I've been recently binge-watching videos of No Man's Sky (So much so that I may actually break my rules and buy a PS4 for that game), and an interesting idea came up. I came across a thread that basically stated that No Man's Sky is what Star Fox for Wii U should be.
Now regardless of what you think of that idea, it does bring up an interesting thought. I think that for most of us, no matter how big in scale we think we've imagined Star Fox, in reality, it's been fairly tiny when you consider the setting. Let's all take a moment to remember that Star Fox is a game, primerily about flying a ship in space.
Setting aside arguments for whether on foot sections should be in Star Fox or not, it still stands to be remembered that the most powerful console to host an original Star Fox game was the GCN. In a game where the setting is supposed to be limitless, Star Fox has been extremely limited in how far he could travel.
Now that's not a criticism. No one expects a system like the gamecube to accurately potray what it feels like to explore space. But the Wii U is a different beast. Even when forgetting power, the Wii U has a tremendous amount of space (pun completely intended) compared to the GCN. You can look at something like Zelda on the Wii U, and compare it to Zelda on the GCN, and the difference in scale becomes apparent. Even looking at something like FFXII in that gen, and compare it to XCX on the Wii U, and the difference in scale becomes astronomical.
Now looking at how "space games" have evolved since then, and we see similar differences scale. We went from Star Fox Assault and Rouge Squadron to...
No Man's Sky:
Elite Dangerous:
and Star Citizen:
These kinds of games have come a long way since the GCN, and an even longer way since the N64. In an era where we are constantly complaining about companies simply making prettier versions of games that we've been playing for over a decade, the last thing I want from Star Fox is an HD version of a game I played 15 years ago.
And when I say that, in this particular case, I'm referring to it's scale. Space is supposed to be the final frontier. It's supposed to be limiteless. It would be, to me, extremely depressing if Zelda Wii U and XCX, two games that take place on the surface of a planet, feel like they dwarf the game that is set in the infinite depths of space.
The fact that that the E3 demo was using the all range mode instead of the valley mode gives me a little hope. That's not to say that I don't want the valley mode, but we are well past the age where simply having a space skybox feels like you are flying through space. There are games coming out now that literally feel like you are flying through space.
Star Fox can't just come out as this tiny, constrained experience next to these giant open behemoths. Not when it's supposed to be in space. Not in 2015. Not for $60. Again, that doesn't mean that I don't want on rails sections. That has its place, and nothing can match the cinematic experience that that brings, but when you're taken off rails, the last thing I want to feel is that I'm in this tiny bubble arena with invisible walls. Not on a system as powerful as the Wii U in 2015.
I think that we haven't gotten a console Star Fox for so long that it's starting to look like people will take anything, but we shouldn't. The industry has grown since Star Fox 64, and even Assault. If the best that can be done then is that game, but in HD, that flies in the face of everything Star Fox used to be. When it came out on the SNES, it blew people away with it's scale. When it game out on the N64, it blew people away with it's scale.
Star Fox is supposed to be about flying in space. I don't want to play this new one and be hyper aware that I am only flying in a tunnel or a bubble. I'll take all the gamepad aiming in the world if Miyamoto can recapture that feeling of flying in a boundless space fulling with infinite possibilities. It doesn't seem like that will be the case, though.
