I think that while WW is a great game, it was a personal let down for me.
Like many fans, I saw the Space World demo and was blown away that the sequel to the zelda series could look like that. I mean you could see every fiber, in Link's tunic, and to me it displayed the power that could lie in the future Nintendo. So I immediately bought the GCN with this Zelda and Perfect Dark in mind (As you know that plan didn't work out- still there were plenty of other unquestionably great games that came out for the cube
). Anyway I was a happy gamer^3, until I saw Link in his new cel shaded style. Honestly I was crushed. The first screen shot I saw was Link, cel-shaded in the worst pose possible. I thought the world would end. But as Wind Waker approached being the Zelda fan that I am, I began to get really excited. It was a Zelda game after all. I played the demos at Best Buy and was really impressed by the quickness of Link's movements and very soon I began frothing at the mouth at the sight or mention of green.
I got my bonus disk and played MQ. The graphics were now only tolerable to me. I was all for cel-shaded now. They let Link move quickly without looking completely unrealistic (a cartoon after all). Finally I got my copy of WW. And for the first day, it was the greatest experience ever. Link does backflips, Link rolls, Link hides under barrels, and has his own talking boat. It was Zelda. Until Link decides to go out to sea and sail miles of ocean that all looks the same. This part, this large part, of the game made the game unbearable for me. I just couldn't stand sailling. Even with the Wind at my back, it still seemed like I was going at a snail's pace- I know boats don't go fast but it was a magic boat. It felt like the demo had lied to me with its promise of speedy and fluid movement because there was movement over fluid but it was by no means speedy. This is when the unthinkable happened and I put down my controller and played other things. Gawd, I even found myself saying that I had HOMEWORK and STUDYING to do, with an unfinished Zelda game under my roof! That is blasphemy!
So while Wind Waker was a good game with a good story, it was a huge let down in that it is the
only Zelda game that I could put down and stop playing.
Just to get something else out of my system- While I'm not a complete OoT fanboy, I do kind of get touchy when people say things such as WW's graphics are better than OoT's. It is kind of comparing apples to oranges. And even if it were comparing apples to apples, WW is OoT's and MM's
sequel. It damn well better have improved graphics. People stop looking at old-gen games with new-gen eyes.
Guitarsmasher- I agree with your entire paragraph save the insinuation that OoT imitated realism with little success. It isn't regarded as one of the best games ever for nothing and even on its inferior platform, it can give some next-gen games a run for their money (nothing Nintendo makes of course).
Topic: Zelda: Wind Waker was it a let down? (Read 44117 times)
