Nintendo can fuck off with all that "magic is really technology" bullshit if that's where they're heading with the series.
I like the fact that there's technology in the Zelda games. Jukeboxes in OOT, aliens in MM? Good stuff, it adds to the unique flavor of the Zelda universe. But don't call the goddesses ancient aliens and say that what fuels the Triforce and dozens of other series relics isn't magic but highly advanced technology. I can only imagine that the people in this thread who are clamoring for Nintendo to go in this direction are such hard-boiled cynics in real life that they find it difficult to immerse themselves in traditional fantasy. I'm sorry you need an explanation for everything, but some of us still like to suspend our disbelief every now and then and enjoy a world where magic exists and can't be explained away--you know, fantasy.
It has nothing to do with cynicism. It's a very interesting concept and the series has already been on this path for a long time and it's the original concept of the series.
Yes, always. Throughout the franchise's 30 year history. From the very first game. Remember the laser gun in Zelda II? The jet pack in A Link to the Past? Good times.
Spirit Tracks is an abomination.
Spirit Tracks is the best handheld Zelda game; Great dungeon, good story, amazing soundtrack, some of the best characterization in the series.
It cracks me up how people shit on it because it doesn't make sense for Hyrule to have trains when other steam vehicles were perfectly okay in previous games. A game set 100 years after Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, both of which had steam ships, makes perfect sense to have trains. Especially since the past had even more advanced technology.
Here's a train depot in Skyward Sword. The engines look more modern like diesel or electric trains.
Heh, it really does when it's fantasy we're talking about.
No it doesn't. Technology is mistaken for magic but never the reverse, because even if magic is involved it's still technology. A machine is a machine.
Both sci-fi and fantasy have unbelievable settings and creatures that don't exist in reality, so what do you suppose separates the two genres from each other?
What makes Star Wars fantasy rather than science fiction despite the huge role that advanced technology plays in the franchise?
Magic.
Whether it's labeled ''misunderstood technology" or not, once you posit a scientific explanation for magic, you have, in effect, gone full sci-fi. The presence of swords and dragons and other fantasy tropes does nothing to change that.
Can't magic just be magic? Can't we have amazing, incomprehensible things rather than things we just don't understand yet but know must have some mundane explanation?
What has set Zelda apart from pure fantasy going on 2 decades? Technology.
Magic can't just be magic when you have robots making servo noises and stuff, characters that are supposed to be computer AIs, factories with conveyor belts powered by electric generators, steam and motor boats, trains, floating cities that are kept aloft by machines, etc. Zelda has long crossed the bridge between fantasy and scifi.
But there is still magic that can't be explained as technology, like Zelda's powers, how the triforce works, most of the magic spells. The series has done a really good job of hinting at the technological nature of several elements of the series without being too explicit and crossing completely to the other side. It's Fantasy with Sci-fi elements.
If Nintendo explains away magic with technology the way people (mistakenly) thought that George Lucas was explaining away the Force with midichlorians, it will no longer be fantasy but sci-fi with fantasy tropes, and the series I loved will be dead to me.
Yes, people were wrong about midichlorians. They are not the Force but are instead a biological component that determines one's sensitivity to the Force. Lucas' problem is that he dropped that info too fast, was waaay too blunt with it, and didn't explain it well enough to justify having the explanation in the first place. We already knew that there was a biological component since sensitivity to the Force ran in Luke's family, as stated in Return of the Jedi, and that's all we really needed to know. Zelda has been very very VERY gradually been introducing these concepts and they've been staying extremely vague about it, which makes the concept interesting like the Force in the original trilogy. We know just enough to know that there are robots and computers and stuff but that's all we know. The Tower of the Gods is full of circuitry and robots and that's as far as it goes. It hints at the bigger picture but doesn't shove it down your throat. There isn't a long-winded exposition sequence where Link ponders the machines he saw. If they have a scene in the next Zelda game where Link attends a senate meeting to discuss a trade dispute where a character spends an hour explaining in exposition that the triforce is actually a computer then yeah, that'd be a fuck up.
It's had these scifi elements for a long time now and it isn't dead for you. They're really good about how they handle it.
Magic has almost always been depicted as glowing. What else would you expect from the physical manifestation of a magic spell but for it to glow?
Anyway, that symbol resembles a labyrinth, which, if you didn't know, is more than just a type of maze, but a symbol found in ancient cultures:
http://symboldictionary.net/?p=3287
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Yes, magic glows. The issue is that Nintendo has been very deliberately evoking scifi technology. They've been putting circuit patterns on stuff associated with the goddesses and those things make noises that electronics make. Go watch that Gohdan fight. Gohdan is very clearly supposed to be a machine. That Gate of Time cutscene is another good example. Very technological imagery and machine sounds. It's not like they did it by accident.