23rd March 2013, 1:33 PM
I get what you mean about the cut scenes. However, I really didn't mind them so much. They're still fairly short and Zelda has never crossed the lines that Metal Gear and Xenosaga have just blown through without looking back.
I got so into this game I never even noticed minor flaws. The only one that got me was with the "save point" system they implemented. It feels like a step backwards. Recent Zelda games let you save progress at every doorway, which is the best possible system if you ask me. Literal "state saving" as in some western RPGs would be too much. People would just "cheat" every single boss fight or action sequence. That said, it still lets you save anywhere in the old ones, and this one requires save points. To their credit, they are so plentiful that I'm almost never too far from one.
Their reasoning behind this system was likely to prevent the glitch Twilight Princess had, where if you saved in a certain area in a very brief situation, quit, and reloaded, it broke game progression. They offered a disc replacement there. However, save points didn't solve the problem like they may have hoped. There is still a major progression breaking save glitch if you do a certain sequence of events in a certain order, save, quit, and reload. Instead of offering a disc replacement, or "patching" the game (the original Wii never got proper game patching added in), they went with a very awkward solution involving downloading a "save file fixer" which you run to "fix" any save file broken in that very specific way. It works, but it is very awkward, and it isn't permanent as it would need to be run every time such a save situation was created.
What this says is that if save points were their solution to the problem, then no, that's not how to do it. Next time, go back to "save anywhere", but be sure to do very thorough testing of all game progression events with saving after every single one at the moment the player can be controlled again, quitting, loading the game, and making sure progression still works. This should be done on a semi-regular basis during development (not really needed at every single version push), and then once more, complete and thoroughly, once the game is considered in "release candidate" mode (and again should they find there is a save glitch they need to fix for another release candidate).
That said, it isn't as big a concern now. Both the 3DS and Wii U OSes are capable of proper game patching. The Wii U does this as a game is launched, but the 3DS requires downloading patch data from the store (the latter shall hopefully be fixed). There should be less of a fear of a complete game breaking scenario caused by saving anywhere this time around, as they won't need to do anything really awkward or expensive to push out a fix to everyone.
I got so into this game I never even noticed minor flaws. The only one that got me was with the "save point" system they implemented. It feels like a step backwards. Recent Zelda games let you save progress at every doorway, which is the best possible system if you ask me. Literal "state saving" as in some western RPGs would be too much. People would just "cheat" every single boss fight or action sequence. That said, it still lets you save anywhere in the old ones, and this one requires save points. To their credit, they are so plentiful that I'm almost never too far from one.
Their reasoning behind this system was likely to prevent the glitch Twilight Princess had, where if you saved in a certain area in a very brief situation, quit, and reloaded, it broke game progression. They offered a disc replacement there. However, save points didn't solve the problem like they may have hoped. There is still a major progression breaking save glitch if you do a certain sequence of events in a certain order, save, quit, and reload. Instead of offering a disc replacement, or "patching" the game (the original Wii never got proper game patching added in), they went with a very awkward solution involving downloading a "save file fixer" which you run to "fix" any save file broken in that very specific way. It works, but it is very awkward, and it isn't permanent as it would need to be run every time such a save situation was created.
What this says is that if save points were their solution to the problem, then no, that's not how to do it. Next time, go back to "save anywhere", but be sure to do very thorough testing of all game progression events with saving after every single one at the moment the player can be controlled again, quitting, loading the game, and making sure progression still works. This should be done on a semi-regular basis during development (not really needed at every single version push), and then once more, complete and thoroughly, once the game is considered in "release candidate" mode (and again should they find there is a save glitch they need to fix for another release candidate).
That said, it isn't as big a concern now. Both the 3DS and Wii U OSes are capable of proper game patching. The Wii U does this as a game is launched, but the 3DS requires downloading patch data from the store (the latter shall hopefully be fixed). There should be less of a fear of a complete game breaking scenario caused by saving anywhere this time around, as they won't need to do anything really awkward or expensive to push out a fix to everyone.
"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)