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MTZehvor on 07 January 2016
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Dulfite said:
MTZehvor said:
Dulfite said:

2) That % from the lifehold goes down as you do missions, it's not like if you just stand around humanity is going to die. There should not be a rush or pressure feeling at all from this, I certainly don't feel pressure.

 

I don't want to drag an off topic conversation out too much longer, but the fact that you don't feel pressure is, to me, quite telling. The story is designed around the concept of pressure; consistently telling the player that they need to hurry or else humanity will die out. With a central narrative based around enforcing a sense of urgency, the gameplay should, ideally, set up in such a way to allow the player to play as if they are really in the story. While I wouldn't advocate an actual time limit (I'm more than aware of how the countdown works) that drops down like in Majora's Mask, I think the complete opposite end of the spectrum simply disconnects people from the main story.

To illustrate with an example, take something like the final bit of Skyward Sword, where Ghirahim has captured Zelda and is going to drain her soul (or whatever he does) to resurrect Demise. Now imagine that the game, instead of encouraging you to chase after him, forced you to go save someone's cat or paint someone's house. You'd probably reasonably assume, as the player, that Zelda couldn't be in that much trouble if you've got the time to go save cats or paint houses. It's the same sort of deal here. I'm all for games heavily based around exploration; some of my favorite games of all time, such as Super Metroid and Wind Waker, require a ton of exploration. Where the game starts to lose me is when a disconnect appears between narrative and gameplay. On one hand, the game implements a story that is based around creating a sense of urgency. On the other hand, the game implements mission design that requires a deep level of exploration. That disconnect is what I'm interested in knowing if you care about.

1) Zelda is intended to be a linear game. Yes, in recent ones, there have been side quests but they aren't really anything special or character developing like the affinity missions or quests you stumble upon in X.

2) I HATED Majoras mask time thing so much that I want nothing to do with any game even remotely like that. That was so stressful. I'm not saying it was a bad game or that people can't enjoy it, but it's not my type of game. My type of game is like X, where there is no stress. Yes, they occassionally make you think about the lifehold deadline (it isn't even that often), but afterwords they bring up random little things, implying that you as a gamer shouldn't be stressed playing this game. It is meant to be enjoyed.

3) Zelda, despite it's linear storyline and lack of major side quests that have nothing to do with that major storyline, does offer plenty of things to do, especially in recent games, that have nothing to do with the story; fishing, for example.

1) If you're going to classify Zelda as a linear game, then X is right up there with it. Both allow for exploration and player freedom, with certain objectives vital to the main story that need to be completed in a certain order (dungeons for Zelda, story missions for X), and both allow for side quests that can be done whenever the player desires after a certain point in the game (after obtaining certain items in Zelda and after reaching a certain level or point in the story for X). The inclusions of affinity missions doesn't make X less linear; all it does is simply change the type of sidequest you're doing or how long the sidequests take to accomplish.

2) I'm not advocating Majora's Mask as something this game should seek to emulate; I'd advocate anything but for something like X. With that said, if the goal of the game isn't to make people feel rushed, then choosing a storyline revolving around the entirety of the human race dying out if a certain object isn't found in enough time was a really, really poor decision.

3) Zelda offers plenty of things to do, and this is where we come to the crux of the issue. Well, two cruxes, actually. The first is offering versus forcing. It's fine if a game wants to allow its player to screw around and completely ignore the story, it's another thing entirely if the game forces the player to do so. If X didn't require the player to, say, save people's cats before going off to search for the lifehold, then I wouldn't have a complaint. The forcing of the sidequest upon the player is what drastically changes things.

The second crux, however, and what I'd argue is the most important one, is that in the case of most Zelda games, you're really in no rush for most of the time. In Ocarina of Time (with the exception of the last bit where Zelda gets captured) the world is already fucked. Can't get much worse. In Majora's Mask, everything's just getting undone anyway, so there's no reason to not screw around. It's not like any good you do will matter much. In Wind Waker, Ganondorf isn't really in a position to do anything harmful at the moment. In X (again, speaking purely from a narrative standpoint), if you don't hurry, everyone dies. That's the difference.