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Zelda needs to be zelda again

I liked Skyward Sword even with the motion controls and Tears of the Kingdom feels with a bloated expansion for Breath of the Wild.

I did like BotW, but I have no desire to go back to it. I don't know if I'll ever finish TotK, it feels like more or the same.

I hope the next Zelda will be closer to Wind Waker.
 
You mean like this?

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The original NES game actually had enemy variety, challenge, and worthwhile rewards.
The original NES game had around 25 common enemies (bosses not included), about half of which came in two different colors. The Switch games have fewer general enemy types, but each comes in at least 3 variants and up to a dozen, all with different weapons/ powers/ moves and other peculiarities.

The original NES game usually rewarded your clueless random wall bombing and random tree burning with rupees or heart containers… pretty much like the Switch games. And sometimes it even took money or life from you.



When you're potentially exploring the overworld for hours you don't want a tune like the LttP dark world repeating hundreds of times. It would drive you nuts.
The original NES Zelda's overworld theme did drive you nuts after a while if you didn't know where to go.
And it most certainly drove your parents nuts after five minutes. I love that theme, but something like that would make people hate BOTW even more than weapon durability.

On the subject of weapon durability, I suppose the devs wanted to make up for never being able to change the one, glaring repetitive gameplay element: swinging your sword always felt the same and functioned the same.
This is probably the main reason they went with sword motion controls on the Wii: to make that one omnipresent command less repetitive and more engaging, since they didn't want to take away the sword as Link's main weapon.
With BOTW they finally went the extra mile and offered more weapons. But they knew that nobody would want to try out different weapons if those didn't break, so they took care to not give you weapons that you can use indefinitely.
I understand people not liking that, but having a weapon break at a critical moment set up so many interesting situations in BOTW/TOTK.
 
I definitely think that the Zekda franchise is big enough to have games in multiple "styles". Similar to how the main line Mario games have multiple styles.

Mario currently has 3 styles
2d side scrolling (classic games. New serues and now Wonder)

3d Games (64 sunshine galaxy, odyssey)

3d land/world

While there are similar elements in each style they play quite differently from one another.

Zelda series could do something similar

Open world style (botw, totk)

Classic style (lttp, oot)

Third style? (Yet to be defined)

Where would a game Ike Echos of wisdom fit style wise? (And also stuff like spirit tracks, 4 swords etc?)

Just something I was thinking about recently.
 
I definitely think that the Zekda franchise is big enough to have games in multiple "styles". Similar to how the main line Mario games have multiple styles.

Mario currently has 3 styles
2d side scrolling (classic games. New serues and now Wonder)

3d Games (64 sunshine galaxy, odyssey)

3d land/world

While there are similar elements in each style they play quite differently from one another.

Zelda series could do something similar

Open world style (botw, totk)

Classic style (lttp, oot)

Third style? (Yet to be defined)

Where would a game Ike Echos of wisdom fit style wise? (And also stuff like spirit tracks, 4 swords etc?)

Just something I was thinking about recently.
A lot of people hate the DS Zelda games and hate Echoes. They just want to play LTTP over and over.
 
If they could keep the exploration and interactivity of the BotW and TotK and bring back dungeons and more complex combat, they'd win everything again.
 
A lot of people hate the DS Zelda games and hate Echoes. They just want to play LTTP over and over.
Yep.
Phantom Hourglass was a Zelda game through and through, but apparently people couldn't stand a dungeon that kept opening up and offering new ways of traversal the more you progressed into the game, or to simple touch controls.

Spirit Tracks and Echoes of Wisdom tried new gimmicks that, frankly, weren't that good. But they weren't mainline games, either. And I'd rather Nintendo half-ass a little experiment here and there, than waste hundreds of millions in a colossal mainline turd.
 
Yep.
Phantom Hourglass was a Zelda game through and through, but apparently people couldn't stand a dungeon that kept opening up and offering new ways of traversal the more you progressed into the game, or to simple touch controls.
Yeah I have some minor complaints with PH, but the mega dungeon was not one of them. It's weird how much people reacted to that, when it made perfect sense as a novel idea in the mix, having a dungeon where you find more shortcuts and paths to go further and further with each revisit.
 
Yeah I have some minor complaints with PH, but the mega dungeon was not one of them. It's weird how much people reacted to that, when it made perfect sense as a novel idea in the mix, having a dungeon where you find more shortcuts and paths to go further and further with each revisit.
I didn't play phantom hour glass until way later, OoT killed my interest in Zelda for awhile, and thought it was severely underrated. I actually prefer it to Wind Waker which even with the Wii U adjustments still feels extremely middling overall.
 
On the subject of weapon durability, I suppose the devs wanted to make up for never being able to change the one, glaring repetitive gameplay element: swinging your sword always felt the same and functioned the same.
Then they could have done what 99% of games with swords do and give you some fucking sword techniques. You know, like they did with Twilight Princess a decade before BotW?

That's one of the most retarded excuses I've ever heard for BotW having such bland, undeveloped combat.
 
I couldn't get into it either. It's funny, because Zelda has always had a history of doing that. The first game is awesome, and the following game usually does something weird. I couldn't get into Tears. I don't mind the open world style, but I wish they'd make it more like Zelda where you find and unlock dungeons and to go through.
 
Yep.
Phantom Hourglass was a Zelda game through and through, but apparently people couldn't stand a dungeon that kept opening up and offering new ways of traversal the more you progressed into the game, or to simple touch controls.

Spirit Tracks and Echoes of Wisdom tried new gimmicks that, frankly, weren't that good. But they weren't mainline games, either. And I'd rather Nintendo half-ass a little experiment here and there, than waste hundreds of millions in a colossal mainline turd.
I haven't played EoW but I love the DS Zelda's, both of them. Spirit Tracks is kind of stupid but very charming and somehow the train thing works. It just seems like I am on a different wavelength than many fans.
 
I don't mind the open world aspects and sideshow. However, I would like to see the return of some proper dungeons.

Also - meaningful open world would be a more apt way to put it. Stuff like the underground from ToTK is just filler garbage.
 
I love the new style of Zelda and was getting tired of the old formula by Twilight Princess.

Puzzles & Dungeons
After Majora's Mask, the dungeon puzzles just got easier and easier. And like many others that was my favorite part. Themed or not, how many more times were we going to place blocks over switches or send an arrow through a torch to burn a flammable barrier? Did no one else become so Zelda literate that a single step into a dungeon room meant you could analyze and deduce a puzzle within seconds?

Now admittedly Skyward Swords mechanics were so unique they brought forth puzzles that were really refreshing. Too bad the game was so linear and hand holdy.

The puzzle boxes were relatively smaller within Breath and Tears but I was so happy to have to think differently. I would have preferred different themes within the Divine Beasts but I loved altering their layouts and solving the puzzles Stone Tower style. Same goes for the Shrines. They were small but there were a few that really made me think and I appreciated the heck out of that. For years I constantly read how people were getting so sick of Zelda's single answer puzzles. Seemed like people were clamoring for more ways to puzzle solve and in general it looks to have been received well.

The World
With Ocarina and Majora I had a sense that Nintendo was trying to make this giant world but were hindered by technology. Then came Wind Waker, it's open sea and the promise of finding new lands across the ocean. Why was darn near every island just a few large rocks jutting from the depths? The game felt so artificial and not lived in. Well aside from that one island. Then with Twilight Princess you got a sense that Castle Town the world was filled up and lived in but nope not really. The Gorons and Zora's still just lived in holes in the walls and the world was mostly deserted. Skyward Sword just made the world disappointingly smaller even if narratively I understood why. Other games on Playstation and X Box looked like real adventures and Zelda just kept on with it's diorama shoe boxes.


Tears and Breath at least brought some realistic scale and a decent amount of lived in civilizations. I think the Zora and Goron's could stand to have a little more personal living space but otherwise it was such a huge step up. The game was mostly deserted but with the post apocalyptic setting it felt right.

Combat & Weapons
I don't necessarily want breakable weapons but I appreciated the system they had going. Even if I didn't necessarily want or need what the reward was, wasn't it cool to see the personality of the enemies? Years after the game launched people were catching the Moblins and Bokoblins doing new and unique things. If we get even more enemies with that level of AI I will be satisfied. Watching the Moblins pick up whatever the could, including their allies, was pretty exciting.

I hope the sword play get's a little more intricate and that we get more permanent tools to fight with. Boomerangs, whips, hook shots, hammers. All that during typical battle that can help you maneuver and fight would be welcome.
 
'New' he says as they release one of the shallowest openworld games ever created, and then follow it up with overpriced DLC disguised as a sequel.

Zelda tourists ruined the franchise
I'm 47 and have played every Zelda since the first on the NES when they were new. It's actually possible for people to have different opinions. I'm sorry you don't like the current Zelda direction. But millions of people do. Can't please everyone.
 
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I'm 47 and have played every Zelda since the first on the NES when they were new. It's actually possible for people to have different opinions. I'm sorry you don't like the current Zelda direction. But millions of people do. Can't please everyone.
Same here, I'm absolutely not a recent tourist -- the OG NES Zelda was my first major video game, cherished in my childhood -- and I agree completely with Miyamoto & Tezuka (the true OGs of what Zelda is...) on their public statements that BOTW/TOTK were a return to roots of the franchise.

Nothing in many, many years before it felt even half as "authentic Zelda" to me as BOTW on release.
 
The biggest issue I think, is that they want to treat classic Zelda style and BTOW style as is they couldn't coexist.

If they made a full reimagining of Zelda OOT, it could have a huge expansive world just like BOTW, but follow a more linear approach (doesn't even have to be very linear, but also not completely free like BTOW), to allow for good storytelling and character development.

They could even make it more like Metroidvania-like, where, while not extremely open as BTOW, it would allow for good exploration and backtracking to access new areas after you get certain items, and let people attack bosses with different methods. In this regard, the bosses could be done like Mega Man, where if you hit them with their weakness item, it's easier, but you can still beat them other ways.

There are many ways in which Zelda could evolve while maintaining both the classic style of having dungeons and items, as well as a huge open world to explore.
 
Ran the table on every modern Zelda game during the pandemic, MM is a powerhouse of originality, OoT gave Nintendo its first legitimate punch, TP, SS, WW, Botw, and Totk hold their values but don't hold a candle to the N64 Zelda games.
 
I'm sorry you don't like the current Zelda direction. But millions of people do. Can't please everyone.
Who gives a fuck what "millions" think? "Millions" shot talentless trash like MrBeast to stardom. "Millions" decided that shallow slop like the MCU was the king of cinema.

BotW has had a devastating impact on the entire gaming landscape, all to please the shallow tourists who only care about what's "in".

Nintendo destroyed Metroid Prime 4, one of their most anticipated games in decades, to please BotW shills. They turned Mario Kart World from what should have been a fan favourite to a highly controversial mistake, again to please the fake Zelda fans
 
Then they could have done what 99% of games with swords do and give you some fucking sword techniques. You know, like they did with Twilight Princess a decade before BotW?

That's one of the most retarded excuses I've ever heard for BotW having such bland, undeveloped combat.
It is not an excuse, just me wondering about a decision that did annoy me several times while playing the games (but never as much as the rain magically starting exactly when I was halfway up a rock wall, or when I spotted a tree with something between its branches).

The sword techniques in TP were all completely optional, and useful pretty much only in selected fights where you could also win by just swinging your sword normally.



Nintendo destroyed Metroid Prime 4, one of their most anticipated games in decades, to please BotW shills.
Source?
Nintendo themselves cared so much about pleasing people with MP4, all the promotion they did was "oh yeah guys, we also have MP4 coming out soon, here's the release date, now back to the games we really want you to care about."
And really, comparing that little barren desert to one of the most carefully crafted open worlds ever seen does nothing for your argument.
 
Nah you are just making excuses. I've played lots of open world games with actual music, like Skyrim for example, so you can have actual music while exploring an overworld instead of just some lazy piano notes here and there.
Well that's baloney. Skyrim is a great score, I listen to it often. But BotW is also great and how it works with the game. You have no idea what you're talking about if you're throwing around phrases like "actual music." What sheer nonsense. :rolleyes:
 
Source?
Nintendo themselves cared so much about pleasing people with MP4, all the promotion they did was "oh yeah guys, we also have MP4 coming out soon, here's the release date, now back to the games we really want you to care about."
And really, comparing that little barren desert to one of the most carefully crafted open worlds ever seen does nothing for your argument.
Here.

The developers confirmed the entire design philosophy of the game was changed to capitalize on the open world Nintendo craze BotW started.
 
Well that's baloney. Skyrim is a great score, I listen to it often. But BotW is also great and how it works with the game. You have no idea what you're talking about if you're throwing around phrases like "actual music." What sheer nonsense. :rolleyes:
Sorry man. I respect your opinion but I really believe the music in BOTW sucks a lot and specially compared to the previous entries. Lets just agree to disagree.
 
Then they could have done what 99% of games with swords do and give you some fucking sword techniques. You know, like they did with Twilight Princess a decade before BotW?

That's one of the most retarded excuses I've ever heard for BotW having such bland, undeveloped combat.

I agree more or less but Twilight Princesses extra sword techniques were a joke. If they were mandatory to take out more enemies and weren't animated so poorly I would give them a little more praise. In Wind Waker Link pulled off that same technique where he rolls behind the enemy and uppercuts them from behind. I remember it was the only way to remove armor from a few enemies, it looked better and felt more useful over all but I feel like there needs to be more.

Miyamoto wanted to make the sword play intricate in Ocarina of Time but pulled back on the complexity. I don't know what that would have consisted of but I would like a little more. Not just more moves that result in more damage, more techniques for different situations that can be reliably used at most anytime.

What other games out there like this evolved combat meaningfully?
 
100% agree OP. TOTK felt like a chore to play through quite honestly. I basically got to a point where I just tried the speedrun like 50% to get it finished. Once I did, I never touched it again. Don't think I even got all the powers or whatever it was.
 
Odds they do a Wind Waker 2 but without the cell shading?

Diving. Wet Suits. Scuba gear. Big ships. Small ships. Lots of ships. Build a ship. All kinds of islands. Volcanoes exploding and rising to become islands. Underwater cities. Submarines. The world is a massive globe ala SMG/AC.

Also gotta wonder if a big addition would be co-op. Or exploring each other's worlds. Worlds that could have some random nature to them or be influenced/constructed by the players. Just thinking out loud and big picture idea.
 
Music in BotW isn't inherently bad. Just isn't memorable and is largely about ambience(which you'd preferably would just let environmental sound do the talking) although I think it's just elevator music or as it was aptly put...Cat Piano. And the Track names are just stuff like Field - Day instead of Hyrule Field. As well as having 3 separate tracks for an overworld theme that sound IMO quite bland.

OoT however has the feeling of Adventure from the early morning, has a sense of determination, moves towards midday, builds tension, and gets slower near the end of the day. And at night the music stops entirely and you have pure ambience that only breaks if you enter combat.

So let's compare.









I'll always prefer ambient sound over music in a open world game so you can absorb as much of it as you can.
 
The original NES game had around 25 common enemies (bosses not included), about half of which came in two different colors. The Switch games have fewer general enemy types, but each comes in at least 3 variants and up to a dozen, all with different weapons/ powers/ moves and other peculiarities.

The original NES game usually rewarded your clueless random wall bombing and random tree burning with rupees or heart containers… pretty much like the Switch games. And sometimes it even took money or life from you.




The original NES Zelda's overworld theme did drive you nuts after a while if you didn't know where to go.
And it most certainly drove your parents nuts after five minutes. I love that theme, but something like that would make people hate BOTW even more than weapon durability.

On the subject of weapon durability, I suppose the devs wanted to make up for never being able to change the one, glaring repetitive gameplay element: swinging your sword always felt the same and functioned the same.
This is probably the main reason they went with sword motion controls on the Wii: to make that one omnipresent commondand less repetitive and more engaging, since they didn't want to take away the sword as Link's main weapon.
With BOTW they finally went the extra mile and offered more weapons. But they knew that nobody would want to try out different weapons if those didn't break, so they took care to not give you weapons that you can use indefinitely.
I understand people not liking that, but having a weapon break at a critical moment set up so many interesting situations in BOTW/TOTK.
Different weapons is a bit of a stretch...you had like what? 3 moveset for one hand, 2 hand and spear? And the moveset were beyond basic, changing weapon stopped being a novelty like 3 hours in...

If that was the reasoning, it was shit reasoning.


Make interesting weapon and a more interesting combat\enemies instead so people are gonna wanna try them, instead of that retarded bend aid...

And let's be real, breaking a weapon was just an annoyance, it didnt opened any new incredible gameplay mechanic, weapons were fucking everywhere so you always had spares to use...

The alternative "funny physics" methods to dispatch enemies only barely worked against the red initial enemies, anything more than that had way to health to bash their heads with 20 wooden box using the telekinesis (also cumbersome as hell)

Sorry but the whole system was shite.
 
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Im one of the new players that just finished its first Zelda with BotW, and loved this one and TotK.

I had played many Zeldas before (I used to borrow from a friend the Game Cube Zelda Collection) but I just never like it. It felt just like a puzzle game rather than an adventure. Now, with my brother it resonates a lot and he loves Zelda. He loved BotW and TotK, but he is on you boat, he kind of misses the old Zelda.

For better or worse, the last 2 'main' zeldas where a HUGE success, and I dont see Nintendo (specially current Nintendo) not asking for more of the open world dollars. I do think that Zelda is big enough to try to make something similar to Monter Hunter, and maybe go '1 open world, 1 classic'. Not yearly ofc, but maybe something in those lines.

They have money, they can make both sides happy
 
I'm with ya, OP. I've played every Zelda game, and TOTK is the first and only one I've bounced off of and never finished.

In general, I'm at low tide right now with most of Nintendo's historic core franchises. TOTK, Mario Odyssey, Prime 4 and DKB are all the antithesis of what I've always loved about those series. And I'm not saying they weren't good games or that there wasn't fun to be had, but they're not really for me anymore if they continue down those respective avenues.
 
Different weapons is a bit of a stretch...you had like what? 3 moveset for one hand, 2 hand and spear? And the moveset were beyond basic, changing weapon stopped being a novelty like 3 hours in...
Then they could have done what 99% of games with swords do and give you some fucking sword techniques. You know, like they did with Twilight Princess a decade before BotW?

That's one of the most retarded excuses I've ever heard for BotW having such bland, undeveloped combat.

This is baffling to me, that anyone would say BOTW was a step back for combat instead of a gigantic leap forward.

Again, were we playing the same game? Previous 3D entries in the franchise had stale combat... little more than z-target and circle enemies, maybe have to use a specific item to unlock them like hookshot to steal a shield or whatever, then very basic swings and that's pretty much it. It was never much fun to take out a group of enemies, once you're done it once there's literally nothing more than game can show you on future encounters.

Breath of the Wild was actually engaging, insanely dynamic. Every fight can be totally different, there are countless systems and strategies you can mix and match to win.

Typical random fight in BOTW is like:

  • scout a big group of baddies ahead in a camp,
  • sneak up and take out a perimeter guard,
  • find a position uphill or upwind of the group, place some round bombs and start them rolling forward ahead of you,
  • detonate those skillfully just as they roll into the surprised group before your arrival, and they blow a few frontline guys out of your way, as the rest hurriedly grab their weapons,
  • strike their fire with a wooden speak so it's burning, then swing it around to catch the nearest guys on fire, they dance around chaotically,
  • hurl the spear just before it breaks, to take out the next guy running at you,
  • use the updraft from that burning of enemies and grass to launch into the air in the middle of them, focus/slomo a couple perfect arrow shots while airborne
  • drop and you maybe use an ice weapon on the biggest guy of the group to keep him out of the way while you finish the rest -- or you launch an electric bolt at him and steal his dropped weapon, or you freeze time when he goes to hurl an enemy at you and make it backfire
I mean, that's almost the least interesting fight you can have, half the time I'm doing things like (in a thunderstorm) making an enemy drop his weapon and leave a metal one in its place, then watch him obliterated by lightning strike as he chases me with it, or knocking down trees to disrupt them, etc. Or stealing or disrupting the enemies horses in all kinds of fun ways. Or the fifty ways of creating chaos with explosive barrels.

And have you seen low-health / weak weapon Lynel fights online? Amazingly high ceiling on player ingenuity or raw talent, you can get clever with just a weak boomerang and pure skills and take out a high level foe.

It's simply nonsense to suggest that combat was anythign but a giant leap forward for the series, over all previous 3d entries. It actually became fun and dynamic. I feel like people here didn't even try to play the game, they just hit the swing & dodge over and over ...as if the game didn't give you every possible signal that that is a retarded way to play, and that all the systems and dynamic elements are the whole point.
 
Who gives a fuck what "millions" think? "Millions" shot talentless trash like MrBeast to stardom. "Millions" decided that shallow slop like the MCU was the king of cinema.

BotW has had a devastating impact on the entire gaming landscape, all to please the shallow tourists who only care about what's "in".

Nintendo destroyed Metroid Prime 4, one of their most anticipated games in decades, to please BotW shills. They turned Mario Kart World from what should have been a fan favourite to a highly controversial mistake, again to please the fake Zelda fans
The companies making the games care. Both sold 3-4 times better than any other previous Zelda. Nintendo isn't a charity. They are making the games that appeal to the majority. There will always be some Luddite who just wants them to make Ocarana over and over again, and whines about change, but the majority love what they have done.
 
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