Is the Legend of Zelda franchise changing for the better or worse after enjoying such an enormous newfound popularity with BOTW?
Is the Legend of Zelda franchise changing for the better or worse after enjoying such an enormous newfound popularity with BOTW?
Everyone and their mom played OoT though?
>sales
You can run the n64 emulator on a toaster. Also OoT 3D exists. Everyone who learned about Zelda played OoT eventually through whatever means.
this includes the sales of the 3ds version of ocarina of time. the best selling zelda game before botw was twilight princess with 8-10 million and botw already broke 30 million which tripled it. you're retarded if you think maybe a million or two more of emulator fags counts
Yeah and 20 million zoomers emulated it after they saw a heckin epic speedrun
i emulated it after watching sequelitis
>zoomers actually playing games instead of watching someone else play them
Whoa
I'm surprised Skyward sold so little compared to Twilight
Wii was dead in the water at that point. The gimmick wore off, the soccer moms who only bought wii sports and mario kart type games had moved on and people who actually liked video games were pissed at the wii for pandering so hard to casuals.
The bigger problem is both minecraft and skyrim released at the same time as skyward sword and despite skyward sword getting critical acclaim it got mogged hard in sales and staying power. It's that right there that caused botw. A real shame. If nintendo hadn't been floundering so hard with the series after relegating koizumi to mario, things would've been different.
I miss Fi.
Same. I liked her as a character. I don't blame her for the babysitting, I blame Aonuma being a brainlet and it being on the Wii trying to make sure literally anyone and their senile grandma and her 2 year old great grandchild could get through the game.
Fi's problem is that almost all of her dialogue consists of either tutorials, hand-holding or expositing. Nothing to flesh out her character. A robot trying to learn abstract things and understand human emotion is a classic character arc, and her robotic/clinical understanding of the world could have been played for humor much more than the game currently does. Fi as a concept for a companion character could've been a slam dunk, but it's all in the execution, and the execution was absolute shit.
Fi is shit and is part of how Skyward Sword ruined Zelda writing forever
elaborate!
Bad writing
Ruined the master sword
Part of the garbage ass origin story of a retarded destiny cycle to try to recontexualize the entire franchise, in the process retroactively depriving major characters of agency
Yeah... true. It sucks when they explain the magic like that.
Why? Skyward Sword looked like shit, had lame ass waggle controls that required the purchase of a peripheral, and had the worst story in the franchise
Most of SS got fixed on the Switch to the point it is actually quite good to replay now, the one issue I still have with it is the limited scope of the world map, at the time they said it was because they felt like they had too many one time locations in TP, but for an adventure game I think that is better than having to traverse the same places again and again.
Some were starting to feel burned out on Zelda. Even back then, I felt little hype coming from everyone about the game. The marketing for the game was never that great, and it didn't really look appealing at a glance from trailers. And lets not forget that awful E3 demonstration Miyamoto did. It also came towards the end of the Wii's life cycle and required an extra device added to your remote to play.
>Miyamoto struggled to play the thing at E3
SS was killed before release.
Twilight Princess was for several years the most anticipated game to come out. It also came out on both the Gamecube and the Wii, one of the few games in the series that wasn't console exclusive.
Is because is a fake graph
Cause Skyward Shit fucking sucked. I tried it back during the Wii days and it blows and got it years later for the Switch thinking shit with real controls it might be good.
It was not.
>Games became mainstream and acceptable around 2015-16
Such a mystery why pretty much all AAA games now sell 10 mil easily in 2 years while up to 2010 it was pretty much unheard of for any game to reach that.
>it was pretty much unheard of for any game to reach that.
Just from Nintendo alone has Mario and Pokemon completely trump those sales numbers. Gaming has been mainstream since the PS2, BoTW outsold everything prior specifically because open world games simply print money.
No, it was because it was on the switch
If you like BOTW, you don't like Zelda.
>minish cap has second fewest sales
criminal
a bit of both. the scope and the scale is impressive and basically what the series needed but some things have been lost in translation like how dungeons are designed
This. And stop with the way they handle cut scenes through "memories" or whatever. Also how they handle main characters. Every main character has basically the same story as the last one.
pretty much this. BOTW raised the bar for world design, but in the end it kind of felt like a glorified tech demo, because it lacked the foundation that really made it a Zelda game. I was initially excited for TOTK because the idea of taking the skeleton of BOTW and fleshing it out with more traditional Zelda elements was really promising, and instead it seems like they just doubled down on the new formula. I understand the series has to change & evolve & appeal to new generations, but it feels like there's barely anything left at all for old fans to connect with, and when you bring up the old games, you get met with a lot of derision which is weird.
>BOTW raised the bar for world design,
It's a big ass bowl with a thousand copies of 10 enemies lazily scattered everywhere, along with dumbass domes containing cereal box puzzles for 4 year olds.
>I understand the series has to change & evolve & appeal to new generations,
It doesn't. Nobody wanted or asked for this. It sold super well because of the brand and being on the switch. A conventional zelda would have sold as well or better.
>A conventional zelda would have sold as well or better.
None of the previous games come close to BoTW.
That's because the switch is a global phenomena. Animal Crossing sold 40 million copies despite being the same fucking game since the original on the gamecube. Super Mario Party sold 20 million copies, over double what the wii one did. Smash U sold almost 3 times as well as Brawl. It's the system, not the games.
If we account for the Switch Bonus, BotW would have still sold 15M copies, making it the biggest success in the franchise.
>despite being the same fucking game since the original on the gamecube
I fucking wish. It's way worse.
>BOTW raised the bar for world design
It hasn't really though, that's the thing. It added some world interactivity not generally seen in open world games, but plenty of open world games have added similar types of mechanics and neither added that much or is all that useful for other open world games, which is why they have to instance so much of it off to shrines instead of having it exist naturally in the world. And things like climbing or the glider outright break world design with how easy it is to skip or walk around everything. If this game was not labeled Zelda, people would be treating it very differently.
It's like saying minecraft raised the bar for world design. It didn't. It raised the bar for sandbox design. And a go anywhere whenever you want, do whatever you want whenever you want type sandbox design is at total odds with what Zelda used to be, which is why these games piss off so many Zelda fans.
>It's like saying minecraft raised the bar for world design. It didn't. It raised the bar for sandbox design. And a go anywhere whenever you want, do whatever you want whenever you want type sandbox design is at total odds with what Zelda used to be, which is why these games piss off so many Zelda fans.
How quickly we forget the back to back linear shitshow that was TP and SS nearly killed the franchise.
Twilight Princess was the best selling Zelda game of all time when it came out. It was Squidward's Sword that sold like ass, mostly because it required a fucking peripheral, but also because it was just a bad game.
Skyward Sword would've sold much better if it had any difficulty.
You don't need either extremes. But TP and SS are both very much still Zelda games despite not allowing you to do some dungeons out of order, while BotW and TotK are not. They're a new IP that used Zelda as a skin because it was far less risky.
>But TP and SS are both very much still Zelda games despite not allowing you to do some dungeons out of order
They are far, far worse than that. They absolutely railroad you through their forced sequences of events and make sure that it's simply not possible to explore and discover their worlds in any natural fashion. Even the previous games in the series that were technically linear with regards to dungeon order weren't close to as bad.
I agree and it's one of the reasons I think the series rolled downhill after Aonuma took over. Their slow slog of a start in particular is brutal. But despite their regression to very handholdy lineartity I still think the core of the Zelda series right from the very first game was always about exploring to find dungeons to find items that opened up more exploration. Linearity hampers that, but exploration isn't necessarily about freedom, it's about discovery and overcoming the unknown. SS barely hangs on to being a Zelda game, but I would still say it's a Zelda game. It kind of felt to me like they wanted to try and make that dungeon select type game the original was supposed to be before they added an overworld halfway through development.
>TP
>the by far best selling Zelda up until that point
>nearly killing the franchise
And not even SS nearly killed the franchise, it still sold millions of units and achieved critical acclaim despite its all its flaws and releasing on a dead by that point system.
Had me til the last bit, that ram-rod linearity that was born with LTTP and reached its peak in the Wii era is the one thing I'm glad BOTW did away with. It's patently wrong to say that "go anywhere do whatever you want" sandboxy design is at total odds with what Zelda used to be, given Zelda 1 and 2 were both built with this in mind, with only minor restrictions imposed by the progression system in the former for the most part. I think I understand what you're trying to say, which is talking about how BOTW completely omits any sense of progression enabling exploration, which I agree with and understand how this can be seen as shaping the series identity, but the wording of the argument is a bit shaky
>given Zelda 1 and 2 were both built with this in mind
They had nonlinearity sure, but they did not throw everything out for freedom above all else. Zelda 1 had 9 huge mandatory dungeons that were double the size of the overworld. You had to do all those dungeons and you had to some dungeons before you could access others. BotW takes that and kneecaps it where you can just run straight to ganon and beat him in 30 minutes because it is essentially nothing but filler bite sized content spread out over a huge world where what most people seem to enjoy about it is simply running from point A to point B rather than the shrines or seeds. That's at total odds with even the first 2 Zelda games.
Not to mention finding and or getting to those dungeons was a real ordeal. The overworld in the first game in particular was designed in a way that felt like it was just a bigger version of one of its own dungeons.
>BOTW raised the bar for world design
it didn't do anything Skyrim hadn't done already over ten years ago.
Worse. Last real Zelda game was Skyward Sword. Last great Zelda game was Twilight Princess.
Just finished BoTW
I dislike ubishit so goddamn much
That guy is full of shit, I've played every single Zelda game except for Triforce Heroes and I think BotW and Tears of the Kingdom are great
I think there's room for both traditional Zelda and open world/open ended puzzle Zelda, just like there was room for 3D and 2D Zelda for a long time. For me though I think moving forward I'd prefer the BotW style. Going back to some of the puzzles in a game like Skyward Sword now can feel a like I'm "trying to figure out what the devs want me to do" as opposed to finding a clean logical solution.
>That guy is full of shit
He's really not though, as he says you can be a Zelda fan as well as a BoTW fan. But there's a lot more BoTW-only fans out there now. I mean, just look up Japan alone, ToTK is selling millions in there and no Zelda game prior ever managed much more than 500k sales
This. Zelda was a niche game back in Japan. It started as an FDS exclusive series and Ocarina was released on a console no one over there had. It was a strong series in the West, like super strong but domestically while not Metroid levels of obscure was still never a huge hit.
Holy based.
Also same for me, everyone who is crying about botw/totk are getting filtered by the tutorial zone.
>polygon
Bros... It's almost like... Not everyone enjoys the same things completely equally, and the word fan is just a rudimentary label...
If only we knew how bad things would get 25 years ago.
So what's the armor situation like in the new zelda? Is there comfy traveling clothes? Are all the old sets still in like the climbing gear?
Pretty much everything is back except for the Gerudo Vai and the Ancient set
Gerudo vai set as DLC I suppose? I'm still on the fence about getting it but I'll probably pick it up. It's basically botw 2.0 then?
>gerudo vai gone
chuds and femboys BTFO
>Gerudo Vai
Between this, Link and Zelda all but confirmed to be an item, and Sidon being clarified to be explicitly straight, I legitimately wonder if Nintendo's trying to rehabilitate BotW Link's image after the forced crossdressing to get into Gerudo Town. Granted, there's still crossdressing but it's optional and the outfits themselves are pretty out of the way.
>Ancient Tech
An unfortunate victim of Shiekah Tech in general being unpersoned Soviet Russia style.
its fine if this is the direction they want to go, but we really need a new franchised focused on the massive dungeons and puzzles the old zelda was known for.
After BOTW got me to play a lot more Zelda, I think the answer is complicated.
BOTW and TOTK being the only new Zelda stories in the last 12 years is fucking sad. I get that they're very complex games, but consider Xenoblade started and ended a trilogy in that time, as well as put out an open world spinoff. Fire Emblem climbed from the grave and released 5 new entries. Zelda's content drought just for the sake of making these games open world is super boring.
To top it all off, now they want this formula to be the series' identity going forward. That's such a sad suckerpunch in the gut to any fan who liked the original style more.
These are great games, but man I understand ho they're such huge turn-offs for many fans who don't want this. Hope in the future we see Nintendo lease the IP out to other developers, like how Capcom made Minish Cap way back. Pad out the release windows and give both kinds of fans something to look forward to.
Minish Cap was dope.
Grezzo probably has been working on a Zelda game since LA. Hope it's a new one and not just another remake.
I hope it's not the shitty LA remake artstyle
>These are great games,
They're repetitive toys
Also. The last new 2D Zelda was A Link Between Worlds. In a way that’s LttP2, like how TotK is BotW2 (I know the JP name is Triforce of the Gods 2).
Pretty crazy thinking about it.
I get the feeling. I really like BotW and TotK, but man. Sometimes I prefer the simpler smaller stuff.
The Capcom games are some of the worst selling entries in the entire series. No idea why. Once they took 2D Zelda back in-house, sales soared (despite Phantom Hourglass being a worse game).
>Once they took 2D Zelda back in-house, sales soared
Mainly because it was on the DS, when Japan became very handheld based while using the WW aesthetic which Japan loved. Japan never really cared about Zelda since the series isn't very special over there.
Most of PH's sales were international, Minish Cap used the same art style and was playable on DS and came out on DS launch.
You can try to justify it all you like, but Capcom's GB and GBA Zeldas underperformed.
'member when a brand new FF used to sell much much better than a new Zelda game? Now it's the complete opposite lmaooo.
*in japan
No?
>'member when a brand new FF used to sell much much better than a new Zelda game?
Not really, no.
Worst, but no stopping it now. This is what the retarded masses want. Just like how the masses prefer to be slaves over being free.
It is the opposite. The masses have no freedom in their personal lives and so when given a taste of freedom in video games, crave it and pedestalize it. Yet, freedom in video games comes at a cost to design, so open world games to people with a critical eye often seem much worse in comparison... they are not designed as well. The most free game of all is sticking you in an empty endless plane and letting you move around. But that's no fun is it?
2 steps forward, 2 steps to the side, 20 steps back
Bonus that the fanbase is easily among the worst and most obnoxious in vidya.
I like the 2D games, I like the classic 3D games and I like the new open world formula, BotW and TotK don't erase the previous games and I can always go back to them when I feel like it and also play BotW or TotK whenever I want to.
No reason TotK should've taken that long to come out. It is practically a mod of BotW.
So? I play other games, I don't need a Zelda game each year, whether they were winging the development or pushed it back so it didn't coincide with other big releases like Xenoblade 3 doesn't hurt me in any way.
I'm just saying that it was practically a clone of BotW. It shouldn't have taken that long. I'd bet 85% of the same source code was used if not more.
It's definitely because of the Ultrahand and Fuse mechanic.
This is definitely my biggest complaint of the game. Nothing feels new. It just feels like BotW second quest. The new features aren't enough when all of the assets are just copypasted and the gameplay loop itself is no different.
Yep. It is practically a carbon copy. Story was more interesting but it shitted on what the series established. And Link's allies just say the same shit for their arcs.
Yeah it's weird. I'd call it expansion pack dlc, but dlcs don't totally invalidate the game they're attached to. It really does feel more like a fan mod. It's annoying how flawed these games are yet people sweep everything under the rug to praise a few aspects to the high heavens and then claim they're 10/10 revolutionary masterpieces as a result. Zelda has always been weird like that, but it's so much louder and more forced now.
The games are ass. Zelda is dead. The tears of the kingdom are the ones the fanbase sheds.
the series has been dog shit since majora's mask and i'm sick of you contrarian zoomies arguing otherwise. you have to have an iq lower than room temperature to not feel insulted by those hand holding simulators.
Majora's Mask was overrated and lame. Very overrated and kind of lame.
Everything after the NES is a handholding sim
This sounds like typical Ganker contrarianism but it's the truth. ALTTP onwards begins the trend of everything being clearly marked out for you, increasing casual appeal (particularly by "improving" presentation to do away with gritty fantasy in favour of cartoonish approachability) and sinking almost all semblance of genuine exploration
lol, nu-Link is a fucking fag
The weird shift towards making Link more and more androgyne beyond what he was in the originals legit amazes me.
It feels legitimately went out of their way to make him more porn related
no, your brain is just so porn-riddled that you relate it to that.
That too.
I think it has more with the developers being porn-riddled and wanting to self-insert their fantasies for the lulz and coomz.
Hi Dobson. You're really inflating the reality of things here
The new Zelda just looks like a shitty Gary's Mod. I don't get it
I am 45 years old and have played literally every Zelda sans the CD-I games. BotW is my favorite.
vidya boomers are the most annoying breed. who cares that people haven’t played your favorite franchise. why does this upset people? same with the fags who want final fantasy to return to turn based. it’s been 20 years. move on or play octopath
Final Fantasy was never about the gameplay systems, so nobody really cares about that. FF16 will feel more like a Final Fantasy game than ToTK feels like a Zelda game. Hopefully it's as good as IX, but I doubt it.
As a longtime Zelda fan BOTW and TOTK are everything I've always wanted the series to be. Though in the future I would like them to do more traditional elements. I don't want the series to become 50% old stuff and 50% new ideas they couldn't squeeze in the old one. Need to get back to a more traditional and linear story too.
If you haven't beaten NES Legend of Zelda then your a fake fan.
while I wouldn't go to that extreme, I'd say oracle of seasons/ages and link to the past (the original)
What do you mean? NES Legend of Zelda has aged rather well for being 36 years old. also i think of it as more if your a fan of a movie trilogy but haven't seen the first one it would be strange.
it's aged like shit tbh, just like 90% of the NES' library
i did a few years ago. Got a picture of the map in the manual and then drew in the blank spots as i was going through. was honestly pretty good.
Only Zelda games i haven't played yet were 2 and spirit tracks. And i'll have to get back to skyward sword and finish that one.
That article is funny as it reminds the set of insane tweets saying this and the gerudo set are orientalist to middle eastern/southwest asian/etc. Funnily enough I'd be more mad if my culture was seen as queershit than some people online finding it attractive. Even when Nintendo puts out the tamest design of what a cool desert tribe would look like, people still seethe at them lmao.
Complete pic*
>caring about what retards on twitter think.
Why do this to yourself anon
Twitter is literally hell
BotW fans seem to more like the idea of playing as a girl called "Linkle" instead of Zelda. Truly a pathetic breed and I think they should be considered a different species from OG fans.
I honestly thought there would be more backlash over chud link
Because mentally healthy people don't read too much into the good old "have to disguise yourself to get into a place" trope.
And they got rid of that in totk. And the new cross dress outfit those freaks latch on is side content most people probably won't even see.
Very few people care about culture wars. It really is a tiny minority, anon. This is why 15 million copies of MK 11 sold despite it being "woke" or why SMB film did so good despite "woke." And on the flip side, it's why Hogwarts Legacy sold 10 mil+ despite being "anti-trans." Very few people give a fuck or pay attention to this shit. If you think they do, you are genuinely living in a bubble.
Man you all are so fucking weird
I grew up playing ALttP and OoT. I like the old games; I like the new games. I'm happy.
They really Need to bring back some old shit from the Classic zeldas, other than that i enjoy botw open world and survival mechanics
>NOOOOO YOU CAN'T SAY LINK IS GAY
I'll say whatever I want if it results in me getting more femboy Link porn. I only care about that. Not culture wars
Legend of Minecraft Nuts and Bolts really captured the zoomer audience so it's good for sales but not for the spirit of the franchise
20 year olds are playing that?
Every time a new entry for a game series releases, there's always a bunch of newfags who come in proportional to how well the game is received, somewhat alienating older fans in the process. This is nothing new. The Zelda series has seen this before with OoT, WW and TP.
It wouldn't event surprise me if it turns out TotK is also a lot of player's first Zelda game despite it being a direct sequel to BotW and being on the same system as it. The general gaming community really doesn't care about series order and just buys the newest thing when they hear about how popular it is.
Where can I find a 5 speed and 5 stamina horse?
I think the best that's possible is a horse with a 5 in just one stat with two other stats being 4 and one that's 3. That's what I got. Tame a horse that doesn't have any spots and is the leader of its herd, and it should be a good one.
How does the Koltin store work? Is there any reason not to trade in your stuff to him?
No reason. You don't use the gems for anything else, so use them.
>WHAT THE FUCK THE GAME THAT OUTSOLD THE BEST SELLING GAME IN THE SERIES HAS NEW FANS
what do you fucks expect
Elden Ring has people who are Elden Ring only players
Witcher 3 has people who are Witcher 3 onlies
GTAV was people's first GTA
There are MK8 Deluxe players who didn't play Double Dash, believe it or not
What is the fucking purpose of acting angry at this
newfags should at least play the first game. if you are play totk without playing botw then your just a waste of space.
The new games are fun, but it's not Zelda anymore. Now it's "fad of the times" or whatever they think will sell best.
Again, it;s not bad, but these spinoffs are not adherent to the original gameplay, lore or story elements.
I refuse to call these games part of the series.
They are well done fan-art in my heart and mind.
hated botw