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Should Nintendo hire fantasy writers for future Zelda stories?

A lot of praise has been fired towards the Witcher series recently. Up until a few moments ago i didn't know that the Witcher video game series was based on a book series, nor did i know that the author helped pen the game.

This got me thinking, since Zelda games usually don't put much emphasis on the story, should Nintendo hire some outside help and get some writers to work within the parameters of the plot Nintendo set out for specific future games?

Would it work or should Nintendo just keep thinking of story as an appendix to gameplay?
 

Mercedes

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They definitely should! The story's never really been up to snuff for me, with only a few good characters (and even then I don't think they're that good, they're just better than the usual 2D, boring ones) standing out, and we're meant to accept it because it's always been the case. I just don't think we should. Zelda U looks like it's making good motions to improve the gameplay, so I'd really like it if they hired some proper writers and wrote a real, compelling story with believable characters and motives, etc. That'd be perfect!
 

Dio

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Yeah they definitely should. If witcher 3 is as good as the reviewers are saying then Zelda U is not even going to compare. The only negative about Witcher 3 I have heard is a bit much filler. So basically a huge world 3-4 times the size of skyrim. Packed with content that is good enough to distract you from the main quest. A rich lore. Excellent gameplay. Well done story.

Zelda U will be smaller and have less content. That is guaranteed considering that the power of the Wii U is nothing compared to that of the Xbox One and PS4, they simply cant match the scale of the true next gen. The story in Zelda has always been enjoyed by me but they are always pretty simplistic with little depth to them.

Zelda could really do with upgrading in the story and lore department, having a proper fantasy writer in charge of the story would do the world of good. Not only because the current series is a convoluted mess of contradictions, but because it is going to need to compete with rival games of the same genre. This may be the first 3D open world Zelda but that does not automatically make it better than the more linear experiences. There are many open world games that have come before and done superbly well, and by entering that market you open yourself up to comparisons between other open world games.
 

Iridescence

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They should hire writers, but I'd rather hire someone in the field of literature rather than someone with experience writing RPG's.
 

Kingwobbly

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Some games take themselves too seriously, I think if you hired the guys who wrote the story for the Witcher you'd probably end up with a too gritty, too dark Zelda game, where Link has a beard and one eye missing and his horse wears loads of armour and Ganondorf is over designed to the point of Death from Darksiders 2. While that can be cool in other games, Zelda wouldn't suit that. I think TP is as dark and gritty as it personally would like Zelda too go. I like the bright colours and the painting-like art style of recent Zelda games, even if Skyward Sword wasn't the best game ever.
I'm just a big fan of colourful games though, Splatoon is like the top of my list for games coming out this year. I'm not even looking forward to Witcher 3 particularly.
 

snakeoiltanker

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I am all for this idea. They make a great game, and dont get me wrong the stories are good. But I think with all the lore in the series, as far as Items, relics, races, ect. getting a great writer to take over, and rewrite the whole series using all the lore from the past twenty something years to make a new epic franchise. however I would just be cool for all future zelda games to have epic intense story lines.
 
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The biggest disadvantage to the Zelda series to me is its lack of story. Sure there is story, but its extremely minor. I love the series, but it will never get close to my favorite single player games simply because it doesn't have the story depth to compete. When people say that OoT is the greatest game of all time, I just can't agree, because to me the greatest games typically have great stories. This is why a game like FF7 will never be topped by a Zelda game, for me at least.

And on the topic of The Witcher, Witcher 2 was absolutely fantastic, and I don't really feel like that one specifically had any filler. Witcher 3 is a bit more ambitious though.
 
Honestly, if Nintendo hires fantasy writers for Zelda, they should hire someone with a good understanding of Japanese culture. The games have always paid homage to important cornerstones of Japanese belief and tradition, like the kami and the Hojo family crest (Triforce). There are a few Western writers that I could see handling the story well too, but I don't think Zelda should head in a Western RPG direction.
 

Iridescence

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Honestly, I think most of the storydriven games right now aren't well written. Well-written for video game standards, yes, but not for literary standards. I would not want Rockstar/Konami/Ubisoft writers on Zelda, making it all about war, violence, masculine fantasies and **** like that.
 
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I can see where people are coming from, but something tells me no. I fell like games that don't prioritize gameplay over story, or vice versa, come out... Meshy. Like neither one can really breathe, ultimately. I've seen games with better stories than Zela, sure, but I've never see games approach the story, and it's place in the overall experience, with as much polish as Zelda.

I also don't think a really thorough author would appropriately pen the series. Modern literature revolves around cynicism and grit (not to be confused with edginess, which is irrelevant here); it's so injected with reality, with moral ambiguity and its own sort of grim tragedy, that it would miss the lofty, romantic nature of a Zelda game. Zelda's stories are very wondrous, even if they're not always immediately complex. You can always look to a Zelda game and find, at its core, classic themes of honor, of sacrifice. It's not that an author would be incapable of delivering that experience (that's what they do, after all), but they'd likely take a more committed, and ultimately different, approach. Nor am I saying that Zelda stories aren't tragic, or even cynical, they certainly are; simply that they don't have the same timbre as what you'd find in literature nowadays.

Concerning lore, I'm going to take the apparently unpopular opinion and argue against a more unified and expansive mythology. If we make Tolkien, or The Elder Scrolls, out of the Zelda Universe, what's to distinguish it in the end? Zelda isn't high fantasy, it's a fairy tale, a legend. It doesn't have great wars and peoples and jealous gods; it has ancient tales, mysteries, forests and meadows and thieves and pirates and knights in shining armor. It's central themes aren't expressed through the intrigue of its great histories, but rather through the absolute humanity of its characters; it's simply not an expansive lore, it's a collection of isolated and dearly held stories. If we're so passionate about this universe (and many of us are), we can theorize and fill in the gaps; we don't have to dilute that purity of heart that we find in Zelda's narratives.
 

Iridescence

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It need not be a complex or deep story, but it wouldn't hurt for a literary pair of eyes to at least look at the script for constructive criticism. And maybe a line editor to make the dialogue stand out.
 

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