Happy Switch Day Everyone!
If you got one, congrats! I am going to play Zelda on my Wii U and hold off on a Switch for now but I will give some of my early Zelda thoughts later.
In terms of DR game development, I am really happy to say things are moving along really well. It continues to be play tested and balanced. We are getting really close here, but I am afraid I keep wanting to add small things in. One of the bigger items that we decided on adding was a brand new demo chapter that ties into the game in a unique way. Well, I recently finished that and it ended up being 5 pages in MS word! It maintains a tempo to it that would be impossible to keep up for a whole game and I think it really delivers in the end. After finishing it up I actually felt like I was getting good at creating these scenarios. This is just a small bite so hopefully everyone enjoys the whole meal as well! Beyond that, I need to play though a side quest that created because there was concern that it may be too dark. I am really eager to see it because I have a pretty high threshold for these sort of things. While playing the main game there was only one small thing that I asked if it could be removed because I felt like it could hit too close to home for some people. It is really just a single line of dialog, its not censorship or anything along those lines. In all honestly, this project came about because I wondered what a mature RPG would be like if we didn't include excessive blood or cursing. If anything the demo scenario will really show off some of those themes. Also up is trying to capture some footage to make a rough cut trailer. One to get some experience, and two to actually give you some cool video footage to see! With it being my first time though, I suspect it will take me longer than a professional, so still, no time line on that. I also need to work on the maps that the scenario I wrote take place on! It is all written down, now it just needs to be created in the game engine. I am hoping for a productive weekend!
So one thing that unfortunately is not on the agenda is playing Zelda for me. As mentioned in previous posts I did want to write some sort of personal retrospective up.What the games meant to me and I wanted to note what I was impressed by between major entries and where I wish they may have taken it. In this post I am not going to be able to go as deep, instead I am going to focus on what I have read in Zelda reviews, my thoughts on some of the changes, what I am hopeful about and what I am less happy about hearing. Keep in mind I have not actually played the game yet and probably wont for a bit. Later on I will post a picture of my back catalog right now, and I am still waiting on Nier next week. So many great games. So the below should be spoiler free unless you went on complete media blackout and its just my two cents.
From what I have read I am happy to hear that the whole game world is fully explorable. One area that aggravated me in several of the series entries was the numerous times you would see something you wanted to get to only to find out you didn't have the correct equipment to get there yet. I can understand some people liking this but for me trying to remember that I passed a place 8 hours ago that I can go back and use a hook shot on is annoying. That is another thing I am happy about. It seems like we have finally moved on from some of the same old legacy items that showed up every game with the same functions. (Not to mention dungeons have ditched the same old mechanics)
Some voice acting is welcome. I am sad to hear that Link appears to be a blank avatar again though. I feel like he should have some personality or let the player create their own character. This is after all "The Legend of Zelda". The Adventures of Link and Link's Awakening had their playable Link because it was his story. From the trailers this seems to be very focused on Zelda telling the story and communicating with you, so let me play as any character I want. (I would still probably pick default Link) As long as it actually isn't changing the story lets change it up. Many may disagree with me and I understand wanting to hold on to our child hood icons very dearly, but lets face it has it really mattered outside of a few cases?
That brings me to my next point, I think Zelda needs a straight up reboot, but maybe this is as close as we will get. So by that I mean, can we just set aside the old confusing timeline and start from scratch? A version of the same Zelda story has been told over and over for nearly 20 years outside of a few cases. In most games it flows something like this. A hero awakens => Zelda in trouble => Bad guy (usually Gannon) seeking power => Bad times in Hyrule(though occasionally elsewhere) => Yay, Link and Zelda won again! => but wait 100 years from now a new bad guy is seeking power(usually Gannon) => queue awakening hero and so on. Lets set aside some of the same old beats and hit some new ones. I am not saying I want motorcycle Link like from that Zelda press conference earlier this week but surely there are new adventures out there for our Hero. Heck , a game where you played as Zelda instead of Link would be interesting to me. I would just love to see Zelda get a really good story, that isn't so predictable. I have heard, eh, less than good things about the new games story in that it is somewhat barren. Thats disappointing to me.
But wait! Gameplay triumphs overall! Sure that can be true. There are still some areas of concern I have regarding weapon destructibility. This is not a feature that I am looking forward to and hopefully it wont impede my fun with the game when I get to it. I like the idea of different weapon types and hope they all have a cool feel to them, while in my perfect world the weapons Link gets would also have massive move sets like a Platinum* game, I will settle for there being a right tool for the job so long as that tool doesn't break when I need it most.
Finally, I see all these 10s, so many accolades proclaiming it to be "Open world done right"or " Best game since Ocarina of Time". I may get hate for this but from the outside looking in (since I haven't played it yet) people remarking how it is cool that you can climb towers to complete your map and note marks of interest on your map are insane to me. This has been happening since at least Assassin's Creed 1 and too many games have followed along with it. From the E3 presentation video when you run into that old dude right away. He should be like "Hey there, you look new around here, here is a copy of the map I've made. I noted a few areas of interest. The rest you will have to find yourself".
One last thing, I know some people enjoy these things, I am not one of them. There is 900 of a collectible to find. I don't know what it does, I also don't care. That is beyond extreme to me. If it is something you would enjoy finding, by all means have fun. There has been times I have tried getting all the collectables in a game and I always give up. I can imagine the poor soul sitting 898 having no idea where the last two are, trying to refer to a guide only to realize they could not possibly remember all of the places they got the 898 things from already.I imagine they are scattered everywhere given how many there are.
So this may seem like I am down on the game and I am not. I am eager to play once the game work is done or I hit a wall and need a break. I am very happy Zelda's first jump into a completely open world seems to be getting so much praise. On a personal level I felt too much credit was given to it based on other games iterating on open worlds for so long, but Zelda and Nintendo always seem to capture that perfect amount of charm. Hey, I am just a guy complaining about things and I haven't touched the game. Could all those 10s be wrong? I doubt it. I just hope by the time I get to it a patch is released to fix some of frame rate issues.
Have a great weekend! Enjoy your copies of Zelda and Switch if you got one! :)
JP
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