Oblivion made me want to vomit.

Besides the fact that Nintendo just wouldn't do this, I could see increasing the texture detail being very tricky because the Wii has the same texture cache as the GC. Considering the aims of the Wii design: cheap, binary-compatible with the GC, I think Nintendo did all they really needed to increasing the clocks (especially the GPU, which got the much bigger bump), and adding some auxiliary memory... but the one bottle-neck they really needed to address and apparently didn't was the on-die GPU cache.

To me, TP was just a general disappointment. From gameplay to story and stuff. It felt like I was playing the game not because I liked the game itself, but because I liked the Zelda series. It never felt that way when I played OoT or MM. Didn't even notice that the graphics were 'outdated' until I went to game sites and forums, searching for reviews.

I'm playing through OoT now for the first time (on the VC), and while it's definitely a much harder game than TP, that's mostly because it makes a lot less sense and the controls are so much worse. The *vastness* of TP is far far beyond OoT (which feels tiny and lifeless by comparison). The only area where TP comes short of the previous games (especially MM) is in the number and depth of NPCs, which to me is the obvious direction to go with the next edition (especially since the Wii has so much more memory and especially data-storage potential, there's a lot of technical room for persistence in the world there wasn't before)

If you played OoT with the N64 controller, you wouldn't find it harder. And how does Oot make 'less' sense?

All the dungeons in Twilight Princess have a goal that's made clear up-front. With a few exceptions OoT is simply a matter of find switch, collect key, open door, find switch, collect key... ...that is to say while in Twilight Princess you generally know what you're looking for / trying to accomplish, in OoT you usually don't know what you're after until you stumble upon it. It's a subtle difference, but it makes all the difference in terms of experience IMHO (there's a lot more satisfaction for instance in solving the TP water dungeon where the goal is clear and the mechanics make sense, vs. the OoT version which is just endless trial-and-error).

A next gen game, as everyone says. The gameplay is the imporant part. Characters, depth, character detail. I mean characters, as in the number of people you interact with. I love there being hundereds of diffrent people you can talk to, each with their own unique personality. Depth. I like a game that goes beyond a short simple story. I like a story in a world. Kinda like how J. R. Tolkien did with Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is a story. A simple story. The story uses only the creatures needed. There is MUCH MUCH MUCH more than what lord of the rings uses from the story. It would be very easy to create a new epic story like lord of the rings. In the exact same world. Even Final Fantasy has created a world similar to that. Each world is diffrent in many ways, Their not all identical worlds, with a diffrent story. But the general idea is very simiar between them. Most of the monsters are the same. New art, new levels. But it follows the FF world. KillZone has created a world, and is expanding on it 6ways from sunday. Zelda, just tells the same old story, in a diffrent way. Each world zelda is in, is shallow, and simple. So little depth, so little complexity. The old zelda, A link to the past. Had dozens of characters to interact with, many citys. Compared to other games of the same timeframe. It was truely an EPIC. It was an amazing game. And is still my favorite Zelda. TP is shallow and simple. THe world is huge. But the Hirulian plains. Their a HUGE, EMPTY field. There's no ruined buildings. No weird secrets. Hundreds of monsters without any real reason to be there. The only things that make me wanna think it is an epic game. Are the bridges. That is what I want to think of zelda. That is what I expect from zelda. I wanna see a stupendus huge city. I wanna see a swamp every way you look there is something new and diffrent. TP did not give me that. I havent really liked many of the 3D versions of Zelda. I think WindWalker was my favorite tho. The art style was childish, and not my cup of tea, but getting past that, the story was GREAT, the scale of the game was GREAT. I hated the end tho. I would have assisted Gannon in restoring the world.

I kind of understand what you're talking about...although I think OOT is more about larger, overall goals. Also understand that in its time, OOT was a HUGE game...I still remember crossing that huge Hyrule Field, with the sun rising and setting...it may feel old today, but it's still my favorite game of all time.

I played the game a few years after launch, after beating Majora's mask, and still felt the same way. It truly was a perfect game. I agree with Kwaad on the 'empty Hyrule field.' It was totally barren. Basically, it was just a GIANT obsticle to the next destination. There was absolutely NOTHING to do out there if you were not a perfectionist, looking for every single bug and cave. Also, there was Kakariko village. What kind of village has a population of ONE person? (A FEW more later on, but the children weren't originally from Kakariko.) Castle town was OKAY in terms of more NPC's. It was harder, however, to find people to talk to because of the random walkbys. The thing I missed was the number of npc's that the other Zelda games had, such as Oot , MM and LttP. NPC's have a way of indirectly telling parts of the story, and it also slows down the pace of the game for the user to understand what's going on sometimes. TP just totally missed that. All the npc's were there strictly to serve a purpopse, and there was nothing else.

The over-world is full of stuff to find and mini-dungeons and whatnot if you take the time to explore. The big open fields themselves are barren, but I'm pretty sure that's the point: they're just places to race your horse around for fun. As has been stated, I think Twilight Princess is gameplay-wise (lets forget graphics) an improvement/refinement over all previous Zelda titles *except* when it comes to NPCs, where it was sorely lacking. I'd be happy to have lost a dungeon and in exchange seen more random over-world NPCs to interact with and do quests for and whatnot, but I'm sure a lot of people would disagree...