Pull my Devil Trigger!
I mean, has a Zelda game ever had 'story' as the strongest element? Granted, I say this having only played a grand total of two, but the story isn't the thing I remember vividly in both of the games I played. I remember the puzzles, the creatures and the characters more than the actual plot.
Y-you do realize there is a timeline debate online that's probably as big as if not bigger than the SMT timeline discussion or making sense of Kingdom Hearts, right?
The games have become a bit more interconnected, but with Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, the story was pretty big. It may not have been front and center, but it still showed effort put into it, with tons of cutscenes and all that stuff.
From what I've heard of the few reviewers who have discussed it (though I have thankfully remained completely spoiler free), the story is not "weak", it's "simple". Which, frankly, is not something which I consider inherently to be a negative. Plenty of my favorite games of all time have simple stories, while games that overcomplicate their stories wind up falling a lot in my eyes. *coughFFXIIIcough*
Now, granted, I don't know anything about the story (not yet, but SOOOON, yay!), so I won't say that it IS a good story. I don't know yet. But I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
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I suppose there's the mindlessly confusing timeline thing, but at least in the individual games I played, the story didn't seem that integral.
The last one I played, Spirit Tracks, had me go to the four corners of the map and... I spent a lot of time on that train. The story was there, sure, I'm not saying Zelda stories are bad, but it felt out of focus as you went about collecting things.
Then again, maybe Spirit Tracks was one of the less successful games in the series, so I could be picking a bad example.
EDIT: And what Skyblade said makes sense. The Spirit Tracks story was pretty 'simple', but that's not a negative. I enjoyed the two Zelda games I played because of the mechanics and the local storylines, as opposed to the overarching plot. I didn't mind that Spirit Track's main plot was out of focus because I was exploring the Ice Temple or cavorting with pirates.
What I said was "fairly weak compared to previous entries," which is what I have read. Eurogamer for example only vaguely talks about the story, says "it's a shame it's not as good as in the other games" and then explains why that's OK though because the rest of the game is so cool.
And fair enough, I'm not trying to say that it sucks or anything... all I'm saying is I seem to remember a certain Final Fantasy game reviewing extremely well despite having some weaknesses in the story; so evidently whilst a great 'everything else' may make up for a weak plot for other people, I know from experience that that is not always the case for me.
In fairness, that timeline debate can mostly be chalked up to Nintendo trying to connect games that were never originally intended to connect to anything and doing a really bad job of it because Nintendo aren't generally known for their writing.
As much as a small handful of the later games have gone on to have more fleshed out stories, can I just say the ones that did are generally among my least favourite games in the series and the ones with the simple but effective stories that did a much better job of the gameplay are the ones I greatly prefer? Because that's true. And I'd rather have more games that focus on the gameplay and keeping the story simple than see Nintendo continue to try and be writers personally.
EDIT: I mean when you get right down to it a simple story can be great. Hell, the story in Portal is actually extremely simple, one of the two characters doesn't even talk, and in terms of narrative and gameplay it's one of the greatest games ever made, so that says something I think.
Well Nintendo and Zelda games in particular have always emphasized gameplay above all else. Their core development principle is making a game that people would enjoy playing. Story is second to them. And for me personally, I really appreciate this approach. It's only with recent entries such as Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword that the story started to become more and more at the forefront of the game.
It looks as though Breath of the Wild still continues this trend, even if it is more simplistic and not as significant as those two titles.
Pull my Devil Trigger!
Got my Switch at midnight and I picked up Zelda.
Worth it. This is...man, this is something fantastic here.
I'm still waiting on Breath of the Wild to arrive (Master Edition was online only, it'll be here later today).
My friend Delzethin is currently running a GoFundMe account to pay for some extended medical troubles he's had. He's had chronic issues and lifetime troubles that have really crippled his career opportunities, and he's trying to get enough funding to get back to a stable medical situation. If you like his content, please support his GoFundMe, or even just contribute to his Patreon.
He can really use a hand with this, and any support you can offer is appreciated.
Woah. It currently has a 98 on Metacrtic with multiple reviews calling it the greatest game ever made. 0__0
I like Kung-Fu.
With this, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Mass Effect Andromeda coming out this year, will this be a year to remember for action/adventure game fans?
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