe the series is over. If anything, Skyward Sword is making steps in the right direction. The series hit rock bottom with a lot of the more recent titles. Maybe it was just me hurling Spirit Tracks across the room. I honestly thought at that time it couldn’t get any worse. And I still feel that way. It was a horrible game. Forget Zelda, forget Aonuma, it was just trash. I can’t think of anything Zelda about it, except that two characters were named Zelda and Link.
I did not say Skyward Sword is the ‘death’ of the series. The emailer did. However, if Zelda games keep being made with the design philosophy of using the ‘integrated hardware and software’ of the Nintendo console to create ‘puzzles’ with tasteless developers farting their ‘creativity’ into the game in the form of horrendous NPCs and dialogue that spews endlessly, the Zelda series will eventually pass the point of no return.
Stigma against Zelda keeps rising. No one respects this series anymore. The franchise has become a joke and Nintendo either doesn’t see it or doesn’t want to see it (similar non-response to the market rejecting 3d Mario time and time again).
I can tell you what Zelda on the 3DS will be about: using the 3d output for ‘3d puzzles’ complete with more crappy NPCs from developers eating funky foods to enchance their ‘creativity’. It’ll be just as lame and disappointing as the last few Zelda games.
In this game, we do go and save someone. There is a threat to the world, even if you gloss over it. Link is trying to prevent it. That’s about all Zelda stories have in common. Ganon isn’t necessarily the only Zelda enemy my friend. There’s exploration, there’s dungeons, there’s bosses (and far more interesting than a game like Twilight Princess). There are items you obtain to get you places. There is even a bit of a leveling system for your character which reminds me of Zelda II (although tis not as pronounced – haven’t seen that in awhile). The whole bit about Zelda not being a princess doesn’t really bother me. If you imagine all Zelda games must have a Zelda princess, all I can do is shrug and say, “she’s still the princess character, no matter what the blazes you call her”. If I were to play this game without ever seeing the game box and all the names removed….I would know what I was playing. Only an idiot would suggest that you wouldn’t know. I mean, mayhaps if all I had played was Zelda 1 and 2…but none of us are that naive. We’ve played Ocarina, Majora, Twilight Princess, and yes some of us have even suffered through Windwaker and its clones.
I have no idea what you’re responding to with this.
The way I see it, we’re close now. Very close. All we need do is get rid of the puzzles. That theme has hounded us since Ocarina. OCARINA. If puzzles destroy a franchise, then we should have seen the death of Zelda a long time ago. What I see in Skyward Sword is dissapointing. It gets some things right. And motion controls are cool. It corrects mistakes that have hounded this series. It simply does not go far enough. But it gives me a lot of hope that we’re on the right track. If you want to abandon the Zelda series, by all means. I’m certainly not an investor, lol.
Most people who bought Ocarina of Time never bothered to finish the game (which is why Nintendo responded by making the game insanely easy). When I played Ocarina, I quit in the middle out of sheer boredom. The reason why was the ‘puzzle formula’ of the dungeons. Zelda games were about growing Link and feeling powerful as you grew. Puzzles do not help with this. If you went to dungeon 5 before you went to dungeon 2, you’d get your butt kicked. But as you grew, when you came to dungeon 5 you would be able to tackle it and feel powerful because of it. Because of the puzzle formula, you not only lack that feeling of power, you are wearing a straitjacket because puzzles only have a few solutions which abolishes all personality from the player.
I think our difference is the positive and negative outlook, but I think the real difference is I sort of scoff at the “OH NOES! ITS OVER!” mentality. Give me a break. Where were you when Twilight Princess launched? A game so dark, its barely Zelda. Did you complain about the inevitable wolf transformations? Did ya? Going back even further…what were your words when Majora’s Mask released? I mean, how do you justify this review when such a game existed long before it? Were you done then? I can only suspect that you are either lying now, or being overdramatic for the sake of entertainment.
Twilight Princess had massive excitement and anticipation surrounding its release. Skyward Sword does not. Anyone can see this.
That’s my response. Take it for what it is. I in no way defend Nintendo, but I don’t think Skyward Sword is the hell its being made out to be. I actually had fun with it, and did not hate it. My favorite Zelda is still Zelda II for all of you who probably are saying I’ve never played the originals. LE GASP!
I don’t think it is possible to be both a fan of Classic Zelda and Aonuma Zelda at the same time. The gameplay philosophies are diametrically opposed. Aonuma hated Classic Zelda and takes great pride and pleasure (his 2004 GDC speech as evidence) in turning Zelda into a completely different type of game.