Twilight Princess

[Hero-of-Time]

For me the dungeons were fine, as were the bosses. I've never had a problem with the dungeons, it was everything in between that bothered me.

 

Pretty much this.

[Jimbob]

Did the dungeon design itself disappoint you (in comparison to past Zeldas), or was it mainly everything else?

 

The Dungeons/Temples started off pretty well, there were no real issues with the first 1/2 of them. It was the second half that started to let me down, and so did one or two bosses.

 

And one or two of the weapons you recieved from the Temples/Dungeons as well, they seemed to have a "one use only". They didn't have much of a use outside of the particular Temple you got them from anyway.

[Ronnie]

The second half of the game definitely felt rushed, and half-arsed. The exception being Snowpeak and it's execution.

 

Temple of Time was the most linear dungeon ever and was the definition of meh IMO. The 10 minutes it took to get there from Snowpeak was also ridiculous.

City in the Sky lacked any sort of magic or soul and felt very dead, although the boss battle was outstanding.

Palace of Twilight was certainly interesting, but again, too simple and linear.

Hyrule Castle, a couple of nice bits I suppose.

 

Whilst WW was clearly missing a couple of dungeons, the rest of the game at least felt full and polished, with the exception being the triforce hunt but personally that didn't really bother me. Ganon's Tower was fantastic.

[darksnowman]

Dungeons 4 and 5 I think are very highly regarded by virtually everyone within the fandom. I'm pretty sure I remember 1, 2 and 3 at least being on the par with what I'd expect from all of them, with some cool item ideals like the gale boomerang and using the iron boots for magnetism puzzles. 6 had a clever structure even if it seemed fairly linear. 7 was pretty epic and huge and had a cool ass boss fight. 8 and 9 were too short, but nothing seemed grossly disappointing about them other than length.

 

Overall I felt they were great and it's why the game holds up well for me despite other issues with pacing and side quests. I'd at least give it a 9/10 in terms of dungeon design. It would've earned the extra point with more length in 8/9 and more continuous item usage (especially for the spinner! Nintendo, add in a similar item to Skyward Sword and make a dungeon entirely based on it and I'm yours!).

 

Most of the dungeons weren't a problem. Dungeon no.2 was very streamlined, though, and with an incredibly basic design. Dungeons 8&9 were practically half-finished. Dungeon 8's second half consisted of moving to certain places and the entirety of Dungeon 9 consisted of picking up a key and meeting the boss.

 

Every other dungeon was well-designed and/or interesting, definitely a step up from Wind Waker where, Medli and Makar aside, the dungeons were very basic and streamlined (like TP's 2nd Dungeon).

 

I thought I knew Twilight Princess pretty well as far as us geeks and nerds go... until I read the above two posts. Referring to the dungeons by number? Now thats hardcore. I need dungeon name/ setting/ elemental theme or something like that.

 

[MadDog]

This was my first Zelda, and i loved everything. It was the first game i played constantly till i completed it, it remained my favourite game until i played Unch 1/2.

[Jonnas]

I thought I knew Twilight Princess pretty well as far as us geeks and nerds go... until I read the above two posts. Referring to the dungeons by number? Now thats hardcore. I need dungeon name/ setting/ elemental theme or something like that.

 

 

Dungeon 1 - Forest Temple

Dungeon 2 - Goron Mines

Dungeon 3 - Lakebed Temple

Dungeon 4 - Arbiter Grounds

Dungeon 5 - Snowpeak Ruins

Dungeon 6 - Temple of Time

Dungeon 7 - City in the Sky

Dungeon 8 - Twilight Palace

Dungeon 9 - Hyrule Castle

 

I only referred to them like that because James started it.

[LostOverThere]

The other day I was thinking, how cool would it be to have a game built around playing as Zelda herself. Have a huge world where you can interact with your people like in Fallout 3, and how you treat them base how much support they show for you. But at the same time, having Zelda as the one who ventures out on a huge quest.

 

I dunno, just sort of rambling here.

[killer kirby]

For me the dungeons were fine, as were the bosses. I've never had a problem with the dungeons, it was everything in between that bothered me.

 

Really? The Horse riding action of trying to save your friend was awesome as well as trying to protect the wagon from danger. Snowboarding was just pure fun. Fishing was nice and relaxing, also rowing a boat while shooting balloons and you could swim, something which should have been a big feature in Wind Waker yet funny enough you could do bugger all swimming :/

 

Oh and Malo's Mart

	Audio

 

Seriously, the moment I heard this music and seeing the elder goron's danced really made me smile and thought it was a great little aspect of the game, hope Nintendo do more like it to be honest.

[darksnowman]

Dungeon 1 - Forest Temple

Dungeon 2 - Goron Mines

Dungeon 3 - Lakebed Temple

Dungeon 4 - Arbiter Grounds

Dungeon 5 - Snowpeak Ruins

Dungeon 6 - Temple of Time

Dungeon 7 - City in the Sky

Dungeon 8 - Twilight Palace

Dungeon 9 - Hyrule Castle

 

I only referred to them like that because James started it.

 

So if he jumped off a cliff you'd follow?

 

 

Seeing the list, I never thought the Arbiter's Grounds was so early in the game. Interesting.

[nekunando]

I can't even think what the Arbiter Grounds are..

 

For some reason, one of the only places I really remember is the Temple of Time, largely because I wasn't all that fond of it

[darksnowman]

I can't even think what the Arbiter Grounds are..

 

Desert.

 

Ganon cutscene.

 

Spinner item.

 

Big skeleton boss.

 

Dungeon 4.

[nekunando]

Desert.

 

 

Ganon cutscene.

 

 

Spinner item.

 

 

Big skeleton boss.

 

 

Dungeon 4.

 

[Jonnas]

Really? The Horse riding action of trying to save your friend was awesome as well as trying to protect the wagon from danger. Snowboarding was just pure fun. Fishing was nice and relaxing, also rowing a boat while shooting balloons and you could swim, something which should have been a big feature in Wind Waker yet funny enough you could do bugger all swimming :/

 

Well, duh. It's an ocean, not a lake. Of course you can't swim for long.

 

Oh and Malo's Mart

	Audio

 

Seriously, the moment I heard this music and seeing the elder goron's danced really made me smile and thought it was a great little aspect of the game, hope Nintendo do more like it to be honest.

 

Haha! I had forgotten about that awesome music. Definitely a highlight in the game.

 

So if he jumped off a cliff you'd follow?

 

No, but it's not like the order I complete the temples is hard to memorize. I tend to use the same terms as the people I'm speaking to, anyway.

[Ronnie]

Call me a killjoy but the Malo Mart music seems really out of place in a Zelda game. Mario definitely, but Zelda? Meh

[Emasher]

What I really want to see is Nintendo putting a lot of time into the game world itself. Their putting a lot of emphasis on controls, I'm sure they'll be fine, and its a Zelda game, so I can't see the gameplay being anything less than amazing, but what's really been lacking in Zelda games lately has been the world itself, especially when you compare it to the first few games in the series. Just consider for a second how open the first Zelda game was. You had a massive world full of all sorts of secret stuff to explore, all sorts of items to collect that all did different things and many of them were optional, and you actually had to look for them. Zelda back then was what Oblivion or Bethesda's Fallout games are today. Now, as much as I love Bethesda's RPGs, I never want to see a Zelda game that's exactly like them. They're buggy, and they have a very different feel than what I want in a Zelda game. However, I do think Nintendo should look a little bit at that sort of game when designing certain aspects of Zelda games. Exploration in Zelda games over the years has become more and more limited. In Twilight Princess, there just wasn't that much to find in the game. There were times when you might spend quite some time getting to and going through a mini-dungeon, only to find 20 rupees and a dead end. The worlds are also very linear in the sense that you're directed towards things and you can't just go off the path and look for stuff.

 

 

I'm sure some of you here remember seeing this screenshot a few weeks before Twilight Princess game out. I remember when it was posted here, someone made a comment about wanting to be able to actually go up those hills and look around on top of them. And I completely agreed with them. Being able to actually go where you want in a game is one of the greatest senses of freedom I've ever had in video games. Having something like a full 3D forest, perhaps with the occasional old abandoned house in it with some hidden item inside would be awesome. Being able to explore the world so fully was why people loved the older Zelda games. On the N64 loosing some of that freedom was fine, because it was probably the first time most of us explored such an amazing world in 3D, but now that the technology has improved so much, I'd really like to see Nintendo starting to take advantage of it and bringing Zelda back to its roots a bit more.

 

Back then, things like being able to control the game and having good gameplay weren't what was important. That was just something people expected Nintendo to deliver on because at the time they were truly the industry leaders in action/adventure games. They were never what made Zelda games amazing in the past. I'd love too see some of that innovation that made the first zelda games special back making the future ones special.

[Ronnie]

Unfortunately what Nintendo seem to care most about these days, is things like having us "roll" a bomb by swinging the remote zzzzzzzz

[Jonnas]

Unfortunately what Nintendo seem to care most about these days, is things like having us "roll" a bomb by swinging the remote zzzzzzzz

 

Yes, because changing the controls will prevent Nintendo from creating a good world to explore...

[Emasher]

I think he's more talking about the fact that controls shouldn't be the priority in the development of, or main selling point of a game after this many years of controls being developed by the industry. Just pressing a button worked fine 5 years ago, its not that they shouldn't try to improve things, but it really shouldn't be the priority at this point, it should be something they should already be able to do easily.

[Jimbob]

So from what i am reading, you want Nintendo to take Zelda in the same direction as Lionhead have done with Fable?.

 

If it is done correctly, of which i know Nintendo wouldn't fault us with the bugs and glitches Lionhead have become famous for, then Zelda could well be returned to it's former glory. All that exploration, being able to climb every hill you see, explore every cave you find and visit every town in the distance.

[Grazza]

I hate to be the grumpy one but, although the bosses were exceptional, I actually wasn't very fond of the dungeons in Twilight Princess. Like many things, they seemed a step-back from Wind Waker.

 

Take many people's favourite dungeon, for example, Snowpeak Mansion. Whilst I liked the theme, that's exactly the problem - it felt like a mansion-themed dungeon rather than an actual mansion. You could only enter via the front door, which felt like a facade, an illusion. You couldn't walk all round the mansion. You couldn't get knocked out of a window and land in the corresponding spot outside.

 

Few of them fitted into the overworld very well, like the way you used a cannon to get to the City in the Sky. Whereas in Wind Waker, you could sail around the entire outside of the mountains that held the dungeons, and when you were on the outdoor sections of the Fire or Fortress dungeons, you could see the corresponding bit of sea.

 

As others have said, TP's overworld wasn't truly explorable - it felt like pieces stitched together. My least favourite part, which is the part I think demonstrates most of the game's shortcomings, is Castle Town. Here, you are forced into an overhead view, which has the result that you never really feel there on street level. This town feels entirely stitched-together, with significant loading times between sections. When you go onto the balcony with the Gorons, you don't get a real-time view of what's going on, you get an illusion. Unlike Windfall Island, it just isn't a "real" town that you can run round, or run round the individual buildings.

 

Twilight Princess just wasn't as advanced as I expected after Wind Waker. To me, it felt like N64-tech, but with more detailed graphics. And after the excellent character design of the enemies in Wind Waker, who would have thought the next game would be so comparitively uninspired? (After all, Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 are spot-on, like WW.)

 

Now, as for control, my viewpoint is that control is something that is gradually improved over time, the current pinnacle being the GameCube and Xbox/360 controllers. I'm not saying MotionPlus doesn't work well, because it does, but let's look at the true context of this. The Wii has been out since 2006 and Nintendo has not released a top class 3rd-person game of this type that truly needs motion control. The simple wrist-shake and tilting of Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 worked fine, but that is not what they're going for here.

 

So, is Zelda really an acceptable game to experiment on? If, in the long-term, advanced motion control is considered unappealing for this type of game, Skyward Sword will always be an oddity, something you need to break out the Wii Remote Plus for.

[Ronnie]

Great post Grazza. I forgot how immersive and 'realistic' WW was. Fantastic game. TP does seem like a step down in hindsight.

 

Yes, because changing the controls will prevent Nintendo from creating a good world to explore...

 

Judging what Nintendo have done with "2D" Zelda on the DS, ie. making it all about the controls and touch-screen, and giving us a dumbed-down Zelda adventure, I wouldn't bet against the same thing happening with SS. For the record I loved Spirit Tracks and will of course wait to judge SS but Nintendo has previous when it comes to prioritising gimmicky controls.

Edited December 5, 2010 by Ronnie

[James McGeachie]

So if he jumped off a cliff you'd follow?

 

Christ, what a phrase to use when I just listed numbers instead of names.

 

I haven't even played the game or looked at anything to do with it since just after it came out. The structure just stands out in my memory pretty well.

 

I couldn't have told you a single dungeon name, I just remembered the important parts, i.e "1=forest, 2=fire, 3=water, 4=desert" and so on.

[Jonnas]

Judging what Nintendo have done with "2D" Zelda on the DS, ie. making it all about the controls and touch-screen, and giving us a dumbed-down Zelda adventure, I wouldn't bet against the same thing happening with SS. For the record I loved Spirit Tracks and will of course wait to judge SS but Nintendo has previous when it comes to prioritising gimmicky controls.

 

So, what you're saying is, you think the guys at Nintendo haven't learned anything since PH. I believe this is incorrect, as ST was an awesome game, and they obviously learned from the mistake made in PH (prioritising new controls over creative game design).

 

Either way, "dumbing down/making things easier" =/= "lack of immersion and/or exploration quality". Just look at Wind Waker.

[Grazza]

Either way, "dumbing down/making things easier" =/= "lack of immersion and/or exploration quality". Just look at Wind Waker.

 

But to be fair, Wind Waker was extremely advanced. Just because it was easy doesn't mean it was dumbed down. Wind Waker was the last Zelda to have the full functionality that had been built into the series up to that date. Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks (brilliant as it is) didn't have things like the compass, which I think is what Ronnie means.

 

I agree with you that they've learned a lot, though, because Spirit Tracks has the most fun dungeons out of any Zelda, in my opinion. It's a superb game throughout.

 

One thing I forgot to say in my last post was that Kakariko Village was actually a good village. Sparse and deserted it may have been, but it was fully modelled. It had the height, for example. If you took a chicken up to the highest point, you could glide down and land anywhere, accurate to your trajectory. That's the sort of thing I like to see in Zelda, even if we had to have less detailed graphics.

 

Another thing... people are talking about town design and whether there should be a Hyrule Castle Town or not. I say, why not have that as the main hub, but make sure it's excellent? There's something comforting about a well-designed town that you can return to again and again, as long as it's good like Clock Town or Windfall Island. It doesn't have to remain stagnant - you could take back your spoils and new items could become available to buy, precisely because of what you took back. New buildings, too, could spring up as the game develops.

[Jonnas]

But to be fair, Wind Waker was extremely advanced. Just because it was easy doesn't mean it was dumbed down. Wind Waker was the last Zelda to have the full functionality that had been built into the series up to that date. Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks (brilliant as it is) didn't have things like the compass, which I think is what Ronnie means.

 

Why would the DS games need things like a compass? For the trips, you use your map to move, and for the foot sections, it would be insulting to your intelligence.

WW needed that compass to help you guide yourself through the sea, steer your boat properly, etc. Adding it to the DS games would show a complete lack of understanding of those games' mechanics. (Like adding the homing attack to a 2D Sonic game)

This holds true for many gameplay elements in Wind Waker.

 

I do believe that the only "dumbing-down" in PH (or even ST) was how the game loved to throw really basic puzzles and streamlined dungeons at you (sometimes even holding your hand unnecessarily). PH was worse at this than any of WW's dungeons.

I also think this is what Ronnie meant.