you can have a dark world without turning into a wolf
i mean bunny Link was cute but I was pretty happy when I got to play true Link
So it's just cosmetics then? Considering wolf Link actually controlled better than normal Link due to his extra speed.
At the cost of being a wolf and all of the quadrupedal, completely unarmed suckiness that entails.
You mean completely as powerful as when you have a sword?
I guess you don't get to use arrows and such, but it's designed so you don't need them in wolf form.
You're much less powerful, to the point where you can cheese the wolf section of the Ganondorf fight by changing back to human while he's down. Your damage is reasonably scaled to the fact that you're biting things instead of hitting them with sharp pieces of metal.
You generally never want to take the wolf form into real combat unless you're forced to.
You're much less powerful, to the point where you can cheese the wolf section of the Ganondorf fight by changing back to human while he's down. Your damage is reasonably scaled to the fact that you're biting things instead of hitting them with sharp pieces of metal.
You generally never want to take the wolf form into real combat unless you're forced to.
That's only late in the game, for the rest of the game leading up to that point (when you don't have the most powerful weapon in the game) you're not at any disadvantage. Even if there was a section where enemies took one extra hit to kill, there was one less enemy present to balance things out.
The final boss in WW is set up brilliantly. The entire game was built towards a clash between our hero and the antagonist. Coupled with the entire ocean gushing down it's nothing short of epic.
In TP, the final boss shows up out of nowhere, says a few lines we've all heard before and transports to an open plain that has nothing to do with the rest of the game.
I'm sorry, but you have terrible tastes. No nostalgia in the world would detract from this fact.
WW builds up, well, yes, but the actual fight is badly designed and unsatisfying.
TP's has a lot more depth.
I'm talking about game design here, not story.
No zelda has a story worth bothering to analyse, except possibly MM.
This is 100% nonsense right here.
None of the stories in the Zelda games are James Joyce, obviously. But just because there's "nothing worth bothering to analyze" doesn't suddenly mean that the story doesn't matter.
No matter how banal and simplistic, the story carries an important role in a game. It provides context to your actions and infuses the gameplay with emotional significance. Even if you don't have enough to write out a 10-page essay, the story is an important element because it evokes emotion. Gameplay can evoke emotion too, but generally it's limited to only a few, like triumph and frustration.
Perfect example. Consider the ending of MGS3, where you have to kill The Boss. The gameplay there is incredibly simple: push a single button, and you win the mini-game. Stripped of the story surrounding that moment, the scene isn't anything at all. But because of the emotion evoked by the narrative, and what we know about the relationship between these two characters, it becomes a heavily charged moment. A lot of players hesitate at first.
I picked that example because it's the simplest and most obvious I can think of, but I'm sure it doesn't count for some reason or that MGS3's ridiculous story is somehow "worth bothering to analyze" so let's go back to Zelda. In OoT, you spend the first chunk of the game seeing Hyrule as a fairly idyllic place. Then Ganon gets the triforce and everything goes to shit. You spend the bulk of the game exploring the ravaged remnants of Link's childhood, interacting with all the people that Ganondorf has fucked over. What's worse, you're powerless to help. The best you can hope to do is ensure that, eventually, things will be alright again. You can allow the new Deku sapling to grow, but who knows how long before it can actually protect the forest. You can kill Morpha, but Zora's Domain remains frozen over. So, after seeing all the shit that Ganon has pulled, it's time to fight him. You fight him with the knowledge that he's the one that's done all this, who's killed or traumatized all those kind people that helped you on your journey when you were a child. It adds meaning to your actions and gives you a reason to hate that character other than because "he's the bad guy."
WW's a somewhat different story. Most of the bad things that you see in that game aren't directly the work of Ganon. If it's your first Zelda, all you know about this guy is that he was once powerful and evil enough that the gods saw fit to bury him under an ocean of water, and that somehow he's survived and is working to reclaim his former glory. He's kidnapping young girls, and he kidnapped your sister, because one of them might possibly be a key player in a conflict they don't know anything about. You face him halfway through hand it's a complete joke. He had the power and the will to slaughter you then and there, and you only survive because of dumb luck. He's a scary guy, and the main sources of exposition all constantly warn you that he will fuck shit up if you let him. Then, at the end, you get to him, and you see another side of this villain that's been menacing you the entire time. He's tired, and old, and desperate to win a fight that he's been predestined to lose over and over for all eternity. In the end he's not even interested in conquering Hyrule. He's suicidal, and wants to kill every element of legend, Zelda and Hyrule, along with himself, so that he can finally rest. You're not fighting to protect the people on the surface in the end, they'll all be fine. You're fighting to protect yourself and to protect Zelda, two children who this lunatic wants to murder. The impact of the fight doesn't come from the gameplay, because like you said, it's fairly simple. It comes from the fact that, if the narrative has done its job right, you've become attached to Tetra/Zelda and want to save her. In a way it almost serves the story that the fight's so easy, because it's a reversal of your previous encounter, and drives home the notion that your character was really just the tool fate uses to deal Ganon his umpteenth crushing defeat. With all his power and skill, Ganon can't match up to a small boy, because the cosmos has decided that he's to be its bitch until the end of time.
In both cases, the story's simplistic but it serves to provide motivation beyond the desire to overcome the challenge of the game, and both sequences would be FAR less evocative and meaningful if I was just dropped into Ganon's tower at random with no context and told to have at it.
Which is, incidentally, almost exactly what TP does.
tldr: you are a big dumb poophead.
Or...
you play games to have fun and read novels/watch movies/tv to have evocative moments via storytelling. I really don't give a shit that Mario Galaxy's story is oh no, Bowser kidnapped the Princess again and we need to save her and collect stars to do so. The game is fun! Similarly, Twilight Princess controls really well, except the shield bash which takes a little getting used to and is basically optional, and has a lot of good puzzles that require some thinking and thus I really like it. More examples: Super Metroid, the original Legend of Zelda, LttP, and really most games Nintendo has ever made. They're fun, that's what I want in my gaming experience, I'm relatively shallow (though I will get back to characterization in a second).
It's a matter of what you're looking for. I play games for gameplay and if I want a story one will develop on its own (I play lots of turn based strategy games). Other people play games for other reasons like you seem to. That's fine! Doesn't invalidate my basic disinterest in such things. And my preference for pure gameplay doesn't invalidate your interest in story and emotion in your gaming experience.
I would say two more things though, first: this analysis makes Metroid Prime really fucking brilliant in that if you WANT things about the setting to make the game deeper and the fall of the Chozo via the space pirates and Metroid Prime to make the experiences more evocative there, they're there. If you don't, you can largely just play the game.
The other thing is that for me the game with the most character I've ever played is this one:
but none of that character is scripted. This forum has the fairly famous story of Patrick Stewart, but everybody who ever played the game has something like that. Have some imagination, people!
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Isn't the hold B move instakill on all enemies? I used that because it looked awsome when I didn't need to.
When I thought of Wolf Link before TP came out I was under the impression that you would be switching quickly in combat, etc. The actual imprementation kinda sucked.
you play games to have fun and read novels/watch movies/tv to have evocative moments via storytelling. I really don't give a shit that Mario Galaxy's story is oh no, Bowser kidnapped the Princess again and we need to save her and collect stars to do so. The game is fun! Similarly, Twilight Princess controls really well, except the shield bash which takes a little getting used to and is basically optional, and has a lot of good puzzles that require some thinking and thus I really like it. More examples: Super Metroid, the original Legend of Zelda, LttP, and really most games Nintendo has ever made. They're fun, that's what I want in my gaming experience, I'm relatively shallow (though I will get back to characterization in a second).
It's a matter of what you're looking for. I play games for gameplay and if I want a story one will develop on its own (I play lots of turn based strategy games). Other people play games for other reasons like you seem to. That's fine! Doesn't invalidate my basic disinterest in such things. And my preference for pure gameplay doesn't invalidate your interest in story and emotion in your gaming experience.
I would say two more things though, first: this analysis makes Metroid Prime really fucking brilliant in that if you WANT things about the setting to make the game deeper and the fall of the Chozo via the space pirates and Metroid Prime to make the experiences more evocative there, they're there. If you don't, you can largely just play the game.
The other thing is that for me the game with the most character I've ever played is this one:
but none of that character is scripted. This forum has the fairly famous story of Patrick Stewart, but everybody who ever played the game has something like that. Have some imagination, people!
I'm really not talking about story in the way that you are, and I realize that the way I phrased that post might have confused that. Everything I talked about with providing motivation for fighting Ganon in WW and OoT, that's not happening on a conscious level. I didn't once think about it until I wrote that post, and tried to put into words why I thought those Ganon fights worked while the TP one didn't.
For example, I'd say Mario games have exactly the correct amount of story that they need. In modern Mario games there's a tiny bit of exposition, maybe a few cutscenes at the start or the end. The mood Mario games seek to evoke is one that's overall joyful and carefree, and the limited narrative aids the other elements of the game in evoking that mood.
Zelda, on the other hand, wants to evoke the mood of an epic adventure, and if you want that you need a villain that the audience can really hate. You don't need lots of cutscenes or dialogue to do that, though it's one option. But you can't expect any kind of dramatic impact if the main villain of a story steps aside in the final act to make room for an entirely different villain that hasn't been built up at all.
For a different kind of example, look at the movie Die Hard. It's certainly no Citizen Kane, but it still manages to suck the viewer in and evoke emotion, because it has a relatable heroes and hatable villains.
Events that happen in the context of a story are inherently more meaningful than events that happen in a vacuum.
My only problem with WW and TP was that the enemies did absolutely no damage making the games a little too easy when compared to OoT or MM.
Nonsense. Not that they're easy, but that OoT or MM were difficult. Being one of the older members of this forum, I think this mistaken but common belief has to do with when you people played these games. I played OoT when I was 16 when it first came out, and found it funny, charming, epic, but not all that difficult. Same with MM, only I was 20. Most of you I'm guessing played the game when you were what? 5? 8? They only seemed more difficult because you weren't all that great at video games yet.
Zelda, on the other hand, wants to evoke the mood of an epic adventure, and if you want that you need a villain that the audience can really hate. You don't need lots of cutscenes or dialogue to do that, though it's one option. But you can't expect any kind of dramatic impact if the main villain of a story steps aside in the final act to make room for an entirely different villain that hasn't been built up at all.
Did you consider LttP or the original Zelda epic adventures? I mean... they're really good games. But by that standard where you need to hate the villain they're not epic adventures. That, by the way, is a silly definition.
EDIT: Also, there hasn't been a hard Zelda since Zelda 2. And Turtle Rock in LttP when you're six.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Most of you I'm guessing played the game when you were what? 5? 8? They only seemed more difficult because you weren't all that great at video games yet.
I think you mistake the average age of forum members. Most of us were teens when we played OoT.
Zelda, on the other hand, wants to evoke the mood of an epic adventure, and if you want that you need a villain that the audience can really hate. You don't need lots of cutscenes or dialogue to do that, though it's one option. But you can't expect any kind of dramatic impact if the main villain of a story steps aside in the final act to make room for an entirely different villain that hasn't been built up at all.
Did you consider LttP or the original Zelda epic adventures? I mean... they're really good games. But by that standard where you need to hate the villain they're not epic adventures. That, by the way, is a silly definition.
EDIT: Also, there hasn't been a hard Zelda since Zelda 2. And Turtle Rock in LttP when you're six.
That admittedly may have been too general.
I'd argue that it's important for what the 3D Zeldas try to do though.
Most of you I'm guessing played the game when you were what? 5? 8? They only seemed more difficult because you weren't all that great at video games yet.
I think you mistake the average age of forum members. Most of us were teens when we played OoT.
I'll admit I'm just going off of a hunch, but I've heard more than a few people talk about playing the game while they were still in grade school. I think this calls for a poll!
I don't think a single villain the audience hates is necessary for a good epic story. I mean, look at the one of the most popular epic stories ever, Lord of the Rings. We see tons of villains doing all kinds of awful things while the main guy Sauron stands in the back. We never hear him speak a word, never know what he looks like, never see an action beyond something broad and sweeping like sending out an army here or there. For all intents and purposes, he is TP Ganon. And anyone who would say LotR is not an epic story is extremely misguided.
You can dislike him as a villain, but that's nothing that others ought to be convinced of - the fact remains that there is nothing about his character that is inappropriate for an epic story. Epic stories use characters like him all the time. And don't misunderstand - any claims about him appearing at the last minute or being an afterthought are also blatantly false, as was stated earlier. His presence is all throughout the story, from the first time Zant references him, to his past explained, to his final appearance. Indeed, he has the same amount of screen time as WW Ganon.
talking about hating the villain is a misnomer. It's not about hate, it's about having a presence. One of the best things about LotR from a literary perspective is the way Sauron towers over the events of the book while we simultaneously know very little about him.
LotR is incredibly effective at establishing Sauron as a threat. the same can not be said for the vast majority of Ganons.
I don't know. I think having a villain that actually is actually presented as a threat is pretty universally a good thing for fantasy adventure, regardless of medium.
yeah, OoT's Ganon was one hell of a looming threat because you saw the devastation caused by his rule wherever you went, and the constant presence of your enemy in Majora's Mask goes without saying
but WW's Ganondorf was sort of a nonentity after the first stretch and TP's did diddly-shit besides wait in his castle...but in an evil way
talking about hating the villain is a misnomer. It's not about hate, it's about having a presence. One of the best things about LotR from a literary perspective is the way Sauron towers over the events of the book while we simultaneously know very little about him.
LotR is incredibly effective at establishing Sauron as a threat. the same can not be said for the vast majority of Ganons.
Yes thank you
I am kind of getting bogged down because of a poor choice of words in something I said that was really tangential to my point anyway.
yeah, OoT's Ganon was one hell of a looming threat because you saw the devastation caused by his rule wherever you went, and the constant presence of your enemy in Majora's Mask goes without saying
but WW's Ganondorf was sort of a nonentity after the first stretch and TP's did diddly-shit besides wait in his castle...but in an evil way
At least you knew that WW Ganon was waiting for you at the end, which is more than you can say for TP Ganon
I think the 'present the villain as a threat' is pretty difficult in Zelda games. You need to be able to explore the world at your leisure. At the same time, you need to be convinced that Ganon is out there and he wants you dead. But a zelda game probably wouldn't be very fun if there were ringwraiths chasing after you. It's a proven fact that a large portion of the audience hate time limits, so a sense of urgency is something that Zelda games won't ever give us again. The only other way they've found to make Ganon a believable threat is to set most of the story after his takeover. And even in this case it feels mostly like Ganon isn't a part of the world, he just sits in his room playing model trains until you collect all six maguffins.
EDIT: I mean it's sometimes hard to believe that Ganon rules the world of OoT when the only examples we see of his evil are things that happened in the past.
mntorankusuI'm not sure how to use this thing....Registered Userregular
edited June 2010
I think OoT did a pretty excellent job of presenting the villain, because of the visible progression. When the game starts, Ganondorf is just a thief who Zelda suspects of wanting to overthrow the king, or whatever. These kids are no match for him at the time, but when the story begins, he's basically just some guy. I think that's pretty neat.
I think the 'present the villain as a threat' is pretty difficult in Zelda games. You need to be able to explore the world at your leisure. At the same time, you need to be convinced that Ganon is out there and he wants you dead. But a zelda game probably wouldn't be very fun if there were ringwraiths chasing after you. It's a proven fact that a large portion of the audience hate time limits, so a sense of urgency is something that Zelda games won't ever give us again. The only other way they've found to make Ganon a believable threat is to set most of the story after his takeover. And even in this case it feels mostly like Ganon isn't a part of the world, he just sits in his room playing model trains until you collect all six maguffins.
EDIT: I mean it's sometimes hard to believe that Ganon rules the world of OoT when the only examples we see of his evil are things that happened in the past.
There are some things that aren't strictly in the past. He's in the middle of having the Gorons sacrificed for example. He addresses you directly at the end of the Forest Temple. And then of course there's the fire in Kakariko.
Posts
http://www.audioentropy.com/
That's only late in the game, for the rest of the game leading up to that point (when you don't have the most powerful weapon in the game) you're not at any disadvantage. Even if there was a section where enemies took one extra hit to kill, there was one less enemy present to balance things out.
Or...
you play games to have fun and read novels/watch movies/tv to have evocative moments via storytelling. I really don't give a shit that Mario Galaxy's story is oh no, Bowser kidnapped the Princess again and we need to save her and collect stars to do so. The game is fun! Similarly, Twilight Princess controls really well, except the shield bash which takes a little getting used to and is basically optional, and has a lot of good puzzles that require some thinking and thus I really like it. More examples: Super Metroid, the original Legend of Zelda, LttP, and really most games Nintendo has ever made. They're fun, that's what I want in my gaming experience, I'm relatively shallow (though I will get back to characterization in a second).
It's a matter of what you're looking for. I play games for gameplay and if I want a story one will develop on its own (I play lots of turn based strategy games). Other people play games for other reasons like you seem to. That's fine! Doesn't invalidate my basic disinterest in such things. And my preference for pure gameplay doesn't invalidate your interest in story and emotion in your gaming experience.
I would say two more things though, first: this analysis makes Metroid Prime really fucking brilliant in that if you WANT things about the setting to make the game deeper and the fall of the Chozo via the space pirates and Metroid Prime to make the experiences more evocative there, they're there. If you don't, you can largely just play the game.
The other thing is that for me the game with the most character I've ever played is this one:
but none of that character is scripted. This forum has the fairly famous story of Patrick Stewart, but everybody who ever played the game has something like that. Have some imagination, people!
When I thought of Wolf Link before TP came out I was under the impression that you would be switching quickly in combat, etc. The actual imprementation kinda sucked.
I'm really not talking about story in the way that you are, and I realize that the way I phrased that post might have confused that. Everything I talked about with providing motivation for fighting Ganon in WW and OoT, that's not happening on a conscious level. I didn't once think about it until I wrote that post, and tried to put into words why I thought those Ganon fights worked while the TP one didn't.
For example, I'd say Mario games have exactly the correct amount of story that they need. In modern Mario games there's a tiny bit of exposition, maybe a few cutscenes at the start or the end. The mood Mario games seek to evoke is one that's overall joyful and carefree, and the limited narrative aids the other elements of the game in evoking that mood.
Zelda, on the other hand, wants to evoke the mood of an epic adventure, and if you want that you need a villain that the audience can really hate. You don't need lots of cutscenes or dialogue to do that, though it's one option. But you can't expect any kind of dramatic impact if the main villain of a story steps aside in the final act to make room for an entirely different villain that hasn't been built up at all.
For a different kind of example, look at the movie Die Hard. It's certainly no Citizen Kane, but it still manages to suck the viewer in and evoke emotion, because it has a relatable heroes and hatable villains.
Events that happen in the context of a story are inherently more meaningful than events that happen in a vacuum.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
that is the gist of it
Nonsense. Not that they're easy, but that OoT or MM were difficult. Being one of the older members of this forum, I think this mistaken but common belief has to do with when you people played these games. I played OoT when I was 16 when it first came out, and found it funny, charming, epic, but not all that difficult. Same with MM, only I was 20. Most of you I'm guessing played the game when you were what? 5? 8? They only seemed more difficult because you weren't all that great at video games yet.
I really do loathe all of you.
Did you consider LttP or the original Zelda epic adventures? I mean... they're really good games. But by that standard where you need to hate the villain they're not epic adventures. That, by the way, is a silly definition.
EDIT: Also, there hasn't been a hard Zelda since Zelda 2. And Turtle Rock in LttP when you're six.
I think you mistake the average age of forum members. Most of us were teens when we played OoT.
That admittedly may have been too general.
I'd argue that it's important for what the 3D Zeldas try to do though.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I see this opinion expressed a lot around here and I just don't get it.
Can someone please explain this to me?
https://medium.com/@alascii
I'll admit I'm just going off of a hunch, but I've heard more than a few people talk about playing the game while they were still in grade school. I think this calls for a poll!
You can dislike him as a villain, but that's nothing that others ought to be convinced of - the fact remains that there is nothing about his character that is inappropriate for an epic story. Epic stories use characters like him all the time. And don't misunderstand - any claims about him appearing at the last minute or being an afterthought are also blatantly false, as was stated earlier. His presence is all throughout the story, from the first time Zant references him, to his past explained, to his final appearance. Indeed, he has the same amount of screen time as WW Ganon.
LotR is incredibly effective at establishing Sauron as a threat. the same can not be said for the vast majority of Ganons.
https://medium.com/@alascii
https://medium.com/@alascii
but WW's Ganondorf was sort of a nonentity after the first stretch and TP's did diddly-shit besides wait in his castle...but in an evil way
Yes thank you
I am kind of getting bogged down because of a poor choice of words in something I said that was really tangential to my point anyway.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
At least you knew that WW Ganon was waiting for you at the end, which is more than you can say for TP Ganon
http://www.audioentropy.com/
EDIT: I mean it's sometimes hard to believe that Ganon rules the world of OoT when the only examples we see of his evil are things that happened in the past.
https://medium.com/@alascii
There are some things that aren't strictly in the past. He's in the middle of having the Gorons sacrificed for example. He addresses you directly at the end of the Forest Temple. And then of course there's the fire in Kakariko.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
https://medium.com/@alascii
Look at this fucker
Magnificent.
Twilight Princess?
What the fuck. Way to drop the ball guys.
No other game in the series has hit the nail on the head in villain presentation like they did in OOT.
Maybe the Skull Kid. Maybe.
It was a big ass pig man.
Give me the dude with the dual chain swords. That's more intimidating.
Of course, Ocarina of Time had the awesome, subtitle-less introduction with the lightning striking in the background. That was, and still is, intense.
uhhhh, this is what ganon is!
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I know that, but this one he was literally a pig, not a pig-beast-man hybrid!
That's just stupid.
EDIT: Majora was an outstanding villain.
What a fucked up creation. I loved every minute of it.
I mean, come on
Amazing
FF14: ARR
Yes, even that TP one pictured above (because he looks sweet as hell)
GANON
moment in Ocarina. That was pure brilliance.
https://medium.com/@alascii
I agree, but I don't think that picture does him very good justice. He looks better in motion.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
and then it came out and it was beautiful
FF14: ARR