Well, I liked LTTP, it was fun back then, but I dunno. It always felt too enclosed to me. I never really got to explore things the way I wanted to. It did have a hint of that, but not enough. I felt too constrained in the bits of OoT I played. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and not have to follow a strict pathway under the illusion of an open world. In the Oracle games, I felt the same way, and also, I felt like the whole Past/Future/Seasons thing was a crappy way of mimicking the light and dark worlds. Zelda II was too repetitive, while the original had too little guidlines.
I think I might like Wind Waker, I just never played it.
Twilight Princess was something I planned to buy, but never did.
Do you know why FSA was the best Zelda? Because it was the one that wasn't fake. In our hearts, we all know Zelda is about dungeon crawling while traversing an amazing, diverse world. The problem really is that while the world is diverse, there aren't really any games where your pathways and experiences can be unique each time you play it. Sure, you might be able to play dungeon x, y, and z in whatever order you like, but you're going to play them the exact same way anyways, no matter what. FSA got rid of the lie about it. It had several settings, great bosses, and the linear, dungeon-puzzler gameplay all the others had, but wasn't fake about it. It's loads and loads of the core Zelda gameplay without an annoying trek across a relatively empty land for the twelfth time.
I've always seen later Zelda games as wannabe Super Metroids: They want to offer an expansive world, they want to offer different pathways for items and weapons and tools, pathways that weave back and forth between each other. They want to offer different ways to play through a dungeon and different ways to defeat the boss. The problem is that they don't. They force you to explore a world that you can only see and not touch, except at one specific time. Then at that point, you go and touch because it's what you're supposed to do, and after that, you're done there. You might have to go back at the end for a fetch quest, maybe, but who really cares at that point.
I guess I'm saying I see so much more possible for LoZ that I think the current state of the games seems pitiful right now. No, it isn't because of Aonouma, and no, it isn't because of Miyamoto. It's really because the games never grew. They never matured. Yes, LTTP was a great build on LoZ, and yes, OoT took what LTTP was and made it 3D, but it didn't exactly do too much more. After that, things just stopped. The Handheld games never pushed anything more, and while Majora's Mask did, it's considered an outcast by several of the series's biggest fans. There's a small sect that sees what should be, and what should have been done after Majora's Mask, but truthfully, most people are just blissfully ignorant.
Well, I don't like to be ignorant. I don't want to play a game that's a shell of what it should be (except Alien Syndrome). I'm not going to waste my time playing something that thinks it is something else. So get with the picture, Nintendo. I agree that the game needs to grow. That's what people really want, whether they know it or not. They want a full world with endless open opportunities, but one goal: Save the Princess*. They don't really want Oblivion, where you can do whatever you want for no real reason. They don't want GTA XIV King Louis edition, where, once again, they do whatever they want for no true reason. They want a game with a beginning, an end, and a new adventure all throughout each time the game is played. Otherwise it's just a feign swing at what could have been.
Does anyone else see what I'm getting at? Am I the only one who feels this way? I certainly feel like I'm not, and there's obviously people dissatisfied with LoZ games around, but does anyone else feel this strongly about it?
*Save the world.
Topic: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 72 (Read 17775 times)
