Do Older People Feel Zelda Can Be a Bit Childish ?

[mrtypr]

Hello people

Just wondering on peoples thoughts on this.. Please Note im not trying to be a troll or anything

I used to love Zelda in my younger years, played Zelda 1 and 2 and finished many times.. Parents only bought me a NES, so couldnt play any other zelda titles

Now im older and work full time, I can buy whatever I like. So Ive purchased a wii just recently and I have played and finish Ocarina of time and Twilight Princess, and just started Skyward Sword

I duno if its me just noticing this because Im older now or what, but I feel like sometimes Im playing a kids game with all the happy and colourful enviroment and music..

It would be nice if they made a more darker feel or something.. But I know that nintendo want to make zelda games for all ages.. I still enjoy the games, they are great. But I think I enjoyed them more when I was alot younger... Maybe because back then I didnt have many games to play as now or because it was more suited to my age group ?

Not sure, whats anyone else think of this?

 

[Bastian]

Zelda has always been a "kids game" from its first inceptions, which you played. Even the first two games which you played when you were young had "colorful environments and music." Zelda has always been like this and likely always will be.

So what has changed?

You.

Because you've grown up, what didn't feel "kid-sy" to you when you were a kid feels kid-sy to you now. You play Ocarina for the first time as an adult and it seems to you to be more childlike than the previous installments, but it isn't. You're just not longer a child.

This is why a lot of people for whom Ocarina of Time was their first Zelda seem to feel like Skyward is more childlike in tone and visuals than Ocarina, but it isn't. They're just not the kid they one were while playing Ocarina.

The Wind Waker is every bit as grown up as any Zelda. It just depends on how old you are coming in on each game.

 

[Hanyou]

I'm 25 years old, and I'll take the childlike whimsy of the Zelda franchise over the unimaginative "darker-and-grittier" aesthetic that's utterly saturated the console market. I find Zelda's consistent ability to make fun of itself far more intriguing than the consistent seriousness of other franchises.

I view the Zelda series as something similar to Pixar films--it has so many good ideas, and the fact that it's family-friendly actually benefits those ideas, rather than hindering them. Conversely, a great many popular games are best compared to Transformers, though that's not to say that more serious titles can't be imaginative (see System Shock/Bioshock for an example).

I hope the Zelda series never takes a more adult direction. It would lose something.

 

[Links Brother]

Zelda is more geared and is more liked for younger people. Mostly the age of 5-15. However this does not mean older people dislike Zelda. I know tons of young adults and even adults at the age of 50 you like Zelda. However if you were to put a group of each age group together I don't think you would be seeing the older people liking Zelda more than age 5-15 group.

 

[Ronin]

Childish? Not at all for me. I prefer its family-friendly qualities far more than any other "mature" series out there. Several of them are so depraved that I can't even stand them (God of War for example). I'm wanting to expand on my gaming basis some, but all the suggestive themes permeating most adult titles would keep me from enjoying those. That's why I opt for Zelda--and Nintendo games in general--because I know I can enjoy them.

Also, I see "family-friendly" as a more apt way to describe the atmosphere of Zelda titles. Though I clearly recall the days when I did feel "kidsy" playing them...especially Majora's Mask in my early years.

 

[Crash]

I think it's one of those things like cartoons. The kids will like it cause it's bright colors, fun, and, at times, funny. While the kid is watching cartoons, the parent can look over and see that little bit of adult humor thrown in that the kids just simply won't get. While it's not quite that simplistic with Zelda it's still along the same basis of kids will like it for what they physically see and the adults will like it more for the deepness that can be found in it once you look into it. I'm 21 years old and Zelda still has the exact same charm today as it did when I first started playing. I believe it's a state of mind. Think it's childish, and it will be, think of it as a game and you'll see it as it is.

 

[Post-organic]

I've been playing Zelda for the better half of my life, and never once was I ashamed of it for any reason. Ironically, TWW's Link is strangely badposterior in my opinion.

 

[surferguy7]

Color and creativity = Childish

....No.

 

[mrtypr]

Yeh what I think of it is this

Its kind of like those movies Finding Nemo, Shrek, Toy Story...

Younger generation would appeal to it the most, but adults can still enjoy them. I like those movies by the way, and like all the zelda games

Thanks for your replies guys

 

[Hanyou]

I actually saw someone use this in a Kotaku article regarding SS. It makes a good point. I saved the quote.

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

No insult intended...but I do think the older we get, the less we ought to concern ourselves with maturity. As an adult, I'm perfectly fine with playing Zelda, watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, even reading Lewis' own Chronicles of Narnia.

Video games are all toys anyway, even while they are art, and anyone who assumes otherwise is just deluding themselves. What debates about maturity in gaming amount to are essentially adolescent battles that are the equivalent of "My Space Marine action figure is cool than your elf-in-tights action figure." A bit silly, but I suppose that's where we are in the current Western-dominated market. A lot of gamers have simply forgotten how to have fun. That's fine when it was, say, Sonic vs. Mario, but it can be a bit silly for adults to have those types of fights.

Again, no offense intended. If you do feel Zelda's a bit childish for you, that may just be a matter of personal preference--only when you quantify Zelda as "better" or "worse" based on its maturity or lack thereof would your opinion be ridiculous.

 

[Wolf Sage]

I for one don't think Zelda's a childish series. I have been playing it since the age of 3, around the time ALttP was released in the US; I practically grew up with the series. My views on whether or not it is childish might revolve around this.

Also, I think Zelda is more a family-friendly series than simply a kid's game. :yes:

 

[bulbasaur]

I'm 19 and the thing about Zelda is as you go back and play games as an adult you see things that you didn't notice while you were young.

There are always underlying tones in a game that at first glance seems so cute and innocent.

But if you think there needs to be a gritty-realism on face value for a game to be adult then yea Zelda is childish.

However the main reason i play Zelda is because the game play is so amazing.

 

[Gizmo]

Nintendo wants to make the Zelda games look more "grown up" and I think this new attitude is complete rubbish. I would like to have a new Zelda were you play Link as a kid again with the same graphics style like in OoT or MM (probably with more polygons etc.). I think the style of TP and SS (which is more or less the same) looks pretty stupid.

I always loved the childish part of The Legend of Zelda.

 

[Y2K3]

I've never seen Zelda has being a 'childish' game... even as a child. In fact, when I was young and playing AoL, I figured it was aimed more at older people, since I had no clue what to do. I was, to an extent, the same when I first played OoT as well. While I generally have no problem with more mature games, that simply would not work well with Zelda in my opinion, as they wouldn't fit with the whole Fantasy Theme the series has going on.

 

[Onilink89]

Even "if" zelda was being labeled as childish, then fine by me. Doesn't change the fact that i like the series. It also doesn't change the fact that i don't care what other people think about me playing this so called childish series.