Email: The new Zelda..

From what I’ve heard/seen, the game actually looks fun, like you said. The sword beam is back, the magic hammer looks great (and it seems to be an effective second weapon option like it was in ALttP. The hammer kind of sucked in OoT). As far as what I’ve seen from the “drawing” gimmick..I watched a lot of footage, and as far as I can tell, all it does is give you more ways to think about how you get to places. It isn’t like pushing blocks or dumb Master Sword puzzles, it looks like it’s used for exploration/maze qualities. I kind of like it, or at the very least, it doesn’t offend me.

 

I think the shield seems to work like it did in Link’s Awakening. It’s always out, but I think you can now press a button to keep it in front of you like 3D Zelda’s. I think, anyway. I’m a bit mixed on the idea of that, because it makes the shield more useful, but it will also make the game a little easier. However, Nintendo did the same with NSMBW – They gave you a mid-air spin so you could more easily time/land your jumps. Some people liked that, some people didn’t. 

 

The graphics are actually fine with me, but I don’t entirely dig the way Link looks. He looks like a little action figure now. I prefer the way the old ALttP looks, but it isn’t..terrible. I like it more than NSMBW, though that doesn’t say much. Music, from what I’ve heard of the game, is fine so far. The dungeon and ect that we saw in the footage might even end up not in the final game, and maybe the graphics will be a bit better polished in the end. I’m on a wait and see approach, but I have to say it looks way better than Skyward Sword so far…or any Zelda game for a while now. It seems a lot more action-orientated too. Despite Nintendo saying the word puzzles (they always say that, even about the original Zelda, which we know is BS), maybe this game will be more like old school Zelda? A Link To The Past is one of my favorite games of all time (and I don’t say that easily), and if we’re getting an advertised sequel to it, I hope it lives up to the games legacy. God knows Other M wasn’t a worthy sequel to Super Metroid. I at least feel confident that this won’t be anything close to that.

 

By the way, I have a question for you: Would you buy a remake of the original ALttP that had a second quest, akin to the original Zelda? Just curious, since it would still be a game we already played, but with the added second quest we all wanted back when the game was first released.

Maybe. It depends.

The real question is “will it make me wish to purchase the hardware?” The purpose of first party games is to get people to buy the hardware. The game console is just a box we buy to get to Mario. This was Yamauchi’s fantastic definition of the NES.

What makes me purchase a game console is that the console performs several jobs that I wish it to perform. The 2d Mario performs one job. The Zelda game performs a completely different job (arcade RPG). The Metroid game yet performs a different job. The RPG games perform their own job. The multiplayer games perform a job very different from the other titles. Oh, and I want the job of prior arcade/classic games done. People forget the NES had practically every arcade game (and many Commodore 64 hits) that were out YEARS before the NES even released.

When Nintendo changed their games, the jobs the console did changed as well. When Mario went 3d, he ceased to be an action game. 3d Mario plays more like Marble Madness with spatial thinking. Aonuma Zelda changed the game from an arcade RPG to a Japanese adventure game (with story). I know people keep being sick of me mentioning this, but this transformation of these main franchises were exactly like the transformation Sakamoto did with Metroid. Metroid always performed a job in our gaming entertainment. But with Metroid: Other M, the job changed to something completely different. It would be as ridiculous as Nintendo making a Duck Hunt 2 be an RPG.

I think Nintendo has been in a developer fishbowl where they keep asking, “What type of new gameplay can we add to this?” without thinking of “What is the job the game does which is why people keep buying it?” New gameplay is fine so long as it doesn’t affect the job. A sequel to Gradius would not be acceptable if the new gameplay was sports related. (Look at the Vic-Viper play football!)

I’m hoping that this Zelda does the job that Zelda is supposed to do. I hope the RPG elements aren’t sidelines. Link is getting rupees. Does he get to buy anything cool with it? Does he get to save up and maybe get a more badass sword or something? That would be cool if it is the case. Zelda needs less ‘Adventure game’ and more ‘RPG game’. It is FUN to run around the overworld collecting money to empower yourself.

When I think of the Zelda experience, I don’t think of the dungeons. I think of the Overworld. Aonuma, for some reason, thinks Zelda is about dungeons when it is not. Zelda is about the sprawling overworld. The overworld, itself, is an adventure and should be more than a linear path to the various dungeons. The dungeons serve the overworld, not the other way around.

Now I’m going to say something that is going to make a hell of a ton of sense. The dungeons were represented in the overworld. They were not just holes in the wall. In Link to the Past, you saw the dungeons on the overworld. They had a massive presence and personality. You couldn’t wait to go inside them. Zelda 1’s dungeons were more hidden, but Zelda 2’s palaces were easily seen on the overworld (yet tricky to get to).

Instead of the dungeon being a hole in the wall, it should have a huge presence in the overworld. It should be a massive building towering over everything. You will say, “Wow. What is in that big building? It sure looks scary!”

How is the new Zelda game’s overworld? LTTP’s overworld is tiny without the Dark World. Is there the Dark World? (There probably is. Perhaps a ‘Skyworld’ or something so we can see more of the OMG 3d.)