• Welcome to ZD Forums! You must create an account and log in to see and participate in the Shoutbox chat on this main index page.

Old or New?

  • Old

    Votes: 7 63.6%
  • New

    Votes: 4 36.4%

  • Total voters
    11

Castle

Ch!ld0fV!si0n
Joined
Oct 24, 2012
Location
Crisis? What Crisis?
Gender
Pan-decepticon-transdeliberate-selfidentifying-sodiumbased-extraexistential-temporal anomaly
I like new ideas.

We've had plenty of games with the old ideas, let's try something new.
Sure! So long as it makes sense for the series. A lot of what ninty's done recently doesn't make sense. Like the entirety of Skyward Sword.
 

Bowsette Plus-Ultra

wah
ZD Legend
Joined
Mar 23, 2013
Location
Iowa
Gender
Lizard
I like new ideas.

We've had plenty of games with the old ideas, let's try something new.

Agreed.

If anyone remembers the Valley of Deluge/Flood thing from a decade ago in the months leading up to Skyward Sword's reveal, that'd be my ideal take on a new Zelda game in a post-BotW world.

1587086215206.png

The premise of what was obviously a fake leak was that you play a schizophrenic man who thinks he's the Link. He helps people, plays the hero, and steps up when Ganon returns after OoT's adult timeline ending. Without a Master Sword or any kind of divine assistance, this hero must figure out how to stall Ganon long enough to evacuate Hyrule to mountains before the gods swoop in and kill everyone with rainfall.
 

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
ZD Legend
Literally never said that.
In general, the Zelda series' tone is all over the map graphically, thematically. The structure and gameplay varies wildly from game to game... the series up to Majora was more or less cohesive in all respects. But since then it's been this sporadic mess of tone, narrative, gameplay and visual styles. I pretty much stopped caring to keep up with it all a long time ago.

Here the quote of you saying it.
Waker just acknowledges that Ocarina of Time exists. If it weren't for the specific callbacks referring specifically to Ocarina, Waker could have continued from virtually any game in the series.

The reason Korl chose link to begin with was
because he was looking for the person to fill the role of the hero who never returned. Throughout the entire game he’s being compared to the hero of time. The entire story of the game is literally based around link proving himself as his a hero separate from the hero of time.

Literally never said that.


Waker just acknowledges that Ocarina of Time exists. If it weren't for the specific callbacks referring specifically to Ocarina, Waker could have continued from virtually


I started an entire thread here on ZD asking that very question. We actually came to a rather clear consensus based on the possibilities. If it was enough for Zelda fans to have almost a page or two of discussion about it, it must have some merit.

How many active fan theories are there of Wind Waker?

If you have to discuss and theorize why a major plot element in a game appeared out of thin air in the 13th installment of a series then it’s not a good plot element.

I’d also assume that there are just as many WW theories as there are TP theories.

This is actually a good question. While TP might have been the first instance of Link, Zelda and Ganon just having the Triforce by default, it has been a thing in every game since. The simplest explanation for me is that ninty has veered away from the narrative trope of the quest for the triforce. Now the main characters must inherit it. It sems like writers convenience that confuses things without providing any explanation as to why. It could be part of the whole reincarnation mess ninty made with Suckward. Who knows? There's a lot that ninty leaves up to speculation.

There are are 19 installments in the Zelda series. TP is the 13th installment. That means there are 6 different opportunities here for me to prove your first statement wrong. Let’s see:

PH-no triforce
ST-no triforce
SS-had to find triforce
LBW-had to find triforce
TFH-no triforce despite the title
BotW-Zelda starts with the triforce, but neither ganon nor link are shown to have their respective piece.

This is a one off thing that TP did and never explained.

Just because something just appears out of nowhere doesn't make it a glaring plot hole. But it does kinda beg the question, where were the light spirits in Ocarina of Time?

Not if it’s a minor detail it doesn’t, but this is the main driving force of the first half of the game, I’d like to know why they’re even here.



There are fan theories about this, mostly regarding the goddess hylia and the infamous tetraforce. Again, if it's enough to build theories off of, it must be meaningful.

Again I’d rather have the story be finished then have a bunch of tiny holes for us to use our imagination to fill in for them.


Because one Link got turned into a bunny and the other got turned into a wolf? What's this about the bunny being the "sacred animal of the hero?" I just remember ALttP saying anyone who enters the dark world gets turned into whatever form fits their personality. TP Link didn't get turned into a wolf by the dark world. He got turned into a wolf by the twilight - or rather, the triforce reacting to his exposure to the twilight to protect him

I’m pretty sure they both specifically called it the sacred animal, but I could be wrong.


That's significant, especially when you remember that the tot serves as a gateway into the sacred realm, which was the whole point of the child era of OoT. Ever wonder why we never actually got to see the sacred realm despite it being our objective in that part of the game? Then you recall that the tot is linked to the Temple of Light in the sacred realm. Put it together and you can at least infer that the dungeon portion of the tot is possibly the temple of light in the sacred realm. Then you recall that Navi left Link through the same window that leads to the tot dungeon. Is there a possible connection there? Did she leave Hyrule to the sacred realm? Why? Then why was Link looking for her in the lost woods in Majora? The same lost woods that the ruins of the tot are now in...

Once again this is pure speculation. If the sacred realm was accessible through a dungeon there would’ve been some evidence of it being accessed by ganondorf in OoT considering you entered through a stain glass window.

This is a fan theory. It was never explicitly stated in the game.

The great deku tree specifically stated that the koroks used to look like humans, and it is heavily implied that the rito evolved from birds, not just theorized.

For that matter, when TP first came out the hero’s shade was only implied to be the hero of time. It was never specifically stated that he was until hyrule historia.

A superficial callback. The only similarity between Kakariko and Windfall is a windmill. There's nothing to suggest that Kakariko in any way historically related to Kakariko. Windfall is arguably, at most, a thin superficial callback to Kakariko, but only if you consider that the only similarities is that they both have windmills and they're both each game's major settlement (or in Waker's case, the only major settlement sans Outset). If ninty really wanted to be daring with their callback, they'd just name Windfall Kakariko like they always do.

Where is this ever explained in the game? I always assumed they were the same three goddesses.

[/QUOTE]

I’m referring to jabun, great deku tree, and valoo. Their designs (and names) all somewhat resemble their ancestors, and it’s more than just a callback since they’re plot-crucial characters that, once again, connect the world to that of OoT.


This is a staple of every Zelda game now. If it makes no sense in TP, then it makes no sense in every game since.

But in other games the tunic is either his normal clothes or serve an actual story purpose like in WW and SS. In TP (and I guess BotW but it’s nowhere near as big of a deal there) the tunic is just given to link because “It’s the clothes of the hero.” It doesn’t play into the story at all. The story would’ve been no different if link just started out wearing it as soon as you started instead of the farmboy clothes.


We should probably end this conversation here. It’s gotten way off topic.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jul 1, 2018
Location
Canada
See, I think you're failing to pick up on the distinction I made between innovation and iteration. Not every Zelda game innovates. And just because a game has certain features, it doesn't mean that the design of the game stresses them. In order to understand that, you have to look at what elements the game places the most emphasis on, or what features they had to invent in order make it possible. The innovation/iteration cycle is largely what defines each era. Ocarina of Time innovates. They had to create things like fluid 3D combat, and had to rethink the way they did environmental puzzles. Then Majora's Mask iterates on those by taking the lessons learned in Ocarina's creation and the feedback they received in order to make the phenomenal puzzles in Majora's Mask.

Well, I'm not saying that there isn't a distinction between innovation and iteration, or that every Zelda game innovates. Not at all. What I am saying is that every entry tends to bring back existing traits from earlier titles even if that aspect isn't, as you call it, a central pillar of the game. Now yes, during the development of Ocarina of Time they had to rethink several things in order to make it work for a 3D landscape, but the foundation was already there. When reinventing a combat system for the 3D plane, they had to create a targeting system that was lacking in the 2D entries, but the core move sets of Link were there. You press the attack button and he swings his sword, you press forward on the joystick and Link runs, hit left or right and he steers accordingly. Even the items weren't an innovation, as the 2D titles had those as well.

I'm not saying that Ocarina of Time wasn't an innovator, but it didn't drastically change the formula of the series. In fact, from a narrative perspective, Ocarina of Time somewhat recycles the tale from A Link to the Past. You have Seven Maidens in A Link to the Past and Seven Sages in Ocarina of Time, you have a malevalent being who seeks to gain ultimate power through the acquisition of the Triforce, Agahim and Ganondorf. You have the Master Sword. These are common staples of the series that revisited in later games in some capacity or another, it's essentially retelling the same story but in a brand new way. A new danger arises, a new hero is called to action, the Blade of Evil's Bane reappears to vanquish evil, and so on.

Naturally, every game of the series will bring its own interpretation of each iteration and either innovate existing ideas or mechanics or reinvent the wheel. It essentially boils down to each game bringing something that didn't exist before and future games rebounding off these ideas to create something uniformed and stable. That doesn't mean you stop inventing new ways to interpret each iteration, but you are working towards a definitive formula or at least a set of standards for a definitive experience of a Zelda game. I am certain if we tallied up all titles and brought up a checklist of essential things each Zelda game should have, we will come up with something that matches our expectations, especially in later titles. That's all I'm saying.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom