Khuutra said:
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 do believe you are my new favorite member.
