Zelda Games.

[Guest Ev.]

Hey everyone.

So Zelda: Ocarina of Time was really the first ever game I properly played and I fell so much in love with it. I spent soooo many hours playing that game (those who know it, it took me like two days just to get to the Deku Tree lol!). Anyway, then Majora's Mask comes out and was, in my opinion of course, so much better! It was darker, creepier, far more twisted and eerie. Which I really liked. Then Wind Waker which was a really fun game, despite my personal dislike of the art style and again being back to playing a young link. Twilight Princess and now the upcoming Skyward Sword. Yes, I'm ignoring the gameboy/DS games because they are very different than console ones.

So. Take OoT and take TP and compare them. I don't mean the landscape itself but the plot, the temples, the manner in which you go about advancing through the game. They are all almost exactly the same. You start off as a child (in TP case just inexperienced), the s**t hits the fan after a little while and you go off out into the world where you a given a mission by somebody/something else which has you go off to different dungeons. You have no character development at all, or at least none worth talking about.

How much more emotional would it be if Link actually decided himself to do things, to stand up to Ganon or whoever the villian might be. He is supposed to be this mighty warrior able to fight back any evil, all I see though is a mindless pawn doing as told by everyone else. He never gets injured, never experiences doubt or has to overcome anything remotely emotional. Wind Waker granted had the whole saving your sister thing, for the first segment of the game, then it was back to same old thing with no development. Twilight Princess had the children who looked up to you, getting scared and injured during the story. It was so ripe to actually have Link be an inspiration and teach them and care about them. Feck all dialogue however, Link never speaks (text or audio) and so on.

I've become rather disenchanted with the series, even now to a point where I have little interest in buying any future titles because, honestly, they are all the same. Its not just the rehashed gameplay elements which I'm more or less fine with, its the story, the lack of charactization, the shallow lifeless protagonist and how far the games are beyond others of this age. They have said they never want Link to talk because that would mean our imagined voice for him would be gone. Thats fair enough, and I apprectiate that consideration really, but have written dialogue for him to show some development and mind of his own.

I feel as though the Zelda games are just stuck in time. Graphics improve, the gameplay gets small additions or slight tweaks and thats it. Nothing else changes about the franchise. Perhaps its merely because I'm growing older but what can be so hard about making a -modern- Zelda with a deep story and character interaction. So Link never audiably speaks, thats fine. Have us select from a list of text options like all those old RPGs. Have him develope and grow into a hero who leads the people against the enemy, not just goes of single handedly to kill them all like a barbarian. :/

Any thoughts? Am I just grumpy in my old (21 *Rolls eyes*) age? Are Nintendo just stuck in their ways and unwilling to even dare change a series that sells so well for them, even if it meant making the game -better-? I mean they could keep making them like they are now and create a sort of current-gen spin-off that tested how well people would respond to such a change, at least.

~Ev.

[Guest sleeping chrysalid]

I didn't get deep into the series but my friend in elementary school had the gamecube collector's edition and I decided to seek out and find a used copy of Ocarina of Time. Even at age eleven it was an emotional game for me. I was a bit of a softy but the game made me cry. Link starts out in this nurturing forest world thinking he's a kokira and when he finally finds out who he is he's alone. He grows up and then he's suddenly pulled from the friends he grew up with and forced to play a miserable yet important role while the friends he once knew are still there but don't even recognize him. Can you imagine being torn from your family and being forced to wander the world accomplishing dreadful tasks to save a world you have no place in? And then after you save it you are not even freed from that torturous form of purgatory but instead sent back to spend an eternity of fighting alone. I know I was feeling emotions that the game was not intended to evoke but I felt sorry for link and I cried. Then when I played the windwaker the emotions were completely different. There was absolutely no emotion in that game besides the part about saving your sister. I agree that most of the games don't have any emotion in them but Oracina of Time seemed deep to me. To live an empty life of complete and utter loneliness and to be forced to go on with no will to live for all of eternity with no hope of death, no hope of an end to such suffering is a fate that would make any person pitiable. Of course, this is coming from a person who once cried while watching the comedy, "Fun with penis and Jane" doesn't really mean much. I am not exactly the most credible person to decide what really is emotional because to me, almost anything can be emotional. It seems silly why I would cry during that movie but at the time I was just thinking about the concept of losing everything. I don't think I'd cry at that particular movie now because I got it all out of my system and I realize it is a comedy but I still get emotional during certain movies. Anyway, you can take this with a grain of salt but I found the Oracina of Time to be very emotional.

[Guest Ev.]

Thats sort of my point though. Ocarina of Time -should- have been really emotional but the game doesn't go into that in any way. It just goes along at its pace and its only when you start thinking about what it would be like, does it get emotional - its not in the actual game itself. Link doesn't show any emotion with perhaps an exception at the end where he returns to the Princess. Remember after he grows up and you return to the forest and no one recognizes you anymore? Some of the Kokiri make references to how you remind them of someone they once knew... and what does Link do? Nothing, no reaction at all. :S

I used to be all for that as it meant you could imagine whatever you'd like but... game after game that very quickly vanishes. Imagine if they remade Ocarina of Time, with alot of dialogue and character development, with actual impacts on Link. It would be so awesome, but it'll never happen because Nintendo are so stuck in their ways imo.

I saw this pic of Link once on DeviantArt, basically he was all battle worn with cuts and slashes here and there, a bloody eye and so on 'walking' towards the camera looking so massively angry and determined. Thats what the game should be like - not to be all in favour of gore or anything, but showing him as so determined to defeat Ganon because of what he did to the land, that he never stops. Theres also that part in WW in the castle where you see Link's statue as the Hero of Time. Why not have a game actually deal with how he rises up from being a simple soldier/warrior into an inspiration and possible leader for the people.

I brought up an discussion like this on a Zelda forum before... lol, I was torn apart. "NO! Don't like it, don't play it!" and so on. Its not really about that though. I could quite easily play any of the Zelda games and enjoy the gameplay but... you can't really ever say the story is dramatic or emotional, or at least the deliverance of it in any case (Scene at the end of WW for example... should have been the most epic in any Zelda game, instead it fell flat on its face >.<).

[Guest Robin Winter]

I desperately want to play Twilight Princess. I tried playing it on a pc emulator, but the program just wasn't solid enough to play it without crashing, so, being that I don't have a Wii, I guess I'm gonna have to track down a gamecube version of it. What I managed to play through was incredible.

I've always been a Zelda fan The only one I didn't really like was Wind Waker. It was too cartoony.

[Guest Purim]

The Zelda games have their inspiration in creator Shigeru Miyamoto's exploration of the Kyoto (I think) Country side and finding secret grottoes. Thus, the main idea at play in the Legend of Zelda is "exploration" not an epic fantasy storyline. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed Wind Waker so; Your Sea Chart was blank (save for a few places) when you get it, and you fill it by exploring the Great Sea.

The trick, however, is that Miyamoto wants the player to be the explorer. That's where the name "Link" even comes from. The character is meant to 'link' the player with the game world. Thus, putting any words in the characters mouth would ruin it. I mean, look what happened to Tom and Jerry when they put words in their mouths.

[Guest Jo22]

Reading this post was like looking into a mirror in a lot of ways. i absolutely love ocarina of time and majora and i had a lot of fun with many other zelda titles including the various hand-held console titles, but ocarina of time is still my favourite game of all time. i don't agree that it is not an emotional game, it made me cry the first time as well. i don't think the relationship between link and zelda is especially emotional, it never really has been. its a cliche and it is also way beyond predictable so it has never been the attractive element of the games for me. in OoT, it was definitely the relationship between link and saria that put a lump in my throat, it was tender and beautiful and the way it was severed early in the game motivated me for many of the game's challenges. Majora had its on attraction, as you say, it was dark and creepy and a much more personal journey than OoT, which was for the most part focused on the narrative of duty.

Twilight princess was fun but lets face it, it was trying to be Oot to the point of it being embarrassing, like a hopeless fanboy (or girl) having cosplay re-enactements in their parents basement. the problem is that zelda, along with mario, metroid, and sonic, have been sucked into the ever-growing void of casual gaming and are therefore even more subject to their tired old formats than before the current console generation, which in my opinion has marked an obvious fork in the road for the gaming industry. at the time of its release, OoT was cutting edge technology and storytelling, however it really hasn't done anything to improve upon itself. if you ask me, nintendo is to blame for the increasing blandness of these classic titles, allowing them to stagnate and whither over the last several years. but then again, much as i love zelda, perhaps its just time to move on and try something 'new'. someone should send a memo to nintendo defining the term.. a different coloured console does not exactly conform to my understanding of innovation.