How Ocarina of Time ruined video games.
By sterbacblu 1 Comments
So I just answered the question of the day from the other day asking what video game series took a turn for the worse. Alas it was all deleted because it only takes the first paragraph of what you type. Lesson learned there. So I guess I'll explain again.
The N64/PS/Saturn era was a pretty dark time for video games, wether we remember it that way or not. That period gave us a number of really ugly looking games that were way too ambitious for the time. As an example, every Square PS1 game. Sadly, this would probably would never have come about in the way it did if it were not for a couple of Nintendo games.
Now Nintendo was one to be more conservative when it came to the advancement of technology. During the time when the Game Gear and Atari Lynx existed, two color handheld systems, the black and white Game Boy held strong due to it's superior battery life. The gamble paid off for Nintendo. They were also reluctant to adopt optical discs, or really anything other than cartridge as a format for games. Nintendo is repeating that belief system and now is blowing away the competition even though their hardware is out of date.
There was a period when Nintendo tried to cut ahead of the pack. The Virtual Boy was a good example of this, although it did not succeed. What did succeed was the N64 and it's killer app, and pretty much the only 3D game that holds up from that time period, Super Mario 64. It was colorful, fun, and had great controls.
Too bad Miyamoto's next game didn't match up with this.
Trust me, I was drinking up the Zelda preview Kool-Aid all the way to November. I heard about how huge the game was, the giant size of Hyrule Field, and of course gawking at all those pictures. Unfortunately the game was way too big and excessive and those environments didn't look so pretty when you were walking around in them.
After my hour long drive to pick up my pre order copy (yes, my closest video game store back then was an hour away), I rushed back home and started playing, and instantly I was disappointed. Everything looked the same. Areas were difficult to navigate, partly because of the poor camera and the repetitive environments. It's difficult to get your bearings when everything looks the same. Finding the sword at the start was a chore, let alone finding the area where the sword is.
Hyrule Field was ridiculous. Just because you can make an area that large doesn't mean you should. Today we have games like Oblivion that make Hyrule Field seem tiny, but Oblivion had things to do in between areas, Hyrule Field was just...empty. I was wondering what happened to the loaded Hyrule from games prior. This is what I was supposed to get excited about, a big empty space?
Then we get to the dungeons. The mantra for fixing this game is simple: just because you can, doesn't mean you should, and when it came to loading up this game with as many time consuming tasks as possible just to drag out the duration, they pulled it off. Gone were the good sized dungeons with a reasonable amount of puzzles. Now we had task after task after task that all of a sudden started incorporating platforming elements. Since when do I have to be a master of the hook shot or bow and arrow in a Zelda game? Why do I need to know how to balance on a beam and fear for falling off? Even the combat was atrocious. What happened to kill the enemy, and then move on to the next puzzle. That's what Zelda is! Where did this sword fighting come from? Save the combat for the bosses.
You put anybody the plays video games and hasn't played OoT, sit them down in front of the Water Temple and say "finish this," we'll see if they don't explode with rage as to the ridiculousness of that level. Every inch of it looks exactly the same and is filled with puzzles strictly with the intention to increase the length of the game. The perfect example of everything wrong with OoT.
Part of my love for early Zelda games was exploring, and to do so in OoT would be overwhelming for your average player, especially when, again, everything looks exactly the same.
Don't think I'm anti-3D games or anything like that. Super Metroid is one of my favorite games ever, number two in fact, and although I prefer it to Metroid Prime, Retro did a damn good job of converting Metroid to a 3D environment. Can you imagine where that series would be today if they had attempted to pull off a Metroid on the N64? I only wish Zelda had waited for that. If you're going to do your first 3D adventure game, don't use a cherished franchise as a guinea pig, use something else! Unfortunately everyone got aboard the hype train and accepted this Zelda as the holy grail and now we're stuck drinking from it's cup for seemingly forever.
Since OoT, we've had Zelda bomb after Zelda bomb. Twilight Princess was honestly a chore for me to get through. It was frustrating, annoying, difficult work, and I felt like I was going home from a job I hated when I was done with that game. Nothing has changed since OoT, except the repetitive environments look a little better than the repetitive environments from back when.
So we're deluged with poor Zelda games. We've had some close ones, but nothing has broke through yet, since they're mostly all OoT clones or plagued with gimmicks. Time limits, boats, wolves, touch screens, micro-sized Links. Give me a Zelda game! Nintendo: once you stop making games for alpha-moms and babies and you remember your "core," use your damn WiiWare service, get some LttP sprites going on and make a REAL Zelda game. And not one with four players! Zelda is a single player game!
Well, it looks like the rest of my days will be spent with 3 good Zelda games (1, 2 & 3) and I guess that's fine. I really wish I had sold my gold OoT cart way back when. I could've gotten 300 bucks for it.