A Link to the Past 2 (Zelda 3DS) Doesn’t Feel Alive

I have spent a lot of time since the reveal of

Zelda 3DS defending it against a lot of nonsensical hatred.

However, the folks over at NeoGAF pointed something out that is a rather

intriguing criticism: A Link to the Past 2 doesn’t feel alive.

This is directly related to the art and how “clean”

the visuals look. There is nothing wrong with looking clean, but as a sequel to

A Link to the Past it should look like the world is actually “lived in”.

This is mostly notable in some of the subtle

things done in A Link to the Past. You see shading affects that make the walls

and yes, even the floor and grass “look” old. Of course, this isn’t restricted

to A Link to the Past either. 2D games since A Link to the past featured

similar effects… such as The Minish Cap.

Now it is notable that this aging shtick isn’t

present everywhere in the original A Link to the Past. Assuming the demo

dungeon was the Tower of Hera, the original iteration was also squeaky clean

experience. The issue we run into is some of this was due to the limitations of

the SNES more so than actual design choice.

We are in 2013, and when you see things that are

supposed to be hundreds of years old… shouldn’t it looked aged? You can see

even more examples of this over at the original thread on this exact topic.

Still, wouldn’t you like to see a world that is supposedly old… look that way?