Let's say Nintendo followed through with the SpaceWorld demo and made a Ocarina of Time sequel for the GameCube instead of Wind Waker, resulting in a conclusive trilogy for the Hero of Time. What direction would you have taken the series in after that?
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Make Wind Waker after it, with the proper amount of development time it needed.
Zelda would have gotten stale a lot more quickly if the series had established itself as nothing but gritty adult Link games that look like OOT.
Kid Link games are better anyway. The spirit of Zelda is all about being a kid in a big world. Aonuma basically was right about everything, and had the right take, but people weren't ready to hear that at the time.
moron, it would have been 1998-2000-2002 as one trilogy, there's nothing stopping you from making Wind Waker afterwards, but it would have actually been successful
I think the more you double down on a certain thing, the harder it is to slam the brakes and turn around.
Like, we're never going back to Zelda 2. There was a period of time where the idea of a sequel to Zelda 2 was viable, but the franchise went and established itself as something else altogether, to the point that you could never really pitch another Zelda with sidescrolling action.
Make three games in a row that look a certain way, and have a particular atmosphere, that becomes what people expect, and they will fight you harder and harder if you have any ideas about changing that.
I don't see why we need a cap to the "OOT trilogy" anyway. That was never a stated thing, and both N64 games are perfectly contained entities.
Why not? Metroidvania soulslike Zelda could jam.
It just wouldn't happen. You'd be fighting took many people saying "this isn't Zelda". The project wouldn't get off the ground.
The games are directly linked and it is strongly suggested that Link was on a quest when the shenanigans started w skull kid and Majora. They both use the same engine and exact same art style for obvious reasons. We are never told what Link was doing only that once he saves Termina it’s back to his world and his mission iirc. It’s actually a clever way to do a middle entry imo, however it was very clear that these two Zelda’s are directly linked.
at the end of the day the thing zelda fans hate more than change is the series itself. wind waker was too kiddie for them, twilight princess was too much like OOT for them, skyward sword was too hand holdy for them and i can only imagine what they thought of breath of the wild and/or tears of the kingdom. did those games finally shut them up or was there something arbitrary about them that didn't fit their "idea" of what zelda is in their heads?
doing an "OOT 3" (something that never really existed ever as MM was only made so they could get out of making a 64DD zelda) would've just resulted in what &
said.
if it was anything like phantom hourglass it would've sucked. people like to complain about the triforce hunting in WW but constantly having to go back to the same dungeon was awful.
that said to PH's credit it had some novel ideas like marking your map (i could actually see a soulslike game using this) and sailing was probably closer to some of the things people wanted in WW's sailing also limebeck was a pretty cool character.
Wind Waker would've ended up a Wii game/late GC game and Twilight Princess had to basically carry the wii for the first few months. Wind waker coming after 3 more mature looking games would've had even more backlash.
What if WW was just for handhelds?
They made that, it was called Phantom Hourglass and it sucked
Phantom Hourglass was actually good, frick you. I'd even go so far as saying its better than the shit we get from the series now.
>muh touchscreen
>muh map
Frick you. That shit was fricking cool even years later after the games release. You actually felt like you were charting new territory and it felt cool. Frick PH haters.
>a third game that looked like OoT would be stale
>Toon Link forever is not stale
>Aonuma is always right all things Zelda
Can't believe a celebrity is posting on Ganker...
We didn't get toon Link forever. We got one big game, and some smaller games that people don't really care about.
The importance of Wind Waker is it established the idea that Zelda could do lots of different things with it's setting and visual style, which has kept the series more interesting in the long run.
>Aonuma is always right all things Zelda
More so than everyone who wanted "mature" adult Link games. Those people were playing the wrong franchise from the start. Do you want a mature Peter Pan too? Narnia with more blood?
>The importance of Wind Waker is it established the idea that Zelda could do lots of different things with it's setting and visual style
It was doing that before Toon Link was even a glimmer in his eye. Literally every game prior to it.
Yea isn’t this the game that followed it’s very successful first entry by making a completely different type of game. You could argue Lttp is just an updated og but it’s so good and hits the bar so high it doesn’t matter. Then OoT is absolutely nothing like it’s predecessors, Zelda has always been an innovative series. Hell even the gameboy games were taking you to a totally unique world. No, it’s just a case of the company not giving the fans what they want and sometimes the best thing to do, is just give them what they want.
>some smaller games that people don't really care about.
Phantom Hourglass sold as much as WW
That spaceworld demo is one of the biggest frick ups they did because it set the precedent that the new Zelda was going to be like that. Even Miyamoto thought it was going to be an OoT successor.
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/miyamoto-initially-cringed-at-wind-wakers-art-style-and-asked-for-a-redesign-its-claimed/
>According to an interview with Wind Waker director, Eiji Aonuma cited by the video, he didn’t believe Miyamoto would like the redesign, so he waited as long as he could before showing it to his boss, saying that he “literally cringed” when he first saw it.
>“If I had gone and talked to him from the very beginning, I think he would’ve said ‘How is that Zelda?’ Aonuma recalls. “Miyamoto had trouble letting go of the realistic link art style until the very end.
>“At some point, he had to give a presentation against his will. That’s when he said something to me like ‘You know, it’s not too late to change course and make a realistic Zelda.”
This morons gamble single handedly fricked the Gamecube so bad that Miyamoto had to make an actual Zelda clone using another one of his series that wasn't even close to an adventure genre to take the heat off and at least rake in some profit. It was not only WW but all the other toonshit after that kept putting nails in his coffin. The only saving grace that it was stupid simple and easy to copy the assets to other games.
>Miyamoto actually wanted more OoT kino
maybe shiggy wasn't such a homosexual after all
>being a kid in a big world
Were the previous Links even kids? They never came off like that to me, nor in spin-off media like the cartoons. Maybe the first NES Link a little bit? OoT was the first time it felt like Link was an actual kid, everything else felt like somewhere between the Young and Adult forms of OoT Link.
Link turning 16 is a plot point in the manual for Zelda 2, because that's the age that he gets the Triforce mark on his hand iirc.
I want an OoT finale where Link is a grizzled middle aged man who never found Navi, and the time travel mechanic has him going back to his childhood self.
That's one of those fan ideas that everyone kind of likes the idea of on paper, but you have to ask if that would even be any good.
The idea of Link as a grizzled old man isn't really Zelda at all. It's God of War.
The oldest Link is in any of the games is like 17. He's supposed to be youthful. It's part of the whole vibe of the series.
Is the whole game just mopey and depressing? Because that doesn't sound like Zelda. That sounds like Dark Souls. Zelda is whimsical and goofy in a lot of places. When it does get dark, it makes an impression specifically because it comes as such a contrast to that pre-established tone.
The people that want old grizzled Link are probably bitter Soulstards.
The first thing Nintendo would do is do a PvP competitive Zelda x Souls collab, not inject it in the mainline Zelda series as they did with Hyrule Warriors and Cadence of Hyrule.
I want Links to be more like Adol in Ys. Fight the big bad threat that made you a hero, then a bunch of continuing adventures in different eras of a wandering hero going on new quests in foreign lands. I would love to see a new Zelda that revisits the past Links we got. A 3rd adventure after Zelda 2. Link's return to Hyrule or discovery of a new land after Awakening, the continuing journey through parallel worlds of young OoT Link, Toon Link and the pirates discovering the landmass they will built a new Hyrule on, a new threat after the events of Twilight Princess. No reason to just abandon them and the worlds already set. Even if it feels like DLC, I think the new ones have the right idea of fleshing out a certain "era" of the series and its versions of the characters.
Don’t care because while I would’ve played that and didn’t play wind waker, an effective end to the trilogy would be the end of my playing the games. So I guess it would’ve had the same effect on me I would’ve just enjoyed the spaceworld one where as I think I’ll have to grind my teeth just to play WW, so I probably never will, and the knock on effect is that all the Zelda’s since look really boring and kind of silly.
That actually would have worked out really well. One sequel as a child, one sequel as an adult. Then make WW to replace the not-OOT game Twilight Princess.
Finish development on Ura Zelda, which was the OOT sequel and release it on the N64 in 2001
Wind Waker comes out in 2004 on the GameCube after a 3 year development cycle
Port all three N64 Zelda games for the GameCube as one collection to fill in the time before the Wind Waker sequel
Wind Waker sequel is pushed back until 2008 on the Wii with Toon Link announced for Brawl to boost sales
Now after two Toon Link games, people would want another adult Link game, wait until the Nintendo Switch and then release Twilight Princess but this time with a huge open world Hyrule Field instead of the shitty one we got.