WrenchNinja
Member
You act like they need anything more than Pokemon.
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Anouma confirms Majora was in development as soon as they finished Ocarina
- Thread starter axisofweevils
- Start date
The 3DS could definitely be doing better with more game releases. I think that's pretty obvious. Last year 3DS had Pokemon, Mario Party and Zelda all on the same day. This year looks weak by comparison, although October did have Smash.
SapphireZora
Neo Member
I just got mega sad. Robin won't be doing the PR for the game.r.i.p
Yeah, this is a sad thought. I loved Robin's commercials for Zelda games in the past. (What a luscious beard, I will be forever jealous). Maybe Zelda Williams would still be interested in getting onboard with Zelda commercials. She was in the commercials with her father, so I wonder if she would continue to carry on that torch. It could either be hard on her or a neat way of carrying on his legacy, possibly both. Hard to say. Either way, R.I.P. Robin Williams. What a guy.
I just started up a game of Majora's Mask for the 64 and the graphical improvements in that trailer are quite noticeable. I wanted to play the original once more before the remake while still giving myself a breather between the two. I still love it. I don't know what's with the 3-year development time, but I'm sure it'll pay off in the end.
Black Republican
Member
cant wait~
Unknown One
Member
The Square Enix effect.
peanutbutterlatte
Member
2013 was an exceptional year. Winter 2012 had fucking Paper Mario and nought else.
It's possible that they could contact her to advertise it, but even aside from whether she'd agree; it might just feel too soon to the general public - even by next year, it'd essentially be advertising a product with a dead celebrity. And while that happens relatively often, I'd like to think NoA has slightly more class than that.
Ocarina and Majora benefit from having a much more saturated palette and more stylised environments; as well as being made for the 3DS; a console release would definitely have to have more substantial work done. Wind Waker was only suited for being remastered in the manner it was due to its unique style - while it required some higher resolution textures, the vast majority of the geometry was untouched.
And while Twilight Princess with no further alterations doesn't look terrible at higher resolutions, it pales in comparison to Wind Waker and Skyward Sword.
With the high standard of remasters thus far, I have a hard time accepting that they'd do a console refresh of Twilight Princess and take on the work it entailed, or simply release it for handhelds, which seems unlikely for other reasons - the next handheld will have enough power to bring up similar problems to remastering it for a Wii U release, and I doubt the 3DS will be in a position for high-profile releases in 2017.
Refreshment.01
Member
There are variuos inconsistencies with your statements.
First, regarding the 3DS ports and WW not needing to update the models. The 3DS versions had a more substantial work and time poured into them than WW. The assets were retouched in many departments textures, character models and world geometry. And let's not forget Twilight Princess is a realization of the Ocarina art style in a more capable hardware than the N64. While Majora used most of the assets with some other artistic liberties. Yet here we are with the 2 of them remastered.
Second, your screen caps of SS and WW and how they look vastly superior in high resolution. What exactly are you trying to prove here? We know that heavy stylized games age better. You can say that not just about the high resolution screen shots, but even SD caps of WW and SS stand the test of time better than TP.
Third, what concerns us here. Is that infact TP re rendered at higher resolutions keeping the same assets looks vastly improved in comparison to the GC/Wii versions of the game.
That's the only thing i said. im not even suggesting we will get a TP remaster. Just that you could have a nice looking remaster in TP with the same amount of development resources applied and in a similar time frame to what was used in WW.
Finally, in the case of a potential TP remaster what would be more interesting to me are changes to the game's pacing and amendments to other game aspects such as the rupee management.
Not true.
They redid a lot, but quite a few models are untouched from the original N64 code and models.
Proven through analysis of the decrypted ROM
TheMoon
Member
At least you didn't post that gif again lol.
Change it to nearly everything and the point still stands.^^
Minister of the Dog
Member
I actually remember taking pics of Link back when I played this. When you're on the boat course, on the river, select the camera from the C-button and quickly take a picture. If you practice for a bit you can get Link's face in a pictograph.
But the difference in asset fidelity in question is not inconsiderable. You can't just hand over a project of similar scale to the 3DS remakes over to Grezzo if console-quality assets are involved - a project to remaster Twilight Princess with the same level of care put into OoT and MM on a HD console would undoubtedly require a serious investment in terms of staff and resources, much more than both WWHD and OoT/MM. And at this point, I'm not sure if they'd want to undertake that level of investment for a remake.
TheMoon
Member
The base quality of the assets in TP is already way higher and in many cases may not even need to be redone. Considering TP is the best selling Zelda game next to OoT if I'm not mistaken, I don't see what would keep them from doing it.
Exactly. This was my first thought and I was surprised that some people took 4 years to mean 'lots of new content'.
More proof (not that its needed), that OOT3D is ported from the N64 code:
Nabooru is still inside every single Iron Knuckle.
Leftover beta N64 link model.
N64 great fairy model
And a quote by the guy behind the program shown above:
So yeah, it's still a shitload of work they did. Apply that to Majora's Mask and it's not hard to see how it has taken 4 years for such a small team. It's ported code, yes - but it still required a huge amount of effort to get running on the 3DS.
Nabooru is still inside every single Iron Knuckle.
Leftover beta N64 link model.
N64 great fairy model
And a quote by the guy behind the program shown above:
So yeah, it's still a shitload of work they did. Apply that to Majora's Mask and it's not hard to see how it has taken 4 years for such a small team. It's ported code, yes - but it still required a huge amount of effort to get running on the 3DS.
The 3DS is a pretty lousy piece of hardware but it has enough great games that you should get one anyway. Same goes for the Wii U.
I love Majora's Mask so much, GAF. I didn't even know it was generally disliked until years after release. Guess I wasn't big on innernet gaming stuff at the time.
I love Majora's Mask so much, GAF. I didn't even know it was generally disliked until years after release. Guess I wasn't big on innernet gaming stuff at the time.
I'm thinking with the wording maybe you can actually choose which day you want to go to with either the existing Song of Time variations or maybe some new ones they're adding. Would help with doing certain side-quests or side-quest requisites you might have missed. Though that would suck the tension out of the Moon's ever-present threat, since you'd never have to restart the three-day cycle, so I doubt that's it.
It took them about a year to do OoT 3D, but suddenly 4 years to do this...?
It's a near 50 person studio, its not that small. The game has either been sitting, or it was shelved while Grezzo helped out with some other projects. Maybe both.
MM is far more complex than Ocarina of Time in almost every way possible.
We've already seen that theyve redesigned clock town to be a persistent area with no loading. Not only that, but they would have had to tweak and test every single NPC to ensure the redesigned areas didnt fuck up their three day cycles.
Its not hard to see why it took longer than OOT3D.
Interceptor
Banned
Why hold on to these 4 years? We know when it started, not when it finished.
Ummmm it can take four years. If the dev is working on this project on side basis u know.
Like, maybe they are doing other job from Ninty while they allocated maybe around 5 people? To do this. And when they had free time then all of them started worked on Majora again?
That's the only thing I can think here. It would be stupid to stale the game release here.
Like, maybe they are doing other job from Ninty while they allocated maybe around 5 people? To do this. And when they had free time then all of them started worked on Majora again?
That's the only thing I can think here. It would be stupid to stale the game release here.
fredrancour
Member
Their only thing since oot was a streetpass plaza game. If they've been splitting their attention with something else then it was either general development support on other titles or is still in hiding.
And if Nintendo is worried about the 2015 lineup then a delay would have made a large amount of sense.
Refreshment.01
Member
Clock Town has no loading now? So no fade to black screens?
How the transitions are handled then? If there's no loading, as you imply, then Link can view and walk from area to area withouth any cuts. That would be inmensly cool.
Btw, where can i see this?
Also if this is indeed the case it would be amazing to have a high vantage point were you see the entire town and watch every NPC go through out their routines. XD
The vantage points is what's most interesting an simultaneously exciting. Being able to actually watch
Kafei
Concerning the model/asset recreation of TP i'd like to believe nintendo still has the highdef assets from most of their objects saved.
They are a company known to remaster/re-release games years later, and by the time the gamecube/wii are was there technology was as such that you create high poly versions and "downport" all your objects to meet the hardware.
I agree with the engine upgrade, but if I'm not mistaken there has been proof (although not for WiiU) that nintendo often uses a shared, compatible game engine throughout their EAD games.
EDIT: I do doubt they will port TP to WiiU but for totally different reasons - this generation had too much zelda allready. But for their next handheld/console, why not.
They are a company known to remaster/re-release games years later, and by the time the gamecube/wii are was there technology was as such that you create high poly versions and "downport" all your objects to meet the hardware.
I agree with the engine upgrade, but if I'm not mistaken there has been proof (although not for WiiU) that nintendo often uses a shared, compatible game engine throughout their EAD games.
EDIT: I do doubt they will port TP to WiiU but for totally different reasons - this generation had too much zelda allready. But for their next handheld/console, why not.
Nothing's been confirmed, but:
1. you can see right into east clock town, and it looks like you can run through it seamlessly. there's no transition area.
2. the route to the laundry pool has been put back enough to allow the area to fit in behind that wall. compared to the N64 version, its significantly changed:
why would they make this change if not to have the entire laundry pool area fit behind it?
3. the area behind the clock tower goes back much, much further - again, this means the entirety of east and west clock town can fit behind the walls without any "cheating" like the n64 version used.
so yeah, the evidence is there, and it makes sense. why implement those changes otherwise? Also, the 3DS is more than capable of rendering the whole thing at once. Being able to traverse clock town without having to endure loading transitions in every section would be a significant improvement. In addition, various ledges, building sides and doorways have been adjusted - why would they do this if not for ensuring the entire town is seamless?
So they updated the original engine to take advantage of the 3DS's specifications, and then recreated the entire game in the new, heavily modified engine... so why do people take offense to it being called a remake?
It's still the exact same game. It's not a remake. It's a remaster with some slightly improved/polished up assets & added 3D + some streamlining of controls. A remake would imply that they totally remade the game from scratch to offer more of a new experience. Maybe make a world that has no loading screens, make bigger changes to the combat system/enemy design and change the whole layout of the world. But going from playing OoT 3D vs. the original is like going from watching a DVD to watching a blu-ray. The experience doesn't change so much that you could call it a whole new game, which is what at least I'd classify a remake.
I'm not buying pokemon. 3DS has nothing releasing through the end of the year that I want.
Fortunately, I held off on buying both layton games this year, so I have those to look forward to. Also, smash was great, but Wii U is killing my 3DS version in a week.
You know, I'm seriously taking issue with the "it's using old code, so it's not a remake" argument. If the old code still works, why would they rewrite it from scratch? Programmers are notoriously lazy human beings and people won't just rewrite code from scratch if there's no good reason for it. If the old code is still sufficient for what the developers went out to accomplish and still works on the intended hardware (relative to the effort needed to rewrite it), then you aren't going to see people making new code. The distinction between remake and remaster should be about content and design philosophy and not about code.
From what we've seen so far, Majora's Mask 3D offers a huge amount of new and improved models and textures, new geometry, some gameplay smoothening and it might or not might have new content (we don't know anything about that yet, so saying "it's exactly the same game" is beyond silly). I think that's already enough to classify it as a remake, since remasters are usually about recreating the original experience on a more modern platform and this doesn't seem to be what's happening here. The developers are clearly aiming for this to be "more than another remake" after all.
("Recreating the original experience on a more modern platform" doesn't mean that textures and geometry aren't reworked at all, but that this is being done with the intention of making new assets that still look like the old assets, but in HD-compatible quality)
It does seem to really blur the lines between the two - the amount of new assets and gameplay alterations would put it far beyond the standard remaster, but at the same time it's still being built directly on the base of the original; even with MM3D apparently having large areas completely redesigned. Due to that, I'd be more comfortable referring to it as a remake if I had to pick one of the two terms, even if it's not wholly original.
Though the greater liberties taken with Majora's Mask do make the unaltered score even more jarring, especially now that we've had a Zelda on the system using (relatively) high-quality streamed audio. I wonder if Yokota was shot down by Kondo again...
Though the greater liberties taken with Majora's Mask do make the unaltered score even more jarring, especially now that we've had a Zelda on the system using (relatively) high-quality streamed audio. I wonder if Yokota was shot down by Kondo again...
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
Is the score being unaltered confirmed? Would Nintendo have audio "source files" that could be redone at a higher quality? My knowledge in this area is pitiful.
Having said that, I think MM is my favourite Zelda score, so I don't mind too much.
TheMoon
Member
Again, you're selling their work short by calling it "slightly improved/polished up assets" when they completely redo pretty much everything. Not open the old file and click on "export as is."
Remaster is a just a fancy and often pretentious way to say "cross-gen port closer to PC/emulator version." Reusing the same assets but at higher resolutions. This is made up of mostly remade assets, based on the originals.
Why is everyone arguing about whether it's a remaster or a remake?
If the game is based on old code/art assets, even if they all have to be redone, it's a remaster. Period.
A remake would be something along the lines of a 2D game being converted into 3D, where absolutely nothing is shared, code/asset-wise from the original game. Anything that requires them to start from scratch is a remake. They're not starting from scratch, so it's a remaster. A really well-done remaster, sure, but a remaster nonetheless.
Maybe we need a new term for it. All we're doing is saying the same thing but arguing about what it should be called.
Maybe these?
Where MM is a Full Game Remaster
If the game is based on old code/art assets, even if they all have to be redone, it's a remaster. Period.
A remake would be something along the lines of a 2D game being converted into 3D, where absolutely nothing is shared, code/asset-wise from the original game. Anything that requires them to start from scratch is a remake. They're not starting from scratch, so it's a remaster. A really well-done remaster, sure, but a remaster nonetheless.
Maybe we need a new term for it. All we're doing is saying the same thing but arguing about what it should be called.
Maybe these?
- Remake = all new, inspired/based on original, but art/code has to be done from scratch
- Port = Everything the same, just working on a different/new platform
- Graphical Remaster = Everything is the same gameplay-wise, and it uses (at least portions of) old code, but graphics are either uprezzed or have new assets altogether
- Full Game Remaster = Everything in the game got an upgrade, including art and gameplay elements, but it is still based on old code.
Where MM is a Full Game Remaster
Don't forget though, the Majora's Mask dungeons
had 15 fairies to be found. Which was really cool but could put a bit of pressure the first time there.
Though I disagree about time stopping inside dungeons, making slow time a bit slower would be a better balance.
As for saving, I believe game should offer a suspend everywhere (but I doubt they will implement that) and permanent save on owl points, which is what I expect to see.
It hasn't been explicitly confirmed, but the use of the original Majora's Incarnation theme for the trailer and OoT3D's unaltered score would suggest that it'll also be the case for MM3D.
As for whether it would be difficult to accomplish, Mahito Yokota commented that he initially intended to orchestrate OoT3D's score, but Kondo overrode him and insisted he replicate the original. While the decision was understandable then due to Ocarina of Time's mythic status and the general atmosphere of the series' 25th anniversary; I was hoping a different approach would have been taken here - seeing as so much else has been revised, it's a shame to not see the underappreciated MM score get the update it deserves as well.
My suggestion to all newcomers to MM, at least the 64 version, is to not worry about dungeon fairies the first time through a dungeon, unless you're a zelda pro and have plenty of time to spare. Get them after you clear the dungeon and restart the cycle. Sure, you have to solve some puzzles twice, but you'll have the dungeon's item and it'll be much easier.
Also, don't START a dungeon on the 2nd/3rd day. Unlock access to the dungeon, restart the cycle, and then enter on the first day.
When I first saw the trailer I thought the graphics were weak, as in my mind thats what the N64 game looked like.
I knew seeing a direct comparison would destroy my rose tinted specs
I've got to be honest, I never liked the look of the original MM. This new look with the lighting looks like a huge improvement to satiate my tastes. I think it's way more moody and atmospheric with the color.
It looks like this remake is in very good hands. Plus, just because they started it a few years ago, doesn't mean that it was in development this whole time. It could have been done for a while now. However, it does seem to be running at a far faster framerate than OOT3D. It's possible that more love was poured into this port than the last one.
The long dev cycle is likely due to working on this game during spare down time with a really tiny team. My guess is that Eiji Aonuma wanted to be far more hands on with this one since it was "his baby" versus OoT, where he was just part of a larger team.
While Grezzo could be the ones doing it, they are also working on a different project currently that was confirmed almost a year ago. MY guess is the main Zelda team is the one handeling it so Eiji Aonuma could keep a better eye on it. It took this long specifically because they never focused on it. I twas just a "do it while we have down time or need a break from normal development". That or Eiji Aonuma pulled 2 or 3 staff aside and had them do the whole thing, which can also take a long time (limited resources put towards it, basically). He probably knew when they started development that they didn't want it coming out anytime soon.
While Grezzo could be the ones doing it, they are also working on a different project currently that was confirmed almost a year ago. MY guess is the main Zelda team is the one handeling it so Eiji Aonuma could keep a better eye on it. It took this long specifically because they never focused on it. I twas just a "do it while we have down time or need a break from normal development". That or Eiji Aonuma pulled 2 or 3 staff aside and had them do the whole thing, which can also take a long time (limited resources put towards it, basically). He probably knew when they started development that they didn't want it coming out anytime soon.
TheMoon
Member
No, Grezzo is doing it. Zelda team has their hands full. The NintendoWorldReport telethon revealed a megaton where the 8-4, Ltd guys spotted Aonuma in Tokyo at the station a while back (Grezzo is in Tokyo) which is pretty uncommon.
I'm personally thinking EAD Tokyo is involved in a light capacity again, too since I'd think Koizumi might want to chime in occasionally as well. They were also involved with OoT3D (coordination, I think).
I don't really see it. They couldn't even show it on the E3 because it wasn't ready.
I'm sure he'd have an extremely light role if any. I'd bet he's elbows deep in the next 3D Mario game.
A man of his talent should really be focused on making new things in my humble opinion. (Here's to hoping for something new and unexpected for Mario's next outing).
I think we now have eniugh evidence to safely say that Clock Town has been redesigned as a seamless area. In addition to my post above, we also have this:
Well looking at the video and seeing this picture makes me believe it. The laundry pool is extended and brought further back.
Thank god for the Great Fairy mask.