Well forced pacing only bothers me when the default (and only) setting is 'ridiculously slow'. It just feels like you have to go through so much tedium to do any of the fun stuff. Like the tadtones thing? People actually enjoyed that? Sure, it only took half an hour, but it was one of the most boring half hours I've experienced in gaming. Not to mention why is the Water Dragon still dicking with me? How much more shit do I need to do to 'prove' myself?
I will say the repeated boss fights don't bother me much. Zelda has always gotten bosses down pretty good and I'll be happy to try out the Boss Rush I've heard about once I get to it.
I mean, I get where you're coming from. Change too much and it's not a 'Zelda' game. However, it doesn't feel like anything has changed. I'd love to see what RE4-reimagning of gameplay would do in a series like Zelda. Chances are it won't happen, but I can dream.
Also, I'm only arguing about this cause I actually like the series and want it to grow. I just feel like it hasn't been.
... Twilight Princess_> Skyward Sword has more radical changes to gameplay than RE3->4 I'd say to be honest. The motion controls and emphasis on precision, the lack of pausing when switching items and weapons, the upgrade system and shield health are far more meaningful to me than RE4's "Now we have over the shoulder cam instead of fixed cam. Here are a few Quick Time Events. Also you can aim by locking yourself in place." I mean, it didn't change much if anything in the other areas of the game. Things like inventory, weapons and the like worked almost identically to how they did in old Resident Evils. So I guess I'm not sure what further changes you would want. Could you give an example?
RE1-3 to RE4 went from a slow, survival horror based gameplay to a fast and tense action game with upgrading weapons and an emphasis on combat.
What I would like in the next Zelda game:
Make it dark. Not blood and gore dark, but dark. Something akin to OoT future world where everyone is just miserable because the big bad has won or whatnot. The last two sub-villains in Zelda have felt a bit over-the-top and cartoony. I don't mind that, but I would love to see a villain who you would fear more than chuckle at. Perhaps start the game in the future where shit has hit the fan and you're a prisoner/slave and you find out that you can go to the past to fix things.
Focus on making the swordplay better. What they did in SS was nice and I won't complain about it, but Zelda's sword play has always felt rather shallow compared to, say, God of War's combo system. Though I dislike WW immensely, I seem to recall it had a more dynamic/meaty feeling combat system. I wouldn't mind seeing a Link who fought more 'violently' - hobbling someone with a cut to the knee (bloodless, probably) and then a head/neck slash (bloodless, again). Just cause he's the Hero of Time (tm) doesn't mean he has to prance around enemies so much.
Make the shops smarter. Let you buy X amount of arrows/bombs/etc instead of a pre-set bundle. If you want to buy a potion, you just go up, hit A, you have it. No being talked to, no lifting it above your head with an explanation of what it does, just.. boom, in your inventory. Give an option to 'put back' an item in a chest if you're already maxed/near maxed on it. "You have looted 300 rupees.. but you can only hold 19. Hold off?" I don't think I like the whole capacity upgrades/medal thing they have going in SS, but I don't hate it either. I'd kind of prefer medals just be something you have on you rather than taking a limited space.
At the start difficulty settings. Normal and hard would be fine. From what I've read of it, Hero Mode sounds like a decent stab at a harder difficulty. Also, more than 3 save slots. Not, like, 100 but perhaps something like 10.
Out of the main game gameplay. Stuff like a Boss Rush mode, or a theatre, or jukebox, etc. Sometimes I just wanna watch a cutscene, dammit! Also pausing and skippable cutscenes! Also, the ability to blaze through text, even if it requires you've seen it once already.
I'll probably think of more, but that's a good start.
I'll agree with you on the text thing, if only to stop the bitching about it on the internet, but making Zelda a more violent and dark affair seems really pointless and gratuitous. Games like God of War, Darksiders and the like fill the 'Darker and Grittier" Zelda mold already and I'm not sure Nintendo would make a good dark game anyways. Part of Zelda's charm has always been the weird and goofy stuff anyways, like the monster handing out money in Zelda 1 with the "Its a secret to everyone!" all the way to Beedle or Tingle. Even in the darkest games, like Majora's Mask, you do things like race a Beaver with a swimming ring on and defend cows from being abducted by aliens.
I also though Giraham was pretty threatening and malevolent, especially in the way his fighting style changed up every time you fought him as he got progressively more pissed off at you. He is over the top, but that doesn't really stop him from being a genuinely interesting and threatening villain considering how active he is in comparison to Link's usual foes.
The shop stuff I'll agree with, even though I do like the flavor from the shop owners, if the series places a higher emphasis on actually buying things in the future. And I like the 'lifting it above your head' thing, but I don't really care too much about it.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
edited December 2011
Just make it an option. Something like 'Cinematic' versus 'Quick' or whatnot.
Also, I'm not saying it has to be super violent but I wouldn't mind a juxtaposition between combat being serious and deep and the social stuff being light-hearted and comical.
I think I can explain why I don't like the motivation in this game now. There's too much of a disconnect between your short term goals and your long term goals, which means there are too many steps between the actions you are taking at any given moment, and the overall goal of the game.
The overall goal is to save Zelda/defeat the big bad, right? And the first dungeon is pretty good about this: Zelda's in a dungeon, so's the big bad, and you head in and try to win. Then Zelda leaves for some reason, and now you've got to go to another place and save Zelda/defeat the big bad. Almost as if the entire first dungeon were useless... And this feeling that my actions were useless came up again a few times.
The problem really starts later though. Zelda is off in some other realm, we need to go through a gate of time to find her. OK, here's a gate, but now we need to upgrade the sword to get there. The dragons will let us upgrade the sword, but now we need to 'increase our spirituality' to meet the dragon to collect the tadtones to prove ourselves to the dragon to even get into the dungeon, where we can upgrade our sword so we can save Zelda. It's all so disconnected, such a tenuous chain of motivations that I couldn't even put together as I was playing it. Also, since the entire game's motivation is to save Zelda, there's no satisfaction of partially completing the goals. In OoT or MM (I use these for examples because they're the most vivid in my memory) every time you complete a dungeon, a whole area changes, and you get the reward of seeing the benefit of your actions to the area and the people in it. In OoT, every dungeon involved saving a small town/village in general, and one person in particular. Divorce these dungeons entirely from the rest of the game and you still have motivation for them: save Saria from the Forest Temple, and return Kokiri village to normal, etc.The dungeons in SS don't have any intrinsic value, it's just 'Rescue Zelda oh wait she's already gone', or 'upgrade your sword'.
SS has no strong short-term goals.
My other three main complaints are:
You make no meaningful decisions: there is exactly one thing you are meant to do at any given point, on a macro scale (go to this area, find dungeon, finish dungeon) and a micro scale (in every area there is the entrance, your goal, and the path you have to take to get from one to the other).
The difficulty is just far too easy, which I am sure is good for new players but does not help to retain existing players. I was on auto-pilot for around 90% of the game, and the... maybe two or three times I was confused, it turned out that the game was not explaining something clearly, so I misunderstood my goals. Misunderstanding goals is normally a problem in communication, not a clever puzzle. This ties in to the lack of meaningful choices: any time I walked into a room I could see an option open to me, like hookshotting to a place or shooting a switch. I'd do that, and exactly one more option would open up. I never actually solved these puzzles, I was just performing trivially easy actions one after the other, and eventually this solved the puzzle. It was like solving a rubik's cube that wouldn't let you move it in any way other than one that brought you closer to solving it: no matter what I did I was slowly brought closer to solving it, without even trying.
The game took control away from me too often. Hitting a switch leads to me losing control, and the camera moves over to show me what's just happened. Pick up a treasure in a fight, and I lose control while it tells me what it is. Fi wants to say something, and because there's no voice acting she can't just talk while I move, I have to stop and watch her text slowly come up on screen. I would be very interested to see someone play this and compare the amount of time they have control to the time they don't, over the course of the game, and compare that ratio to other games. This would definitely be on the jRPG end of the spectrum.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Zelda is the only series that I can think of off the top of my head that continuously reminds you what an item does. I mean, yes, if you pick up the same item twice (off the ground) in one playtime it won't remind you, but it 'forgets' every time you reload. That's gotta stop.
It doesn't even tell you what the item does, it just gives a flavor description. I would like to see in the menu what each item can be used to upgrade.
If you don't hate me enough after that one, could you tell me how in the heck I'm supposed to properly use the Wiimote to steer my bird while flying?
Spent like 15 minutes on that one challenge, and couldn't get it to veer left no matter what I did.
Also, when pushing the d-pad to center the Wiimote, should I be pointing at the center of my TV, or at the sensor itself? Should I also be extending my elbow out, or just rest it comfortably like normal?
The first time you center it on boot-up I think it requires you to point at the screen because it uses the sensor bar. After that you can point wherever the heck you want.
There I was, 3DS: 2621-2671-9899 (Ekera), Wii U: LostCrescendo
Hmm, so it doesn't matter where it's actually pointing?
I also wonder when it boots up and asks that it be put on a "flat surface" if it actually has to sit on something hard and flat. I play games sitting on my bed, so maybe if I set it on my desk it would work better.
Anyway, I haven't left the starting area yet (but I got my tunic so it should be happening in mere minutes), but I can safely say one thing:
The interaction with Link and Zelda is the highest tier of D'awwwwwwwwww.
It's like the bizzaro version of their relationship in the cartoon. It's just so adorable.
The problem with voice acting is that it really only takes one bad performance to ruin it completely. I don't mind voice acting done right, I just think that the Zelda series doesn't need it. Allow us to speed up/skip the text dialogue and no one will complain as much.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
This game is really good at facial expressions and body language. There's nothing quite like it even on the HD twins. I want to see what Nintendo can do with the Wii U.
I think I can explain why I don't like the motivation in this game now. There's too much of a disconnect between your short term goals and your long term goals, which means there are too many steps between the actions you are taking at any given moment, and the overall goal of the game. <snip>
Great post. The most blatant offender was needing to go to the back door of a warehouse through some contrived mini-game just because the front door was locked. In the end you find out it was all pointless. Not too long after that, when you hunt and shoot down a moving invisible object, it'll stop after you inflict enough damage; only it doesn't stop in that specific location, it will magically transport to a fixed location. You're initially unaware of this until you leave the location, possibly after a few hours, so they assume you forget about it. It's all so devoid of causality.
I think the only time my actions mattered for the people inhabiting the 'dungeon' areas was when I rescued the mogmas. The kikwis didn't even mind being flooded, the third race were kind of being dicks op top of being nonexistant without some switch and the water dragon was just being the water dragon. When you see Zora's Fountain is frozen, you actually feel for the zoras and their king. When a dragon is terrorizing the gorons, you want to help the lovable lumps. I didn't even mind the screaming goron baby in Majora's Mask.
The complaint about confusing puzzles though, I don't quite agree with. Take for example the puzzle where you have to line up pieces of a bridge. Despite the initial confusion of how it works, it wasn't a bad puzzle at all. If it was explained to me clearly, it would have taken 2 minutes tops instead of properly thinking how to solve it and creating a eureka moment. This goes in-line with all the handholding complaints. You can't have it both ways. Puzzles can be 100% not confusing, but then solving it is just a matter of time, like a sliding block puzzle, and we all know how we feel about those.
Going back to Ocarina of Time, the Water Temple is one giant soul-crushing puzzle. Would it have been as soul-crushing though if a certain key wasn't hidden extremely well, making you look everywhere, constantly raising and lowering the water level, when it's right under your nose quite literally?
Focus on making the swordplay better. What they did in SS was nice and I won't complain about it, but Zelda's sword play has always felt rather shallow compared to, say, God of War's combo system. Though I dislike WW immensely, I seem to recall it had a more dynamic/meaty feeling combat system. I wouldn't mind seeing a Link who fought more 'violently' - hobbling someone with a cut to the knee (bloodless, probably) and then a head/neck slash (bloodless, again). Just cause he's the Hero of Time (tm) doesn't mean he has to prance around enemies so much.
Man, what? I cannot disagree with this more. In God of War you press QTE buttons to do the things you're talking about. It's barely interactive. I hate games like that, I feel like QTEs are a total step backward for gameplay. I have nothing against challenging twitch gameplay, I loved Devil May Cry 3 (way better than GoW, imo), but Skyward Sword's combat is so much deeper and more vicarious.
I thought it could have been *harder.* Enemies could attack faster, less telegraphing, enemies do more damage. But I think you're drastically undercutting the complexity of SS's combat here. And maybe you simply didn't like the motion controls as much as I did, but I can't express how awesome it was to hold up the controller to charge up my sword right as a bokoblin held up his taser.
Other than that, I agree with a lot of your other points. The series really should let go of a lot of the traditions. But I don't think those traditions are that important to the game to begin with. The core of Zelda games has always been about control, about feeling immersed in these labyrinthine environments and feeling like you're really having swordfights, and Skyward Sword's motion controls are the biggest leap in that department since Ocarina of Time.
I think I can explain why I don't like the motivation in this game now. There's too much of a disconnect between your short term goals and your long term goals, which means there are too many steps between the actions you are taking at any given moment, and the overall goal of the game.
I agree, but I think the real disconnect here is how Nintendo sees Zelda and the expectations of people like yourself have for Zelda. Lots of people seem to think that a central part of the Zelda experience is the story, the exploration of wide-open worlds and making impactful decisions. This is probably informed by games that do this well like Skyrim or Bioware games.
But Nintendo seems to think of Zelda as closer to the Mario series than Skyrim. Like Mario, the setting, plot and goals in a Zelda game are afterthoughts concocted after-the-fact to wrap around fundamental gameplay ideas. The reason there are ancient robots in Skyward Sword, for example, is because they thought of the Beetle's design and gameplay first.
My view is that Zelda either needs to go all the way with story, or just forget about it entirely. I've stopped caring about the story in Zelda. I play Zelda games entirely for the gameplay. I don't care about making overarching choices or Link's supposed motivation, I just want to explore ancient palaces and have awesome swordfights. So for me the story has become dead weight, like if you were playing a Mario game and had to hold down A for 5 hours between gameplay to scroll through text about the machinations of the court of the Mushroom Kingdom.
Clearly a lot of other people really do play Zelda for the story and want RPG-like interactivity and freedom. I don't begrudge this desire ... I just think you need to keep in mind the tradeoffs you're asking for. If you want the Zelda folks to put significant time and effort into story, interactivity, presenting significant choices and freedom to the player—instead of treating these things as afterthoughts to fundamental gameplay—you're also asking them to spend *less* time focusing on the fundamentals.
Qingu on
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Focus on making the swordplay better. What they did in SS was nice and I won't complain about it, but Zelda's sword play has always felt rather shallow compared to, say, God of War's combo system. Though I dislike WW immensely, I seem to recall it had a more dynamic/meaty feeling combat system. I wouldn't mind seeing a Link who fought more 'violently' - hobbling someone with a cut to the knee (bloodless, probably) and then a head/neck slash (bloodless, again). Just cause he's the Hero of Time (tm) doesn't mean he has to prance around enemies so much.
Man, what? I cannot disagree with this more. In God of War you press QTE buttons to do the things you're talking about. It's barely interactive. I hate games like that, I feel like QTEs are a total step backward for gameplay. I have nothing against challenging twitch gameplay, I loved Devil May Cry 3 (way better than GoW, imo), but Skyward Sword's combat is so much deeper and more vicarious.
I thought it could have been *harder.* Enemies could attack faster, less telegraphing, enemies do more damage. But I think you're drastically undercutting the complexity of SS's combat here. And maybe you simply didn't like the motion controls as much as I did, but I can't express how awesome it was to hold up the controller to charge up my sword right as a bokoblin held up his taser.
Other than that, I agree with a lot of your other points. The series really should let go of a lot of the traditions. But I don't think those traditions are that important to the game to begin with. The core of Zelda games has always been about control, about feeling immersed in these labyrinthine environments and feeling like you're really having swordfights, and Skyward Sword's motion controls are the biggest leap in that department since Ocarina of Time.
I was very much not talking about how you end up killing bosses in GoW. I meant the general combat. Even with the motion controls, all you really do is swing your sword in some direction and occasionally block. There's very little difference between fight singular enemies and multiple ones. Hell, fighting multiple ones is a pain since they'll often block your single AOE attack.
I was very much not talking about how you end up killing bosses in GoW. I meant the general combat. Even with the motion controls, all you really do is swing your sword in some direction and occasionally block. There's very little difference between fight singular enemies and multiple ones. Hell, fighting multiple ones is a pain since they'll often block your single AOE attack.
But ... what? I mean, what you said applies even more to general combat in GoW or DMC. Except you don't even have to think about which way you swing your weapons, so it's even less complex.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
It's more about the dodging and blocking that you HAVE to do in GoW to survive. There's no urgency to combat in Zelda (IMO, of course). Combat just doesn't feel very responsive to me in SS, but I understand if people disagree with me on that.
A lot of people don't feel they are 'fighting the controls' though. I totally get why some people don't like motion controls but both people who do and don't like em need to at least understand the other side of the argument.
There I was, 3DS: 2621-2671-9899 (Ekera), Wii U: LostCrescendo
It's more about the dodging and blocking that you HAVE to do in GoW to survive. There's no urgency to combat in Zelda (IMO, of course). Combat just doesn't feel very responsive to me in SS, but I understand if people disagree with me on that.
Hrmph! This is why I tell people to not pick up heart containers! It doesn't feel urgent because you take half as much damage as you should.
A lot of people don't feel they are 'fighting the controls' though. I totally get why some people don't like motion controls but both people who do and don't like em need to at least understand the other side of the argument.
Even if they were tighter, the fact remains that motion controls will never be as responsive as just hitting buttons.
I think I can explain why I don't like the motivation in this game now. There's too much of a disconnect between your short term goals and your long term goals, which means there are too many steps between the actions you are taking at any given moment, and the overall goal of the game. <snip>
The complaint about confusing puzzles though, I don't quite agree with. Take for example the puzzle where you have to line up pieces of a bridge. Despite the initial confusion of how it works, it wasn't a bad puzzle at all. If it was explained to me clearly, it would have taken 2 minutes tops instead of properly thinking how to solve it and creating a eureka moment. This goes in-line with all the handholding complaints. You can't have it both ways. Puzzles can be 100% not confusing, but then solving it is just a matter of time, like a sliding block puzzle, and we all know how we feel about those.
Can I just clarify here, I'm not saying that the only difficult challenges were when I was confused about what I was meant to do, I mean that most of the game was easy, and a lot of what wasn't was due to poor communication. I think that bridge building puzzle is one of the few good puzzles. What I meant about poor communication is like the room where a hint says there's one switch above, one below, and I find a switch below me, so I spend a while hunting for a switch above me, only to finally learn the hint was referring to a different room.
I would love more puzzles like the water temple, or like that bridge. Confusing me is good, confusing me through poor communication isn't.
So I've been fucking around on my brother's wii shop trying to get his netflix to update and I noticed that SS has a save file patch for the glitch. Pretty cool.
I'm not that much of a technical person but I don't see how that is a fact. Unless it's like a fighting game I doubt that translating a motion into a movement through a wireless controller is that much more laggy than any other wireless controller. Plus you can not do some things with a traditional controller that you can with motion control (and vice versa to be fair). I don't see how Skyward Sword could have possibly been done with a regular controller and I don't think that traditional Zelda controls or something ripped off from another game like God of War would have worked as good in SS.
I would imagine the next handheld Zelda will be a traditional affair since I think Nintendo will go for 3D effects rather than touch screen controls this time around. Though I guess you could do sword slices without looking at the screen, would still be a problem for non-sword stuff.
Re: Puzzles. You're going to have to be more specific because I can't think of a puzzle in SS that was 'confusing' in the manner you're talking about.
Dritz on
There I was, 3DS: 2621-2671-9899 (Ekera), Wii U: LostCrescendo
I'm not that much of a technical person but I don't see how that is a fact. Unless it's like a fighting game I doubt that translating a motion into a movement through a wireless controller is that much more laggy than any other wireless controller. Plus you can not do some things with a traditional controller that you can with motion control (and vice versa to be fair). I don't see how Skyward Sword could have possibly been done with a regular controller and I don't think that traditional Zelda controls or something ripped off from another game like God of War would have worked as good in SS.
I would imagine the next handheld Zelda will be a traditional affair since I think Nintendo will go for 3D effects rather than touch screen controls this time around. Though I guess you could do sword slices without looking at the screen, would still be a problem for non-sword stuff.
Re: Puzzles. You're going to have to be more specific because I can't think of a puzzle in SS that was 'confusing' in the manner you're talking about.
I dont have the quote, but in an interview concerning OoT one of the people on the dev team (dont remember who) said he couldnt spill specifics, but the next 3Ds venture they are going to try and utilize the gyro controls on a new level.
Wich is bad news for me as I am a fan of the classic button pushing, analog moving controls
3DS Friend code-2578-3543-8236 | Xbox GT- IceShot22
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
What you gain in 'direct control' over, say, your sword movements via the WiiMote, you lose out in the split second reliability of blocking via a button or whatnot. For example, if SS required the response times GoW2 did for Titan difficulty in terms of block and dodging, I'm fairly sure it would be almost impossible to do since you can only move so fast with the movement controls in rapid succession.
What I meant about poor communication is like the room where a hint says there's one switch above, one below, and I find a switch below me, so I spend a while hunting for a switch above me, only to finally learn the hint was referring to a different room.
I need to see an exact transcript of this message because I remember it being incredibly obvious as to exactly what it was referring to.
I dont have the quote, but in an interview concerning OoT one of the people on the dev team (dont remember who) said he couldnt spill specifics, but the next 3Ds venture they are going to try and utilize the gyro controls on a new level.
Wich is bad news for me as I am a fan of the classic button pushing, analog moving controls
I doubt this is true. You may be mis-remembering another quote, something about how Skyward Sword was going to be the "last traditional Zelda?"
Gyro controls on the 3DS won't really get in the way of traditional controls. Judging by TP and SS aiming with motion controls is the one thing I'll outright say someone is crazy for not liking. Other motion control stuff is preference but I'm pretty sure aiming is an objective fact*.
*
Only slightly hyperbole
There I was, 3DS: 2621-2671-9899 (Ekera), Wii U: LostCrescendo
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Funny thing is, I would've much preferred to swim/fly by pointing with the Wiimote instead of tilting it.
I doubt this is true. You may be mis-remembering another quote, something about how Skyward Sword was going to be the "last traditional Zelda?"
Ive been looking for the interview and cant find it, But I def remember seeing this. They didnt have any specifics so who knows what they mean by groundbreaking. I do remember it being a translated interview, so the site I was at may have messed something up there, but I do remember reading this... somewhere.
3DS Friend code-2578-3543-8236 | Xbox GT- IceShot22
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
I thought TP was supposed to be the last traditional Zelda?
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I'll agree with you on the text thing, if only to stop the bitching about it on the internet, but making Zelda a more violent and dark affair seems really pointless and gratuitous. Games like God of War, Darksiders and the like fill the 'Darker and Grittier" Zelda mold already and I'm not sure Nintendo would make a good dark game anyways. Part of Zelda's charm has always been the weird and goofy stuff anyways, like the monster handing out money in Zelda 1 with the "Its a secret to everyone!" all the way to Beedle or Tingle. Even in the darkest games, like Majora's Mask, you do things like race a Beaver with a swimming ring on and defend cows from being abducted by aliens.
I also though Giraham was pretty threatening and malevolent, especially in the way his fighting style changed up every time you fought him as he got progressively more pissed off at you. He is over the top, but that doesn't really stop him from being a genuinely interesting and threatening villain considering how active he is in comparison to Link's usual foes.
The shop stuff I'll agree with, even though I do like the flavor from the shop owners, if the series places a higher emphasis on actually buying things in the future. And I like the 'lifting it above your head' thing, but I don't really care too much about it.
Also, I'm not saying it has to be super violent but I wouldn't mind a juxtaposition between combat being serious and deep and the social stuff being light-hearted and comical.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
The problem really starts later though. Zelda is off in some other realm, we need to go through a gate of time to find her. OK, here's a gate, but now we need to upgrade the sword to get there. The dragons will let us upgrade the sword, but now we need to 'increase our spirituality' to meet the dragon to collect the tadtones to prove ourselves to the dragon to even get into the dungeon, where we can upgrade our sword so we can save Zelda. It's all so disconnected, such a tenuous chain of motivations that I couldn't even put together as I was playing it. Also, since the entire game's motivation is to save Zelda, there's no satisfaction of partially completing the goals. In OoT or MM (I use these for examples because they're the most vivid in my memory) every time you complete a dungeon, a whole area changes, and you get the reward of seeing the benefit of your actions to the area and the people in it. In OoT, every dungeon involved saving a small town/village in general, and one person in particular. Divorce these dungeons entirely from the rest of the game and you still have motivation for them: save Saria from the Forest Temple, and return Kokiri village to normal, etc.The dungeons in SS don't have any intrinsic value, it's just 'Rescue Zelda oh wait she's already gone', or 'upgrade your sword'.
SS has no strong short-term goals.
My other three main complaints are:
You make no meaningful decisions: there is exactly one thing you are meant to do at any given point, on a macro scale (go to this area, find dungeon, finish dungeon) and a micro scale (in every area there is the entrance, your goal, and the path you have to take to get from one to the other).
The difficulty is just far too easy, which I am sure is good for new players but does not help to retain existing players. I was on auto-pilot for around 90% of the game, and the... maybe two or three times I was confused, it turned out that the game was not explaining something clearly, so I misunderstood my goals. Misunderstanding goals is normally a problem in communication, not a clever puzzle. This ties in to the lack of meaningful choices: any time I walked into a room I could see an option open to me, like hookshotting to a place or shooting a switch. I'd do that, and exactly one more option would open up. I never actually solved these puzzles, I was just performing trivially easy actions one after the other, and eventually this solved the puzzle. It was like solving a rubik's cube that wouldn't let you move it in any way other than one that brought you closer to solving it: no matter what I did I was slowly brought closer to solving it, without even trying.
The game took control away from me too often. Hitting a switch leads to me losing control, and the camera moves over to show me what's just happened. Pick up a treasure in a fight, and I lose control while it tells me what it is. Fi wants to say something, and because there's no voice acting she can't just talk while I move, I have to stop and watch her text slowly come up on screen. I would be very interested to see someone play this and compare the amount of time they have control to the time they don't, over the course of the game, and compare that ratio to other games. This would definitely be on the jRPG end of the spectrum.
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It should help soften the blow on my latest article: http://blamethelag.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/ten-things-i-hate-about-the-legend-of-zelda-the-wind-waker/
If you don't hate me enough after that one, could you tell me how in the heck I'm supposed to properly use the Wiimote to steer my bird while flying?
Spent like 15 minutes on that one challenge, and couldn't get it to veer left no matter what I did.
Also, when pushing the d-pad to center the Wiimote, should I be pointing at the center of my TV, or at the sensor itself? Should I also be extending my elbow out, or just rest it comfortably like normal?
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I also wonder when it boots up and asks that it be put on a "flat surface" if it actually has to sit on something hard and flat. I play games sitting on my bed, so maybe if I set it on my desk it would work better.
Anyway, I haven't left the starting area yet (but I got my tunic so it should be happening in mere minutes), but I can safely say one thing:
The interaction with Link and Zelda is the highest tier of D'awwwwwwwwww.
It's like the bizzaro version of their relationship in the cartoon. It's just so adorable.
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Also the first boss fight was insanely intense.
It's funny....on the one hand, there are several occasions where I wish Nintendo would quit being so old fashioned and go the full voiceover route.
But there are also many scenes where you could make a case that it isn't necessary, particularly most scenes with Link by his lonesome.
For a mute character, you can easily tell what's going on in Link's head just by his silent observations.
It makes his interactions with Zelda all the more heartwarming, and it especially made the scene after
really powerful.
You can totally feel the hurt he's feeling.
It might be a slow start, but damn if it isn't an emotionally powerful one.
Also listened to the Anniversary soundtrack.
Almost got weepy eyed when they started playing the Dark World theme.
So excellent. :^:
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Great post. The most blatant offender was needing to go to the back door of a warehouse through some contrived mini-game just because the front door was locked. In the end you find out it was all pointless. Not too long after that, when you hunt and shoot down a moving invisible object, it'll stop after you inflict enough damage; only it doesn't stop in that specific location, it will magically transport to a fixed location. You're initially unaware of this until you leave the location, possibly after a few hours, so they assume you forget about it. It's all so devoid of causality.
I think the only time my actions mattered for the people inhabiting the 'dungeon' areas was when I rescued the mogmas. The kikwis didn't even mind being flooded, the third race were kind of being dicks op top of being nonexistant without some switch and the water dragon was just being the water dragon. When you see Zora's Fountain is frozen, you actually feel for the zoras and their king. When a dragon is terrorizing the gorons, you want to help the lovable lumps. I didn't even mind the screaming goron baby in Majora's Mask.
The complaint about confusing puzzles though, I don't quite agree with. Take for example the puzzle where you have to line up pieces of a bridge. Despite the initial confusion of how it works, it wasn't a bad puzzle at all. If it was explained to me clearly, it would have taken 2 minutes tops instead of properly thinking how to solve it and creating a eureka moment. This goes in-line with all the handholding complaints. You can't have it both ways. Puzzles can be 100% not confusing, but then solving it is just a matter of time, like a sliding block puzzle, and we all know how we feel about those.
Going back to Ocarina of Time, the Water Temple is one giant soul-crushing puzzle. Would it have been as soul-crushing though if a certain key wasn't hidden extremely well, making you look everywhere, constantly raising and lowering the water level, when it's right under your nose quite literally?
I thought it could have been *harder.* Enemies could attack faster, less telegraphing, enemies do more damage. But I think you're drastically undercutting the complexity of SS's combat here. And maybe you simply didn't like the motion controls as much as I did, but I can't express how awesome it was to hold up the controller to charge up my sword right as a bokoblin held up his taser.
Other than that, I agree with a lot of your other points. The series really should let go of a lot of the traditions. But I don't think those traditions are that important to the game to begin with. The core of Zelda games has always been about control, about feeling immersed in these labyrinthine environments and feeling like you're really having swordfights, and Skyward Sword's motion controls are the biggest leap in that department since Ocarina of Time.
But Nintendo seems to think of Zelda as closer to the Mario series than Skyrim. Like Mario, the setting, plot and goals in a Zelda game are afterthoughts concocted after-the-fact to wrap around fundamental gameplay ideas. The reason there are ancient robots in Skyward Sword, for example, is because they thought of the Beetle's design and gameplay first.
My view is that Zelda either needs to go all the way with story, or just forget about it entirely. I've stopped caring about the story in Zelda. I play Zelda games entirely for the gameplay. I don't care about making overarching choices or Link's supposed motivation, I just want to explore ancient palaces and have awesome swordfights. So for me the story has become dead weight, like if you were playing a Mario game and had to hold down A for 5 hours between gameplay to scroll through text about the machinations of the court of the Mushroom Kingdom.
Clearly a lot of other people really do play Zelda for the story and want RPG-like interactivity and freedom. I don't begrudge this desire ... I just think you need to keep in mind the tradeoffs you're asking for. If you want the Zelda folks to put significant time and effort into story, interactivity, presenting significant choices and freedom to the player—instead of treating these things as afterthoughts to fundamental gameplay—you're also asking them to spend *less* time focusing on the fundamentals.
I was very much not talking about how you end up killing bosses in GoW. I meant the general combat. Even with the motion controls, all you really do is swing your sword in some direction and occasionally block. There's very little difference between fight singular enemies and multiple ones. Hell, fighting multiple ones is a pain since they'll often block your single AOE attack.
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Even if they were tighter, the fact remains that motion controls will never be as responsive as just hitting buttons.
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Can I just clarify here, I'm not saying that the only difficult challenges were when I was confused about what I was meant to do, I mean that most of the game was easy, and a lot of what wasn't was due to poor communication. I think that bridge building puzzle is one of the few good puzzles. What I meant about poor communication is like the room where a hint says there's one switch above, one below, and I find a switch below me, so I spend a while hunting for a switch above me, only to finally learn the hint was referring to a different room.
I would love more puzzles like the water temple, or like that bridge. Confusing me is good, confusing me through poor communication isn't.
I would imagine the next handheld Zelda will be a traditional affair since I think Nintendo will go for 3D effects rather than touch screen controls this time around. Though I guess you could do sword slices without looking at the screen, would still be a problem for non-sword stuff.
Re: Puzzles. You're going to have to be more specific because I can't think of a puzzle in SS that was 'confusing' in the manner you're talking about.
I dont have the quote, but in an interview concerning OoT one of the people on the dev team (dont remember who) said he couldnt spill specifics, but the next 3Ds venture they are going to try and utilize the gyro controls on a new level.
Wich is bad news for me as I am a fan of the classic button pushing, analog moving controls
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I need to see an exact transcript of this message because I remember it being incredibly obvious as to exactly what it was referring to.
I doubt this is true. You may be mis-remembering another quote, something about how Skyward Sword was going to be the "last traditional Zelda?"
Some of them are ridiculously unnecessary, but not really confusing.
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Ive been looking for the interview and cant find it, But I def remember seeing this. They didnt have any specifics so who knows what they mean by groundbreaking. I do remember it being a translated interview, so the site I was at may have messed something up there, but I do remember reading this... somewhere.
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