The new Zelda game on Wii U will have an open world. Is that all the franchise needs to do to truly evolve?
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/editorial/37902/is-open-world-enough-for-zelda
E3 2014 has come and gone, and with it we've received news of a new open world Zelda title. A fresh entry in the Zelda series is always exciting, but the announcement of this new direction holds many exciting prospects. The question, however, is how can Nintendo's star franchise stay relevant in a world that already has sandbox games such as Assassin's Creed, Skyrim, and will have Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3? Is being open world enough, or is there something more than draws people to these games? Is the freedom of a sandbox with enemies and dungeons what draws us to fall in love with franchises... or is it something less tangible?
After all, Watch Dogs has an open world full of things to hack, but the response to that game was lukewarm at best and apathetic at worst. Watch Dogs may have sold well thanks to initial hype, but as a franchise it seems to have missed the qualities that will give it longevity. So, how can the new Zelda avoid that pitfall and breathe new life into Nintendo's star franchise?
I remember the exact moment I fell in love with The Legend of Zelda series. I had finally convinced my parents to buy me a Game Boy Pocket and a game my friend recommended: Link's Awakening. I had never heard of the series before, as I never had a NES or SNES growing up, but I trusted my friend's advice.
After slapping the cartridge in and hitting the power button, I can only describe the mental state of my 10-year-old self as "enchanted." As the hours passed, the island of Koholint won me over with simple, yet eccentric characters. Marin's morality, Tarin's unhealthy love of mushrooms, and Mamu the frog's renown singing ability are just some examples of what made the setting compelling.
Koholint Island was a world I could believe in... and more importantly one I wanted to save.
And boy did I try to save it. Even though Link's ultimate goal in the game is to return home by waking the mythical Wind Fish from his slumber, it's clear from the beginning a shadow hung over Koholint.... and as the reigning champion of Hyrule it was my job to snuff it out. However, as I progressed deeper into the game's story, I learned a terrible truth.
Koholint wasn't real. It was a dream of the Wind Fish given life. The price I would pay for returning home was robbing these people of their existence. Marin, Mamu, and even the shopkeeper who kills you with a laser beam for stealing would be gone forever.
So what did I do? What could I do? I kept playing. I finally came face to face with the Wind Fish. He asked me to awaken with him, reducing Koholint into nothing more than a memory. All I had to do was press a button to trigger the last cut scene.
I immediately put the Game Boy on the table and left it there for an hour. With a tumultuous mix of excitement and remorse, I finally watched a final montage of the characters I had grown to love before they were gone forever. I felt regret, but also solace knowing that those characters would live on in the memories of their dreamers, which is maybe where they had been all along.
All of those emotions came from black and white pictures on a 2.6-inch screen. Before that moment, games to me were nothing more than entertainment. They were a fun distraction or a mental challenge, but never emotionally engaging.
Nintendo wisely carried on their character-oriented tradition with the Zelda series. If you notice, the way the Sages in Ocarina of Time are designed to emotionally tether you to their respective regions on the map. Even if you didn't care about the Goron, surely you wanted to help your honorary brother Darunia. Majora's Mask took the concept a step further by designing the entire game around helping people who have their own quirks and desires. You didn't want to just save Termina, you wanted to help its citizens solve their tribulations of love and loss.
Zelda games weren't just fun to play, they were emotionally involving. You didn't just save the world because it was fun, but because it was worth saving. Hyrule, Koholint, and Termina were full of details that rewarded the player for delving deeper into the game. They had a degree of verisimilitude that was remarkable given their hardware platforms and more that gave us reason to come back to them time after time.
Other series in Nintendo’s library have also succeeded at this. Donkey Kong 64 may not have had a complex narrative, but the new additions to the Kong family were teeming with personality that only added to the franchise. Even the Metroid series accomplished similar goals with barely any characters to compliment the protagonist. Each game has Samus alone with only her wits and a constantly malfunctioning suit to rely on. You feel isolated and overwhelmed in alien worlds home to a fantastic atmosphere holding the promise of deadly secrets. It's impossible to deny a sense of wonder playing Metroid Prime, but with that wonder comes the palpable need to escape the danger hiding just under the surface.
Now, not every game needs to be emotionally engaging on the level of Ocarina of Time or Final Fantasy VI. Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart are examples of franchises that are known purely for their exciting gameplay. Indeed, Super Mario 64 is an amazing game that only wished to be a fantastic platformer. Those games have their lauded place in our hearts and indeed the industry would not exist without them. However, over the last generation Nintendo put more emphasis on pure gameplay without the emotional motivation to compliment it. If they make an open world with those tenets in mind, it may not be enough to make us believe in the newest Zelda's open world.
For example, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword exists in a setting that is conspicuously empty. Many of the gameplay mechanics, from flying to swordplay, were fantastic, but I felt myself oddly detached while playing the game. Link was fighting to save the world... but what world really existed to save?
Skyloft was home to a knight academy designed to police three or four dozen people. The surface of Hyrule fared even worse, mostly bereft of civilization save for a conveniently scholarly Goron or small population of woodland creatures. Yes, Groose and Batreaux were compelling characters, but that doesn't make up for an otherwise empty setting.
Yes, on the surface Skyward Sword proved fun to play... but underneath that lied a world lacking in the details of the series' earlier installments. Companies such as Naughty Dog, Bethesda, Irrational Games, and Bioware have only expanded upon what Nintendo and Square pioneered in the 16 and 32-bit eras. We've been given new worlds to explore and new characters to fall in love with. The Wii era placed more emphasis on gameplay and the allure of motion controls, resulting in a stagnation in the emotional involvement of some of Nintendo's most beloved worlds. The simple truth, however, is that emotionally involving narratives and revolutionary gameplay aren't, and shouldn't be, mutually exclusive.
Gaming as a medium is evolving to compete with movies and television. If there is one lesson Nintendo should take away from the last generation, it's that gaming is driven by the passion of the players. Sometimes having nothing more than fun with a game isn't enough; people want fall in love with it. Pure gameplay experiences with quirky visuals aren't always enough to sell a system. Gamers want something or someone whom they can relate. Skyrim became the first Elder Scrolls game to break into mainstream media because it created a believable fantasy world in which people could invest themselves. Mass Effect earned a large and devoted fanbase by populating their universe with thoughtful lore and interesting characters. Nintendo franchises in the current era have struggled to tap into those kind of devoted fanbases. The new Zelda, however, has the potential to remedy that. Nintendo has a chance to make a world that we can fall in love with, and in turn, be excited by... and that approach needn't be confined to the new Zelda.
Should Nintendo begin exclusively making sweeping and complex epics featuring Mario? Certainly not. Many times, less is more (I'm looking at you, Metroid: Other M), but a new narrative-driven franchise could be just what Nintendo needs to gain interest again. Imagine an RPG in the vein of Kingdom Hearts with Nintendo's mascots coming together like they did in the Subspace Emissary. Games like Wii Sports are important, but many gamers are looking for an emotional experience that stays with them long after they put the controller down. They're looking for that moment of hesitation just before waking the Wind Fish. They're looking for a sense of love that tells them to play just one more level. If the new Zelda can give us that... the possibilities going forward are endless.
Gaming as a medium is evolving to compete with movies and television. If there is one lesson Nintendo should take away from the last generation, it's that gaming is driven by the passion of the players. Sometimes having nothing more than fun with a game isn't enough; people want fall in love with it. Pure gameplay experiences with quirky visuals aren't always enough to sell a system. Gamers want something or someone whom they can relate. Skyrim became the first Elder Scrolls game to break into mainstream media because it created a believable fantasy world in which people could invest themselves. Mass Effect earned a large and devoted fanbase by populating their universe with thoughtful lore and interesting characters. Nintendo franchises in the current era have struggled to tap into those kind of devoted fanbases. The new Zelda, however, has the potential to remedy that. Nintendo has a chance to make a world that we can fall in love with, and in turn, be excited by... and that approach needn't be confined to the new Zelda.
QuoteGaming as a medium is evolving to compete with movies and television. If there is one lesson Nintendo should take away from the last generation, it's that gaming is driven by the passion of the players. Sometimes having nothing more than fun with a game isn't enough; people want fall in love with it. Pure gameplay experiences with quirky visuals aren't always enough to sell a system. Gamers want something or someone whom they can relate. Skyrim became the first Elder Scrolls game to break into mainstream media because it created a believable fantasy world in which people could invest themselves. Mass Effect earned a large and devoted fanbase by populating their universe with thoughtful lore and interesting characters. Nintendo franchises in the current era have struggled to tap into those kind of devoted fanbases. The new Zelda, however, has the potential to remedy that. Nintendo has a chance to make a world that we can fall in love with, and in turn, be excited by... and that approach needn't be confined to the new Zelda.
And this line of thinking has caused budgets to increase like crazy and put studio's out of business like never before. I'm sorry but what you are advocating for is the real cancer that has been killing the industry since last gen. Most of the games despite creating these big epic tales that are suppose to get the players emotionally invested, have storylines that are still terrible. You cited Mass Effect, which is a bad example considering the complete train-wreck the storyline of that series became in the end. Plus Skyrim was the first Elder Scrolls to have mainstream success because it had a 100 million dollar marketing campaign which was higher then any previous game in the series by far and they dumbed down the core gameplay to make it more accessible to a wider audience as well.
It's one thing to want a Zelda game that gives a more emotionally invested story, but using the likes of Naughty Dog, Bethesda, Irrational Games, and Bioware as examples are the wrong way for Nintendo to do it since it involves spending way too much money on something that doesn't even improve the quality of the stories, but makes the already poor storylines even longer and more bloated then before.
I'd rather Nintendo spend the majority of the budget on the gameplay which is what the series has always been most famous for, and not waste a lot of it on the storyline and setting, resulting in a dumb down produce like Skyrim just so people can live in an interactive movie.
I also think we should be hesitant applying what we've come to expect from "open world" games to what Nintendo might mean when they suggest that Zelda has an open world.
Their first suggestion was that "if you can see it, you can go there" which is pretty much already the case with Zelda games.
They intend to give us choices for the how of it, so maybe that will lead to something, but I'm not sure we're going to get a massive, open world filled with things for us to do.
They'd still have to add in all those meaningful places and characters, then give us more minigames, quests, activities. Ways to play and have fun without advancing the story. To really make an open world game like we're used to, Nintendo has to do a lot more than just give us a few options for how to get to the next temple.
QuoteGaming as a medium is evolving to compete with movies and television. If there is one lesson Nintendo should take away from the last generation, it's that gaming is driven by the passion of the players. Sometimes having nothing more than fun with a game isn't enough; people want fall in love with it. Pure gameplay experiences with quirky visuals aren't always enough to sell a system. Gamers want something or someone whom they can relate. Skyrim became the first Elder Scrolls game to break into mainstream media because it created a believable fantasy world in which people could invest themselves. Mass Effect earned a large and devoted fanbase by populating their universe with thoughtful lore and interesting characters. Nintendo franchises in the current era have struggled to tap into those kind of devoted fanbases. The new Zelda, however, has the potential to remedy that. Nintendo has a chance to make a world that we can fall in love with, and in turn, be excited by... and that approach needn't be confined to the new Zelda.
And this line of thinking has caused budgets to increase like crazy and put studio's out of business like never before. I'm sorry but what you are advocating for is the real cancer that has been killing the industry since last gen. Most of the games despite creating these big epic tales that are suppose to get the players emotionally invested, have storylines that are still terrible. You cited Mass Effect, which is a bad example considering the complete train-wreck the storyline of that series became in the end. Plus Skyrim was the first Elder Scrolls to have mainstream success because it had a 100 million dollar marketing campaign which was higher then any previous game in the series by far and they dumbed down the core gameplay to make it more accessible to a wider audience as well.
It's one thing to want a Zelda game that gives a more emotionally invested story, but using the likes of Naughty Dog, Bethesda, Irrational Games, and Bioware as examples are the wrong way for Nintendo to do it since it involves spending way too much money on something that doesn't even improve the quality of the stories, but makes the already poor storylines even longer and more bloated then before.
I'd rather Nintendo spend the majority of the budget on the gameplay which is what the series has always been most famous for, and not waste a lot of it on the storyline and setting, resulting in a dumb down produce like Skyrim just so people can live in an interactive movie.
The game will be open world in the same way Pikmin's real-time strategy or Metroid Prime's an FPS. It will be a distinctly Nintendo take on that style. That may not always be a good thing, but it worked out fairly well in both those cases I mentioned.
Id like to see them handle combat in the way dark souls does where beating the enemy is a matter of understanding it and not just running up to it and slashing away.Some of the bosses are like that, but not all.
Speaking of which, Nintendo is at a crossroads. They can either use the WIipad or the Wiimote for control, but they can't do both. No matter what you think of Skyward Sword as a game, you must admit that the controls were spectacular. And they can either continue perfecting them or simply forgo them.Personally, I also loved the control scheme on skyward sword I'd love to see that as at least an option on the new one.
Unless there is something so amazing about controlling Link with the Wiipad, I would hate for them to end what SS started.