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General Zelda Why Does Nintendo Waste Time on Gimmicks and Art Style?

Justac00lguy

BooBoo
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Why? Just because you have the gist of a story in mind doesn't mean you have the entire gameplay portion of the game mapped out.

I don't recall mentioning gameplay I mentioned plot points but again if this is the case then this would refer back to my earlier point with how Nintendo seem to waste time experimenting in the development stage.
 

JuicieJ

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I don't recall mentoring gameplay I mentioned plot points but again if this is the case then this would refer back to my earlier poin with how Nintendo seem to waste time experimenting in the development stage.

Experimenting isn't wasting time. It's trying out new things and seeing what works best with them. It's how gaming evolution happens. Without experimentation, gaming would become static, meaning it would never grow. I don't think any of us want that.
 

Justac00lguy

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Experimenting isn't wasting time. It's trying out new things and seeing what works best with them. It's how gaming evolution happens. Without experimentation, gaming would become static, meaning it would never grow. I don't think any of us want that.

I mentioned this in my first post in this thread....

There is nothing wrong with experimenting but we are 16 games in and only 4 for me and am sure many others would agree have actually moved the game franchise forward. Zelda has the perfect format in my opinion all they need to do is expand off this, maybe innovate to an extent but to keep sidetracking instead of building off the series stand outs is not the way forward.
 

JuicieJ

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I mentioned this in my first post in this thread....

There is nothing wrong with experimenting but we are 16 games in and only 4 for me and am sure many others would agree have actually moved the game franchise forward. Zelda has the perfect format in my opinion all they need to do is expand off this, maybe innovate to an extent but to keep sidetracking instead of building off the series stand outs is not the way forward.

How are they sidetracking? They've still always attempted to improve the core mechanics of the series' formula, which is part of what they were trying to do with the Wii MotionPlus (and what they did with many features in Skyward Sword).
 

Alex

~TLoZ Veteran~
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I honestly don't mind if it takes a while before the next Zelda game comes out because yeah sure it sucks, but atleast they always make a great game so i don't mind as long as they make me proud as they always have. :p
 

Cfrock

Keep it strong
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wait, i could've sworn you were trying to disagree with me...

I have been, you have just misunderstood my tone. Phrases like this:
If its controls are a gimmick then logically all control schemes are gimmicks.
and
This logic basically means every game ever released for the Wii was a gimmick, because they all used motion controls too.
were used to demonstrate how ridiculous and fallacious such logic is. If you think that I was agreeing with you, then you seem to feel these statements are actually true. If that is the case then you view all video games as gimmicks. I find that absolutely ridiculous and it demonstrates that you have just as skewed a view of what a gimmick actually is as the rest of us "delusional" people.

If you honestly believe that every game on the Nintendo Wii made use of gimmicks purely because the system had a motion-based controller then I have no interest in talking to you about this subject because you do not understand what is being discussed.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
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Well...art style is a huge factor in sales, so that's part of it. I'm sure sure if gimmicks help or hurt the series in terms of sales. TP's motion controls felt far more gimmicky than SS's...on the other hand, SS's controls and advertisement fits the term "gimmick" more than TP's, which is to say they really made the M+ a huge deal in advertisement in SS, not to mention they based the game more around them even if it was completely pointless at times. In the end, TP's "gimmick" landed them the 2nd best selling Zelda of all time while SS's "gimmick" gave them worse sales than Link's Crossbow Training, so it could really go either way. But yeah, as a business, art style is very important towards their profits. tWW and TP are proof of this.
 

Sir Quaffler

May we meet again
Sorry OP but I'm gonna agree with JJ and Cfrock on this one. I don't see what Nintendo is doing with the control scheme and visual styles as gimmicks at all. I've seen innumerable other games that shoehorn in needless control schemes that only serve to show off what the system may do with no regard to how it affects the game; the Zelda games that use a new control scheme (I'm mainly talking about PH, ST, and SS here) use them effectively; they feel an integral part of the game, like I cannot get the same kind of experience with those games without that kind of setup.

And as far as art style goes, why is trying to make a unique-looking game a bad thing? In these times when we live in a deluge of "realistic"-looking games I like seeing a breath of fresh air. I like playing games that feel and play like nothing else out there, and that goes a long way toward making the games better than others. I like Zelda's art styles because they go against the grain, they dare to be different.
 
I have no comment on gimmicks. Cfrock already nailed that one.

Regarding art styles, I appreciate the visual variety Nintendo offers with each installment. While I enjoyed the Oracles and both DS games, that feeling of freshness if lost to familiarity with a reused art style. While every Zelda game (bar Zelda II) is an action-adventure game from the same series, aesthetic differences create tonal changes. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword imbue players with very different emotions, for example. While Skyward Sword had its sentimental moments like encountering a Guardian in a Silent Realm for the first time, Twilight Princess is by far the darker game, shrouded in an aura of mystery and despair.
 

ihateghirahim

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When I joined this website, I criticized SS above all other games. Now I must defend it time and again because people criticize it for the wrong reasons.

The motion controls are NOT A GIMMICK! Nintendo put all their efforts into it. It was well integrated, it handled well, and they did not make it the sole thing they advertised. The motion controls were an evolution, similar to nintendo pioneering the z-target in OoT. No one calls z-targeting a gimmick, and it did less than the motion controls.

Zelda actually has had next to no gimmicks (unlike a certain mustache-bearing Italian). The games are for the most part serious and revolutionary. The only gimmicks were in the Four Swords games, and to a lesser extent the stylus controls in the DS games.
 

SinkingBadges

The Quiet Man
Hmm, not sure if getting into the “SS is/not a gimmick” tangent (?) going up there is a good idea, so I’ll put that part in a spoiler tag in case it's unnecessary. Skip it if you'd rather (heck, I wrote it since the topic just interests me rather than trying to debate) for a more straightforward reply to the OP:

Reading Cfrock’s answer still hasn’t made me stop from completely seeing Skyward Sword as a gimmick, but definitely it’s not to the degree it was the game’s one and only focus… at least from the perspective of someone who followed all of the conferences and the info dumps on the mediums. As far as the bigger picture, by which I mean the publicity used to reach out to the masses like TV or ads in gaming sites (because, anyone who followed news on the game since before release, the established or “hardcore” fanbase to put it somehow, was probably already interested enough in the game for Nintendo to stop worrying about getting them in and get interest from the “casuals” instead). In that sense, the motion controls did take more of a spotlight, perhaps more than the other features since as Erebea said, things like the equipment powering system are at least possible to ignore.

Then again, I don’t really think SS is that good an example of a marketing gimmick. They did use it on the bigger advertisement campaign, but it wasn’t the main draw for most people who did follow the news releases and conferences out of pure interest. I think as far as the creative part of the game’s development goes, the motion controls weren’t the main focus, but as far as the more general audience –focused part goes, I did see it getting more focus. It doesn’t look like it started out as the main focus, but they definitely did bring it up pretty often in the general advertisement. But that just applies to SS, as far as I'm concerned.

In reply to the OP: PH and ST on the other side… I personally think their transition is a more fitting example for unnecessary gimmicks. Now don’t get me wrong, they were fine and all, but the fact alone that ST had to correct some of PH’s controls shows the overall control scheme wasn’t as polished as it could’ve been, and same goes for it having to streamline and simplify the overall structure. I think PH is pretty good, but I also think there’s a point somewhere when people recommend to get ST instead; I often feel like it was taken out of the drawing board halfway through development sometimes, like some of the movement or rolling controls. In that sense, PH does feel to me like it tried to go new places without really worrying if it got everything nailed and as close to perfection as possible. (at least compared to ST)

Now for a minor nitpick Van, but I don't think Wind Waker is a good example of that. The artstyle fits because the game is supposed to have a whimsical and colorful atmosphere. It also gets dark and frightening enough when it needs to, so I can't see how it could be the unpolished novelty-type of thing I percieve PH and ST (and SS to some extent, in my humble opinion) to be. Especially since it's a pretty basic Zelda-scheme in any other respect.
 
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Random Person

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I too feel that Zelda games as of late have been experiments... and by "as of late," I mean PH and SS. WW felt expirimental, but it came out some time ago. TP was a continuation of OoT and ST was one of PH. The art style, I don't mind so much as it's fine to experiment with it depending on the game, but I don't think it's necessary. Just improve on what you have and stop trying to please everybody (and no, I don't mean stop trying to appeal to a wider audience). As far as gimicky controls, I don't mind that either so long as it's accompanied by rupee game play. SS didn't have bad gameplay but some people out there (LIKE DAT DARE RANDOM PERSON FELLOW) believe that it wasn't as fantastic as the Zelda series is known to be. Nintendo is known for being gimicky, but they generally don't use them to sell games, they use them to sell systems. Games like Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess came out with the mechanics of their system (3D and Motion Controls). While these games did have gimmicky things, they didn't feel too much so. OoT was simply the next Zelda and TP had a traditional version of itself on the gamecube, not to mention its Wii version didn't have that drastic of difference as far as improving in the next phase of Zelda. PH felt gimcky but I forgive it (thus far, still playing) for its rupee gameplay and puzzle. SS is the only game I'd call unforgivingly gimicky as it demands you have WM+ and imo it's gameplay nor story lived up to it.

So while I do want Nintendo to spend a majority of their time on gameplay and story, working on gimcky items isn't too bad for me as long as the other two departments don't suffer for it. A game can be gimicky all it wants so long as it's still a good game.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
Honestly, though, the only reason I consider SS's gameplay to be "gimmicky" is that the game did seem to be selling itself as a M+ game rather than "The Next Zelda". In that sense, tWW and TP were gimmicky in the sense that art style was being a used as a gimmick to draw in new players in tWW's case and recover their own fanbase in TP's case.
 

Ventus

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What do you mean M+. It can't mean the ESRB rating, and I'm not good with acronyms.
By M+ he means WiiMotion+; the forced technology used in Skyward Sword. And really, SS was made as a final bastion for the Wii - to keep people interested because the technology would be reused and refined for the Wii U.
 

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