Deleted member 1930
Is there any better game series?
Zelda is actually so good, even when the games have big, ugly scars, people, someone, somewhere will overlook those blemishes and may even hold it as their favorite in the game
why is it awesome?
1. a modern telling of high fantasy. Aside from GoT (gross) we do not have a classic Hero-saves-the-princess type of story. it's a great mono-myth tale
2. this can go for almost any nintendo franchise, but it captures a lot of child-like wonder in it's aesthetic and gameplay. while normies and casuals want games that are "realistic" and "Gritty" and all this, nintendo in general makes games what they (in my opinion) should be, which is helping us remember what it feels like to be care-free, get lost in imagination. I often think of them as a modern disney in that way (real disney, not the satanic mon-corporation we have today). Nintendo games ARE for kids, primarily, but I do not understand how this is a negative in the eyes of a lot of people. "mario is a kid's game"....yeah, well, you're 31 with a mortgage, don't you WANT to escape and have a care-free reaility and feel like a kid?
3. Aesthetics man. each zelda game has a vibe to it and that vibe is always A+. no matter what entry of the game you boot up, nothing is out of place. all the colors, the architecture, the clothing, it always looks right, the world building is amazing
when I was a wee lad, i was obsessed with the N64 zelda's. i wanted to be link, i played pretend i was saving hyrule, killing monsters and all that in my backyard. i bought a wooden sword and shield at a ren-fair even. its hard for someone to comprehend if you didn't grow up with it, but the world in Ocarina of Time feels so massive and real, at least as a kid.
WHY BREATH OF THE WILD SAVED THE FRANCHISE:
in general it is beautiful and from a game design aspect, it's PRETTY good. it's not perfect, but it's just good enough that (this happens many times with zelda) it is good enough to (most of the time) allowsyou to look pass the shortcomings
also, it has characters now: zelda has always been insanely ambitious and in a lot of cases, nintendo's vision cannot really fit inside of available hardware at the time. because of this, characters, events, environments have to be nerfed to fit on an N64 or SNES or Gameboy or whatever
But Breath of the Wild has cutscenes. voice acting! and it's good. for some reason a lot of people shit on the voice acting in breath of the wild. "oh the voice actors sound like they're trying too hard"....but like....it's a high fantasy, arthurian adventure. like....part of that style IS melodramatic acting. the characters are tropey stereotypes, but that's what (can) makes stories great. yes, most of these tropes we've seen 100 times in other forms of art. but does that make them NOT good, especially if done well? The story of BotW is kind of secondary, so your interactions with these characters is not constant, it's in small 3 minute cutscenes here and there. if we CONSTANTLY had to interact with these characters, I could see some of these being a bit grating. but because you don't see them a lot (actually you don't ever need to see them, depending on how you play the game), watching the cutscenes is quite entertaining. because he cutscenes are so short and sparse, the writers (??) really had to make sure personalities of the characters come across and that can lead to the tropey-ness being a little hamfisted for some.
i could go on and on about the pros and cons of botw and even considered making a video (isnpired by making a rebuttal to Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson on why Ocarina of Time sucks apparantly), but....time...you know? i might go deeper in, but not in this post
also as a side note: zelda is beautiful in this game. her outfits are also quite amazing in terms of color and design. where a lot of characters have somewhat simple clothes...Zelda is the princess, and her clothing in the game really reflects her regal role. her main outfit is kind of an adventurer outfit and it's cute. but there are cutscenes where she's wearing a regal dress/gown and...idk, it wouldn't surprise me if they hired a separate person or people just to get her clothes right. also, she is the center point of most cutscenes (duh, her name is the name of the game!) and her personality in the cutscenes is very cute. she's kind of a snotty brat a lot of the time, but seeing her interactions with other characters is great.
Piece of MTTS trivia: the text and body colors on my bandcamp page are ripped from zelda's outfits in breath of the wild. the lilac color on the background of the page is ALSO from zelda, but ill save that secret for another time. if anyone can guess, maybe ill give someone a prize lol
SUB-TOPIC: SAVING LINK
Link is a paradox. He is iconic to gaming history. he's not as mainstream as Mario or Mickey Mouse, but he's definitlyup there. its ironic because link doesn't really have a personality. he doesn't have a catchphrase or a voice. he's just a twink that dresses like peter pan. while botw has kept him silent, they made it part of his personality. the in-game explanation is that, as a warrior, he has some kind of ptsd-like thing that makes him stoic and silent.
there's a bit of a disconnect with link as a fighter in zelda games. in pretty much every game, he's just some rando from some village who gets chosen to draw the sword from the stone and beomce the hero. but WHY is he such a badass with it? how did this literal farmer (as he is in twilight princess) get good with a bow and a sword. and doing magic, etc?
well, botw does a remarkable job of telling this. see, in breath of the wild. link awakes 100 years in the future after falling in battle. right as he wakes up he is proficient with improvising weapons (the first weapons you get in the game are sticks and tree branches). the reason he is good at using weapons and improvised living off the land (cooking is how you restore health) is because in this game, like starts as a trained knight and guardian to the princess. this is a really cool explanation on how he can just wake up, pick up shit off the gound and fuck up monsters. he was trained to do exactly that. he's not a farmer, he's not some random kid. he's a hero and warrior doing hero and warrior shit. when he falls in battle int he events prior to the game, he picks up where he left off and makes use of the training he remembers. speaking of heroic shit, this brings me to my last point
The Best Part:
View: https://youtu.be/rzNek4MfK5M?t=3825
This scene made me tear up. why? well, its because ihave a soft spot for heroes doing heroic shit. while zelda is classically always been the story of "the hero beats the monster to save the princess", this scene consolidates all of it. all about what zelda is is in this scene. its hard to explain why i love this scene so much. it similar to certain things i love about Batman or Luke Skywalker (who have also made me tear up). i suppose its a mono-myth telling of the hero just being heroic. why is he saving the princess here? why does batman fight evil? because that's what they fucking do, they don't need a reason. that's just what they do. this scene is that idea, concentrated. no dialogue, you actually don't even SEE the action. but you know it happened because link is a badass and in this scene, he's doing what he was born to do. not because he was told to or for some superficial reason. he's just doing it because that's what he does. Most of these games just hav elink doing his quest, beating the villain and that's the end of the story. you dont know links life before or after. but in botw and the companion game, that IS his life. that's what he's born to do, is be a badass warrior
thanks for coming to my ted talk. if you think it was dumb, blame @Jessica3cho and @zalazalaza for convincing me to write this
I
Zelda is actually so good, even when the games have big, ugly scars, people, someone, somewhere will overlook those blemishes and may even hold it as their favorite in the game
why is it awesome?
1. a modern telling of high fantasy. Aside from GoT (gross) we do not have a classic Hero-saves-the-princess type of story. it's a great mono-myth tale
2. this can go for almost any nintendo franchise, but it captures a lot of child-like wonder in it's aesthetic and gameplay. while normies and casuals want games that are "realistic" and "Gritty" and all this, nintendo in general makes games what they (in my opinion) should be, which is helping us remember what it feels like to be care-free, get lost in imagination. I often think of them as a modern disney in that way (real disney, not the satanic mon-corporation we have today). Nintendo games ARE for kids, primarily, but I do not understand how this is a negative in the eyes of a lot of people. "mario is a kid's game"....yeah, well, you're 31 with a mortgage, don't you WANT to escape and have a care-free reaility and feel like a kid?
3. Aesthetics man. each zelda game has a vibe to it and that vibe is always A+. no matter what entry of the game you boot up, nothing is out of place. all the colors, the architecture, the clothing, it always looks right, the world building is amazing
when I was a wee lad, i was obsessed with the N64 zelda's. i wanted to be link, i played pretend i was saving hyrule, killing monsters and all that in my backyard. i bought a wooden sword and shield at a ren-fair even. its hard for someone to comprehend if you didn't grow up with it, but the world in Ocarina of Time feels so massive and real, at least as a kid.
WHY BREATH OF THE WILD SAVED THE FRANCHISE:
in general it is beautiful and from a game design aspect, it's PRETTY good. it's not perfect, but it's just good enough that (this happens many times with zelda) it is good enough to (most of the time) allowsyou to look pass the shortcomings
also, it has characters now: zelda has always been insanely ambitious and in a lot of cases, nintendo's vision cannot really fit inside of available hardware at the time. because of this, characters, events, environments have to be nerfed to fit on an N64 or SNES or Gameboy or whatever
But Breath of the Wild has cutscenes. voice acting! and it's good. for some reason a lot of people shit on the voice acting in breath of the wild. "oh the voice actors sound like they're trying too hard"....but like....it's a high fantasy, arthurian adventure. like....part of that style IS melodramatic acting. the characters are tropey stereotypes, but that's what (can) makes stories great. yes, most of these tropes we've seen 100 times in other forms of art. but does that make them NOT good, especially if done well? The story of BotW is kind of secondary, so your interactions with these characters is not constant, it's in small 3 minute cutscenes here and there. if we CONSTANTLY had to interact with these characters, I could see some of these being a bit grating. but because you don't see them a lot (actually you don't ever need to see them, depending on how you play the game), watching the cutscenes is quite entertaining. because he cutscenes are so short and sparse, the writers (??) really had to make sure personalities of the characters come across and that can lead to the tropey-ness being a little hamfisted for some.
i could go on and on about the pros and cons of botw and even considered making a video (isnpired by making a rebuttal to Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson on why Ocarina of Time sucks apparantly), but....time...you know? i might go deeper in, but not in this post
also as a side note: zelda is beautiful in this game. her outfits are also quite amazing in terms of color and design. where a lot of characters have somewhat simple clothes...Zelda is the princess, and her clothing in the game really reflects her regal role. her main outfit is kind of an adventurer outfit and it's cute. but there are cutscenes where she's wearing a regal dress/gown and...idk, it wouldn't surprise me if they hired a separate person or people just to get her clothes right. also, she is the center point of most cutscenes (duh, her name is the name of the game!) and her personality in the cutscenes is very cute. she's kind of a snotty brat a lot of the time, but seeing her interactions with other characters is great.
Piece of MTTS trivia: the text and body colors on my bandcamp page are ripped from zelda's outfits in breath of the wild. the lilac color on the background of the page is ALSO from zelda, but ill save that secret for another time. if anyone can guess, maybe ill give someone a prize lol
SUB-TOPIC: SAVING LINK
Link is a paradox. He is iconic to gaming history. he's not as mainstream as Mario or Mickey Mouse, but he's definitlyup there. its ironic because link doesn't really have a personality. he doesn't have a catchphrase or a voice. he's just a twink that dresses like peter pan. while botw has kept him silent, they made it part of his personality. the in-game explanation is that, as a warrior, he has some kind of ptsd-like thing that makes him stoic and silent.
there's a bit of a disconnect with link as a fighter in zelda games. in pretty much every game, he's just some rando from some village who gets chosen to draw the sword from the stone and beomce the hero. but WHY is he such a badass with it? how did this literal farmer (as he is in twilight princess) get good with a bow and a sword. and doing magic, etc?
well, botw does a remarkable job of telling this. see, in breath of the wild. link awakes 100 years in the future after falling in battle. right as he wakes up he is proficient with improvising weapons (the first weapons you get in the game are sticks and tree branches). the reason he is good at using weapons and improvised living off the land (cooking is how you restore health) is because in this game, like starts as a trained knight and guardian to the princess. this is a really cool explanation on how he can just wake up, pick up shit off the gound and fuck up monsters. he was trained to do exactly that. he's not a farmer, he's not some random kid. he's a hero and warrior doing hero and warrior shit. when he falls in battle int he events prior to the game, he picks up where he left off and makes use of the training he remembers. speaking of heroic shit, this brings me to my last point
The Best Part:
View: https://youtu.be/rzNek4MfK5M?t=3825
This scene made me tear up. why? well, its because ihave a soft spot for heroes doing heroic shit. while zelda is classically always been the story of "the hero beats the monster to save the princess", this scene consolidates all of it. all about what zelda is is in this scene. its hard to explain why i love this scene so much. it similar to certain things i love about Batman or Luke Skywalker (who have also made me tear up). i suppose its a mono-myth telling of the hero just being heroic. why is he saving the princess here? why does batman fight evil? because that's what they fucking do, they don't need a reason. that's just what they do. this scene is that idea, concentrated. no dialogue, you actually don't even SEE the action. but you know it happened because link is a badass and in this scene, he's doing what he was born to do. not because he was told to or for some superficial reason. he's just doing it because that's what he does. Most of these games just hav elink doing his quest, beating the villain and that's the end of the story. you dont know links life before or after. but in botw and the companion game, that IS his life. that's what he's born to do, is be a badass warrior
thanks for coming to my ted talk. if you think it was dumb, blame @Jessica3cho and @zalazalaza for convincing me to write this
I
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