Email: Aonuma wants to “redefine” ALTTP to his vision.

I was looking at this game, and when I saw the “A Link Between Worlds” sub-title in the trailer, it then hit me: this is Aonuma’s way of going backwards in his crusade to alter Zelda. Not only does he get to redefine what future Zelda games are, he also feels the need to go back and twist the classics.

This is the reason the overworld is the same, and everything else looks like a remake, except the dungeons (which will now of course be full Aonuma-fests with everything frustrating about his games in them)

 

This is the trailer, and it’s pretty clear what they are doing here.

There are no enemies except 1 or 2 per area, and they just stand there until you kill them, they don’t even charge at you like they did in the original. Even the green soldiers at the beginning of the Light World were aggressive, they charged at you with their weapons pointed up and you had to face them because they were so fast… until you got the dashing boots anyway, which was very cool (don’t expect this kind of combat dynamic in the Aonuma game).

Aren’t enemies supposed to at least look like they want to kill you?

Enemies are just SO SLOW, look at them. Probably so Aonuma can keep up with them while he cuts grass. Game looks as slow as the DS games, and people thought they were slow because of the clunky touch control scheme; what’s the excuse now?

 

Don’t be surprised if Aonuma then comes up with “Legend of Zelda: Link’s Adventure” at some point and it’s basically a reboot of Zelda 2 into his NPC chore simulator, with some nonsensical gimmick added on top of it based on whatever his son is into at the moment.

There is no stopping the man, he would literally go back in time and remake Zelda 1 if he could.To be fair, it is hard to determine things from a trailer.

However, there is precedent for a Nintendo developer to go back and ‘remake’ a classic in order to tie it into his ‘vision’. That would be Sakamoto with Metroid: Zero Mission where cutscenes and text were added plus an ‘extra sequence’ with Samus running around without a suit playing a stealth game.

The type of criticizing we’re doing is what we do to Western developers all the time. Richard Garriot was criticized for some of the directions he went with Ultima and Chris Roberts was criticized for some of the directions he went with Wing Commander. But if I said, “Hey Mr. Roberts, I think you are going too far in the movies. You should return more with the Wing Commander 1 style or even go more the freedom route of Privateer.” I could say to Richard Garriot, “Mr. Garriot, I’m not really liking your omg 3d direction or omg animation direction of Ultima 9 or Ultima 8. I think Ultima works best as an open vast world as seen in the earlier games.” You know what they would say to me? “Hmm, that might be the case.”

Nintendo’s reaction is, “OMG, how many best selling games did this guy make? STFU. Here is more of the crap you hate because you don’t tell me what to do. Hahahaha.”

Ultimately, I’m not being derogatory to Nintendo. Western developers don’t get angry at me because they know I am praising another game they made when I say I don’t like another game. I prefer Ultima VII over Ultima IX. They don’t take this personally since they made the earlier game.

So if I say to Sakamoto, “I don’t like Metroid: Other M. But I do like Metroid,” he will get all upset instead of think, “So Other M is not the right direction to go. I need to go in a more Super Metroid type route.”

I really think the ‘find your passion’ is one of the worst advice that can be given. ‘Find your passion’ means ‘have fun’ and results in people in college majoring in something worthless. It’s their ‘passion’. Something useful like engineering or math is never their ‘passion’.

It is like Nintendo developers feel they are entitled to ‘passion’ with their games. The classic Nintendo games represent an era of when game making was engineering based, cold, calculating, grinding, very technical, and difficult to pull off. They hate it. But guess what? That is why it is a job and not playtime. Everyone’s job is not ‘fun’. So why do Nintendo developers think their job is to have ‘fun’?

The game developer’s job is for YOU, the beautiful gamer, to have fun. Hopefully, the developer has fun making you have fun. This is how it used to be.

Now, it seems as if Nintendo wants to flip this around. They want the Nintendo developers to have fun and only want you to have fun in them having fun. So when they do goofy creativity, you go, “Boy, arent’ they so creative. Even though I hate this, I so enjoy that Nintendo gets to be creative. Let me read the latest Iwata Asks so I can revel in how much fun they are having.”

Sorry, but this is not why I buy video games. Gamers have the right to be selfish. They are only interested in themselves having fun. Why should a gamer care if the developer has fun or not? It is like asking a diner whether or not he cares if the chef had fun or not preparing the meal. The diner doesn’t care. The diner just wants food.

What I’m saying comes right out of Iwata’s “Heart of the Gamer” speech where Iwata admonishes game companies for making games for themselves. Yet, isn’t that what Nintendo is doing today?