Email: Artstyles

I remember back before Gamecube was launched, they showed a demo for the next gen Zelda. Link fighting Ganon, it was awesome, and was actually the reason I got excited about a Gamecube in the first place. Then a couple of years later they finally revealed the next gen Zelda and it turned link into a whiny little Cel-Shaded twerp. The rage I felt was indescribable. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, the backlash was so huge that many on the internet tried to set up petitions demanding Nintendo go back and scrap that crappy artstyle. In the bizarro world of gaming forums today, people speak of Wind Waker in high regards, I’m in awe of this, as it is in complete opposition to the reality at that time (much like Zelda 2 being the black sheep of the series). Wind Waker was seen as a huge disappointment to long time fans. They talk as if the artstyle is ‘timeless’ no its not, its crap, and doesn’t belong in the Zelda Universe.

 

Why else would audience members be cheering and some reported CRYING (lol) when Twilight Princess was revealed for the first time? With Skyward Snore they tried that shit again, and the reaction while not as bad as Wind Wakers, was lukewarm at best. With Wii U’s demo, people thought “good finally an HD Zelda, and because horsepower isn’t an issue (A reason given by gamers as to why SS chose the artstyle it did) anymore, we’ll get a kickass Zelda” I remember even back then feeling uneasy about it. And then Aonuma quote about the tech demo not being indicative of a final Zelda product threw me for a loop. You as well, Master Malstrom, even wrote something about how the Zelda Wii U title won’t look like the tech demo, over a year ago.

 

This is getting ridiculous. I never remember artstyle being an issue with any Zelda until Wind Waker, which is the game that started Aonuma’s direction in earnest (was it?) The handheld Zelda’s he’s created are complete trash. I’m always holding my breath now when a Zelda will be revealed. It’s a steady but rapid decline since Majora’s Mask. But again in bizarro land MM and WW are the best Zelda’s to date. Zelda has become a joke. The Zelda team keeps trying to live off of OoT’s nostalgia, well its run out. I don’t even want a top down Zelda either, if his team is going to handle it. He would make the artstyle something of a WW of Nintendo Land with lolipops in the hands of darknuts, instead of swords.

 

Damn near every game from Nintendo has an artstyle issue save for Metroid. I wish NSMB looked like the Smash Bros Brawl artstyle they used for the Mario level. I mean come on, this is an HD console, why do Mii’s not have arms and legs? Mii’s are lame now any way.

 

I imagine it comes down to their ‘creativity’ I think Retro wasn’t allowed to touch Zelda because Aonuma knew that Retro would do to his Zelda what they did to Sakamoto’s Metroid; Make a better game than they do!

 

Always a pleasure Sir, Keep up the great blog!

As I understand it, everything to do with Mario and Zelda as Miyamoto has the boss. (Metroid does not fall under Miyamoto.) Miyamoto has placed ‘lieutenants’ to take charge of the series and to raise the new crop of game developers on them. For 2d Mario, he has Tezuka who worked on some of the levels in Classic Mario. For Mario Kart, he has someone there (who is doing a good job as I understand it). For Zelda, it is Aonuma. Officially, Aonuma is said to not be involved in Zelda because more and more people are becoming aware of what he is doing (his approach to game design with Spirit Tracks was ‘bring your son to work day’ with the stupid trains).

From Aonuma’s own words, he said he hated Zelda 1 (he probably didn’t play Zelda 2. But if he hated Zelda 1, you know he’d hate Zelda 2). Aonuma also is unable to play Super Mario Brothers and games like Pac-Man. He says he prefers PC adventure games where you ‘solve puzzles’ and sit back. He became interested in Link to the Past because he could run around cutting grass all day. In this period of his life, he was looking to become an artist in video games. He was very interested in the art these Zelda games did. He made a game called Majestic which flopped in Japan.

Aonuma was involved in Link’s Adventure. To what extent, I do not know. In Ocarina of Time, Aonuma was not responsible for the design. He was in charge for the dungeon layouts and some of the enemy designs (the common complaint about Ocarina of Time, in fact the only complaint, has been the dungeon layouts. Ohh, that Water Temple!).

As I understand it, he was responsible for the design and direction of Majora’s Mask. The game was made in a very short amount of time which is what impressed Miyamoto. This is probably how Aonuma got his Zelda gig. I think Wind Waker was the game Aonuma had complete control over. What does he do? He remakes Majestic.

Since Aonuma’s time as director, the Zelda franchise has mutated into something else. The artstyle is out of whack. The game has no cohesive universe (and Nintendo’s official timeline has been a huge disappointment). The game’s design has radically changed into being a slow paced game about talking to NPCs and doing puzzles. The sword combat has been minimized and even Aonuma removing the sword completely (as it was with Skyward Sword in the earlier version). The biggest problem is that Aonuma has been hiring people who thinks like he does. He has hired artists who think this type of art style is ‘fantastic’ and that mathematician so he could do new special sort of ‘puzzles’. Since Nintendo never fires anyone, the company has his dead weight now.

Someone like Sakamoto is someone who should realize he is not a movie director and should concentrate on his strengths. But someone like Aonuma… I don’t think there is any saving grace in him. This guy has no business being involved in making video games. He is of that rare minority who hated Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda. His tastes in art is not international (so why is he at Nintendo which is about making international games?). His taste in fantasy is non-existent as I doubt he has ever read a fantasy book. My impression of Aonuma is that he is someone who never became a man. He spent his college years making wooden dolls (!) and Miyamoto hired him because of that (which shows bad decision making on Miyamoto’s part). The worst thing is that Aonuma doesn’t seem to have any empathy with the customers. Aonuma fashions himself as a Japanese chef whose destiny is to ’embrace his creativity’, not as a game developer whose job is to sell video games.

The tragic thing is that there is already an established Zelda art style that everyone likes. Look at the non-game art for the NES and SNES Zeldas.

No one has a problem with this art. It is cartoony, but it looks international. Link looks elfin but still a badass. Evil is depicted as evil and not as clowns.

There was even a freaking TV show of Zelda.

This cartoon ran nationally throughout the United States. Like all cartoons, people will find faults in it. But no one complained of its ‘art style’. Link was a swordsman. Zelda was a hot elfin chick. The monsters and Ganon are depicted as evil and repugnant.

The fact that all these cartoons, toys, and graphical representations of Mario and Zelda existed so prevalently in the 80s torches the myth that better hardware is showing off the artistic eccentricities of Japan. What has changed is the people behind the games. The new people hired into Nintendo don’t seem to have grown up and think their jobs is a lottery ticket to this thing called ‘creativity’. When they deal with an established brand such as Mario, Zelda, or Metroid, they deal with established expectations. Nintendo doesn’t get to change these expectations, not Sakamoto, not Miyamoto, no one. If Nintendo doesn’t want to deal with these expectations, then they should make a non-Mario, non-Zelda, and non-Metroid game for a change. Remember when Nintendo made new fantasy IPs?

I’m not going to pretend that I know what goes on behind the scenes at Nintendo. But I do know that Nintendo is not meeting expectations considering the Zelda series. And the problem is never the audience.