More good news for Zelda in America

[A Black Falcon]

Been on vacation (skiing in New Hampshire) since friday night... so this is responding in general to everything back to OB1's response to my last post in the thread...

And if you disagree with him then well, good for you.

Wel, yeah, it is a difference of opinion and not something that can be objectively proven to be fact... well, except for sales/public opinion. And I will admit that while the initial opinion was really bad, it does seem to have been improving over time... it IS a Zelda game, and more people have played it and saw how it does look good for its style...

No it isn't.

I am scared for you if you can't tell I wasn't serious there... given the smily...

Stupid! Don't you understand that ABF's word is fact, even though he says that whenever he says anything like that it's just his opinion, but then contradicts himself immediately afterwards?

I thought I'd explained this enough times... maybe this post will get it through? Probably not...

Then we must agree that we have different ideals for Nintendo...one being no better than the other. Your ideal is for Nintendo to be the undying artist. Mine is for Nintendo to be the artist that uses all of his creativity to entertain.

Art, or success? Tough question for artists... but this isn't exactly art. This is videogames, and Nintendo isn't a artist in a attic... its a company that wants to be succesful... so they will of course do whatever it takes to succeed while staying in their moral (and whatever other) boundaries that they set... if they were smart they would do that anyway... but like Sega, as you point out quite well, Nintendo doesn't exactly always do that.

Should they? I don't know. Art for art's sake is good, but not the way to run a successful games company... a balance of the two is probably best. You just can't make art and expect the people to adjust to like it all the time... as both Nintendo is doing here and Sega does regularly.

It just doesn't work often enough. However... in this case Nintendo has a big thing in their favor: its a major, super-popular franchise that they are running this experiment on... instantly helping it gain in the consumers' eyes... but still... as I've said many times, its questionable to make a game like this that requires the consumers to adjust to like the game for them to be able to accept it... it just isn't a good business practice to follow much...

I thought my metaphor was pretty good...oh well. What I'm saying is that Link's animations in Wind Waker are not a key element in the Zelda experience. I think you could change the animations, the art style, the presentation, and it would still be Legend of Zelda:Wind Waker. But if you honestly think that the animations are one of the elements that are intrinsic to Zelda, I can't convince you of anything, because even the slightest change would ruin the game for you.

Well... I agree with you on this point for sure...

The thing is, I'm looking at the same words from Miyamoto, and I come to a different conclusion: that a SW2000 Zelda would be an arduous task, one that would take many years of polish. I absoutely agree with him.

Yeah... it definitely does seem that he is saying that the realisitc style would be a lot harder to do, and would take a lot more programming and art time that they would rather not spend on the art and graphics style... a understandable choice, of course, but a interesting one, given how in most places these days graphics are so important...

That, because it is a cartoon world, things like exaggerated animation and such are consistent for the world. And that consistency is important for a game. This consistency is what he calls, "realistic." Every photorealistic game to date has had inconsistencies (bumping into a wall strangely, etc.) that reduce the immersion. However, a realistic game does not require such glaring inconsistencies. It is simply because the graphics are photorealistic that people expect the rules of reality to apply. Yet, within the first five minutes, the Matrix skillfully explains to the audience that its photorealistic world has different rules from reality. And most of the audience accepted that without saying, "Ugh, that's so unrealistic!"

Yeah... I do see how people COULD expect a realistic world to have realistic physics, but I don't see why they'd REQUIRE it... like OoT -- it hardly had realistic rules in many ways but that wasn't a problem... but I guess it is true that with the increasing complexity that newer graphics bring people expect more. But still... it doesn't seem impossible to do -- just more challenging than a cartoon world is...

And I think we can all agree that, with the right amount of time and the right amount of inginuity, a "realistic" photorealistic Zelda could be done.

Yes... but of course they have limited time, and since its Nintendo they require near-perfection, so spending more time on gameplay (and less on complex graphics and realistic rules) is a reasonable thing to do...

photo-realistic fantasy world.

OB1, attempt to understand this concept -- by 'photorealistic' I'm not looking for something exactly like real life... I'm looking for the most realistic look the game could have while still staying true to being a light fantasy game in a fantasy world... it obviously can't be "complete realism". But it could look realistic for that fanstasy world...

Well that's the thing. OoT sort of touched the whole realistic thing but wasn't really able to pull it off because of the graphics engine, but the SW2000 demo looked like it was taking the whole realism idea much further and trying to make a "what if Zelda was just a bunch of real humans in funny costumes" game. And if you look at the art style from OoT you can see that it's actually very cartoony, they were just stuck between the art from the game and a somewhat-realistic look. The visual style of WW is actually much more true to the series than the SW2000 version would have been.

Hmm... I don't understand something. Why do you think that I think OoT looked realistic or something? I never said that in the way you take it to mean... as I tried to explain above here. As for the Spaceworld 2000 Demo, it looked like OoT in improved graphics... and while Link and Ganon did look very serious, they could easily have had some much lighter elements to the graphics in a full game to make it not super-realistic or something... Zelda has never had absolutely serious graphics, of course, and since its fantasy that style might not work so well... A 'realistic' Zelda would be like a (improved version of the) Spaceworld demo... but not without humor or anything... I don't see how that style would rule out realistic or convincing nonhuman creatures, or a fantastic world, or something. Its Zelda... it would have those elements, just in a more 'realistic' (considering the subject) style than TWW... its really not a challenging concept...

Oh, and as said before, Link would have equilivant, but more realistic, animations to what he has in WW... same for the enemies. And it wouldn't hurt the game in any possible way I can see... I just don't understand at all why you think that there would have been some major creative sacrifice if it'd been done that way... it just doesn't really make sense...