| Phoeniks.Wright said: 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. |
Christ, could you try to indicate in some way which segments you're replying to with which parts of your post? Scrolling up and down constantly makes the whole thing hard to read. Number them or something.
I'm not going to reply to segments individually, only make statements that apply to overarching parts of your post.
Diminishing returns for 2D Zelda: Even if you like to pretend that the "formula" of the game was deviated from starting with Link to the Past, that doesn't change the fact that the first nadir of 2D Zelda was Adventures of Link, not LttP. The appeal of AoL was the lowest of the first three 2D Zelda games; but the general trend of appeal in those games was downward, and Link's Awakening ended up being the very lowest of them.
Absolute appeal: Absolute appeal means that Zelda games do not increase in popularity based on population they can sell to, according to past sales trends. Sales are determined by the absolute appeal of the game in question. The absolute appeal of Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess is higher than that of Legend of Zelda; Phantom Hourglass beats out every game in the series but those three. That's a fact.
Zeniths and nadirs: This doesn't really belong in a conversation about what Zelda "should" be, it's a component of a different discussion, and I retract it with apology. This is also the case for a discussion of regional appeal, though; Japan's buying habits are running counter to the west for Zelda (Twilight Princess sold poorly there but is the best-selling game in the series by a considerable margin in both the Americas and Europe), which is a point that bears addressing, but only in another discussion.
Dictation of Zelda: No, what you buy or do not buy does not determine how well the game will sell, and assuming it does is fallacious. More, even that wouldn't determine what Zelda should be, only what form of Zelda would sell best (and so far, it's a game in the style of Ocarina or TP). The two things are not the same. Your rejection of puzzles isn't the norm, but the norm being accpetance doesn't necessarily mean that Zelda should have dungeoneering as a focus; the simple fact is that it does.
Appeal of Skyward Sword: I'm not having this discussion with you. You're set enough in how you see the game that I'm not going to be able to change it by talking to you.
Narrative focus: In Ocarina of Time your rival Mido was jealous of how much the prettiest girl in the village, Saria, liked you. The first segment of the game centers around your quest to gain favor with the village elder and the girl, and you would return at several necessary parts throughout the game to revisit this place and further expand on your relationship with the girl and with the village itself, up to and including Mido. In Wind Waker you team up with the pirate Tetra to go find your sister. Much of your movement in the game is dictated by Tetra's instructions, and you will visit the pirates several necessary times over the course of the story to further plan out how to rescue your sister with their help.
When you said Ocarina and Wind Waker weren't like that, you simultaneously are wrong and also hit upon the point: while those descriptions can be used to accurately summarize the plot viewed from a certain perspective, they don't ultimately capture the overarching plot of the games. The same is going to be true of Skyward Sword, regardless of whether or not you need to come back to the main village in Skyloft or not; the "plot" in Zelda is only ever made up of how the relationships between characters dictate the actions that characters take toward each other, and that's true in every game from the Legend of Zelda all the way through Spirit Tracks. The most important relationships in the game are always, always going to be between Link, Zelda, and Ganon - or whoever's standing in for Ganon. Ultimately the plot will revolve around saving either the girl or the world, and pretending anything else is disengenuous - yes, even with Aonuma saying it, because Aonuma constantly makes misleading jokes about the direction of the game. Don't you remember when he said the next game (this one) would be about a Dancing Link?
What Zelda should be: It's obvious that you think the first game should be the model for all future Zelda games, but there's no particular reason for anyone else to agree with you, and no objective measure by which the original game can be considered inherently superior to its successors. Don't buy the game if you don't like it. That's perfectly fine, and God knows nobody can make you bu ythe game. But, at the same time, it would be doing yourself and everyone else a favor if you could manage to stave off the self-entitled line of thought that can be summarized as "Zelda should be what I want and if Nintendo isn't doing that then they're destroying Zelda". You think Zelda has never veered away from what I wanted in the games? Wrong. That happens more or less every time a new game is announced. But change in this series is inevitable, and I know that my expectations aren't going to be fulfilled every time (and they shouldn't be; not only are they transient and mercurial but they also wouldn't be particularly fun, sometimes) so it's better for me and everyone involved to see the games as they are, not according to some imaginary grading system whereby they're compared solely to games from the series's distant past.
That's all. I've said my peace. I'm done talking to you; the last word in this discussion is yours for the taking.
