| JEMC said: I'll be honest, as a WiiU owner what excited me the most was the fact that Zelda will break the items/dungeons rule. That could mean a lot for Zelda WiiU! |
I dunno. People get hung up on the demand for non-linearity. They don't understand the consequences that has on the complexity of later dungeons in the game.
Iwata simplified the Zelda formula, effectively lying and feeding into the non-linearity hype in the process. He said traditionally you would only get new items during dungeons (not true at all) and that puzzles in the dungeon in which you acquire a new item will be solved by using that item.
But this is misleading. Zelda games take into account the arsenal you've built up over the course of the game. This means that by the time you reach the final dungeon, you could be facing a puzzle which requires the use of any or all of the items you have already acquired. Look at Ocarina of Time: did you get the Hookshot in a dungeon? Weren't you using that Hookshot in every dungeon for the rest of the game after getting it? How about the Bow & Arrow, did you stop using that after the Forest Temple? Wasn't the Megaton Hammer still needed after the Fire Temple? This holds true in more recent games as well. The Beetle obtained in the Skyview Temple of Skyward Sword is used liberally throughout the game. Bombs in the second dungeon... the gust jar in the third... the whip in the fourth... these items are used to make the puzzles in the final few dungeons more complex.
Heck, you rarely obtain the dungeon item at the start of the dungeon (in the next-to-final dungeon this can be slightly more commonplace). You spend the first half of the dungeon solving puzzles without the use of the dungeon item.
All of this comes around to the point that if you design a Zelda game around the idea of non-linearity, you sacrifice this complexity in dungeons. I can pick up the hookshot and go into whatever dungeon the game will let me go into and know that the hookshot is the only item I'll need to complete the dungeon. Watering down late-game dungeons to appease fans who want to play the same game a thousand times and have a different experience every time (the video game equivalent of having your cake and eating it too) is not the way to go in my opinion.
