| Khuutra said: Your extrapolation isn't actually based on anything except for recycled Malstromisms, which isn't actually an argument. Zelda games have never sold in direct relation to the total gamer population, or even the console userbase; if they did, then Wind Waker sold several times better than the original game. Zelda is a series with a certain degreee of absolute appeal, and different games will appeal differently. In four months, Twilight Pricess will be the best-selling Zelda game of all time, and it's been ahead of the original game for something like two years. You insist that they should strive to replicate what made the first Zelda game such a success, but why would they when it's not the biggest success in the series? Why, when that formula produced diminishing returns over the course of four games? Zelda is a series which experiences natural and recurring zeniths and nadirs in its sales patterns, which is often down to unnecessary or unwanted sequels (Spirit Tracks) or games that people just didn't find as appealing as their predecessors (Adventures of Link, Link to the Past) or hardware limitations limiting the scope of the audience (Majora's Mask and probably Skyward Sword). There's two things you need to understand, here, though. The first is that you're still wrong in that nobody gets to dictate what Zelda should be, because dictating means that your opinion actually matters beyond your buying power. It doesn't, because people still buy the living shit out of the puzzle-dungeon 3D diatribes like Ocarina and Twilight Princess. But that's not the biggest reason - the biggest reason is that the Legend of Zelda, at its core, is about a young boy going on an adventure and exploring, and that's all it is. Hahaha, I'm kidding, see, that would be me dictating what Zelda is. But Zelda has always been a vehicle for experimentation in realizing traditional series motifs, and balking against change in Zelda is like balking against jumping in Mario. It's going to happen, and you need to be prepared for it. Change isn't bad in Zelda games when it still carries out certain concepts that make the series great. Second and more, you are taking certain elements of Skyward Sword to be signals of doom when they aren't. Skyward Sword is going to be a high school drama in the same sense that Wind Waker was a buddy comedy about Link sailing around with pirates, or Ocarina was a gradeschool drama about Link growing up and coming back to see his friends. All of those things are true, but they're not the actual narratives of the game and they serve as character-building focuses for Link, not narrative structures for the game. Narrative structures for all but a very few Zelda games come down to this: some rat bastard took the princess, let's go kill him. All other character relationships serve only to highlight the fundamental relationship between hero, villain, and damsel, because that's the way it has always been. And shit, what's not to like about how Skyward Sword is set up? Individual combat has been given more focus, and it looks like you need twitch-based reflexes as much as you do the ability to see where an enemy is holding its shield. The fight with the evil sorcerer is the hardest fight in the game seen so far and it doesn't have much directional horsing around at all, the guy is just fast and hits hard like a nightmare version of Dark Link from Ocarina of Time. Puzzle solving looks like the standard for the series since Link to the Past, which is interacting with the environment in ways that makes sense for the environment at hand. Oh, you have to turn a puzzle piece around to stick it in a hole - big freaking deal, there's only six orientations for the damn thing unless they move away from cubic designs. The overworld - haven't you seen how much they've avoided showing the overworld? How much they've steered us away from seeing the world below, dropping onl ythe barest hints of what we're going to see? They say that the exploration is like Wind Waker with more to see, free-roaming and enormous and with sidequests out your freaking nose. Better combat than any other 3D Zelda, a giant world with lots of extra stuff to see, a centralized hub town with the best aspects of Majora's Mask, fun-to-use items with various applications (don't tell me you don't want to just scourge the Hell out of some lizard demons with the whip, you would be a liar), an art style that won't age, beautiful music, and they're levaing us the mystery, they're holding back so much of the game before release so there's so much to see Christ, why not be excited? There's so much to be excited for. Fighting and flying and exploring and hardship and danger! It's shaping up to have everything, to be the best and hardest and most demanding of the 3D Zeldas. How can you balk at this game and not simultaneously rail at Ocarina and Majora and Wind Waker all at once? |
I read this part a few times, but I still can't understand what you mean by it. Already it sounds like a made up word along the lines of "casual gamer", so I'm temtpted to dismiss it as absolute tripe, but I won't. Instead, I'd really like to know what it means, and why it sounds as though it's such a terrible thing.
No idea where this came from. By that reason, I could have said that in 1996, Zelda had an "absolute limit" of 6.5 million sales. Yet Ocarina of time sold more, and twilight princess seems on it's way to beat that number. There is no reason whatsoever to indicate that an "absolute limit" has been reached.
In raw numbers it might not, but that's where total population and how much markets where available come into play. Not only where the populations in America, Japan and EMEAA the smallest at that time ( since population grew ), but if you look at the sales of the 1st one vs Ocarina of time, we see minor growth in America only, a minor regression in Japan, and most of the growth comes from EMEAA, where the markets are more available then in the NES times. This means that Zelda sales are quasi stagnant when it comes to it's biggest sellers. And with growing population over time, that's not such a great thing. Also, back with LoZ, it was a bleeding social phenomenon, there was Zelda cornflakes and saturday morning TV shows! I don't see that anymore. Oh, and the frmula started to drift away around the time of A Link to the Past, focusing more on the puzzles.
I see nothing natural in sales, you make it sound as though it's a given there will be X amount of people buying a Zelda game. Which is prepostorous. Unappealing games selling less is the only major credible reason, hardware limitation to a point, but still very small ( Zelda SS will have at least a 27 million potential market base already, or a tad more ), while unwanted sequels only occur if the sequel is unappealing.
My opinion dictates what I buy or not. And that dictates how well a game will sell or not. And that dictates what a Zelda game should be or not. As for the rest, it'd be interesting to see how many of those people are new to Zelda, and how many buy for the puzzles or despite the puzzles. I can personally tel you I never bought a Zelda game thinking "Yeah, I want to ace those puzzles!"
Yeah, close enough.
Not sure what you mean by that, but not all experimentation is good, jsut like if they made the jumping in Mario feel wrong, I would be against it.
But the whole problem is that it doesn't. They only keep traditional Zelda things in the most superficial way.
First of all, OoT and WW were never either of those things, and no, it seems that the high scholl drama will be an actual narrative for the game, though probably still secondaty to sve the princess, it is holding a much higher importance here: he mentions specifically that you're in a boarding scholl, Zelda is a classmate, another classmate is competing with you over her and you will see him throughout the game, and that you seem to have to ( could be wrong here ) return to Skyloft just to chitchat with the villagers as part of the story and so forced to do it ( different interview ) as part of the story, unlike MM.
I don't know how you saw that, but I've seen nothing that needs twitch based reflexes. The enemies come at you by one or two at the most, never more, they aren't aggressive at all, and there's only ever one way to defeat them, jsut like a bloody puzzle. So no, combat has failed miserably.
I fail to see how having a bleeding eye on a door that you need to spin your sword to destroy it makes sense, why not just have door without locks? All this does is interrupt the fow of the game for no good reason. Same for that easy, yet annoying and so useless cube thing puzzle.
Wrong there, it's going to be puzzles as far as the eye can see ( if that Nintendo E3 rep is to be believed ).
Sadly, no. It's combat that is underdevelopped by the lack of challenging enemies, a world filled with puzzles, a centralised hub town that you seem to have to return to as part of the story, items which are either redundant ( slingshot, seriously, WTF? ) or even if they are awesome, will be limited to basic puzzle solving ( hope not ), an art style which IK guess is nice, but I vastly prefered TP's one, and the worst part is that they lied by teasing us with that precise art style, and what's the end result? Different. Music will most definitely be nice. But since the overworld will be filled with puzzles, it gives me little motivation to explore it. At all.
Phew, that was a long response.
But no, it doesn't look anywhere near the hardest 3D zelda game, and even if it turns out to be, that's still easy compared to the 2D ones. OoT's only major complaint was the water temple, the rest of the game was really good. MM had the incredibly annoying clock system, and WW had a huge, empty ocean that you had to go through, both things pervaded through the whole game.
You know, it's not as if I want to hate this game, I really would like to buy it and enjoy it, but everything it's doing is wrong. Everything that made the early games great is being spat on and destroyed, while focusing on crappy story and annoyong puzzles, and so transforming the game into something that's clearly not a Zelda game.
