[dark steve]

Okay, so everybody loves to bicker about Zelda games, and, I think, nearly everybody has at least a hazy picture of where they'd like the series to be steered next, especially in light of that particular photo followed by the announcement the series was being put on "hiatus" after Twilight Princess was released. So, maybe while consciously trying NOT to discuss which games are "charming" or which are "un-redeemable miyamoto school of design lock and key handholding garbage" what next? Hey James, what do YOU think?

[Lick Meth]

I have an idea I dreamt up a while back; basically, a Zelda game done entirely in the style of that website "game", Grow, but with no definitive order within.

Basically, items are stored around the overworld, be they in caves with disgusting puzzles, shops with extortianate prices, or townsfolk for elaborate trade. How to solve the puzzle? Entirely possible in itself, but clues can be garnered from wall writings, townsfolk, scriptures and that kind of thing. How to afford those weapons? Take a job, bounty hunting or treasure hunting (but now with something to spend it on, lol). Elaborate trades? Like the trade for the giant sword in OoT, but more logical.

The dungeons can be tackled in any order, and have many routes based on the inventory you're currently owning. Your weapons get stronger depending on order picked up, and dungeons will, as the connection implied above says, grow to accomodate more difficult puzzles based upon your inventory.

[another god]

Zelda is Zelda. It's the story of a boy who saves a girl. He uses a sword, a boomerang, some bombs, and a couple arrows. Sometimes there are magic wands; sometimes there are magic flutes. Don't be hypocrites talking about how all they do is fluff the details and sell you the same game everytime. All you really want from a "grow Zelda" is a brand new Zelda game every time you play. It's still fluffed... it's just fluffed a lot.

Don't get me started on the whole GTA Zelda Knight Batallion Defense 2007 game.

If Zelda really wants to grow as a series (not that it does), it has to be a little more professional. It's like when you finish college and you want a real job you put on a suit and a tie. And even if it doesn't want to grow up like everyone else, it still has to take itself more seriously. Put on a nice coat, wear nice shoes, wear a nice shirt, and have something interesting to say.

I really want to say that Zelda should be more like Shadow of the Colossus, but for as much as Colossus succeeded where Zelda failed, it failed where Zelda succeeded. The mystery and lore of Colossus was really just emptiness. If they gave you a shovel to dig a hole in the ground, you'd just fall through space. I kind of would expect something like that from Colossus.

In Zelda I'd kind of expect to see all of that earth fleshed in.

[gooktime]

I think future incarnations of Zelda need to take a more minimalist approach; lose the tacky minigames and stop pandering to the kotaku crowd and the idea that a game shorter than 30 hours can't be good.

A major switch up in items and structure would be good, too. It's hard to get excited when with every release I know exactly what I'm going to get after completing three dungeons.

[dark steve]

The first thing that struck me about "sandbox zelda" is that you've suddenly got what sounds like a modern compromise that ties in the openness and mystery of the first game with the complexity that comes later.
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[haze]

they should be more like Faces of Evil
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[slipstream]

More "turtles all the way down" shenanigans ala Link's Awakening. No, really.
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[ö]

You need to be able to climb on things. And swim. Generally, interact with the gameworld.

[another god]

[Lick Meth]

[ö]

I hope so!

[sethsez]

With every Zelda game, the graphics have been getting more ornate and yet the design has remained the same. The design worked perfectly when there was some form of abstraction, but that's less and less the case with each new release.

Basically, Zelda needs to make the environments feel more realistic. I don't mean in terms of art style, just... make a crypt feel like a crypt rather than a series of puzzles with crypt textures. Ico is a great example of a game that can have nonsensical puzzles almost nonstop and still manage to feel like a huge castle. Twilight Princess flirted with this a few times (the rooftops, the yeti's mansion) and they wound up being some of the most compelling areas in the game. The rest of it, however, felt like a theme park ride.

[parker]

I think the next Zelda game needs to not be such a big fat liar. Twilight Princess tells you: "prepare to be shot by cannon into the sealed off gerudo desert lands where you must locate and raid an ancient prison where the most evil of inmates were teleported by a magic mirror directly to HELL" when they actually just meant "go do the sand dungeon." There's no raiding of any prisons there.

I also thought it would have been better if, say, at that Yeti's house, instead of just being an ice dungeon, maybe instead you have to fix his heating or plumbing or something instead. Maybe a giant rat is chewing on his heating pipes and you have to turn into wolf form and sniff that bastard out, I don't know, something like that.

[capgamer]

The next Zelda game should be played in the perspective of the master sword.
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[Baines]

Just fix what they've got. No need to add a fancy physics engine or try to copy GTA while the core remains flawed.

As for copying Shadow of the Colossus or turning it into some other game entirely (like RE4), that might as well be used for a new franchise, because there remains a decent market for "Zelda" even at its worst. Zelda can be fixed without turning it into a new game, so fix it first, then consider that route afterwards.

[ö]

You know, even though it never went anywhere interesting, I really liked the beginning parts of Wind Waker where Link has to make do with things he finds in the environment -- sticks, swords, whatever. This fits in with climbing and swimming and stuff. To make the world feel less artificial, it needs to be more than a backdrop in which you slide around, doing videogamey things. There needs to be a solid relationship between the player and the setting.

Way early on, being able to do things like bomb and burn and push rocks and play the flute to make mystical things happen were close enough. That was pretty big interaction for the time. Now, as a few people have said, there's this lush, realistic 3-D world that suggests all kinds of possibilities and still all the player is able to do is act on it by proxy, through these specialized, abstracted tools.

[sethsez]

[Maztorre]

Zelda is ultimately about conveying the growth of the player and gaining mastery of the environment around you. Much of the staple elements of the series are abstractions that are now redundant. So:

Scrap the heart meter and replace it with an animation system that merges elements of Colossus and Wind Waker. Link's appearance should deteriorate as he takes hits; this will be how the player gauges how much life Link has in him. Conversely, defeating enemies and (especially) bosses improves Link's appearance. The more bosses Link defeats, the more the (invisible) cap on his health is raised, and thus at maximum health he will look significantly more heroic and confident as the game progresses. Lifting from Colossus' animation system, Link will have real "weight" as he wanders and clambers around, and a centre of balance. Using the sword is then based more around timing the swings with Link's body movements so that he isn't flailing around at bats like a lunatic. All the items of the game then require practice and learning on the player's part to use "properly". As the player learns, the appearance and efficiency of using equipment and techniques improves.

The overworld and item set will be similar to Animal Crossing in many ways. NPCs will follow general daily schedules, monsters exist in an ecosystem and interact with each other and the world without Link's influence, and many of Link's items are mainly used for direct interaction with the world rather than designed explicitly for dungeons. Dungeons often require manipulation of the outside enviornment to access, and are more closely connected to the overworld. Puzzles that involve beams of light, for example, may require the player to find the relevant spot on the overworld and dig a hole to let sunlight in, for example (of course, the player could then jump into the hole and continue the dungeon from where he left off last visit). NPCs are fully voice acted in fictitious Hylian language, and use "soft" subtitles rather than dialogue boxes. You are free to walk around and do other things whilst someone speaks as long as you are in earshot of them. As well as standard information-giving dialogue they have 5-6 miscellaneous "catch-all" phrases. As Link's appearance becomes more notable townsfolk become generally more "aware" of the player's presence. After a certain point men will tip their hats to you or women will become generally more flirtacious. Link being Link, he has no further reaction to this besides modest embarrassment.

Acquiring a horse should relate back to mastery of the environment, and so Link must actually tame a wild horse (one of many?) roaming the overworld. At least one dungeon in the game can be explored on horseback and is advantageous to do so. Taming a horse is optional.

Rupees are no longer dropped by enemies and are acquired only from chests and a few specific sidequests. This lowers the average number of rupees acquired in a single playthrough considerably, the idea being that after exploring each dungeon Link will have just enough to play a few games at a town fair or purchase an optional item from a shop.

Link's progress in the game will be shown at various times relative to Hyrule soldiers sent out to find Zelda. One dungeon will have Hyrule soldiers exploring unaware of Link's presence, and will show Link bypassing them at various points through his use of items and now-superior skill. Link will also catch Ganon/Ganondorf's attention fairly early on in the game, and Ganon's attitude towards the player will change over time from amusement to interest to annoyance to shock(he has the triforce!!!!) right up until the final battle. The final dungeon itself could be put forward more as a battle of wits and skill between the player and Ganon than simply as a bunch of puzzles inexplicably thrown around someone's castle. Twilight Princess used elements of this quite well, for the most part.
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THERE ARE SOME BAD PEOPLE ON THE RISE

[antitype]

Zelda Scrolls: Borrowing
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steam | last.fm

[Maztorre]

Elder Scrolls is a bit rubbish though
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THERE ARE SOME BAD PEOPLE ON THE RISE

[L]

[Intentionally Wrong]

Is there anybody here who hasn't played the Four-Swords Adventure for Gamecube?
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Obsequious pigs are not welcome in Mulravia.

[Felix]

really we ought to take into account that maybe the problem with zelda is that the abstraction has become all dolled up and meaningless yet meanwhile there's a new zelda game being released just this month (in japan) on a console that has been dedicated to doing away with exactly that.

it occured to me while reading sethsez's post that we all seem to be pretty readily aware of exactly which parts of twilight princess "worked;" it's really silly to imagine them making many monumental changes to zelda at this point (i'd like to hear from aderack on nintendo being "comfortable" again after so short a period of time, actually) and so at least we might find favour with more rooftops and yetis.

[Zebadayus]

I haven't, Jason.
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What a post! So much effort, so many generalisations and so much garbage.

[Krazii Bakon Lypes]

[Lick Meth]

[ajutla]

no fucking puzzles that i can recognize as such.

[Intentionally Wrong]

[evnvnv]

Although the prospect of an abstraction-less next gen zelda would be really cool, I also definitely wouldn't mind a hyper-video game-y "New Legend Of Zelda" update on the DS, keeping the basic mechanics (simplicity) of the first game but tossing in a variety of ideas from later games and some new ones as well.

I know NSMB is controversial but I think this would work very well with zelda. People would complain that it wasn't epic enough but it would be fun to play. I guess four swords is sort of this way, but I don't really like the...episodic (?) qualities. Being portable is key, too.

[ö]

[L]

[Lick Meth]

I propose they scrap the hookshot/grappling hook and replace it with a piece of rope, that you can attach to an arrow to shoot at a target and pull yourself up with, or clamber across chasms too far to cross without aid.

(editted for clarity)

[KonamiCode]

[wourme]

Discussion of what to do in the next Zelda game kind of has a bad taste for me. It legitimizes wasting good talent on endless sequels. I think Twilight Princess was one Zelda too many. I could be mistaken, but it just didn't seem as if the developers were inspired to work on it. If that's the case, I wish they could have instead done what they really wanted to.

Some of the ideas in this thread sound good, but I'd much rather see them in a new game in a different world than in yet another Zelda game.

In Twilight Princess, I was surprised to find myself enjoying that cave of trials (or was it ordeals?) more than most of the actual game. In part because it reminded me of when video games were less forgiving. Sure, it can be frustrating, but it also leads to an interesting challenge (having to be careful about using items) and a sense of accomplishment at making progress beyond just having put the time in.

[diplo]

i think this is as good a thread as any to ask what exactly happened in twilight princess' plot. at some point, i lost track of what exactly my motivation, and what others', motivation was. last i checked, i was going after these dark artifacts because...huh? and then there was ganon, and there was this mirror. and i need to restore the mirror? and then... hm.

to me, zelda, as it is, is a good machine that has hiccups which are being ignored.

1: stop making every character in hyrule besides link a horrendously ugly twit. twilight princess had that trio in telma's bar, and it was painful to compare their design to everyone else. go back and look at that respectable, interesting art for the older games (was it by terada?). hyrule being a land of misshapen dorks, obese women, and a bishounen elf is painfully dead. get rid of the gorons. i do not even want to think of that goron chief.

2: increase the population's actual intelligence. i don't want to save stupid people who lose shit or make orgasmic noises. why didn't the whole town notice the gigantic pyramid surrounding their castle? does no one look up? does no one ever leave? the town square blew ocarina's down, unquestionably, but to make the place so comparatively isolated and ignorant was a catastrophic failure.

3: give a reason to explore. after i realized practically every chest in tp's hyrule was full of rupees, and that i had nothing to even spend those rupees on, and that my wallet was always full on top of that, i lost all motivation. the game was not lovely enough to make me explore for the sake of exploring. collecting hearts isn't enough either, anymore, unless the challenge in combat is strengthened adequately to make heart collecting an actual help rather than a completionist activity.

too lazy to write other stuff

majora's mask, i think, got a lot of stuff right. except i'm not too motivated to replay, due to its save system.

[parkbench]

first order of business: another god and eric-jon make excellent points in their posts . Maztorre's post also paints an awesome picture of a game I want ASAP.

I'm not sure about this. I mean, it sounds fun in principle, but even I got tired of that "OH NOES UNDER ATTACK" mechanic of games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It just gets tedious after awhile.

I do agree that the series needs to grow. I'd really hate to see it fall by the wayside like Megaman and become something hackneyed, something to churn out for some cash. I like what they've been doing for awhile now: re-imagining each iteration. Really, they've been damned creative about it all the way from the beginning from LttP to Majora's Mask to Wind Waker to Oracle of Ages and what have you.

[Screwtape]

I'd play a Zelda game whose environment was as carefully designed and wholistic as Riven.

Playing through Ocarina of Time recently, it began to bug me that each dungeon 'resets' every time you leave it and go back - a jarring abstraction compared to the effort and ambience put into the environments.

So, yeah - more emphasis on doing things that stay done, plskthx.
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私はガラスを食べられます。それは私を傷つけません。

[Elder Toups]

The next Zelda game should be developed in Common Lisp + CLOS. Multiple dispatch = large, sandboxy world.
I am now finished failing to contribute to this discussion.
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Who dares limit our lifestyle?

[another god]

I kind of understand why everyone is so drawn to the whole GTA: Hyrule thing. I hate to say it, but it took me a long time to like the original Zelda. I was initially drawn to Link to the Past and Link's Awakening. Those games were more inviting. Everything was cuter and more fun. Everything was also pretty "breakable". It wasn't just sequence breaking or whatnot, but it was about pushing things to the limit - seeing how the gameworld worked with and against the items I had.

I don't think Zelda ever aspired to be like Shadow of the Colossus. I think it just aspired to be a world with a lot of toys with a goal to achieve. I was OK with my toys being shallow representations of things when I was a little kid, but now I'm a little anxious about the idea of playing with the hookshot for the 5th game in a row. Do you know how many hours I've spent hook shooting things just to see what did what? It's still the same goddamn thing decades later.

It's not that I'm hoping for new ingenius puzzles. I don't really care about puzzles. In fact, that's the part of Zelda I hated most. What I liked the most was running around seeing what my toys could do. Now that we have 128 bits of raw computing power I'd like to see my toys do more. I'd like to take that shovel and see what's on the other side of Hyrule. I'd like to see if I can surf on my shield everywhere, call that flying bird dragon and explore everything, and break houses down with that ball & chain. Hell, digging in the rain in wolf mode and being able to first person zoom in on the worms I just kicked up... that would be awesome.

Sure, some of that is just "oh god I wish I could do that," but some other things aren't. I loved the horseback combat in Twilight. Pulling out my bow and arrow and actually targetting those moblins? Hard-on. Finding out that there's no locational damage? Limp.

Give me details, damnit. I don't care if I'm playing the same goddamn game as Twilight Princess as long as the whole world has just... cool things. Pretty much I wouldn't mind Twilight Princess with headshots.

[kzkb1]

A really realistic Zelda. Like this:

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/4598/zeldafinalduel2paper1024x9xa.jpg

Man. It would be interesting.

[antitype]

Zelda Scrolls: Obviously

But seriously, wasn't that what Twilight Princess was supposed to be? A "realistic" Zelda?

I dunno, I think we can look to new and different games with good ideas — even if they're flawed, like Oblivion — without needing to cling to the Zelda name, characters, etc. Kill your idols and all that. Growing upward may bring true progress, but growing outward just stretches a bunch of canonized abstractions into even more severe abstractions and it eventually becomes absurd. So. Growing upward and/or stripping down (e.g. design by subtraction) would appear to be the way to go. I suppose either could be done with the Zelda series if it went through some radical enough changes, but really, do we think that's ever going to happen?
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steam | last.fm