#anyways whoo Zelda! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ganondoodle · 1 year ago

Text

more thoughts!!

-- it strikes me as strange that all the powers of the sages are elemental and then theres .... time? since when is time and element akin to fire and such? i get that its a fun mechanic but it really falls out of order, espeically since there have been all of those sages before, tho i havent played OOT myself, shouldnt there be a sage of shadow instead of time? since we also got a sage of light? (i guess spirit also isnt an element in that sense but at least that one has been there before) or is that time thing supposed to be like .. since it was Ocarina of Time that link fills that eightth spot somehow and thats why time is a sage thing in tok? is that to be understood as it being about the eight statue of the gerudo? since the shadow one has been dismissed? i guess?? even then shadow is missing so the only thing to assume is that ganondorf is the sage of shadow, but none of it ever gets adressed additionally, i just found out that in english dragon-zelda is called light dragon and dragon-ganondorf is called demon dragon (which works fine but), they are called Weißdrache and Schwarzdrache in german (white- and black dragon) which imo (!!) plays even more into the sage stuff

--the fact that bascially everything that happened in botw is kinda .. ignored? drives me absolutely nuts, not just the sheikah stuff but also everythign about calamty ganon wouldnt it have been mention-worthy that clam gan presumably was just a puppet of ganondorf trying to break free or soemthing? wouldnt gan himslef say anthing about it? why is it all miasma suddendly and malice isnt even mentioned once?

--in general i cant help but feel more and more like totk is just trying to replace botw essentially, not a sequel, but a replacement, all sheikah tech is sonau tech now, the titans are the mystery stone, clam gan is demon gan now, zelda holding him back for 100 years is zelda being dragon for the master sword (but super duper long now), the sheikah stone abilities is raurus arm abilities etc. (and i dont want to sound like im bashing totk or anything, its such a fun game, but the weird dismissiveness of botw feels so weird ..)

-im now almost done with the underground and beneath where the shrine of life used to be (rip for unknown reasons) is a hot spring called secret spring of life and im .... idk it just feels like even another slap in the face

-zelda in botw had a really intersting thing going on character wise, with her being pressured so much she keeps making herself sick trying to adhere to her fathers orders, and really wouldnt it have been a better conclusion to her arc there that yeah she dont have the sealing powers everyone wants her to have but she isntead is so smart to work with sheikah tech she can make something that helps against clam gan; i guess her unlocking her powers, she had them after all whoo, its meant to read as uwu power of love or something but in that situation wouldnt it have been more like ... yeah she literally lost nigh everyone she cares about now and feels responsible for it all and link now dying too is as much pressure as you can put on someone, idk if my reading comprehension is just that bad but couldnt that be read as ... the problem of her not unlocking her powers was she wasnt pressured .. enough? (its probably been done like that bc its more tragic, but anyway, thats not quite my point-)

at the end of botw zelda even talks about one of the titans having stopped working, and her wanting to inspect that, which ngl, made it sound like she still cares about it even if its purpose is gone now (but in totk that doesnt matter anymore and also all of it is gone?) and wants to keep working with sheikah tech .. and now in totk its never even mentioned aside from symin and impa giving a super summed up version of the story of botw, literally the only guardian parts are on top of purahs ex-laboratory, given how everything else sheikah was wiped off the map it feels almost like an oversight

now my point is that all of it is completely dismissed in totk, suddendly its all abotu sonau sonau sonau, which somwhat makes sense as in zeldas interest in history, and well ... we wouldnt even know if she cares about sheikah tech still sicne she gets taken into the past so fast- it feels like such a disservice to her character, i really liked zelda with her intersting in science and history, but it all is overwritten by her being pressured yet again to sacrifice everything (and it being undone as if nothing happenend in the end anyway) .. and it kinda being both in botw and totk bc shes being ignored really, in botw its her father not listening to her and just punishing her more and more for not having sealing powers (prayers sure seemed to work well huh lets do more of that lol, and i know he gives up on it in his diary then but if he started doing it when she was 6 and now shes 17??? thats a lil late bro) and in totk its rauru going yeah no if we cant defeat gan well idk actually, im sure you are here for a purpose tho go figure it out yourself lol its not like i know gan better than you possibly could lmao in botw you got to at least see her ... more naturally? more of her character? idk how to put it but in totk it feels like shes even less there even tho it technically the opposite, and all the lil text things you can find cant do all the heavy lifting, oh she apparently rode around on some construct beast like its nothing thats never shown or mentioned again and i guess she actually spent more time in the past as a human than dragon but how would we know all we see is her being shoved around again having to do a big sacrifice in the end again (that turns out to be a non problem after all)

-in all the dragon tears we barely get to see anything of all those new characters, its basically always about gan but for it being so much about him we dont know shit about him actually (like yuno even says we dont know who he even is except that hes very strong and very evil, but that gets dismissed too) and it all makes it so hard to care

--what hapened to yuno inhereting daruks protection but it being gone in totk? does inheretited magical power disappear when the ghost of your granpa dies? (does the whole inhereting stuff even work with gororns they jsut come out of stone after all??)

--quite a few of access points to the underground are exactly where sheikah shrines used to be, them being gone would be interesting if it was gans access to the world, like him infecting the power pipeline of whatever ancient energy was (rip to that too i guess) and thus cracking open the earth itself but theres isnt anything of the shrines remaining in the udnerground anyway and most srhine are just GONE without even leaving a scarring on the earth except for less grass in its spot so its .. ??? how do we not even see any remaining stuff of the big pillars that housed the guardians? all sheikah tech stuff came from the ground so ... wouldnt that have been the perfect opportunity to have it be all in the underground? like mabye the ancient sheikah where there and built it all in the udnerground so it can go up to the surface when its needed

--miasma veins/roots spreading all over the udnerground and it concentrating where hes ... chilling in his lil cave .. does it imply hes bascially sucking the life out of the land to reinvigorate himself? why not have bigger parts of the land then die and whither around miasma? anyway its both cool and kidna disgusting watching those veins pumping ... something through them in a heartbeat kinda way (cool theme but not really worked with nay more than that?)

--im a lil surprised gan doesnt care about ANY of the tech, back in botw it was like THE thing he tried to work with (assuming clam gan was something to do with him which .... hopefully ? otherwise whats the point even) and the sonau having similar tech too woudlnt it imply he should do somethign with it? (and again whats with the mosnter underground endlelly mining sonanium ... but for whom???)

--(whats up with the sorcercers statues that are built like mechs and can talk through statues of hylia?????)

--(also WHAT are the dark fossils?? they are as big as the dragons and three in each region?? is it a reference im not getting??)

it makes little more sense if you view from a DLC kind of point of view, at least mechanically, like the sonau shrines wouldnt be needed in botw since you already got your way to retrieve hearts and stamina .. but thats really it then isnt it? idk making it a sequel but then dismissing or even ignoring/removing so much that was SO important to the first game is so strange

again i am not trying to make this game seem bad, even if it might sound like that, and its so fun and so well made in most parts but some things just dont add up at all and its confusing the hell out of me, theres so much groundwork, so much awesome stuff to work with but the story does ntohing with it or the most boring option possible and it just makes me sad zelda has been a franchise were it gets most interestign when you look at the details and interpret it yourself, but given how modern these games are now, and how innovative and darign they have been reinventing the zelda playstyle completely, turning it bassically upsaide down but then the story is still found lacking, and contrasted with the stellar gameplay, music, world and (most) design aspects (looking at you gerudo) it just feels that much worse

sorry for this long ass rant, i just need to get my thoughts out .. even if some dont make sense or are dumb in hindsight, so pls remember this is just a big ol ramble with not perfectely articulated ideas

so i sort of half accidentally did the end of totk on monday, i had over 130 hours and slightly over 50% of the game done and did the second to last fight with 3 hearts left and no way to heal but fairies after i gave up multiple times thinking the game might be trying to force me to fight a certain way xD

so im still playing it and am aiming for the 100% but i dont think theres gonna be much more to discover story wise the game is really fun and has a lot of detail and love put into it that you can really see, the music is fantastic as well, some of the characters get more love which is great but the story is … well disappointing but not surprising, especially in its treatment of ganondorf, who still feels incredibly flat as a character, which was to be expected but also … you cant fault people (including me) for faintly hoping theyd do something more interesting tho i will say the end fight is really well done and i cant think of a way to top that in terms of epicness xD

anyway, some unfiltered thoughts and opinions in no particular order (keep in mind i know its viddy game logic uwu but still some things can really destroy the immersion; and also i like to think too hard about the stuff i care about so take this with a grain of salt, i never expected the story to be world changing but i want to remind you that i am criticizing it bc i love this franchise)

--what the hell happened to all the sheikah tech?? botws story gets mentioned a few times but never is it mentioned what happened to all the tons of tech lying around everywhere? if they dismantled the towers for purah to build her new ones around i guess thats fine, but all the srhines? the titans ??? THE SHRINE OF LIFE??? its all gone, esepcially the shrine of life irks me bc the cave is still there and its still called by its bame but its nothing but a cave in a vague shape of how the buidling was it absolutely drives me crazy bc its so dumb?? even if it all stopped working for some reason why would you dismantled it all and even then where did the material go?? why would you dismanlted an neitre building like that anyway?? if you want to have a cave there just have it be half collapsed, if all sheikah tech has gotten useless just leave it there but overgrown?? and why is all of purahs tech still working then? zelda doesnt seem to care about it anymore either even tho shes been so obsessed with it for so long? the titans how would you even MOVE them?? you CANNOT tell me that all this tech that survived tens of thousands of years just went poof within a few years; and sometimes it even feels .. insulting? like you know how much robelo cared for cherry and now shes tiny and just serves as a way to buy fotos for your collection? the fact that the shrine of life is fully gone but the cave is vaguely shaped like its interior and where the bed used to be is a healing pool of water too? like idk if im just insane but it feels like 'haha lol remember what used to be here? get it? the water heals you like the bed in the shrine of life and lol there was the stairs HAHA remember? its gone now for no reason.lmao.' to be clear i like having some mysteries and all but that is just …. so weird? when i discovered the shrine of life i was so taken aback i didnt know what to do, it really broke my immersion, by alot even, it just makes it feel even more like all sheikah tech was replaced by much cooler (tm) sonau tech

--what happend to the sonau people? we only know that rauru and mineru are the last two remaining ones back then but … what made them die out like that? this is by far not as important to me as the issue with the sheikah tech but still feels like a point that could have been mentioned

--as much as i like the open world and how free you are to do things your own way but, regardign the dragon tears i think they should have been locked more behind story progression, i got all of them rather early on and it made it a lil frustrating to play through the other story parts bc you know the truth but you cant tell anyone and everyone around you is acting like a dumbass running after fake zelda while the real one is floating around above you, and i know thats partly my fault for getting them all so early but it still felt like some could have been more well hidden or locked or something since theres no hint to when it would fit to do which one; i expecpted impa to travel to each one but it seemed like she appeared on only a few here and there- additionally i fully expected her to be more important, that she would have an actual involment trying to help zelda undragonfy but that turned out to be very wrong lmao

--why are the enemies in the underground mining sonanium? ganondorf didnt seem itnerested at all in any of their tech, only in the mystery stones (only one too, he didnt seem to want any more of them either) they dont use it for anything? at least the ones on the surface collected stuff they could eat or use for fighting?

--did mineru really build herself a robot body just to fight ganondorf for a bit and then leave? as the last of the sonau, even tho long dead too, why wouldnt she tell their history and knowledge or something and instead if just helping a lil in the fight and then go poof (i half expected purah to be a surprise sage since the spirit one would have fit her i think)

--the zelda being the white dragon plot point lost alot of weight to me when it was just .. resolved like that in the end, i know she spent thousands of years like that and all but it seemed like a much heavier decision that later on felt a little less flat after fidning mineru even tho i felt like i didnt care at all at first bc of the way i found out ,and i half expected there to be an extra mission to try and find her soul again since that apparently gets lost when you do the whole dragon thing, but in the end that wasnt a problem at all, two ghosts and link (somehow naked again) blasting her with some magic(tm) and boom shes back and well and fine woohoo it was a non problem after all i didnt expect her to stay dragon since that would mean the end of the legend of zelda basically, but still it took away alot of the weight of her decision to me? like i get undragonfying her before the end would be difficult since you can get material off of her but still i hoped for something other than boom it resolved itself and i thoguht and worried about it for nothing honestly a post game or even another title where the main focus wouldnt be desstroying yet anyother one note evilest guy of them all and isntead the goal is to bring zeldas soul back and undragon her or something would have been a cool idea tbh tho i know its unrealistic

--did ganondorf think turning himself into a dragon would end the world somehow? did he mean the lil evil goo clouds he spit at you in the last fight to end the world? and how come that he was vunerable to fight? none of the other dragons could be hurt and for an 'immortal' dragon he sure went down fast also how did the stone get back on his forehead? you need to eat it to dragonfy yourself and zelda doesnt have her stone out either (i know viddy games logic but still) (on another note, gan shoving half his arm in his own mouth felt really cursed to watch)

--into WHAT exactly wanted gan to reshape the world into?? only destroying it is such a non reason if you want to rule it? theres nothing left to rule if you kill everything in it?? he just gonna play cards with some bokblins or what -i really wanted to fight ganondorf on the surface, not in his lil miasma incubation cave again :(

--so …. why he evil? are we really doing the and WHOOP suddendnly theres the eviliest guy of the world and he hates your guts for some reason thing again? no tension with the gerudo that seemed to follow him in the lil cutscene we see and the ones that went on raurus side? no actual origin? does he have ANYONE to talk to normally or did he just surround himself by monsters all the time or abadon everyone that once followed him once he got his power up?? you can make any design or fight as good as it can possibly be but in the end its still gonna feel hollow if the character has no character besides evil even the fake zelda wasnt actually him and just a lil puppet made of miasma so even him fucking with people is a little less interesting when he was actually just marinading in his lil goop cave, and the lil hand wink he gives you at phase two can only do so much lmao

--ganondorf is cool and all, but tbh he feels more like the evil miasma goop guy than anything else --why are the old sonau ruins in hyrule so different from the rest? like we know now that they arent actually a civilization from the sky alone but were even in the underground too, and all of their ruins have that blocky white style to it, the supposedly sonau ruins in phirone for example, albeit they share the dragon theme the style on the outside is very much different? and the ancient ruins from the other races dont match it either --are the sheikah descendants of the mixing of sonau and hylians? the white hair and third eye theme would fit to the only alive sonaus we see having white hair (fur?), the literal third eye and their affinity to techonology similar to the sheikah, and zelda having both light and time powers would make sense if its yet another descendant thing, but that would mean zelda was at least part sheikah .. (ngl white haired zelda might look pretty neat actually) but also … it didnt seem like sonia and rauru have been together all that long and no mention or even hint to them having children … which given that both of them die would be an important thing to mention no?

--why cant you do anything with the dongos but feed them????????? i wanna ride them :(

--where is kashiwa????????????????? they talk about him like hes a lost legend

--putting in all the amiibo stuff is cool and annoying at the same time, i spent 5 hours fighting my way throguh the underground to follow treasure maps and found 3 nigh identcal link hats from past games in a row, then two other parts of similar, then two aiimbo weapons and then jsut yesterday another one from a bigger quest that i expected more of; getting the armor sets of past games is cool if you want them but if i did i would have just gotten the amiibos back in botw, my inevntory already feels super bloated with all the new and old armor sets and now the amiibo stuff as well even tho i have like .. half of it all atm (and dont go and argue 'oh so complaining about more content for free???' yes. yes i am.)

--whats with this game and making link almost naked? rauru saving you from death? naked. (annoying) survival shrines? naked. weird teleport to alternate ghost dimension to blast zelda with magic power tm to solve all problems? naked.

--(added in edit) im glad dorephan didnt die!! i fully expected him to have died offscreen or something to make way for everyones favorite fish

--(added in edit) so are definitely other lands besides hyrule if yona came from there, also lol

--the story feels, espeically once you see the last cutscene, very …. uncomfortable to me if dare to think about it more than just taking everythign as its said to you, like … the oh so perfect descednants of the gods(what) marry a normal hylian lady and sourround themselves with perfetly obedient faceless servants of the other races so the perfect and good kingdom tm is born and oh suddendly theres an evil brown man (makign him grey doesnt change the implications, if anything, it makes it worse bc they wont even stand for it and instead are trying to hide it behind uuuuh no no its fine hes blue actally kinda way) from the desert that attacks the perfect good kingdom and king, then he swears alliance to them only to betray and murder da queen right away to get his hands on a super power the perfect and good king held and would have never never used it in a bad way nono and now they need to defend it by all means and at the end woohoo zelda has now again the perfect kingdom with no opposition except the yiga who are (as much as i love them) mostly played for laughs or .. well, evil(tm) as epic and cool the dragon fight was, zelda being the slim tiny white/gold/blue dragon and ganondorf being the evil spiky big black and red dragon and them literally being called white/black dragon feels like wow they arent even trying to hide the black and white storytelling huh (i know its a design trope to the bad be black(color) and the good anything else and spiky vs round and soft blah blah but that doesnt make it any better .. maybe even worse? idk)

the way nintendy was keeping stuff a secret and hinting around so much made me feel like it would finally be a little more nuanced and then it turned out to be even flatter than before and all that secrecy(?) was only to keep dragon zelda plotpoint a secret, something that was resolved no problem in the end anyway (i didnt need zelda to stay dragon but .. it all just lost so much weight the way it was done at the end)

-- (added in edit) master koga is the best character and no one can beat him, the most joy i felt was seeing him again and i am not joking, i wish i could talk to him normally tho without him being able to see through my yiga disguise :( im so glad he didnt die tho bc if he actually went to gan he would 100% be dead within seconds

--(added in edit2) i forgot to mention but was just reminded that link getting his arm back felt super weird too, so really everything that meant major changes got reversed basically ... coool ...back to status quo i guess, couldnt he if he wasnt missing it at least have it be discolored somehow? or scarred? any reminder? zelda too even, could she also have some sort of scar or similar due to her transformation ??

--(added in edit2) so where did the mystery stones even come from? gans and zeldas are gone after dragonfying i guess so ...what?

so in summary, im not eloquent enough to properly analyse all the problematic/questionable stuff and put it into the right words, but these are my random thoughts just spilled out, theres gonna be things i missed, forgot, or gonna think about later, maybe ill add it maybe not

again take it with a grain of salt, the game is still one of the most fun games i have ever played, my problems with it lie majorly in the story, its still very much worth playing!

#ganondoodles talks #long post #totk spoilers #totk spoiler #maybe they will do a DLC that fleshes out ganondorfs character haha ha #-puts on clown make up-

175 notes · View notes

archonreviews · 7 years ago

Text

The Archon’s Opinion: What Does it Mean for Good Characters to Have Bad Games; or, the Curious Case of Sonic the Hedgehog

Hey, guess who can’t count to five? This Archon! Whoo!

Anyway, I wanted to discuss something that’s been on my mind since Sonic Mania came out a while back, and even since the Game Grumps (hi guys) began their playthrough of Sonic Unleashed. That thing is simply: why is it that though Sonic the Hedgehog is a good character, the games about him are... not so good. On this episode of The Archon’s Opinion, we’re going to determine the why, what, and how, of the atrociousness of Sonic games. Or maybe I’ll just ramble on about how awesome Shadow Sonic is. Who knows?

Let’s start out by defining what it is that makes Sonic a “good character”. What I mean by “good character” is one who is largely appealing, and one who is either deep or punchy, one you have to think a lot about or one you can immediately recognize and empathize with. In this case, Sonic is the latter; he’s got an easily-recognizable silhouette, and a fun and easy-to-memorize suite of powers (goes fast, can go super-saiyan, can roll good, spikes sharp). Also, while the particulars of his personality depend on the writer, he’s generally consistent in his carefree-but-righteous nature. Most people like to think of themselves as morally upright, and many people, I should think, prefer to think of themselves as being fun-loving and care-free, like Sonic in a way. So, Sonic the Hedgehog is both punchy and easy to follow, and broadly appealing.

Next, a little context about Sonic’s history in video games. Back in ye olden dayes, Sonic the Hedgehog came out for the SEGA Genesis. It was a pretty standard platforming game, with an emphasis on speed and semi-complex environments. It was meant as a direct competitor to the Mario Bros. series, and it sold like hotcakes on a cold morning, or something like that. Sonic’s 2 and 3, as well as 3 and Knuckles all also did really well, financially speaking. Things only began to run downhill when Sonic Adventure was released. Poor dialogue, mediocre plot, and annoying characters dragged down the game significantly. Things seemed to uptick with the release of Sonic Adventure 2, which had some problems, but in terms of plot, characters, controls, and graphics, it was a vast improvement. Sonic Heroes was largely a blank in terms of critical reception, getting average reviews among publications, and mixed reviews from individual critics. Sometime later... came the dark ages.

^(Ugh)^

^(Uuulgh)^

^(Bluuurgh, no.)^

^(Huh)^

^(Hey, okay.)^

^(Aaaargh! Ah Gottirn, nein!)^

While Sonic Colors and Generations provided brief, dim lights in the darkness that followed Adventure 2, they were not enough to save Sonic’s critically damaged reputation. Many people, players and critics alike, have gone on record as saying that Sonic should be put down for good, each individual having their own opinion as to when he should have been dropped.

So, we have a character who is consistently likable and eminently marketable, but who is the subject of a swath of poor video games. And yet, despite the utter abhorrence many Sonic titles languish in, he still has plenty of fans. Why is this?

Perhaps the answer lies in other media that Sonic has been in. For example, the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series has generally been received positively. One might very easily argue that this is because the comic series lacks the various elements that made the games really bad. After all, you don’t have to rely on shitty controls to make Sonic do his thing in a comic series, and the character’s voices can be as cool or as terrible as you imagine them to be. Also, the plots are written by people who’s job it is to write plots! Amazing! And the graphics are drawn by people who are trained to draw comic book art. Also amazing!

^(Pictured: Something I’d totally read)^

In this way, the comics make use of Sonic’s personality and abilities, without forcing you to wrestle with poorly implemented controls or terrible glitches. We get his character, without his game. The same goes for the television series; although, none of the television adaptations seem to sell quite as well as the comic. Possibly because of the voices of... certain characters.

So how can Sonic Team and SEGA make Sonic games better while preserving Sonic’s character? What really is the deal with Sonic games? Well, game journalist and professional... Boglinwatcher, I guess... Jim Sterling, has actually made the point that after the relative failure of Sonic ‘06, SEGA kept trying different things to make the games good, many of which failed. He went on to say that each of the games presented an interesting concept, and that each could have been a great game, if it were refined. His argument was if SEGA had stuck to a single concept or idea long enough to make it good, then Sonic games could be good, Q.E.D.

To see that idea in action, we can take a look at SEGA’s direct competitor, Nintendo. In many ways, Nintendo’s flagship characters are much like Sonic the Hedgehog. Por exemple, Mario has a very basic set of abilities, an easily-recognizable silhouette, and his bright colors and blank-slate personality make it easy for us to project ourselves onto him as we play. Link from the Legend of Zelda games, is very similar, with a simple-ish design, a monotone color scheme, and a classic story arc.

Consider now, that Nintendo has, with few exceptions, been pumping out the same Mario and Zelda games for years. Mario has had plenty o’ platformers, and Link has a lot of adventure games. One does not create using the same formula over and over without becoming very good at it, and refining it to a razor polish. Mildly mixed metaphors aside, this is, essentially the main difference between Nintendo’s properties and Sonic the Hedgehog; Sonic games can have all the interesting ideas in the world, but if they’re not refined, they just won’t be very good as compared to a more polished experience.

Now, we’ve all heard the flagship complaints carried by Sonic’s detractors. The first is that because he’s too fast, and because depth perception in a 3d environment is difficult, Sonic simply cannot exist competently in a 3d space. Q.E.D. any 3d Sonic game will be bad. I disagree; I believe that 3d Sonic’s relative atrociousness isn’t an intrinsic property of 3d physics’ interaction with Sonic’s speed, but that Sonic Team simply don’t often design environments wherein the two elements play well. When stages are constructed to take advantage of Sonic’s characteristic speed, such as the first level in Sonic Adventure and some of the “Regular Sonic” stages in Unleashed, they’ve often been described as good, or even the best parts of those games. Really, the problem isn’t Sonic, it’s Sonic’s developers, who don’t seem to know how to handle him.

Another common complaint is that Sonic’s ever-expanding team of sapient animal friends is drawing the games away from their core focus. Such detractors will say that any stage in which you are you are, say, being Tails in a mech, instead of being Sonic and going fast, is somehow a detriment to the game’s quality. Again, I have to disagree; plenty of games have many different core mechanics that form the whole game, and I think maybe instead of insisting that every Sonic game be about going fast exclusively, we should look at any stage in which we get to play as a new character as an interesting new experience; even if we don’t personally like it; we can at least appreciate that the particular game in question isn’t monotone. That said, those critics who claim that the other character’s personalities and voices are irritating may have a point, at least in the grand generality of Sonic games.

Finally, I want to talk for a moment about the relative success of Sonic Mania, and the stigma that 3d Sonics have acquired. See, Mania has been hailed as this return to form for Sonic the Hedgehog, and that’s not without merit. The game essentially has classic Sonic’s turgid wang firmly in it’s mouth, and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I feel like it could lead to a bad thing. A lot of the complaints about modern Sonics has been about the 3d aspects, and Mania is 2d, you see. What I’m worried about it that Sonic Team might see the success and praise for Mania and think that the number of dimensions is the problem, instead of the lack of polish, the glitches, the unlikable sidekicks, etc. And therein lies a risk of a return to the problem Jim Sterling mentioned, wherein Sonic Team simply abandons an aspect of Sonic games because they think that it specifically is the reason it didn’t do well, and thus, it may lead to merely another unpolished Sonic game, except in 2d.

فى الختام،, Sonic games suffer primarily from a severe lack of polish, overall glitchiness, and a menagerie of annoying ancillary characters, truly. But they have not suffered from 3d, or from Sonic’s own character. To fix this, Sonic Team should stick to one or a few core elements for the games, at least for a while, until they get good at it, before trying to get fancy.

^(Or they could just release Shadow the Hedgehog 2 already. Whatever works for them.)^

#archon's opinion #article #sonic the hedgehog

1 note · View note

nikniknikin · 8 years ago

Text

Just “finished” botw.

By that I mean I finally decided not to try and 100% it before going to hyrule castle, and went ahead and fought calamity ganon. And whoo boy. I am. Very Peeved to say the least. My two biggest problems (at the moment) and their VERY EASY, INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS solutions below the cut. Spoilers obviously.

SO FIRST OF FUCKING ALL: THE GOD DAMN TRIFORCE

So Zelda’s whole quest through her memories is about her trying to unlock her Zelda Powers, which is clearly the triforce of wisdom. At No Point do they refer to it in these terms and idfk why because they are EXPLICITLY AWARE OF THE REINCARNATION CYCLE???? IN THIS GAME??? Why does the triforce just go completely unmentioned? what the fuck anyway. The Point is that at the end of the Big Hero Battle vs Dark Beast Ganon, Zelda has the entire completed triforce, and there’s no mention of it whatsoever before or after. She just sorta....has it.

So how did she get it, and how should Nintendo have demonstrated this? First off, Link has the triforce of courage pre-restoration nap. Him GETTING it could easily have been one of the 12 memories, and fit nicely in with the ‘he makes zelda feel inadequate’ plotline that those memories serve. Zelda unlocks the triforce of wisdom when defending Link from the guardian. Link then dies, (dont even front with that ‘gravely injured’ bullshit, its the shrine of resurrection, not the shrine of ‘good thing his wounds were totally non-fatal’). So from many previous games we know that triforce pieces can change hands through defeat in battle. Meaning that when Link gave his life to save Zelda, he effectively passed her the triforce of courage.

Now with 2/3rds of the triforce in hand, she goes to keep Ganon under check and has a 100 year long arm wrestling match with him for the triforce of power. Link shows up as link is want to do, defeats calamity ganon in battle, gets triforce of power. After the Dark Beast Ganon fight, Zelda emerges and the two of them together complete the triforce, Zelda uses its power to vanish Calamity Ganon. Ta-DAAAAA. Really minimal fucking changes on the story that’s ALREADY THERE and you don’t just ignore literally The Central Plot Element of the zelda franchise.

NEXT FUCKING TOPIC: Ganondorf.

So they explicitly say in the dark beast ganon fight, that Demise (unnamed but effectively him) gave up on reincarnation to unlock his true malevolent power. SO WHY THE FUCK!!!! WAS THE PLOT!!! NOT ABOUT RESTARTING IT!!! Think about it, add a character (or even just fucking make it riju why the fuck not), who helps Link out through the course of the game in some ways. If you do an extra long Main Quest Item involving befriending them, then at the end after you’ve defeated dark beast, they arrive and ask to have the darkness sealed wITHIN THEMSELVES. So as to make future inevitable recurrences of demise’s hatred be depowered by having a mortal vessel once more. Do you know how ape shit people would go for that??? Do you know how well that would fit into YOUR FUCKING LORE that you spent a whole lot of time and money and pomp and circumstance unveiling ~6 years ago? WHY DID YOU JUST DECIDE TO DROP ALL THAT ??? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU JFC I CAME UP WITH THAT IDEA IN LITERAL SECONDS AFTER SEEING THE ENDING. FUCK.

The wasted potential of characters and narrative elements in this game is fucking criminal. Don’t get me wrong I had a great time playing it but Zelda has always been a series with such a strong narrative component and they just let that ball drop SO HARD this time.

#botw #im mad #botw spoilers #>8C

3 notes · View notes

beardycarrot · 8 years ago

Text

Why I’m excited for BotW

There’s a lot of be excited about, even beyond NEW 3D ZELDA GAME WHOO! I’m always excited when a new Zelda game comes out, but this one in particular feels like they’re really doing something new. Before Skyward Sword came out, the big selling points were 1:1 sword combat (which seemed really promising after Red Steel 2 the year before), and what Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi described as a change to the “dungeon-field-dungeon” format that had become the norm for Zelda games.

The reasoning for this change was understandable. The biggest complaints about Twilight Princess (at least at the time) were that the world was too big and empty, and that the mandatory sections of interacting with certain NPCs between dungeons were uninteresting and just bogged things down. Unfortunately, how they handled this change was by essentially making the “field” segments in Skyward Sword open-air dungeons, with your progression through them feeling linear and not at all like you were exploring.

With Breath of the Wild, they’ve swung completely in the opposite direction. You’re free to explore everything, whenever and however you want, and it’s completely non-linear. This may be a knee-jerk reaction to the backlash over how Skyward Sword was handled, but looking at what they’ve made, it’s clear a lot of consideration has gone into it.

Open World

The thing I’m most excited about is the game’s main feature, the huge, content-rich open world. My favorite thing to do in games is just to explore, goof off, get a close look at things everyone else just runs past. I love exploration and discovery, and Breath of the Wild seems to have been designed for that specifically. Not a lot to say here: open worlds are just awesome.

Gearing Up

My second-favorite thing in games is character customization. Whether it’s just designing a character at the start of the game or being able to choose clothing and such throughout, being able to customize how your character looks has always been a big selling point for me. Animal Crossing, Monster Hunter, Splatoon, pretty much every western RPG. As a kid, I really liked being able to choose how Link looked in Ocarina of Time, even if the options were limited to three tunics, two swords, and two shields. Not only does Breath of the Wild have a bunch of clothing options and a ridiculous number of weapon and shield combinations, but if the end of the E3 trailer is to be believed, for the first time ever you’ll also be able to change Link’s hairstyle. It’s not a huge thing, but it will help to personalize your experience even more.

Continuity

I’m a sucker for in-game nods to continuity, and BotW seems to be referencing pretty much the entire series. The first trailer for the game after the initial teaser showed the Great Bridge of Hylia, a location from Twilight Princess. We’ve since seen what appears to be Hyrule Castle Town from TP, the Lost Woods from ALttP, statues of the goddess Hylia from SS, a pair of mountains inspired by LoZ artwork, and some people even claim that the starting area contains what looks to be the ruins of an area from OoT. Maybe there’s a storyline explanation for all this, maybe they’re just easter eggs thrown in for fans... Who knows, maybe this is finally the game to bring everything together that we all thought TP was going to be. Whatever the case, I love it, and will surely spend ridiculous amounts of time just staring at stuff.

Difficulty

I’m not one for overly-challenging games. I play games to have fun, not for bragging rights or anything like that, and getting frustrated... just isn’t fun. Thus, I typically play games on the normal difficulty setting, content that I’ll enjoy the experience and that it’s how the developers intended the game to be played anyway. That said, Zelda games have been a bit too easy lately. Twilight Princess put a fairy outside of every boss door, and Skyward Sword went as far as to increase your starting heart count to six... with the majority of early enemies being incredibly slow, clearly telegraphing their attacks, and only doing a quarter of a heart of damage anyway. Not wanting to frustrate players is fine, but it’s also no fun if you can just tank your way through every encounter. As a big open-world game, Breath of the Wild has a periodic auto save feature, meaning that enemies can hit a lot harder without fear of annoying the player too much by sending them back. You have to play strategically if you want to get through, and if you decide that you’re ill-equipped to deal with the situation... well, it’s an open-world game, you can just set a marker to remind you to deal with that area, then go off and do something else. As someone who has breezed through all the recent Zelda games, I’m actually excited for a bit more challenge.

Story

Games having a good story has never been a selling point for me. I’m not one of those people who will completely ignore a game’s story and mash buttons to get through, but I don’t necessarily seek out strong narratives, either. I’m a Nintendo fan, I value gameplay above all else. What’s this game’s story, Bowser is going all Balthazar on a bunch of fairy princesses? There’s no dialog in the entire game? Cool, I’m gonna turn into a cat and climb up some walls. I’ve always thought a setting a characters are more important than the actual story being told in a game, but what little I’ve seen of BotW’s story has me excited. Especially the bits where it seems Link will remember the events of one hundred years ago in flashbacks. Who are Link and Zelda? What’s their relationship? What’s happened that she falls into his arms, crying? This isn’t the kind of thing we normally see from Nintendo, and I’m super excited to see where they’re going with it. I’m also curious to know what’s going on with all this Sheikah tech, since we have yet to see any Sheikah characters. You’d think Impa would be one of the first they reveal, right? It’s entirely possible that the hype is unwarranted. I always get super hyped-up for Zelda games: it happened with Twilight Princess, it happened with Skyward Sword, and it will continue to happen in the future. Maybe there will be things I come to dislike about BotW; maybe having to heal all the time will get annoying, maybe I’ll constantly have too many weapons and keep having to throw out the weakest ones. It’s impossible to say at this point, but I honestly think this will finally be the Zelda game that does everything right.

#zelda #breath of the wild #botw #hype

1 note · View note