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TheLastStarFighter on 04 June 2015
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Miyamotoo said:
TheLastStarFighter said:
These games take too long largely due to incompetence. Like Rockstar and GTA, they've been using the same engine for every game since the N64 days, just improving the visuals. The problem is they re-work the concept and unique "hook" of each game repeatedly for a year or two before getting into true production. It's a terrible waste, and in the end the games aren't really dramatically different from their predecessor despite new "art styles", most of which people don't like anyway. Skyward Sword is Wind Waker in the Sky, Twilight Princess is an attempt at OoT, and all of the games generally re-use characters, music for various scenarios, etc.

Zelda could learn a lot from GTA. The fans are passionate, and also set in their ways. The Dev team should maintain a constant artstyle and basic play mechanic, but add fun new locales, cool new weapons, an interesting plot, some great new soundtrack elements and improve the visuals with each new iteration. The defining uniqueness of any title should be focused on the plot, such as the Triforce in LoZ, the origin story and dark world sealing in ALttP or OoT's time travel. Beyond that titles should focus on just being bigger and better than before.

Incompetence!?

And yet they make one of the bests games in the world. I say, take all time you need and deliver great game, not fast developed mediocre game.

The way they development Zelda game is reason why Zelda franchise maintenance high quality around 30 years.

For me one of the best parts of Zelda games is different artstyle for every new game. That is one of reasons why Zelda is so special, last thing I want is Zelda to be more like GTA or any other game.

 

Incompetence in project management, not in developer skill.  Ferrari's are beautiful and exceptional cars.  However, if the factory started taking twice as long to make each vehicle while having constitently poorer quality - even if it was still a fabulous car, one would start to question the leadership there.

In the case of Zelda, the Metacritic scores starting with OoT for each successive new home console release are:

99, 95, 96, 95, 93.  That's including MM in the second slot, which is a side story and built in short order.  So ignoring that, we have a very consitent and steady decline in opinion of the last four main titles.  The games are getting worse, with SS being the first title which really falls short of "masterpiece" of any main Zelda title ever made.  This is an issue.  It's more of an issue when you consider that it had the longest development cycle ever.  Previous titles were consistent 3-year games.  SS was 5-year.

If you're Iwata, and you see one of your main products go from 3-year to 5-year development cycles while dropping from 95-99 level quality to 93 level quality, you should be cracking heads.  There is a significant problem the division.