I wouldn't mind if they got rid of bombs completely and just replace them with bomb arrows. Same thing with the hook shot. They could replace it with some type of arrow that has a rope at the end of it or something. I do think the enemy should be way more aggressive though. I love the enemy design in the souls games, for the most part. Same with bloodborne.

It's not the 5 1/2 minutes here. It's the 5 1/2 minutes here, and the 5 minutes there, and the 10 minutes over there, and the 5 minutes on the side... it adds up, as it was intended to add up. The game is not still amazing, it holds up extremely poorly today, and it is outclassed by almost every one of its successors, including Zelda II. I haven't gotten around to Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks yet. But every Zelda game I've played is much better than the first -- including Majora's Mask, a game I don't personally enjoy very much.

I have no objection to dungeons having more difficult enemy encounters in them, which is why the sparesly populated overworld seen recently doesn't bother me. I don't want to be stopped every 15 feet by another enemy in the overworld, save that stuff for the dungeons. But the dungeons should also be where the adventure elements shine, as they always have been. And you are still talking about puzzles. So, for your benefit I will walk you through a single dungeon in a modern 3D Zelda game, and explain what is a puzzle and what is not. I'll pick something straightforward as opposed to, for instance, the Water Temple.

How about the Earth Temple from Skyward Sword?

In the first room, you are attacked by a couple of fire keese while leaping across rocks that sink into the lava, and a red chuchu waits for you on the other platform. There is a chest hidden above eye level which you can find pretty easily by observing your surroundings -- a patch of dirt can be dug up to reveal a gust of wind. This chest contains 20 rupees, a minor reward for paying attention. Continuing on, you leap across more rocks to a platform guarded by several fire keese. A dig spot on this platform contains not a reward, but a trap -- another red chuchu. An NPC here provides a little optional dialogue, and then leaves. Back to the center of the room, across a couple more platforms. This time, though, the platforms are rising and falling with geysers of lava. They lead you to a long platform with two conspicuous contraptions on it. These are new objects, not like anything seen previously in the game. They each look like a gear with a taut rope connecting it to a bar. How do you interact with this thing? You whap it with your sword, and the rope snaps. A drawbridge is shown partially lowering toward you, but it stops short. You go cut the other rope. The bridge lowers further, but still not all the way. But that's all of the ropes, so you look around for more. After a moment of observation (or perhaps immediately upon landing on this platform, it will vary), you spot a third mechanism on the wall by the top of the bridge, well out of the reach of your sword. As you have used your Beetle to snap ropes in the previous dungeon, you whip it out here as well and break the third rope, lowering the bridge completely.

Whew! Let's call this the end of the first room, even though it technically continues across the bridge. Upon inspecting our actions in this room, we were attacked by about ten weak enemies and introduced to two new elements. Did we solve any puzzles? No... no puzzles here. Puzzles are usually about pattern recognition (a la Tetris) or simple reasoning skills (Professor Layton). They shouldn't be reliant on context. The solutions to the challenges presented in this room were very straightforward or even obvious (enemy encounters included), but as this is the first room, their purpose was to introduce the player to these ideas, not to challenge you with them. Zelda 1 does the same kind of things. The first dungeon contains a room with three Gels (the weakest enemy in the game), a single block, and a gated door. Its purpose is to teach the player that blocks can be pushed, and that this can trigger unexpected resuts (such as a door opening). The game doesn't tell you this, and it isn't immediately obvious just by observing the block. You must explore the room by interacting with the block to learn this. It's not a puzzle, it's adventure gameplay.

Back to the Earth Temple, then you fight your first Lizalfos and then you shoot bomb flowers with your slingshot and ride a big ball around in the lava and fight two Lizalfos at once and get bombs and use them on walls and it's all great, and none of that is a puzzle. Yeah I skipped the rest, I'm lazy and this is way too long.

Sliding blocks around on ice to depress a switch, that's a puzzle. It teaches you nothing about the game world or how you can interact with it. It requires no knowledge of the context of the situation. Observing your surroundings and noticing a path on your map blocked by an ordinary-looking wall in the dungeon and tossing a bomb at that wall is not a puzzle. It requires more than pattern recognition, it requires an understanding of the capabilities of the player character and his arsenal and (most importantly!) a sense of curiosity, a desire to ask what if, to pick something out of your inventory and point it at something suspicious-looking and click. This is an adventure game, and it is what Zelda has been since day 1.

So stop asking for Aonuma to surgically remove the adventure from this action-adventure game. There are more than enough pure action games these days. Zelda provides a unique experience because it is one of the only remaining franchises that respects this amazing combination of gameplay ideas.

But the new Zelda clearly uses button controls, so that's already not an issue. In any case, I disagree. I don't know what enemies you were flailing your arms against, but that didn't work out too well for anyone I know who played the game. Maybe you would have enjoyed it more if you hadn't been flailing.

The complexity was not artificial. Take the moblins, you could slash their shields apart or blow them up with a bomb. Later you are forced to fight a moblin with a metal shield that can't be slashed or bombed on a narrow bridge. You have to figure out how to deal with that. It has nothing to do with flailing your arms or directional slashes.

Really it sounds like the only reason you don't like Skyward Sword's combat is because you're allergic to motion controls. Referring to Fruit Ninja doesn't make directional slashes an inherently bad design choice for sword combat. It was great in Metal Gear Rising.

And Zelda 1 has shit combat. Almost every enemy in the game can be killed with a full-screen sword beam that phases through every possible obstacle. The only enemy that comes to mind who resists it is the darknut, and fighting them is so complex... you can't hit them from the front. That's it. You want to talk about great sword combat in a Zelda game, look at Zelda II. Hell, even Link Between Worlds is pretty good. I was surprised by how well the shield is handled.

Speaking of the shield, a better way to punish players for overuse of their shield would be to throw Link off-balance for using it poorly, leaving him open to attack... which Skyward Sword does. The shield damage is just an extra punishment, to remind you to get good. Though I'll grant that knocking Link off-balance would be punishment enough.

No it's not 5 minutes here and five minutes there. Those five minutes are the largest amount of time you'll be pushing blocks in any dungeon in zelda 1 by far.

I don't care if you don't consider those things puzzles. I do and I want them out of Zelda because they weren't like that in the first one. They aren't fun. It's mundane and it limits the dungeon design. You don't need context sensitive item puzzles to have an adventure feel in a dungeon. Like Aonuma said in his quote where he suggested that puzzles wouldn't be in the next Zelda, it should be about taking the experiences you've had playing the game, and using them to explore further. That shouldn't be tied to items. This old games are great at encouraging exploration, and they don't resort to this stupid dungeon gimmicks that's zelda has been resorting to. I don't think that the block pushing in Zelda 1 are the highlight of those games either, but recent Zelda games take that to an unbearable level. There's nothing wrong with encouraging curiosity, but those puzzles don't encourage curiosity. There's no curiosity to be found in the expected.

The dungeons are for trials. The adventure is for adventuring. You are obviously supposed to be exploring the dungeon, but the dungeon are supposed to challenge your skill. Again, the souls games do a fantastic job of being so close to exactly what Zelda dungeons should be. A trial. You go adventuring, you find a dungeon, you are tested vigorously, youre awarded, and then you are relieved that you're out of the dungeon. It shouldn't be a fun little stroll where you are snapping ropes with Beatles.

But I wasn't talking about just pushing blocks. It's all of the things the game does to slow the player down in ways that don't add content. Like the rupee grind I mentioned, and the fact that you always respawn with 3 hearts.

They aren't "like that" in the first one because the first one sucks. They are all pushing random blocks until one moves and bombing random walls with no indication of which walls are bombable (thus requiring you to waste all of your bombs trying every wall and, go figure, wasting your rupees restocking on bombs). It doesn't limit the dungeon design, it is the dungeon design. Because the first game's dungeons are a bunch of awful attempts at design scattered around a bunch of rooms full of enemies that die in one hit.

You are simply wrong about Zelda. The Souls games aren't even adventure games, they're action/RPGs and they don't have dungeons at all. You simply want Zelda to be something it is not, and never has been. I'm not making this stuff up. The creator of the series, director, producer, and designer of your beloved Zelda 1, defines Zelda as the experience of cutting a sign and seeing it floating in the water. Interacting with the world in a non-challenging way and being pleasantly surprised by the results. These are the feelings of the artist, and you are telling Picasso to be more like Da Vinci.

I hope you eventually accept that The Legend of Zelda is not the game you want it to be, and that's not a bad thing. If you want to play Dark Souls, play Dark Souls. Or keep playing games you consider mundane and not fun and insisting they should be more like the very very first game that came out in the series, 30 years ago, a game that is actually very manipulative and poorly designed in hindsight.

You throw around words like "experiences" and "explore," but I don't think you recognize their meaning. What kind of experiences will you have playing Zelda that will allow you to explore further? Combat experiences? And what does exploring mean? Merely moving to a different area and observing it?

You will explore the world by interacting with it, as has always been the case in Zelda. Just like the water fruit in Skyward Sword. How do you explore the deeper parts of the sixth dungeon? By stabbing water fruits and flinging them at things -- this is how you fight the mini-boss, too! And what experiences did you have while playing the game earlier that helped you learn this? Stabbing pumpkins and flinging them off of Skyloft.

If this hasn't been brought up yet, I want to use the GamePad's touchscreen to mark notes on my dungeon maps . This isn't a big change or even new (DS Zelda games) but it hasn't been done in a home console Zelda yet.

Oh wait this more about conventions than new features.

I guess I would like to control Epona and other partners when I'm not near them. With the GamePad's screen, you could mark a trail for them to go. You can also set their AI to defend, attack anything nearby, or do nothing and wait.

It's always obvious where to bomb walls. The map indicates that clearly, and the walls make a different sound when you hit it with a sword. It's literally designed that way to make you want to explore the dungeon an find shortcuts through it. The dungeon designs in Zelda 1 do more to match the way you're supposed to feel in Zelda than any of the games since have done, barring Zelda 2. The dungeons in Zelda 1 were clearly primative to what a Zelda game of today should be, the same way its overworld was. Zelda Wii U's overworld was inspired by the openess and freedom experienced in Zelda 1. It's not a 1-1 replica. It's an update of that formula, and Zelda Wii U's dungeons should be just that, an update to that formula. Dark Souls is that update.

You're the one who's wrong about Zelda. Miyamoto created Zelda through the experience of exploring caves as a child. Theres a fear of the unknown, and a bravery, and a perserverence to doing something like that. That's not reflected at all with how Zelda dungeons are designed today and the new head of Zelda seems to feel the same way, if he really does intend to remove puzzles from Zelda games like he's basically said he would. It may not be dark souls yet, but it's one hell of a start.

Of course Dark Souls isn't an exploration game. It does have exploring, though, and it does have dungeons, and you are exploring those dungeons. Just because you aren't using a boomerang to hit switches doesn't mean it isn't a dungeon. I don't want Zelda U to be Dark Souls, I want the dungeons in Zelda U to feel like the dungeons, and heck everything, in Dark Souls. That's how dungeons used to feel, that's how they are supposed to feel, and that is half of why Zelda is even a relevant franchise today. I won't get the experience I want from Zelda U by "just playing Dark Souls." 

You did more than just fight in Zelda 1 dungeons. The entire point is that you go in them feeling lost, and you have you find your way to the end by putting the peices together. You absolutely needed a map in the original Zelda. You needed to plan where you wanted to go. You don't need a map in modern Zelda dungeons. Not even in intricate ones like the water temple. It's just a linear progression of puzzles. You aren't exploring. You're being taken on a pleasant tour. You're not getting lost and finding your way. There's no sence of danger or adventure to the new dungeons. They are beautiful, and they have great music, and yet they are relentlessly predictable. And there are obviously exceptions for every dungeon. There are moments where you feel free, but they are fleeting and often feel accidental.

All I'm doing is telling Picasso to stop painting like Da Vinci. Nothing I've said regarding the dungeon structure conflicts with Miyamoto's views of Zelda. Cutting a sign and seeing it float isn't the same as shooting an arrow at an eye to move a platform.

Come to think about it, I do very much WANT puzzles in the new Zelda! If there's no puzzles, this game more or less turns into Skyrim - which have no puzzles at all in its caves/castles. It's all combat, and I'd like at the very least SOME puzzles to give me a break from all the fighting...

Take puzzles out???

Puzzles are the best part of Zelda an the reason why the N64 Zelda's are still considered leaps and bounds better than the new ones - the puzzles were a lot more difficult.

Zelda without puzzles is just a dungeon crawler/slasher game.

Also, you want dungeons explorable in any order? that would greatly effect the amount of narrative that Nintendo can weave in. It'd turn in to a Skyrim type of character story game without a real time narrative.

The main change I want is:

1. More puzzles and specifically much more difficult puzzles.
2. More difficult combat
3. Way less hearts -make it more difficult to refill your health
4. When you die restart at the front entrance of a dungeon
5. Less empty space - there should be more to do.

It's not hard to tell you're 23.  Zelda 1 is an amazing game by virtually all standards.  I picked Zelda up soon after release and it was absolutely playable without a guide.  You had to figure things out on your own or by talking to actual real-life friends to come up with ideas.  OMG! that's horrible!  It's a hard game, as that type of game should be.

Zelda 1 is also an open-world game with fast action, secrets to find and gadgets to collect, along with state-of-the-art graphics and sound (for the day), a great mythological background and setting, and a finely crafted world to explore.  If ZeldaU takes this model it will potentially be awesome, and a bigger seller than past titles, limited only by Wii U sales.  People love those types of games... see: GTA.