People who've known me for a long time know I have no shortage of hatred for Twilight Princess. Just recounting what I hate about the game is so draining for me that I don't know if I can do it.
Visuals: The art style is repulsive, generic, and unbelievably dull. Every prior Zelda game showed that the developers had ambition, but were willing to work within the limitations of their system. Ocarina had a few weak points in terms of execution (mostly rock textures, which were stretched), but for the most part it was a colorful game that was internally consistent and it just worked. EVERY TEXTURE in Twilight Princess looked even more muddy and stretched than the rock textures in Ocarina of Time, and there was little contrast. What this showed was that Nintendo did NOT work within the limitations of the hardware. Starfox Adventures, Metroid Prime, Pikmin, and even Star Wars: Rogue Leader do an exponentially better job of painting believable worlds, and while they are not all completely "realistic," they do show that Gamecube hardware is capable of painting vibrant worlds that actually do have elements that look like they've been ripped straight from our reality.
I'm sorry, but Twilight Princess is just an ugly game. Objectively. No one will ever convince me otherwise. It shows a complete lack of
visual design, instead catering to the lowest common denominator of Western taste: unmitigated, bland darkness without any wonder or semblance of originality.
I am in love with Skyward Sword's art style. I hope Nintendo continues to take this route.
Story: I'm not going into this too much, but it's driven entirely by the abrasive Midna. We're supposed to care about the Twilight Realm when we rarely see it (and when we do, it's much more boring than Hyrule). This is just bad writing. As for Ilia, the amnesiac whose whole role is to ***** at Link for mistreating Epona (what?) and then become nothing more than a worthless motivator, I can't bring myself to give a damn about her.
None of this would be much of a problem if it were backstory relegated to a manual, but the fact is the game is
very plot-driven. As is the case with the graphics, Nintendo didn't understand its limitations here. They just threw out random plot elements and hope they worked. This is very different from Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, and Majora's Mask, which show how to write a story for a Zelda game. One thing clearly led to another, but the stories still had scope that allowed every region and character to be incorporated. Twilight Princess is perhaps more ambitious than Ocarina of Time and Link's Awakening, but it's not nearly as successful.
Gameplay: Linear, lacking in exploration, arbitrary, and disjointed. These elements will not destroy a gaming experience on their own; together, they can, and Twilight Princess showcases all of them. There's no real reason for it to be linear, but it is; you're led by the hand by a boring troupe of characters whose names I can't remember for no good reason, and major parts of the overworld are blocked off not by obstacles managed with items, but
by the plot. What a terrible design decision for a Zelda game. It removes any sense of accomplishment from the player and it betrays everything Zelda's supposed to be about. Previous Zelda games were linear; none were as
unnecessarily and
obstinately linear.
When Nintendo did try to change things up, they failed. The wolf controls are sloppy, slippery, and unnatural. Assuming the wolf form is more of an annoyance than an asset, especially at the beginning of the game when the browner-than-normal Twilight Realm is hindering your progress. Ugh.
I have more to say about the gameplay, but I won't say it now. Suffice to say, Twilight Princess is a chore.
A special word on "darkness:" I hear people throw around the word "dark" liberally to describe everything about this game, and they usually do so in its defense, as if it's automatically a good thing. I like dark fantasy and science fiction (Hyperion is one of my favorite books!). But absolute darkness is usually juvenile for a long story, showing little respect for nuance and tone. Even horror films, when they're worth watching, build up their characters by showing them as everyday individuals or at least making them interesting in some way that's not "dark."
Twilight Princess is not as "dark" as people say it is, but it does try to be. You can tell that Nintendo wanted to make it a melancholy experience. The problem is that instead of ever being genuinely dark, it's just dull. Everything--from the muted story to the muted colors--operates with lethargy. People mistake this for maturity or genuine darkness when it's really just laziness, artificial darkness meant to create atmosphere without ever really knowing how. Yes, there were also moments meant to be funny, whimsical, and adventurous, but the brown world and foreign plot kept them from being the oases they should have been.
Have people ever really thought about why they find Majora's Mask dark? I'll answer that:
Majora's Mask has contrast. This is important. Fantasies can especially benefit from sharp contrasts in tone, and this style has always worked for Zelda; rather than being uniformly dull, it will swing you wildly from one emotion to the other, and in an odd way emulate the human experience in the real world. Majora's Mask is actually a very bright, colorful, funny, exciting game, but its moments of darkness and its overall story act as very effective exclamation points. High fantasy at its best. It's for this same reason that people praise movies like The Empire Strikes Back--they take us by surprise, but still provide us with plenty of fun while they're at it. I suppose Nintendo could craft a Dune-type story, something that manages to exhibit a consistent tone of melancholy. Morrowind and Riven are games that actually achieved this (and used browns well, I should add!). I think the Metroid series actually manages to do this on occasion. But they obviously didn't know how to do this when they were making Twilight Princess. Maybe they were halfhearted about it because they realized it betrayed a fundamental tenet of the Zelda experience--adventure.
Summary of this last section: "Darkness" is not inherently good, and Twilight Princess fails at it, mostly due to the development team's inept attempts at sparse contrast and consistent melancholy.
I don't know if I've expressed myself as well as I'd like here. My thoughts were a bit disorganized. I'll just say the mangled, disorderly nature of this post is a tribute to Twilight Princess's tone, style, and ridiculous plot and leave it at that.
EDIT: Oh, and TP is nothing like Ocarina of Time. Thought I'd throw that out there. While I hate this game, my criticisms only partly intersect with Benzaie's. A lack of innovation isn't a huge problem in my view, as long as things are done well. Also,
I believe strongly if he had made this review near the games initial release, it would be a lot less negative.
I was every bit as negative about Twilight Princess in early 2007 when I first played it, and I've known several people who've shared my opinion for just as long. Oftentimes, we were shut down by people who thought positively of the game and accused us of being "blinded by nostalgia" for Ocarina of Time (which makes little sense; I loved The Wind Waker and liked Majora's Mask). I think it's just that people are more willing to listen now.
I wouldn't be surprised if Benzaie's always felt this way.
