[Jatsie]

I'm usually a fan of side quests, but I must confess, I didn't bother with many of them in Twilight Princess, simply because they were rather tedious.

Conversely, with Wind Waker I was the exact opposite, and had more fun completing the side quests, than I did bothering with the main storyline.

[bigjko]

I generally find sidequests tedious. And most of the Zelda ones I never bother with. I only bother with those that I happen to stumble into and that seem to be fun (i.e. the snowboarding.)

[MoriartyL]

This game flatly refuses to let me make up my mind about it. Every time I think I know what I'm getting, it pulls the rug out from under me and gives me something completely different. First there was the fetch-quest-to-wolf twist, then the monkey dungeon which made it seem like the game was going to be animal-themed, then it started fitting into a formula of explore-wolf-dungeon-boss-repeat, then it threw that formula away and stopped dealing with the whole wolf thing to start a standard and unexceptional dungeon that didn't seem to fit into any sort of structure I could wrap my head around. (All that I've already said.) Then, near the end of that dungeon it became totally amazing, and just as soon as I was getting used to using that item they pulled it away for later. (I assume.) And then I got a cutscene which thoroughly confused me as to where the game was going, and then was pointed in the direction of a big scary monster to fight. And then- well, if you've played the game you know exactly how that turns out, but it leads to a dungeon which is hilarious in concept and marvelous in execution and I thought the game would turn into a light and quirky collection of cool ideas. Then it suddenly got all serious and delivered the best dungeon Zelda has ever had (which I will not name but built on the idea of using statues from The Wind Waker). Where is it going next? At this point, I'd be a fool to pretend I have any inkling.

But at this point I think I know what this game is, finally. (Of course, I thought I knew what it was half a dozen times so far, and I was never right- so maybe this will prove just as wrong.) The Zelda team have plans to bring Zelda in a different direction -I'm pretty sure I read that in an interview once. But they've got lots of great ideas for a Zelda game that they've never had a chance to use. (For instance, I'm certain they said in an interview that they wanted to do horseback battles back in Ocarina of Time.) Once Zelda moves on, they'll have lost their moment of opportunity. So before moving on, they create one last Zelda game to cap off everything that's come so far, stuffed with every wild idea they've got. The game is not story-driven; that's a facade they put up in order to have enough plot twists to justify everything they could come up with. Then they added in the wolf and the Twilight Realm and all that to hold it all together as one game.

Because without those plot elements, this is pretty much a collection of self-contained sections. Seriously. If you look at any dungeon on its own, you'll see a brilliant idea perfectly (or almost perfectly) executed. But they've got no connections to each other- each has its own items, its own enemies, even its own art direction! I mean, the doors in each dungeon are different from the other dungeons. The style of those dungeons is different from one to the next: The forest temple is like The Wind Waker, with a large area always leading you forward. The water temple is like Majora's Mask, designed like a gigantic maze. One is constantly looping and one is perfectly linear, one is focused on exploring and one is focused on puzzles. These dungeons don't seem to agree on what game they're trying to be a part of.

So when you look at the big picture, it's no wonder it feels like every other Zelda game. It goes in one direction, then flips around 180 degrees. It goes a little bit in that direction before deciding it would like to turn 134 degrees and hop on its head with a little flutter. But despite all that, I think the inclusion of the sixth dungeon alone makes it the second best Zelda game ever.

[nl4m]

[QUOTE=bigjko;394539]

Spoiler:

The bug catching side-quest is huge.

^I'm around 50% done with that.

There's the golden man who sold his soul (although, that's just a recycling of the Poe soul collection in OOT, albeit with a twist.)


^ Got around 26/8 Poe's.


There's the tired/depressed Goron outside Castle Town.

^Made the bridge and opened the road.

Finding Oockoo in every dungeon.

^That's easy.

The Cave of Ordeals.

^Got there and almost won it. I just needed the rod. So as soon as I finish the 6th temple, I'll finish the cave.

Helping Malo Mart get a bridge to start their Castle Town department.

^Did it AND got the suit.

Finding all the cats in the Mysterious Village.

^Hah ?

The Zora Prince.

^ Hah ? That's not a side quest. You HAVE TO get his earing.

So I guess you were not as engaged in the game, due to having problems with its gameplay recycling, and therefore didn't bother going looking for these side-quests.

No, No. I LOVE side quests. It would be the only original part to the game (excluding the cave. Stole it from WW). What I hate is the 10 floored temples.

And yes, I assumed you knew who the last boss would be, seeing how far you were into the game, but I was hinting at where that last boss would be as you did at first just count the dungeons leading up to the place where literally every main Zelda game ends.

He has to have his own castle... Since the only castle in the game is the one blocked off... I would imagen that his in there.

[bigjko]

Then what's this about there being four sidequests and THAT'S IT!

I forgot, the cat thing is after the sixth dungeon.

I don't really understand what you're trying to argue. That OOT has more of everything? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. You obviously haven't finished everything.

Then you must be arguing that it's a rehash of OOT. Yes, I agree. There's loads of similarities. We just disagree on whether that's bad or not. Personally, I think it manages to make the old formula stay very fresh. Especially with dungeons five, six and seven. You think it all feels either too familiar or too easy. I think you might be more of a Zelda veteran than I am, which makes the big difference between our opinion.

[nl4m]

Originally Posted by bigjko

I don't really understand what you're trying to argue. That OOT has more of everything? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. You obviously haven't finished everything

1 or 2 more side quests isn't going to make a difference. To get 4 bottles in OOT, you have to go on 4 side-quests. And don't get me started with the planting, and the hearts and the stone of agony, the poe AND skaluta's (sp ? There are 100 skaluta's to collect. Way more than there are bugs in TP)... OOT has more side-quest. Why ? Cause it was 6 years in production. TP was half that much.

Then you must be arguing that it's a rehash of OOT.

Not just rehash. But everything in OOT was made perfectly, better than any other Zelda game. In most Zelda games, when you enter a temple, you only use your sword until you find a weapon in that temple. When you get the weapon then you only use THAT weapon to finish the temple off. OOT was different. Each room had SOO many different puzzles that, in order to finish any one temple, you would have to use ALL the weapons you have. You wont find this in TP, or anyother Zelda.

Yes, I agree. There's loads of similarities. We just disagree on whether that's bad or not. Personally, I think it manages to make the old formula stay very fresh. Especially with dungeons five, six and seven.

Spoiler:

5th temple you get the spinner, that's nice. 6th you get a rod, which was once/twice done.

You think it all feels either too familiar or too easy. I think you might be more of a Zelda veteran than I am, which makes the big difference between our opinion.

Yes. I think that is the case. You know the game Zelda: Orcal of Seasons. In it there is a house, nothing special just a house that's not even in Hyrule. The person who owns it is called Impa (that's the name of Zelda's bodygaurd in OOT). I mean, would it have killed Ninntendo to make up a new name ? Instead they messed up the OOT story for me. I even think that there is a Impa in the Orcale of Ages. If they were to give the name to anymore people, OOT would lose alot of value to me.

[bigjko]

Just for the record, Capcom developed Oracle of Ages/Seasons. Not Nintendo.

[MoriartyL]

Does anyone know if there's a way to play Wii's Virtual Console games on some sort of controller similar to N64's? More specifically, a controller with C-buttons instead of a C-stick. I ask because I have the (official) Gamecube emulation of Ocarina of Time, and it really doesn't work well with the C-stick. Pushing an analog stick up to talk to Navi, for instance, is very awkward. But worse is the ocarina, where the X, Y and Z buttons do a reasonable job of standing in for the C-buttons but an incomplete one, since they don't stand in for C-up. So you find yourself either switching between one interface and another in mid-song, or you use the C-stick for all the buttons, which is -again- completely awkward. What had me excited for the VC initially (before I learned that the "Classic" controller would be similar to the Gamecube controller) was the thought of being able to (legally) play Ocarina of Time with a reasonable interface. So is there some third-party imitation of the N64 controller for Wii? Or if not, is there some way to change the controls so that the ocarina could be controlled via D-pad? (A stretch, I know.)

But the lack of rumble suggests to me that maybe Nintendo isn't taking this seriously enough, in which case they probably wouldn't worry about what buttons you use to do what. If so, I'll just have to keep waiting for a good way to play this classic.

[Trader]

I loved the first 2 and was so disappointed by the graphic [I know even thought they where better than the first 2 put together] I actually got motion sickness from riding that darn horse.

[Starflux]

Is it me, or does the second part of Twilight Princess really lose steam after an excellent first part? Not that it's bad, but it seems less involved. The temples are pretty good there, but the pacing seems more conservative and the new ideas seem exhausted. I don't know. Could be my own perception. But there's one thing I do know: and that's that the fifth temple, the Yeti mansion, is absolute fucking genius and I loved it. It's their HOME, and yet also a TEMPLE! And they're just cooking and everything. Such a great theme and idea. Quirky and funny and scary too. Great boss at the end. Loved it. All the temples after that couldn't quite reach that level, even if they had some awesome stuff as well. The last temple was downright disappointing and drab. I haven't yet thought it through very much, but I think the ending was a little bit meh.

[Lucien21]

I'm in the Yeti Mansion at the moment.

Loving every minute of this game. Even played it for 2 hours this morning and decided to shut down the Wii without saving, just so I coud do it all again * DOH *

[MoriartyL]

Yep, Snowpeak Mansion is genius.

The trouble later on is:

Spoiler:

After you've seen a mansion dungeon with furniture and a kitchen and a bedroom (and really, it's a shame they couldn't fit in more, but the cannons were so brilliant in themselves that it's hard to argue), you can't really buy into a "City in the Sky" which doesn't have any characteristics of a city.

Now, if there were a dungeon with a whole town in it (including stores and people to interact with and fetch quests and all that, all in the service of exploring the dungeon), now that would be really impressive. Ah well, I guess it's good to know that there's still lots left for the series to do.

[MdaG]

Do the Zelda games have a thread which the games lie along or are they parallel universes? Story wise I mean.

[Starflux]

I think they're kind of remakes of each other, though they do have hints of a timeline, which could as well be easter eggs. Wind Waker's opening tells the story of Ocarina. But it's of little consequence; it just adds flavour. In my mind, they're all connected, though not through space or time.

It occurs to me that

Spoiler:

they might have rushed Twilight Princess, or at least lost a lot of vision near the ending. The first half is so very tight and has a wonderful buildup of characters and plots. You really are incredibly curious what will happen to the devious Midna, the mindwarped Ilia, the voluptuous Telma and all the others. And Midna's ill condition, and the Yeti and his wife, and just everything. It's all introduced wonderfully. But then in the second part it's like they forgot all of that, and then looked back when they were making the ending; suddenly remembering they had all this stuff going on and then wrapped it up half-heartedly. It's such a shame. Character developments are left hanging or return to flatness, plot twists are forgotten and promising events left alone.

But then, it would be the legendary Zelda indeed that managed to fulfil at the end. They're notoriously bad at wrapping up their stories. Only The Wind Waker managed to hit the spot somewhat with a poignant ending. That brought me hope for future instalments, but Twilight Princess is regrettably a return to form -bad form.

[Dasilva]

They are all sequels and prequels, not remakes. Take a look at this Gametrailers Timeline feature for Zelda, its very interesting and complex how all zelda games are linked:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.p...pe=mov&pl=game

[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by MdaG

Do the Zelda games have a thread which the games lie along or are they parallel universes? Story wise I mean.

I used to think they'd all fit together neatly, and spent a tremendous amount of time arguing how. Were there two timelines, caused by time travel? Was there one timeline, with a major event shoehorned between two games that should go one after the other? And so on. I wish I still had some of those forum posts I wrote- some of them were pretty creative.

Then Four Sword Adventures came out, which seemed to imply it took place before Ocarina of Time, but used characters from OoT, and used geography extremely similar to a game which was clearly after OoT. At that point, I stopped expecting a coherent timeline.

Originally Posted by Flux

It occurs to me that...

I think the end of the game was exactly like the rest of the game- self-contained. By the point they'd reached the yetis, I'd already been disappointed a few times by the game throwing out what it had developed. It's not like any of the act 2 stuff flowed naturally out of the act 1 plot elements, so it's not a sudden regression to not have act 3 tie it all up.

A thought just occurred to me. I love Nintendo, but they've got this serious problem in their philosophy which I call "Impatient Phoenix Syndrome". Every time they come up with a good idea for a game, they make it once and then throw it out. (Well, usually. Mario Party escaped this fate by standing still.) What they should be doing is developing those ideas into fully-realized art forms, but they're so in love with the "newness" factor that they keep wrecking down what they've built up to get at it.

The thought that occurs to me is that Twilight Princess is (unintentionally, I'm sure) a self-parody. This game isn't satisfied with throwing everything away between sequels- this game wants to be so consistently new that it wants to throw everything away between dungeons! This is Nintendo topping themselves. But where can they go from here? Next Zelda game, they'll have to throw everything away in between puzzles, introducing a new type of gameplay in each one!

I sure hope that's not what they meant when they said they'd be bringing the series somewhere new after this.



Dasilva, that video is interesting and similar to how I was thinking before abandoning hope in eventually getting the answers. Their timeline even makes sense, mostly. Still, it's hard for me to believe that a game called "A Link to the Past", so named specifically because it was a prequel, takes place after the original games. And by reading A Link to the Past's backstory after having played Ocarina of Time, it's pretty obvious that OoT was a revision of that same story, making LttP the first time Ganon escapes after OoT. The place where (to me) it makes the most sense is at the same exact time as The Wind Waker's backstory, thus shedding light on how the flood happened. And then Four Sword Adventures, as I said, doesn't fit in.

I think the developers think they're going to have a clear timeline in the end. Twilight Princess, which obviously (to anyone who's played it) takes place at the end of one of the timelines (probably TWW's) hints at a backstory which sounds like a game they're still planning. But they've messed it up along the way, and I suspect that even when another ten games are released in the series much of the timeline still won't make sense entirely. They're just more concerned with each individual game than they are with the bigger picture.

[Starflux]

I think that there's not really a bigger timeline. They're loosely ties to each other, sometimes completely seperate, and sometimes remakes. Furthermore, I think it'd be a mistake to make sequels. Zelda works because of its constant reimagining of events, puzzles and characters from earlier games. Gameplay-wise, they're remakes. You shouldn't try to link them all together. Remakes > sequels.

You make a good point on the throwing out of things, Moriarty. I don't think TP was a conscious effort to do that INSIDE the game though. I think it was just bad writing/planning that did it. And yes, there's unfortunately little cohesion between all the elements of TP =( Items are never used again, characters left hanging... big shame.

Spoiler:

And Zelda is just a shoehorned McGuffin, having no role whatsoever in the game.

It's still a great game to play of course. It's just that the latter half is a bit uninspired and though the dialogue is good, the writing is not so.

[MoriartyL]

Earlier in this thread, I excused Twilight Princess's lack of direction as a way to give the developers a chance to use all the ideas they've really wanted to use over the years. Turns out, I gave them too much credit. NintendoWorldReport has posted a transcript of Eiji Aonuma's GDC talk. If you have any interest in Zelda, I highly recommend that you read it (though it's long), because it's quite enlightening.

Anyway, for me reading this is frustrating. Aonuma (who is in charge of the Zelda series) seems to be suggesting that this was genuinely the best they could do. For instance, the wolf gameplay didn't come about because some of the controls guys had wanted to play around with less conventional controls for a while, it came about (and this is just my impression from what he's saying) as a desperate move to give the game its own identity. If this is truly the case, then Aonuma is not the right person to be controlling Zelda. Harsh, perhaps, but how else am I supposed to react when I read things like this?

"We knew what a challenge it would be to innovative gameplay on the GameCube, so we had to come up with something new from another direction. Try though we did, we couldn’t come up with any good ideas."

Now that's just sad, right there. Aonuma is the wrong person for the job because he's asking the wrong questions. He's asking, "How can we make the Zelda gameplay fresh?", when he should be asking "What is the experience that we want to give to the player, and how will the gameplay get us there?". Miyamoto never had all the answers, but he was asking the right questions. Many of his games are his attempts to recreate little experiences he's had in his life, to share those experiences with others through gameplay. So no matter what type of gameplay he's using, be it platforming or action or puzzles or simulation, his enthusiasm for life's little moments is expressed to the player to make a universally appealing game. Aonuma, on the other hand, is taking his inspiration from new hardware. He's looking to new interfaces, not his own feelings, to define the experience that the players get. It could work, as in his example of his wife playing or -I'm sure- in the new DS game, but it doesn't really accomplish anything. At the end of the game, the player hasn't gone through a personal journey.

And that's what Zelda is all about. Not the battle scenes, as Aonuma thinks. Not the history of the series, as some fans think. I know that Aonuma and (if I'm not mistaken) Miyamoto have admitted in the past that they don't know what makes Zelda special. That's why they're having a hard time repeating it. So listen up, because apparently what I'm telling you here is a secret which not even Zelda's creators understand: Zelda is all about the emotional arc which the player goes through. In Ocarina of Time, you feel (not Link, but you) that the forest is a comfortable home, filled with friendly faces who will help you along. Then, you (again- you) realize that this is just a tiny part of the world; you leave the forest and see a giant landscape, wide open in front of you. It's a magical moment. And as you walk onward, all you can think about is how anything could be out here. But then day turns to night, and an endless number of skeletons pop up, even though you've had very little experience so far with battles, and it's then that the realization hits you: You've left the comfort of home for a world that isn't so friendly.

That's Zelda. Not that specific example, but any epic story where the main character, the hero, the one who has to experience hardships and joys and all the rest, is not some side character like Midna or Tetra, or even Link himself, but you the player. That's Zelda. It's not supposed to be telling you a story, RPG-style, it's supposed to be giving you an experience.

So when I hear Aonuma going on about problems with camera control and new hardware and button mapping, it's really frustrating. Not because none of that is important- of course it is. But he's playing on such a low level. He's like a musician focusing on hitting all the notes instead of thinking about what the tune is, and finding a way to express that tune to the listener. Aonuma can't possibly be expected to know where Zelda's supposed to go next, because he doesn't understand what Zelda is in the first place. He could get the controls so fresh and innovative that he'd get all the world on board. But then what? Maybe he would just throw it all out and start over after that, because he's not actually trying to accomplish much of anything once he has those people's attention. He shouldn't be starting a new Zelda game by throwing out the old controls, he should start a new Zelda game by throwing out the old experience, and coming up with a new one! We've all played the little boy turning into a hero, over and over and over. Only once has that emotional arc actually been gotten right (in Ocarina of Time), but the point stands- it's time for new experiences.

It's time for experiences that don't just end in sealing evil away again. It's time for experiences that don't just build up the character's physical strength, but the strength of character. It's time for tragedies and comedies and all the rest, with the player right in the middle. And after reading this talk, I have no confidence that Aonuma is ever going to find his way there.

[MdaG]

At the risk of repeating what someone else have already posted...
Here are some custom made Zelda games including a remake of the original Zelda on the 8-bit Nintendo.

Zelda Classic

[SLabyrinth]

After playing Wind Waker, TP was 'eh' for me. After experiencing something that was such a divergence from the Zelda formula I wanted more. TP was good, but it wasn't the best. The wolf parts were my favorite, I rushed through the human Link parts because it was too much of the same-old stuff repackaged with prettier graphics.

I think I'm the only person that liked Wind Waker. At first I hated it, absolutely and totally. I thought they were crazy. But then I actually played it for a few hours and got hooked. It was the same elements of the other Zelda's but the story was different and the graphics were charming. It felt fresh. The final battle was iconic for me, probably one of my favorite scenes ever because every part of the game, the sound, graphics, story, controls, came together for this single moment of awesomeness. I even liked sailing around, discovering all the little islands and battling pirates.

It seems that the team felt like they had to recreate the OOT experience, as that is typically accepted as the best Zelda (no arguments here, but I liked all the Zeldas pretty equally). And they did, but in the end the game felt too similar when you were playing human Link. My thought was, "If I want to play OOT, I'll go play OOT, not this." They should have fully explored wolf Link and used him a lot more in the game, in my opinion. And had more Midna.