6th September 2006, 1:55 PM
I thought having a flying boat would have been fun while playing. I've taken it further and thought that if a horse is awesome, a flying horse would be like the awesomest ever. Some sort of unicorn pegasus would be like, the best thing ever, especially if it ran "on" the wind and you had to have some odd turns and there was some epic sky battle and a bunch of crazy items you could use on horse back. Maybe fight a tornado... That said, I didn't put any expectations on finding something like that in the game. My expectations were more on the lines of "the next dungeon must be where the puzzles really start getting challenging" and "alright, now some sort of underwater dungeon to fetch the 3rd pearl!".
Yeah, I've thought on similar lines that a large number of Zelda games, ever since LTTP, have tried to replicate that game's success with "two worlds". Four Swords Adventure did a good job of it. Finding out your shadows in the other world can directly interact with your split "selves" was pretty amazing (probably an extention of the four sword's power) though the first puzzle where we were INTENDED to discover that, I ended up BRUTE FORCING my way through a barrage of cannon balls and actually living. That's the OTHER way to solve a puzzle Zelda rarely goes into, the "enough of this, I'm just going to punch my way through!" and then you just take your awesome sword or bombs or flaming arrows and just take OUT the locked wooden door in front of you. If they decide to implement more "sandbox" style gameplay into Zelda, a more open ended way of using some ingenuity to solve puzzles is probably the best way to go. I'm starting to think the main issue isn't that the new Zelda games have puzzles that are "too easy" so much as that they are getting too "formulaic" (though there is the easiness issue in some areas, for example you should be required to experiment with items to see what puzzles they can solve rather than being told exactly what they do like "and for some odd reason I think I should point out they can cut down icicles on the ceiling"). Breaking the mold may require some more procedurally generated interaction with your environment so an obstacle can be overcome in many different ways. PURE speculation, but it would be interesting if that's what Nintendo means when they say Twilight Princess is the "last traditional Zelda game", though admittedly it is more likely they merely mean in terms of innovative controller interaction than a total overhaul of how puzzles are handled. I still think it might be a good idea to look into that though.
I call that previous paragraph a DJ style stream of conciousness. Now back to the original topic, let's see, LTTP had it's dark world, and OOT had it's "future land" which as you said was basically past land but with more places accessible, and some other changes not nearly as dramatic as dark land. Link's Awakening didn't have a second world though. (The incredibly short "dream within a dream land" sequences don't really count.) Majora's Mask WAS another world, and you barely touched the Hyrule reality, but they spent their focus more on sheer depth of the world. The two Oracle games also tried alternate worlds. There was the 4 seasons, which didn't nearly capture it, though there were 4 of the seasons so it was nifty enough. There was also the somewhat small "subland" there, basically just an underworld. Ages had a past and a future. Due to the much greater difference in time, they could make things change more. This felt more like a failure simply because they could have done so much more with it than they did. It fell short of "Dark World" level differences. Wind Waker had Old Hyrule held within that time bubble beneath the waves, but that was more of a dungeon to itself than a seperate world. Minish Cap had the realm of the small. That could have been flushed out more than it was. Now, sometimes adhering to actual physics can ruin a game's fun. In Minish Cap's case though, can you imagine?
I've read a number of biologist's opinions on how many sheer missed opportunities "shrinking" stories miss out on, and just how much more awesome an accurate portrayal of what happens when you change the scale but not the shape of a structure. Let's put it this way. If you can manage to not die of exposure, you can flip out like a ninja if you are shrunk. All that wall jumping and taking out things twice your size with a single flying kick off the ceiling? If you want that, shrink yourself! That's the secret of ninja movies. They all take place in alternate universes that are actually smaller in scale than our own. The thing to remember is that surface area (a 2D thing) will not be reduced nearly as much as volume (3D). Basic math of course, if the shape is the same and all you do is shrink, ratios are still going to be different (not intuitive, but do the math and you'll see, I'm right). The biology sites have gone on saying that due to that, the first danger is freezing to death. The greater surface area to volume is why smaller thing's hearts beat faster (and indirectly the reason they live relatively shorter lives, well in those with physiology similar to our own like mammals), because heat is lost quicker. So, Link could have had to rush from warm spot to warm spot while small (which would have been fun) until eventually you get the "fire coat", a magical coat that grants Link with the same ability to maintain heat that he had when he was big (or as a universal answer, a wizard did it, the hat already solves the problem). But, this is no excuse for lacking all the awesome flip out and kill people abilities that a shrunken man has. 1 inch woman being attacked by spider? Disadvantage? Spider! That's concentrated muscle mass. Not as strong as when big in an absolute sense, but there's a reason that ants can lift so much weight and it's that scaling issue again. Also consider that with lower mass, someone doesn't have nearly the inertia they have at our size. These combined mean a few things. One, you can jump into a normal sized well, hit terminal velocity really quick, and just sort of bounce without breaking anything when you hit bottom. Mice under a certain weight can be dropped from any height and assuming they don't pass out from lack of air or hit something otherwise deadly, they hit TV too soon to ever die from a drop (on Earth, which means other assumptions like an atmosphere like our own, our gravity, and dropping it when at a speed relative to earth's so the creature doesn't slam into atmosphere or skid across the ground sideways). A mouse bounces, a human breaks, and a horse will literally splash (don't drop an elephant anything higher than a foot, and even that may be too much). All this combined means your shrunken friend will be able to tear that spider a new one. Jump way up over it, land safely, instantly reverse direction and deliver a kick to the arse sending it sprawling outward. If it weren't for the huge energy issues we have at that scale just to stay alive, other things might actually more closely resemble us at that scale. At any rate, back to the game, Link could have been totally awesome flipping around and moving a lot quicker and not hurt himself falling from great heights when smaller, totally different dynamic when he puts on the hat sort of thing. (Oh yes, surface tension becomes VERY strong when small, so be careful drinking a big water "bubble" we'd call a drop at that scale because the moment you put it to your lips, it's instantly capillary action'd its way down your throat, whether you swallow or not. They at least seem to recognize how powerful that force becomes at that scale with the falling drops of water of DEATH in the game.) I'm not saying a magical video game needs to be accurate in physics. I'm just saying that when the missed opportunities seem THAT amazingly good as ideas for awesome gameplay AND have the bonus of being physically accurate, well then you just want them to make the game yourself if someone else doesn't.
Back on topic again, Four Swords was a barebones (almost proof of concept, though still amazingly fun) game but Four Swords Adventures introduced the Dark World again, though this time it seems to act differently and doesn't even seem to be the same "dark world" as the sacred realm of LTTP (no golden skies and it seems to basically just be a shadow of the light world and it's all wavy, plus this game was before Ganon corrupted the sacred land so if it was that place it shouldn't be filled with darkness). Since Nintendo has officially stated that there is an infinity of alternate worlds in the Zelda universe due to the way that the goddess trinity created it, that isn't too far fetched. And now, there's the Twilight realm. From what I've seen, it seems to be a fully fleshed out location as opposed to just tiny fragments. With a unique art style applied to the whole thing, and the way Nintendo is going on about how massive the game will be, I'd say it's reasonable to expect this place to be fully fleshed out. I wonder how, or if, it relates to the golden land or the dark world of Four Swords though.
Yeah, I've thought on similar lines that a large number of Zelda games, ever since LTTP, have tried to replicate that game's success with "two worlds". Four Swords Adventure did a good job of it. Finding out your shadows in the other world can directly interact with your split "selves" was pretty amazing (probably an extention of the four sword's power) though the first puzzle where we were INTENDED to discover that, I ended up BRUTE FORCING my way through a barrage of cannon balls and actually living. That's the OTHER way to solve a puzzle Zelda rarely goes into, the "enough of this, I'm just going to punch my way through!" and then you just take your awesome sword or bombs or flaming arrows and just take OUT the locked wooden door in front of you. If they decide to implement more "sandbox" style gameplay into Zelda, a more open ended way of using some ingenuity to solve puzzles is probably the best way to go. I'm starting to think the main issue isn't that the new Zelda games have puzzles that are "too easy" so much as that they are getting too "formulaic" (though there is the easiness issue in some areas, for example you should be required to experiment with items to see what puzzles they can solve rather than being told exactly what they do like "and for some odd reason I think I should point out they can cut down icicles on the ceiling"). Breaking the mold may require some more procedurally generated interaction with your environment so an obstacle can be overcome in many different ways. PURE speculation, but it would be interesting if that's what Nintendo means when they say Twilight Princess is the "last traditional Zelda game", though admittedly it is more likely they merely mean in terms of innovative controller interaction than a total overhaul of how puzzles are handled. I still think it might be a good idea to look into that though.
I call that previous paragraph a DJ style stream of conciousness. Now back to the original topic, let's see, LTTP had it's dark world, and OOT had it's "future land" which as you said was basically past land but with more places accessible, and some other changes not nearly as dramatic as dark land. Link's Awakening didn't have a second world though. (The incredibly short "dream within a dream land" sequences don't really count.) Majora's Mask WAS another world, and you barely touched the Hyrule reality, but they spent their focus more on sheer depth of the world. The two Oracle games also tried alternate worlds. There was the 4 seasons, which didn't nearly capture it, though there were 4 of the seasons so it was nifty enough. There was also the somewhat small "subland" there, basically just an underworld. Ages had a past and a future. Due to the much greater difference in time, they could make things change more. This felt more like a failure simply because they could have done so much more with it than they did. It fell short of "Dark World" level differences. Wind Waker had Old Hyrule held within that time bubble beneath the waves, but that was more of a dungeon to itself than a seperate world. Minish Cap had the realm of the small. That could have been flushed out more than it was. Now, sometimes adhering to actual physics can ruin a game's fun. In Minish Cap's case though, can you imagine?
I've read a number of biologist's opinions on how many sheer missed opportunities "shrinking" stories miss out on, and just how much more awesome an accurate portrayal of what happens when you change the scale but not the shape of a structure. Let's put it this way. If you can manage to not die of exposure, you can flip out like a ninja if you are shrunk. All that wall jumping and taking out things twice your size with a single flying kick off the ceiling? If you want that, shrink yourself! That's the secret of ninja movies. They all take place in alternate universes that are actually smaller in scale than our own. The thing to remember is that surface area (a 2D thing) will not be reduced nearly as much as volume (3D). Basic math of course, if the shape is the same and all you do is shrink, ratios are still going to be different (not intuitive, but do the math and you'll see, I'm right). The biology sites have gone on saying that due to that, the first danger is freezing to death. The greater surface area to volume is why smaller thing's hearts beat faster (and indirectly the reason they live relatively shorter lives, well in those with physiology similar to our own like mammals), because heat is lost quicker. So, Link could have had to rush from warm spot to warm spot while small (which would have been fun) until eventually you get the "fire coat", a magical coat that grants Link with the same ability to maintain heat that he had when he was big (or as a universal answer, a wizard did it, the hat already solves the problem). But, this is no excuse for lacking all the awesome flip out and kill people abilities that a shrunken man has. 1 inch woman being attacked by spider? Disadvantage? Spider! That's concentrated muscle mass. Not as strong as when big in an absolute sense, but there's a reason that ants can lift so much weight and it's that scaling issue again. Also consider that with lower mass, someone doesn't have nearly the inertia they have at our size. These combined mean a few things. One, you can jump into a normal sized well, hit terminal velocity really quick, and just sort of bounce without breaking anything when you hit bottom. Mice under a certain weight can be dropped from any height and assuming they don't pass out from lack of air or hit something otherwise deadly, they hit TV too soon to ever die from a drop (on Earth, which means other assumptions like an atmosphere like our own, our gravity, and dropping it when at a speed relative to earth's so the creature doesn't slam into atmosphere or skid across the ground sideways). A mouse bounces, a human breaks, and a horse will literally splash (don't drop an elephant anything higher than a foot, and even that may be too much). All this combined means your shrunken friend will be able to tear that spider a new one. Jump way up over it, land safely, instantly reverse direction and deliver a kick to the arse sending it sprawling outward. If it weren't for the huge energy issues we have at that scale just to stay alive, other things might actually more closely resemble us at that scale. At any rate, back to the game, Link could have been totally awesome flipping around and moving a lot quicker and not hurt himself falling from great heights when smaller, totally different dynamic when he puts on the hat sort of thing. (Oh yes, surface tension becomes VERY strong when small, so be careful drinking a big water "bubble" we'd call a drop at that scale because the moment you put it to your lips, it's instantly capillary action'd its way down your throat, whether you swallow or not. They at least seem to recognize how powerful that force becomes at that scale with the falling drops of water of DEATH in the game.) I'm not saying a magical video game needs to be accurate in physics. I'm just saying that when the missed opportunities seem THAT amazingly good as ideas for awesome gameplay AND have the bonus of being physically accurate, well then you just want them to make the game yourself if someone else doesn't.
Back on topic again, Four Swords was a barebones (almost proof of concept, though still amazingly fun) game but Four Swords Adventures introduced the Dark World again, though this time it seems to act differently and doesn't even seem to be the same "dark world" as the sacred realm of LTTP (no golden skies and it seems to basically just be a shadow of the light world and it's all wavy, plus this game was before Ganon corrupted the sacred land so if it was that place it shouldn't be filled with darkness). Since Nintendo has officially stated that there is an infinity of alternate worlds in the Zelda universe due to the way that the goddess trinity created it, that isn't too far fetched. And now, there's the Twilight realm. From what I've seen, it seems to be a fully fleshed out location as opposed to just tiny fragments. With a unique art style applied to the whole thing, and the way Nintendo is going on about how massive the game will be, I'd say it's reasonable to expect this place to be fully fleshed out. I wonder how, or if, it relates to the golden land or the dark world of Four Swords though.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)