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rawliverandgoronspice · 8 months ago

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While I completely agree with everything Bloo said, I am... I also feel like there is a competing possibility for the placement of Ganondorf's glyph, and while it absolutely does not erase the implications or the fact that it does punch down this story of repetence and villification and "dark origin story", as the devteam would consider it (I think it might have been part of the argument within the team), I also think there's a more... down-to-earth, designer-brain case at play here. I might be totally offbase, but for having interacted with a LOT of designers who think practically about things and are both uninterested and very perplexed by the necessity of storytelling and its priorities, I think the placement choice may have gone something like this:

"Hey, wouldn't it be normal to put a Ganondorf memory near Gerudo Town, since he's gerudo? It would just make sense that players would go look for memories related to Ganondorf near Gerudo Town, right? And then it's important to have the glyph be visible from all nearby landmarks to encourage the player to go from interest point to interest point."

I think it was literally all the designers considered in their choice of placement honesty. Why wouldn't they. They apparently didn't hire narrative designers/game writers/quest designers/anyone with narrative sensitivity to keep the design team from going with their first obvious game designer instinct over and over and over, never once stopping to think about the ingame or "watsonian" implications of any of it --instead their choices are almost systematically guided by progression, affordance, impact, and "wouldn't it be cool if". I think this particular instance is a great example of that "designer brain" tendency --but the whole game is like that, which is why I'm so grumpy that they thought narrative skill was but an optional flavoring they could skip with no consequences. I don't think anyone in this team considered the way the glyphs would or even *could* impact the NPCs in the world beyond vaguely Impa and the NPCs that serve as pointers going "activity over there!!" as their core function.

It's exactly as Bloo said: these barely qualify as Zelda's memories. The entire framing is poorly thought out, and I think game mechanics is truly the only thing driving most of the decisions taken in this game.

do you ever warp into Gerudo Town, look straight ahead, and draw some unpleasant conclusions about the connection between that geoglyph and the Gerudo tendency to bear guilt for Ganondorf’s actions even thousands of years into the future? Like, assuming that for some time the geoglyphs were visible before disappearing until the Upheaval, that sure is a “look at this guy you made who sucked so bad and will one day be a threat once more” reminder staring the Gerudo dead in the face. and that seems a bit much

#totk #totk critical #ganondorf #gerudos #I think both what bloo said and what I say coexist and do a little dance together named: zero narrative self-introspection #or examination of intent #this is literally a fight to the death on almost every project I've been involved in #once I had a team of designers who had designed a game that was textually and in its mechanics about colonialism #and when I pointed that out they went: yeah sure there might be some of that #but we don't feel equipped to address that so we just won't :) and then it magically won't be about that anymore #as if you could wish intent out of existence and then it's like it never existed even though the mechanics are still the same!!!#a LOT of designers are like that!#not all of them of course --and I love designers they are absolutely core to have a fun game of course which is why we're all here #but godddddd some of them are incredibly obtuse (even while working for a narrative game!)#and their perspective is always the one that wins also #writing/storytelling needs to adapt and will adapt you're considered expandable in every production basically #(they are even paid more as a baseline than narrative folks --at least in the west)#this game is just. designers doing whatever and not realizing this might lead to a shallow world #it's pure distilled “narrative as set dressing” philosophy which is both incredibly outdated and also a poor example of doing that #which is why it's particularly frustrating to me!!! zelda has done much more effort in the past!!#sorry I only focused on the more surface-level aspect but I feel like people severely understimate Game Designer Brain Syndrome :(#(again --with all the affection in the world but aaaaa!!! let narrative help you make your game more engaging!!! we all win in the end!!!)#(I once worked in a pretty successful studio known for narrative work)#(and some of the designers were like “yeah we skip all narrative content we don't care” just. in the open.)#(narrative is more valued than it used to be but still pretty much considered unnecessary fluff in huge chunks of the industry)#(they don't even realize how disrespectful it is --or how they're shooting themselves in the foot too)#(ANYWAY)#(sorry for the rant hahaha)#(not sure that was particularly helpful but eyy)

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