AWKWARD ZOMBIE

This still feels like a huge step backwards. I've actually heard people who pretty much just play these games for their writing say that the game's atrocious writing is excusable because it's a 2D Zelda, and 2D Zeldas have never really needed adequate writing, since they're more focused on gameplay and they're considered so minor next to the 3D games. I don't think that's quite true; just having decent gameplay isn't enough for a 2D Zelda anymore. Say what you will about Spirit Tracks, but it at least had a new world with locations we hadn't seen before, a halfway decent story, a couple well-developed characters, and it actually made Zelda a major and active character. Yes, the villains sucked, but so did Yuga. Yes, the graphics were a bit ugly, but who cares? It may not have been the best entry in the series, but it was a lot better than people gave it credit for. Then ALBW comes along and does away with all of those great things and goes backwards two decades, slapping on some pretty makeup and adding on a couple gimmicks to look new. We've already seen its world, its story is about as bland as they come, its characters hardly even deserve to be called characters, and Zelda is back to being nothing but the damsel you rescue at the end.

The issue I think is the difference between how most 2D and 3D Zeldas play.

2D Zeldas were simple because the focus was on gameplay. It's not that plot doesn't matter, but 10 minutes of exposition at the beginning of ALttP wouldn't have sat well with a lot of people. The Oracle games and Minish cap were a lot more story based, but they also stopped the game for dialogue at some points and were pretty linear, something some fans don't want to happen.

OoT was a bit more dialogue heavy, but still pretty bare bones, and you could do the Adult Link part a lot more open.

But after that, there's been a lot of need in the games to slow down, develop the story and give you an initial "sandbox" to play around in to get used to the controls, and often spending an hour or so doing this before you can break out and actually play the game can be insanely grating. I mean, fuck, look at TP. Not everyone plays Zelda to have the game babysit them for the first few hours.

What ALBW does well is that it captures the gameplay from the early games, without necessarily losing what recent games have done since then. It's a bit like the NSMB of Zelda. Certainly isn't going to be for every fan, but that's kind of the thing with Zelda. There's titles that while enjoyable aren't to the tastes of certain players.

One of my friends recently got really into Zelda (he's played most of the games, never beat them or got too far though) and played Wind Waker and ALBW this year. He absolutely loved WW, but he also liked that ALBW was a bit of a challenge, and was rather punishing to him for not doing things right in things like boss fights. He even had to learn the hard way of how to beat the final boss with Zelda tennis.

And the plot was personally fine for me. A plot with a light hand, to me, is better than one that's omnipresent and stifling, like TP. Plus there's less room for disappointment, like with Ganondorf being in TP just brought the game down in general.

Except I feel that it has lost what games have done beginning with A Link to the Past, hence my rant about what Spirit Tracks did right and A Link Between Worlds did wrong.


If by "with a light hand" you mean virtually nonexistent. And that wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that there is nothing particularly good about the writing. Like I've said before, not all Zelda games have good stories, but the writing in at least one area should be at least halfway competent, or it should at least give us something we haven't seen before.


Yeah, it's not like they put Ganon in this one or anything. And they DEFINITELY didn't say anything about him that would essentially retcon multiple games, like that he'd been sealed away since A Link to the Past. And before anyone says that they didn't say that:

Holy fuck this is so accurate

Not really for me so much because I love LBW and the NSMB games

Sir Real you've been going on about the "sealed" thing for a while and I wanted to point out that LTTP has been a prequel to the first zelda game for a while now and Ganon's in both of those games so like...

Also, in regards to TP, Ganon comes out of almost nowhere in the final acts of that game and just takes the plot away from Zant, whereas in LBW he is hinted at a bit more, comes up at the halfway mark, and proceeds to not be the main villain.

I'm willing to cut the first game some slack because a) I always assumed that they somehow resurrected him yet again (after all, they established in Zelda II that he can be brought back to life) and b) I feel some sort of strange need to cut the original game some slack. Can't put my finger on why.

Also, I agree that TP has serious problems, one of them being Ganondorf's inclusion. Really, I just wish they'd made Zant a better villain and just had him carry the whole game. You don't need Ganon to have a good game, guys, in case half of your games weren't enough evidence. So yes, that is a very fair point against TP, but it doesn't change the fact that to me, playing ALBW was like masturbating right after getting poison ivy all over my hand; it felt kinda nice at the time, but now I'm feeling not only ashamed of myself, but also very stupid and very, very uncomfortable.


EDIT: No, I do not know this from personal experience.

Spirit Tracks did some good things, especially for developing Zelda and giving a bit of closure to the Adult Link timeline, but the dungeons still horribly suffered from the typical linear nature and focus on finding the dungeon's item, then spend the rest of the time getting used to the item before largely abandoning it. The Tower of Spirits, which should have been the place to allow you to use all of your items effectively largely was used for phantom puzzles and focused more on typical items like the bow than the likes of the whip and other items. Even ALttP didn't do this, letting you largely tackle the dungeons as you pleased, and giving you items that often didn't affect how you handled the dungeon. Hell, a lot of the items weren't even in the dungeons, with the Ice Rod being available in the corner of Hyrule. This is something they broke away from a bit with LBW. You can use the item expected of you in the dungeon by itself, but often the puzzles can be solved easier by using other items (instead of lobbing bombs at an opponent, why not hit them with arrows?).

To get back to form with the original games, some things had to be shed off, but my argument is that the game shed off things that have been unnecessary for a game structured to be like ALttP.



The plot was there, it was just boiled down. There was probably even more plot impact than there was in ALttP. You actually got the meet the sages whereas the only meeting you had with the maidens was talking to them when you saved them. Other characters were fleshed out, especially Yuga, and the backstory was given clearly rather than left to be discussed either in the optional opening sequence, or when you beat the game and had the Triforce espouse everything to you.



Now you're just being contrary. My issue with how Ganondorf was in the game had to do with how poorly implemented he was. If it was anywhere closer to WW, it would have been much better. Hell, I'd have preferred a OoT Ganondorf, considering at that point he had won everything.

But TP Ganondorf had to fight to win, and even his Ganon form was a disappointing wolf Link fight, and wasn't even the final battle. Plus the shoehorned in horseback riding part where you ran around in circles and the disappointing swordfight, it just felt entirely out of place and forced, wheras Zant's fight was magnificent and reminiscent of past Zelda games where the final boss was a culmination of all of your experiences.

Besides which, they explained that easily. After using the Triforce to restore Hyrule and the Sacred Realm in ALttP, the Triforce split apart like it did in OoT (probably after sending Link to save Holodrum/Labrynna), and the Triforce of Power went back to Ganon, which restored him and gave him his immortality that he's had throughout the whole series, regardless of whether he's sealed or killed. The same thing canonically happened between ALttP and LoZ, considering the Triforce of Power chose Ganon and he went after the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda.

Also, before you say retcon again, in the credits for ALttP, the Triforce is shown flying apart at the end. Considering the game was a prequel to LoZ (a fact even acknowledged by Nintendo Power and (IIRC) Famitsu back in the 90's), in which the Triforce was already known to have broken apart, this could have been their hint at that occurring.

In any case, if it's impossible for the Triforce to return to Ganon to keep him alive (and probably trapped in the Sacred Realm since that's where he was destroyed), then it's also impossible for the Triforce to have brought back Ganon for LoZ, which we know is the reason he has the Triforce of Power to begin with.

I honestly found Spirit Tracks boring, I never even bothered to beat it, and now I'm doing hero mode in A link between worlds which is a blast so far. I'm gonna try and get a 100% With this playthrough.

...

*Gets out a guide*

Yes, you get to meet the sages...none of whom have any real memorable personality. Granted, neither do the maidens in ALttP, but that does not excuse ALBW's lack of personality. Yuga is one of the blandest villains in the entire series, just fitting into the "camp and bland" category with Vaati, except minus Vaati's cool design, so there's pretty much nothing interesting at all about Yuga. He's basically just running around going "I'm going to take over the world and I'm going to be FABULOUS!"


I don't recall the backstory being optional in ALttP, I recall it starting up when you started a new file, but that might be exclusive to the GBA version; I never played the SNES version. Regardless, ALttP's intro gives a massive expansion on the mythos, telling the player about the events of the Sealing War and giving many other vital bits of information never before seen in the series. By contrast, the backstory to ALBW is merely a recap; rather than actually give us new or interesting information, it basically just says "PREVIOUSLY ON THE LEGEND OF ZELDA." You might as well just look up the plot of ALttP on a wiki or something.


I...what...did you even play the Oracle games? Look, in A Link to the Past, Link destroyed Ganon. In the Oracle games, it wasn't the Triforce or anything like that that brought him back, it was a complicated ritual by Twinrova. They lit the three flames of sorrow, destruction, and despair and sacrificed themselves in order to bring Ganon back from the dead. Link then obliterated Ganon yet again, so you couldn't even argue that he sealed him away in those games! Ganon was dead! The retcon I'm referring to is the fact that they say that Ganon was sealed away since ALttP, thereby not only going against ALttP's ending, but also going against the entire plot of the Oracle games.

To each their own on Yuga, but Zelda's always been about having villains be intimidating for abnormal reasons. I mean, Ganon was a pig-faced demon with a trident and evil magic, Agahnim and Ganondorf were warlock/mages and Majora's Mask is... an evil mask.

I much prefer someone camp like Yuga to someone boring and typical like Onox.

As for the backstory, it was only present in the instruction booklet with the game in ALttP, otherwise, you had to idle at the title screen to see it. Some plot was in the actual game, but mostly it was that part and the ending that gave it.

To give ALttP a bit more credit though, escorting the old man up the mountain after his granddaughter was kidnapped by Agahnim was a pretty nice touch for exposition.


In the Oracle games, the Triforce was still together and was what sent Link off to protect the Oracles, therefore it wasn't in Ganon's possession to restore him, leaving Twinrova to have to do it, however, at some point after the Oracle games, even if we disregard ALBW entirely, the Triforce would have to split up to revive Ganon for LoZ to even happen.

Now, your other main issue is him being sealed away, which we don't really know the details of, however, if we think about the results of the oracle games, Twinrova was only able to recreate Ganon's body by sacrificing themselves instead of Zelda (who was the key to a perfect sacrifice), the English games say that he's a mindless beast, and I think the Japanese games even say something along the lines of him being "soulless". If he's destroyed in this state, it's probably safe to say that the part of him not revived (his mind or soul or whatever), is probably where he was destroyed, meaning if the Triforce brought him back, he'd be stuck in the Sacred Realm where Link destroyed him in ALttP. The reason why Zelda was instrumental to the plan was that she was the key to unlock the sacred realm, which is something she's shown to possess in the series (the royal family holding the Ocarina of Time, being a sage, knowing the location of the Triforce, etc.).

It's a bit contentious, but obviously the Zelda team wanted Ganon to regenerate without just popping up in Hyrule again.

I have to disagree, I loved a few of these sages in the game, my favorite being Irene since she helps you out the most during your quest, Osfala also had a rather smug behavior, Gulley was a clueless little tyke, Impa was the wise one, etc. etc. I'd call them static characters in this story, but I still find something memorable about them, I guess its the design.

I feel hat Yuga had a generic villain personality, but I liked his design alot, and I think he fit the villain role well enough in this game, but I have to at least agree that he deserved more backstory.

In other news good lord, Yuga deals 4 hearts of damage in Hero Mode, get as many heart containers as you can before you fight him, and don't forget a few bottles for milk and potions.

Irene is not by any means a well-written character. She was essentially just a transportation mechanic that talked, and even then, she never said anything interesting. Simply being helpful doesn't make a character great. And while we're on that topic, Osfala being smug and Gulley being clueless doesn't make either of them good characters, either. The sages were, at best, one-dimensional.

Come to think of it, the spiritual leaders in Zelda are usually really bland. The Oracles had little to no personality, the Lokomos in Spirit Tracks were bland as hell, and Oshus didn't have much of any personality either. A few of the Sages in Ocarina of Time were okay.

Still not sold on Yuga's design. He just looks like Ganondorf in drag--

Oh. Oh no, they didn't. Oh, goddesses, why?

Ganondorf Dragmire.

Kamak, I find it very difficult to take you seriously with that signature sometimes

irene was the only thing approaching a well written character

Why? She had less personality than Maple.