Simple. Zelda Wii U will try and be the best game of all time, and Xenoblade X just never was quite at that level. In what way is that not more ambitious?

The obvious points about how Zelda will compete a level above X are the clearly superior graphics, undoubtedly superior audio, and more dynamic gameplay in an open world. Making a game like Zelda in a seamless world is much harder than making a game like X in one.

I'm sure X will be a great game (or perhaps I should say is a great game), and in terms of things like customisation and what have you it of course aims for more than Zelda - a series that isn't about that.

I guess my point is that X may be considered "more ambitious" in quantity of content, but if past Zelda titles are any indication Zelda will be more ambitious where it matters, in the quality.

Welp, Zelda U will probably have everything you listed, except voice acting. Also, realistic graphics doesn't mean better graphics. In fact, Zelda U's graphics look much better technically than XCX from what we've seen. It's not an opinion, it's common sense, the general consensus.

Should have gotten the warranty.

Well from what I've seen of Xenoblade X, even in Xenoblade Wii the characters' faces were much more expressive during cutscenes, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say character models and animations in Zelda Wii U will be leagues ahead of XenoX.

But I don't see how the games themselves are comparable, nor why 'ambition' is such a big deal.

Population doesn't matter when the assets are just copy pasted. That isn't ambition. Quantity isn't ambition. That's like saying that a 1 million word thesis is more ambitious than a 10 thousand word thesis then the former has only 1 thousand unique words repeated over and over. That's 99% of these games. It's just stretching and reusing the same assets. That's not a bad thing, but it isn't ambition. It's cutting corners.

It's not at all the same thing. You interact with literally every single item in XC the same exact way. That's not even remotely the case in WW. You open up chests, use the grappling hook to pick up sunken treasure, use the boomerang to pick up unreachable items, use the boomerang to pick up multiple items at the same time, use the grappling hook to steal items from enemies, control seagulls to pick up items for you in far away places, and break item orbs from powerful enemies.

It's completely different with fighting because, like I said, fightning is naturally more dynamic in an action game than in a game like XC when you're put into a "battle phase" and interact with a fixed battle system. I don't even have enough room on this post to intricately detail all of the different ways to tackle every enemy in WW, where as XC is just interacting with the battle system. Stat buffs and debuffs aren't even remotely dynamic. Changes in a formulaic battle system are not dynamic. You're still interacting with every enemy and the world around you in the same exact way in every situation, which isn't even the case in Zelda 1. That's an issue with like every JRPG. It's not at all an issue with Zelda games.

I don't think Monolith Soft has a "Legend of Zelda needs help" standby team, lol. Could development have started? Sure, but with part of their team missing it still would be hindered. 

That's a good question. I feel the same way.

It may have everything, but not everything will be to the extent Xenoblade X has. And which graphics look better is an opinion, lol.

Nope, it is not. You can say you like X's artstyle better, that's ok. But graphically, from what we've seen, it's a 99% consensus that Zelda looks better graphically than X.

Off the top of my head, the (final) polished art style of Zelda U will look better than Xenoblade, for sure, and the graphical fidelity in general will be gorgeous. Nintendo knows better than anyone how to squeeze amazing graphics out of their own hardware (just look at Mario Galaxy on Wii, which easily looked as impressive as most PS3 games, at least in art style and "flash"). The early, vague demo footage that we've seen, already looked, in some ways, more "organic" than Xenoblade, even if the art style is "Cartoonier".

Zelda does not need, and I would personally prefer that it not have voice acting.

We have no idea what kind of load screens Zelda U will have, but keep in mind that Twilight Princess, for example, was technically a 2005 Gamecube game that got delayed a year and released on Wii hardware. Taken in that context, it was and IS still a very technically impressive game, with some amazing lighting and some excellent enemy and boss models. It easily looked better than most Xbox games (first gen, not 360). As for loading itself, TP had a huge world for it's time, MUCH better than what we had been given in OoT and WW, but it did have load times between areas, because it had to. Hardware limitations. Wii U is not so limited. So it's very possible Zelda U might just have exactly what you described: no real load times, except or fast traveling or saving.

Zelda games are traditionally single player, and do not need any online elements.

"Fully accessible massive world: you see it, you can go there". I'm not sure if you paid attention, but that is PRECISELY what Aonuma claimed would be possible in Zelda U. That was one of the only things they DID really talk about, in otherwise very vague game information, was how big the game would be (Miyamoto stated that the entire game world of TP would fit into one corner of the overall game map  for Zelda U), and how you'd have free reign to approach things you could see on the horizon. I think that is going to be one of the selling points of this Zelda, if what Aonuma was hinting at was true, and that is a game more like Zelda 1, where you can just adventure around, and go where you please. I'm sure there will still be places you can't go until you gain a certain item, but you'll at least perhaps have the option of GETTING there and maybe dying like an idiot first. Who knows? But they have said the game world will be massive, and more of an "open world" experience.

Zelda has never been about a party of characters, as it's not a true rpg, but rather an action/adventure game.

As for crafting/customizing weapons and armor, who knows? They did introduce some kind of mechanic like that for Skyward Sword, one of the game's finer points. One would hope that will be the one mechanic from SS that caries over. But even if it doesn't, old school Zelda style where you just FIND items, is just fine.



As for how else Zelda U might be "better"? Off the top of my head, I would say gameplay and gameplay physics/mechanics. Zelda games have almost always had VERY tight controls, and very good in-game mechanics. One of the only instances of which I can say this hasn't been the case, specifically for 3D Zelda games, is that damn "auto-jump" feature that they invented for Oot. I have never personally liked that, and would LOVE for them to introduce manual jumping, or at least an ITEM that lets you manually jump (such as the feather item from Link's Awakening). Allowing the player to control jumping like that would add a whole other dimention to dungeons, to the complexity of fights/action, especially if they added some kind of wall-run or wall jumping. I'm not saying make it Mario or Prince of Persia, as jumping has never been what the Zelda series has been all about. But it certainly WAS nice to have the abiltiy to jump in Zelda II and Link's Awakening.

But regardless, I would imagine the in-world physics and mechanics of Zelda will be tighter and more polished, simply because 3D Zelda games typically have been superior in those areas over most other 3D action games.

But really, why the comparison? They're two different types of games. Both are ambitious. And both will have their fans, both will be enjoyed. So why start a thread to argue about which will be "better"? Better is subjective, and depends entirely upon what you want out of a game experience. For me personally, while I respect and admire what Monolith accomplished with the first Xenoblade, it just wasn't my type of game, gameplay-wise. It's essentially a single player MMO, in a way. Not really my thing. For me, Zelda is more my style, because I love the solid action gameplay, and I love having a huge game world to be able to roam around and explore, and if this game really IS going to bring the focus back more onto THAT element, exploring a huge world, then I'm very excited for that, so long as they don't find some dumb gimmick or some other way to muck up the works.

But that doesn't mean one game is "better" than the other.