Damn, I thought I responded to this, but must have just forgotten. Oh well, here we go..
Mgoblue201 said:
Ilia as an important part of the story doesn't even make it halfway to the Forest Temple. Midna is much more important, and as a pure relationship forged, it is the best of the entire series. That's not the point, however. Ilia had purpose. She had direction. Look, I'm not the one claiming that it's all touching. As much as I loved TP, at its best its story elements were merely good. I'm much too interested in real storytelling with cinema or literature to truly think that Zelda is any decent storytelling entity. I love it, but I love it for what it is. And if I am to judge them on an individual basis, the scenes in OOT simply aren't all that good. Some storytelling elements might have been dropped in the second half of TP, but at least it knows where it's going through and through. Its characters were developed in a fashion that was simple and yet purposeful.
And that's where we disagree. As I said before, they did a decent job with her and Link in the first half, but then it's like they thought 'er..okay, what do we do now?', and thought it was best to just take her out of the picture completely and hope that no one noticed or cared. However, the deal with Saria works well because she wasn't built up to be some integral part of the story. She had a purpose, and Nintendo didn't dwell on it for nearly the entire game, and once she served that purpose, it was the end of that. Unlike Ilia, where after an intense buildup, it was like 'okay, see ya!'.
So you don't think Zelda stories are worthy of Shakespeare or whatever, that's fine. And no one's claiming that. But I do think that for what Zelda does (well most of the time), it does a very good job. It's a whimsical, light hearted, and it gets the job done. That's what I care about most of the time.
Another area where TP falls apart. Take the whole Ganon thing. He apparently just came out of nowhere, with no explanation whatsoever. Which is another area where OoT trumps TP. The buildup between Ganond and Link was handled so much better and at the end, it's so immensely satisfying meeting him for that final battle. Whereas probably the only good buildup in all of TP is just with Link and Midna.
OOT, however, is not. It rarely tries to be different than save this place or this person. Because of that, characters cannot have their own individuality. They have little motivation because there is nothing within the story to drive them somewhere. In fact, there is almost no storytelling designed to go anywhere but toward the quest of getting to the next temple to defeat Ganon. Stories are created because there are stories to tell. But the game isn't trying to tell much of a story. It's creating scenarios for the exact purpose of getting you from one dungeon to another. But when you sit down and have a talk with Marin in LA, you forget for a moment that it's all cleverly designed for you to go with her because of the weight on that scene propogated by all of the influences of the conflict and the storytelling. It's a huge difference. Without motivation, it's hard to have that conflict of what Link is about to do. It's that conflict of interests with a character you truly like that makes it interesting (though Link may in fact have helped her by awakening the Wind Fish, depending on how you interpret the story).
I'm not getting your examples about WW and LA, really. OoT has as much motivation as pretty much any other Zelda game. Ganon's about to take over/destroy the land, and Link has to stop him. What more motivation do you need?
It's not about AI. It's about making them more dynamic. Those flying lizards in TP could have been great enemies, but the method to defeating them is so rinse and repeat that there is no actual skill involved: it's a memorization game, no better than a spelling bee. It doesn't take any greater AI. But the attack pattern shouldn't be on a rail. The Stalfos weren't much better. The pattern to defeating them is still pretty rinse and repeat (there is always one perfect way to strike them, and they're easy to avoid until then). The big flaw in that game is that only one enemy will attack at once. If you had to wait for a specific moment to attack, then that's a lot harder with two other Stalfos trying to kill you.
And again, I still don't see how the 2D games were any more complex in this area.
