As long as it isn't empty of interesting things, nor filled with useless treasure chests containing "10 rupees!"
Man, I hate those chests. It makes me wonder if when Nintendo tests Zelda games out that they have a completely different approach to rupees than the fans do. I spent most Zelda games hovering around a full wallet. I just don't spend rupees that much. I buy essential items and that is about it. There is usually nothing interesting else to buy. What am I going to buy arrows and bombs? I can get those for free from defeated enemies. It's like Nintendo designs the game under the assumption that everyone is shooting arrows and throwing bombs all over the damn place and needs to constantly purchase refills. So the many chests of rupees in their minds is probably doing the player a big favour. Am I just playing differently than everyone else? Is spending rupees left and right the more common way of playing? The ironic thing is that the original Zelda had the exact opposite problem. Rupees were scarce, items were expensive and each arrow cost a rupee. In that game millions of treasure chests bursting with rupees would have been a blessing.
I wonder if the problem with Zelda's world is that Nintendo just doesn't really care about storyline elements. If you look at something like Lord of the Rings you can tell that Tolkien had this huge world in his head and had all sorts of details mapped out. I'll watch the movie and I'll see this cool statue in the background and it's not some random ass statue, it's a statue taken from the book and it was all planned and it meant something. It makes a simple locale feel so alive and real.
Miyamoto has all this gameplay is his head and then pulls all the storyline details out of his butt at the last minute. So if you want to see underground ruins of an ancient civilization? Well there is no ancient civilization in Miyamoto's head so either it doesn't go in or he decides to put something there but it's just made up with no real details behind it. When someone has a whole world planned in their head, they don't hodge podge some area together. They know the details and it is more like they are just relaying existing information. They care so the results are better. Nintendo as a whole doesn't really care about stories so Miyamoto is going to be thinking more in terms of water level, forest level, fire level. He's going to think in a technical videogame kind of way. Nintendo is not creating a world, they're creating a level for the player to play in.
I don't think this approach is necessarily wrong (it probably allows for better level design) but I think it benefitted more from inferior hardware. On the NES just that fact that it's one big world is mindblowing at the time. Ocarina of Time was such an ambitious game at the time that it didn't matter that the world was a big empty field and a bunch of glorified rooms hanging off it. I'm riding a horse! I'm travelling through time! I'm playing the individual notes of these songs! There was enough "wow" factor to keep us distracted.
Twilight Princess comes along and we're not so impressed by these things. There are less technical limitations now. Now I notice that the world is just an empty hub with rooms branching of it and that it isn't that big and there isn't much to it. Prior to the Gamecube the graphics were weak enough that you could just shove a statue in some place and it looked great because, holy ****, there's a statue. Any window dressing was exceptional. But now that it is not so exceptional that random statue looks like a random statue. It feels stiff and forced.
Hell, I noticed this with a lot of Nintendo's games from the Cube onward. It's like once the graphics were such that things could look like they should, Nintendo's characters and worlds felt a lot more generic to me. Sometimes the games seemed more empty and lacked extra details, like Nintendo only did the bare minimum. It may have been that before there was no room to work with so it took less effort to make things stand out. It's easier to fill a bedroom than it is a gymnasium. One huge exception was Metroid Prime which was just brimming with details and backstory and that game just filled with me with awe. I can't say what the thought process was in designing that game but it sure as hell felt like every detail was meticulously planned. With Zelda lately it's been more like "uh, well I guess we'll put a lake here".
Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Read 616971 times)
