Little ‘f’ fans enjoy the ride, dig the scenery and buy a few souveniers. They like what they like for what it is.

Big ‘F’ fans draw maps. They present slideshows. They buy real estate. They like what they like for how it articulates and informs their dreams.

Jacob Stutsman is a 22-year-old college student who someday wants to be a writer. He’s got Zelda in his heart and Michigan football in his veins; likes movies and music and beachside walks.

He is also a Fan.

Evidence for this now rests in our TP section – Jacob is the author of the impressive Twilight Princess Transcript. More than a month in the making, it was first posted on Gamefaqs in January, where it underwent several revisions, before catching the attention of TSA. Shortly thereafter it hit the Hylia and thus, apparently, the world.

A transcript itself is impressive – reading takes up at least 12 of TP’s forty-ish hours. But it’s also a comprehensive character guide, a passionate dissertation on the Zelda storyline, an incidental walkthrough and a TP story FAQ. It is over two hundred pages long. A comprehensive resource for timeline theorists, fanfic-ers and specifically themed websites looking for relevant content.

It is also strangely artful. Where many walkthroughs or guides go for the straight info dump, it is measured and composed; worth your time to read through where in other places you would skip ahead. Jacob has accomplished something special with this work – among it’s other accomplishments the transcript has caught the attention of big boys like Joystiq and 1Up. It is a guide to be reckoned with.

In this email interview, Jacob goes into detail about his process, his love of the series and the sudden shock of minor fame.

***

Pip: Tell us a little bit about the logistics of putting together the transcript – what was your process?

Jacob Stutsman: I am a horrible planner. People tend to deviate toward certain things in life, ya know, certain things encapsulated in their DNA, and that’s not something I was ever born to do. I started writing the script in late December, around the turn of the year. I suppose I thought it would be some sort of milk run. Go in, lay the foundation, spend a couple days reaffirming the skeleton and then the inner decorum and furniture. Not a day had passed when I realized that it would be an impossible task in a week, much less two or three days. I used my first file as a barometer, and I became increasingly aware that it was taking me longer than even that. That evened out over time, of course, and I had built up a 50-hour file by the end of it. I had initially submitted it to Gamefaqs before the Forest Temple. They were on vacation at that time, so when they came back I was already to the Gerudo Desert, but they had actually rejected the first version. They had this rule that in-depth FAQs could not be left unpaved. They had to be completed in their entirety insomuch that the guide stretches from the beginning to end without any gaps or ravines. After that I turned to TSA’s visual guide to quickly complete the rest of the required dialogue in only a few scant hours.

It was around this time that I realized that it would become an epic undertaking. It was just a very bad time of the year. New Year’s. School revved back up. Michigan got absolutely devastated in the Rose Bowl. But if you want to do something, you find the time. At that stage I had pieces of dialogue laying everywhere on the kitchen floor, and I had to arrange it all in various orders that made sense. Some of it I was keeping in another document but hadn’t laced it into the actual script yet. There’s just so much dialogue, and where do I put it, ya know? Some of it fell in different places, for instance where it logistically makes sense and how you can find it and all of that, and I think I’m happy with the outcome. It got so massive that I had to lend an index for assistance at a later date. But I originally wanted it to not just be a Princess game script but a celebration of what is so great and riveting and spellbinding about the Zelda series as a whole. Yes the gameplay, and if Zelda was only gameplay, then it would still be one of the best series of all times. But even the original Zelda had that innate quality to capture you in its world and characters, and that didn’t feature a single cutscene. So I wanted to establish just what made the past twenty years so magical. I think I’ve done a decent job of that.

As a brief aside here, the storyline FAQ section has actually galvanized the most talk amongst the Zelda enthusiasts. I wrote it because Twilight Princess has so many questions expertly strewn about it, and I thought that as long as I was writing a script, I might as well address them all. I am actually slightly unhappy with it for two reasons. One, a lot of it I did not mean to present as fact, and I hope that people don’t get the wrong idea about it. I tried to make it slightly more agnostic in subsequent versions, but that doesn’t always shine through. And two, I think I went for truncation at the expense of clarity. In other words, I didn’t want to delineate too long because I could write books on the Zelda storyline without realizing it, but I felt I did a disservice by shaving so much off. And I tried to edit it so heavily that I think it lacks focus in parts. I wouldn’t mind one day going back through it and throwing everything into question and rebuilding it from scratch, but I’m afraid that when that day comes, that section of the guide will already have outlived its usefulness.

P: What motivated you to do it?

JS: That initial thrust came rather instinctively actually. You know you want to do something. You act on it. I didn’t have time to think because if I thought, then perhaps someone would erect a guide before me, and that would leave me out to dry. It’s almost predatory in nature. Everything is, but you don’t expect to find that with videogame guides. Having the first draft rejected only heightened that sense, so that was in part why I turned to the visual guide to do what I needed to do.

But if I had to pinpoint one reason, I’d say that I had been so caught up in the Zelda phenomenon that even before Princess was out I played with the idea of doing a guide. This was malleable in the sense that I had become riveted with the game’s story, expediting debates that actually made me think beyond the surface level, and I just found so much that I enjoyed about the story, and I really wanted to be a part of that with this game being the supposed second coming and all. So I molded this idea of doing a guide around the script, and if I so choose to put my effort into something, then that will radiate through, and the result is there I think.

P: This is one of two ‘guides’ you’ve created. How does working on the TP transcript compare with your first experience with Star Fox Assault?

The Star Fox Assault gold medal guide I took a week maybe. I got 3,000 hits, maybe three or four e-mails. It doesn’t even compare in terms of effort and response. It’s like east from west.

P: How has the response been to the TP transcript?

JS: It was kind of quiet at first, and rightfully so. I mean I could tell that a lot of people were viewing it, and I got a few e-mails, but the dominoes really didn’t start falling until TSA posted an article about it on thehylia.com back on the 12th or 13th I think. That was like a second wind. After that it was like explosions going off. I got more e-mails in one day than I ever had, although that’s not saying much since I rarely use my e-mail (coincidentally, on Valentine’s Day, people were telling me how much they loved the guide). I received multiple requests to use it on various sites. I even found links to my guide cropping up on slashdot and joystiq and even 1Up. It was very surreal, and I began to wonder if other Zelda guides or game scripts had ever gotten this kind of limelight. It wasn’t by any sort of great response though. Millions of sites on the internet get more hits in one day than I have in fifty days, after all my script has a narrow target audience. It’s simply that people were recognizing the effort I put into it. Most of the responses were great. Some of them weren’t all that civil. Naturally, if you put time into something that’s non profit, especially one involving a videogame, people are going to question just how much free time you have. Recently there has been a backlash against Matt at IGN because he 6.9′d Sonic. I mean how does he deal with that? It’s a much larger and more grandiose scope than I have to deal with. There are people calling him a moron because he was harsh on a game they haven’t even played yet. TSA told me that he has to deal with that stuff all of the time. It’s a constant and unstoppable wave. Of course, I’ve become a little more sensitive about how I talk about people now. I like brandishing my whip and being contentious a little, but you have to be careful. A human being is not something to toss around lightly.

The good things people say are actually a bit embarrassing, and it’s paradoxical since I like to hear that people like what I’m doing. There are typically three reasons for that kind of reaction. Either the person is disingenuous and thus bad and they know they’re a meatball and not deserving of the praise, or they know they didn’t do a good job, or like Barry Sanders compliments are not needed since they know they are doing a good job. Or perhaps in your mind you think they’re all code words and subliminal messages and you try to focus in on what they mean and they end up accentuating the bad. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I should be apologizing for what I do. Life isn’t always about what others think. It’s about what thoughts you project on the opinions of others. I really, really want to be a writer, so the bad comments tell me that I’m not there yet and the good comments remind me in my own mind of how I far I have to go. The former makes me look down and see that I’m not very far up the mountain while the latter makes me look up to see that there is still a lot of the mountain before me.

But I do want to spend my life in a state where people read what I write. Since this is my first real exposure, it’s a very eye opening experience. People will read into everything and between the lines and between periods and they’ll make assumptions about you and they’ll either say very flattering or very demeaning things. It makes me rethink whether I want to stay in my little bubble or not because it’s just a completely different world. I can think I’m colossal in my own mind and in the minds of friends and family reaffirming my place in society, but then you realize that there’s an entire world out there because some guy from Saskatchewan that you would never, ever, otherwise meet is talking about you as if you’re not even in the room. It’s almost ungodly. And millions of people have their names bandied about, handled by complete strangers, on a daily basis. And then you realize that it is the thoughts of friends and family that’s important. But that’s not something that is always easy to see. People generally want to be liked, and everybody has a certain predisposition of how much chatter in positive and negative electrical bursts they can take. Somebody probably thinks I’m a schmuck just because of the way I write. And then you put yourself out there for anybody to access at any time. But it’s something that I really want to do.

P: How long have you been a Zelda fan, and how long have you been a member of the online Zelda community?

JS: Zelda has been with me through so much of my lineage and mental records that I have lost track of the first time I played Zelda. I owned the first but could never beat it, at least at that time, and I rented the Adventure of Link but never owned it. The original came out when I was two, so I began playing when I was very young. Link to the Past though established my stance as a firm Zelda fan. It was the world, really. And the story. And the lust and conquest for greed. It is something innately human, and it captured it so effervescently that I think it escaped me until I was older. Back then it was a mere fairy tale. Now it has coalesced into something beautifully told and real. That game was good to me. I got the SNES Christmas of 1992 I believe, and I think I got LTTP around that time (Mario Kart was the game I know I received that day, although it could have been LTTP too). It took me months to find every last thing, and I remember buying a guide up in Ann Arbor on the way to my grandparent’s so I could find the last heart piece (it was the one in Turtle Rock where you come out from the cave and warp to the Light World, you know which one I’m talking about). I still have that guide. The first time my parents caught me swearing, it was to that game. Those moments are vivacious in my eyes, and they make up a good deal of my childhood.

But in terms of the online aspect, Zelda was actually one of those things that got me heavily involved in the internet as I began posting on the Zelda board at IGN years and years ago. It has only been in the last few months where I have branched out to other Zelda communities.

P: What Zelda sites do you go to?

JS: I make the rounds. I mostly go to the timeline board on zeldalegends.net. I visit thehylia.com periodically. Sometimes I even go to ZU. It has only been recently that I have ventured beyond IGN and Gmail though. Actually, there was a very long time ago when I visited zeldapower.com with regularity, but then I started going to IGN a lot, and I dropped everything else. That lasted for years. It has only been recently where I have started to come out of the shell a little. I started posting on several different boards, and the semester was over, and it was very cold outside, like liquid nitrogen, freon plant cold, so there was the Nsider boards and Zelda Legends and I even began to post on Gamefaqs and look around ZU. But I’ve cut back on the calories a little in the recent weeks.

P: What’s your personal favorite Zelda game?

JS: Majora’s Mask has always had that special seduction. The three day system and the coherency of the townspeople will never be replicated until virtual reality is discovered. The only two games that can challenge its title as king of the hill are perhaps Link to the Past and Twilight Princess. LTTP is perfect in nearly all phases of the game. Dungeons, music, atmosphere, ambiance, story, world, it all forms a cohesive mesh. TP almost tantalizes you with some things you wish it did, but it does so many things right. It feels a little too disjointed though as if they’re going in one direction but then they juke and you break your ankles thinking that it’s going the other way. And it’s just so big, you wish it was a little bigger, that there was a cave beneath every rock. But what is there is absolutely magnificent. Those three really though are interchangeable. Link’s Awakening also has a special place in my heart. (Yes, I did manage to get through all of that without mentioning Ocarina while remaining pitifully, painfully serious)

P: Your least favorite?

JS: Adventure of Link seems to be the common answer. It’s a great game, but every moment I was afraid of my life, and at a certain level it just ceases to be fun and starts to become frustrating, which is a shame since the game really is fun. I didn’t get past the second level until last November, and I beat it in three days, but it just requires a certain precision, like a surgeon wielding a knife, and it requires you to take stock of your life in all accounts, and I am good at neither. My thumbs are about as nimble as a forklift, I was never very good at those twitch games, and if I can’t mindlessly rush headlong in, then forget it, so it’s just not my kind of game.

P: You mentioned in an email that Zelda transcends the art form. Elaborate on that thought.

JS: I think there are two levels to this. First, you have to be popular enough to transcend your medium and enter into the realm of pop culture. This, of course, has nothing to do with quality as Britney Spears would be transcendental according to this definition, and she’s better off in the military with her shaved mango. The second is, of course, quality. Zelda has raised the stakes time and again, and it’s the only series to put out so many iterations under the same genre and still keep the same momentum throughout.

And this is why I think worlds and characters are so important. Mario can perhaps be called the most transcendental franchise of all time, but Mario himself is transitory. It’s the ease of gameplay and the addictiveness people care about, and the plumber and the theme music and all of that are simply gateways into those memories. But Zelda…it’s no surprise that it’s called a legend. You get caught up in the tales and in the worlds, and it all means something more than a catchy pop culture reference. All of these pieces themselves have a claim over your heart. That is to say that you’d actually care what happens to Midna or Zelda as opposed to what happens with Mario. You love Mario, but you’re not in love with Mario. He’s simply a vehicle while Link and Zelda and Ganon are their own separate entities. That’s why I think Zelda always gets the leg up on Mario.

P: Have you got your sights set on any other games to transcribe?

JS: I think I am taking a very long vacation from guides after this. Actually, this is the first time I have thought about doing anything else, mostly because I have been so singularly focused on this one script. There’s always Phantom Hourglass. We’ll see though. I’m not sure if this is something people take turns doing or what. But Zelda is the only videogame that affects me in such a way, so if the question presupposes that there’s anything outside of Zelda that I’m thinking of doing, then no. Zelda is the only one.

Among Zelda fans, people often have a preoccupation with the story. Make a thread in a forum asking why people love the series, and you’ll get at least a couple fans saying that the story is the reason (I believe that this is usually a gross oversimplification which stems from people lacking understanding of their own love for the series… but I digress). But what is a “story,” exactly? What makes it good? You could have the best plot in the world, but that doesn’t necessarily make the story as a whole a worthwhile one. Conversely, an unremarkable plot does not always make a bad story.

The best stories are character-based. A story that deals with human, believable characters is the most engrossing, griping, and emotional one. As human beings, we identify with human-like characters, and the more we identify with characters, the more we are drawn into their world and lives. A character that possesses depth, motivations, growth, and a personality is truly a work of art. It is characters like these that are the building blocks of any great story, and it is the affects that events have on characters that gives them impact and importance. When a sad event happens in any story, you feel sad because you empathize with the characters that are experiencing this sadness.

The Zelda series traditionally has strong characters. Not as detailed as in many games, and you’ll never find as much sheer dialogue as in some other genres… but from a thematic and design standpoint, they are strong, simple characters. A perfect example would be Marin, from Link’s Awakening. She only has a few pages worth of dialogue throughout the entire game, but for years I have found her to have a huge depth of character and emotion. She was simple: a girl who dreamed of a world outside her small island, who sits on the beach and sings to seagulls. Into her world comes Link, a man from the outside world she dreams of. She falls in love – not with Link, but with what he represents: freedom and the wide world out beyond the confines of her life. That is it. Simple, but that simple, elegant concept is portrayed so strongly and subtly that to this day she is easily one of the best characters of the franchise. And ever since, Zelda characters have followed that mold: strong, simple, and memorable. Just look at the way people latch onto characters like Malon or the Windmill guy and remember them forever.

Twilight Princess’ cast of supporting characters is a masterpiece. I can say with confidence that (with the possible exception of Majora’s Mask) it is the best of the series. I was blown away with how good of a job the Zelda team did at bringing these characters and their interactions to life. I will even go so far as to say that the work done on the supporting cast was the highlight of this game.

The main reason for this is that they actually involved their characters in the troubles of Hyrule. Looking back over the series, it’s almost as if Hyrule is untouched by everything. In a Link to the Past, their King is dead, they’re under the rule of Agahnim, and Ganon is ready for a full-scale invasion. Yet, with almost no exceptions, everyone goes about their lives as if nothing is happening. It is the same in Ocarina of Time. Even in the future, when Hyrule is supposedly under the iron grip of Ganondorf, only Castle Town is really affected. The Gorons? They’re imprisoned and slated to be executed as an example, but once you free them they go back to life as usual. The people living in Kakariko? None of them seem to care about what’s happening in the world around them. The same detachment can be seen in the Wind Waker. Throughout the series, you never feel any real sense of involvement from the NPCs. Nobody reacts to the troubles of the world. Prior to Twilight Princess, the only real exception to this was Majora’s Mask. This is not how it should be. When a land is invaded or endangered, people should notice. Men should be taking up arms to guard their families. Merchants should be ripping people off and selling stuff at outrageous prices. The armies of Hyrule should either be destroyed or organizing some sort of resistance. Children should be kidnapped by monsters, leaving apprehensive and despairing parents left behind to try to rescue them. Hyrule as a whole, and not just a few central characters, should bleed and need a hero to rescue her. Not gratuitously, but enough that the world you play in can become a part of the story, something more than just a simple setting.

Twilight Princess is an enormous step in the right direction, one that the Zelda series has needed to take for years. The people are involved in the story. You get Rusl telling you that the forest has grown more dangerous. Monsters actually break into supposedly safe areas and kidnap children. When you return to Ordon village and sneak around as a wolf right after the children are all kidnapped, overhearing the reactions of these villagers trying to deal with the situation… it sent shivers down my spine. The whole situation is orchestrated beautifully, and the reactions of the villagers felt authentic. I absolutely loved the way that Rusl was wounded from fighting the bokoblins, and how, when he was suspicious that they were prowling the village again, he got back up and limped around with his sword, ready to defend his village once again. That is the sort of thing that breathes life into a world. It shows that, although Link may be the hero, others are affected and willing to fight for the cause as well. It gives our characters more dimension. Kakariko village is another great example; the scene when you first arrive as a wolf and see Barnes, Renado, and the Ordon children in the sanctuary was a very cool one.

I am a huge fan of involved characters, ones who are willing to put their resources to their fullest use to achieve their own goals, rather than just simply sitting back and absentmindedly letting the hero do everything. There are a variety of reasons for this. Being a hero who saves a bunch of helpless incompetents is all well and good, but a game can have so much more. If you have a bunch of other capable characters fighting the good fight, it puts the hero’s actions into perspective. It shows that you really are that hero, really are a step above even the best of what the rest of the land has to offer. Zelda games… rarely accomplish this. They tend to have a collection of NPCs who can barely tie their shoes, let alone help you save Hyrule.

The second major reason why I like involved NPCs is that they tend to be cooler, more authentic characters. Examples of involved NPCs in past Zelda games are characters like Sheik, Tetra, Darunia, Impa, Quill, Mido, Link of the Gorons, Malon, Ralph, and practically every character from Majora’s Mask. These are all characters that did their best based on what they were capable of, however little that might have been. They didn’t just stay in one spot and say the same thing over and over again whenever you talked to them. Of course, all of these characters actually played specific and relatively important roles in the main stories of their games. They’re not just random NPCs.

But that is the beauty of the NPCs of Twilight Princess; they’re not just random NPCs anymore, they’re characters in their own right. Like Majora’s Mask, actually. The developers managed to give a huge number of even minor NPCs some role in the story, even if it was only as victim. And they responded in kind; as victims, rather than just relocating to Kakariko Village and pretending nothing happened. In Ocarina of Time, the Castle Town refugees in Kakariko don’t act like anything happened; they don’t act like their home was destroyed and infested with the undead. But when all the children of Ordon village are kidnapped, not only does the entire village feel that blow, but many of the characters actively work to get the children back and prevent it from happening again. Remember Beth’s father? The lazy, no-good one who whines about his wife bossing him around at the beginning of the game, and who seems incapable of accomplishing anything? When you come back to Ordon as a wolf after the children are kidnapped, he starts summoning hawks and attacking you with them. It was a minor touch, but the way he talks when he does so shows a bit of depth and growth. Here was a minor character that was actually affected by the events of the story, whose attitude and actions reflect the changes in the world around him. The game abounds with minor details like that, at least during the first half. I was very impressed.

Not only does the home village of these children react accordingly to their loss, but when they arrive at Kakariko Village, the residents of that village respond to their arrival. They got involved, however briefly, with the events happening in their world. I’ll say it now; I wasn’t too happy with what the development team did to the atmosphere of Kakariko Village in TP. But I quickly looked past that, because its chief resident, Renado, was such a strong character.

These involved characters can be seen throughout the entire cast of Twilight Princess. Telma? She was a great NPC. She didn’t show much growth, but she had personality, heh. And she was a fighter; she sees Link as the swordsman he is, she got involved with Ilia’s memory problems, and her bar is the headquarters of a party of warriors that I loved. As I said earlier, a hero who has capable followers and admirers is more impressive than one who doesn’t, and the group that meets at Telma’s bar definitely gives Link a boost in that area. There is something about small groups of vigilante freedom fighters that attracts people. Robin Hood is a classic example. It has that whole roguish romantic hero thing going on.

So yes. The group that fights for Hyrule – Aura, Chad, and Ashei – was a nice touch to the game. The fact that Rusl turned out to be the fourth member was even better, further creating an interconnected web of characters. It showed that these NPCs are part of a wider world, rather than just remaining isolated in their corner of the game. Knowing that there were several other people fighting for the future of Hyrule, and actually moving around the world to accomplish their goals, definitely helped create that feeling of a cohesive world. I was very happy when they showed up in the final dungeon to save Link’s ass, too. Even a hero needs to be rescued very now and then, and I like it when developers remember that. It was disappointing that they didn’t show up again; that part of their involvement seemed like an obvious loose-end, something that deserved – needed – a conclusion.

I did think it was extremely cruel of Link and Midna to exclude Chad from the whole Sky Palace thing. The guy had spent his life researching it, and so had his father; the least they could have done with let him in on it. Bad Link, bad. Share the fun of seeing and doing everything with your poor little allies.

The epitomes of these involved characters are the children of Ordon Village. You all know who I’m talking about; Malo, Talo, Beth, and of course Colin. They are there from the very beginning, Links’ friends and admirers. They are also the most involved characters in the game. We get to witness the way their personality develops and gains depth through all the events that happen to them. At the very beginning of the game, they are normal children; they tease and bully, play, and look up to their hero: Link. They are simple, but strong and authentic. As stand alone characters, they are relatively boring, but when they are put together and begin to interact with each other and others, they shine. We get to see Malo and Talo picking on Colin, their excitement over Link’s new slingshot, their eagerness to beat monkeys to death… They all undergo a bit of growth after they are kidnapped. Not the usual lose-your-childhood traumatic sort of growth, but they mature a bit while retaining that childhood (Except Malo. He’s just bizarre, and awesome in a quirky sort of way.) An example of this would be the way that after Colin gets kidnapped a second time by the Moblin lord, Talo decides to do his part by standing watch up in that tower. It’s the sort of thing a kid would do, but it’s still a far cry from the way he bullied Colin at the beginning of the game.

Colin is interesting because of the way he idolizes Link. Talo looks up to Link in the sense that he thinks Link is cool, but Colin actually looks up to him on a deeper level as a person, too. One of the best parts of the kids is that they actively look up to Link; this is the first time Link really gets credit for his actions, the first time he gets any real admiration for what he does. This also helps give us a glimpse into the character of Link himself – more on that later.

Another thing I enjoyed about the kids was the way that their presence affected other characters around them. In Ordon, they are obviously the heart of the village, the hope of its future. When they are torn from their home, Ordon and its residents noticeably feel that wound. In Kakariko they made a difference, too. People act differently around children; they speak differently, they might act in a nurturing/reassuring manner. Having children around gives any writer an option to show us more sides of a person’s character. We see this with Renado and Barnes – having the children around gives us a better glimpse into Renado’s character. It’s also obvious that Barnes doesn’t know the first thing about kids – another part of his character that we wouldn’t know if the children weren’t there to reveal it. Telma taking care of Ilia and her lost memory gives us the opportunity to meet the true side of the barkeep. Children are a powerful story-telling tool, and I am glad to see the Zelda team using them.

Of course, human characters aren’t the only ones populating Hyrule. Twilight Princess has the series’ classic Gorons and Zora, and one new race: the Twili.

I’ll tackle the Gorons first. Visually, the design of these Gorons was incredible. They took the original Goron design, beefed up the race as a whole so that they were more warlike and imposing, and then gave them swirled tattoos that looked absolutely sweet. Gone are the spindly-limbed rolling rocks of prior games; the Gorons of Twilight Princess are modeled after Darunia and Darmani. The visual side of any character, their design, is extremely important in setting our view of them and their personality. The Gorons were a resounding success in that area, and their aesthetics went hand-in-hand with the general character traits that the development team gave the Goron race. They were portrayed in this game as a proud people, aware of their own strength and perhaps even a bit arrogant about it. They start the game angry and withdrawn from the Hylians of Kakariko Village, trying to sort out their own problems. You find that this is a recent development, and that the Gorons are usually a pretty open and friendly race. Once you rescue them, they return to that, and I must say, I thought it was pretty cool. In Twilight Princess, the Gorons are more than just golem creatures holed up in their own little city; they’re friends to Kakariko village, traveling entrepreneurs, and allies in your own quest. I greatly enjoyed seeing the way that the Gorons were a part of the world beyond their mountain. They show involvement in the world and the story as a whole, rather than act as an isolated piece of the game. There are many examples of this, but my favorite is the way that some of the Gorons wanted to help the people of Castle Town by helping Malo open his bargain-priced shop.

The Zora are very similar to the Gorons in many ways. They feature a sweet aesthetic look that takes the original OoT Zora design and runs with it, giving us those cool bits of Zora clothing and armor. For the Zora, getting their movements to look fishlike and slightly alien was just as important as the design itself, and I think the Zelda team nailed that, too. Sadly, I thought that the Zora race wasn’t as well done as the Gorons. With the Gorons, there is a distinct and immediately apparent racial personality, which is reinforced by the actions they take and things they say. I bet you that everyone who played through TP to the end could tell you that the Gorons are proud, strong and know it too, and that they like hot spring water. And that they have cute kids. But the Zora… there is nothing that people can really latch on to as definitive traits of a Zora. They are ultimately a flatter race than the Gorons; just kind of… there. And even that they did worse than the Gorons. I mentioned that the Gorons involve themselves with the world outside their immediate domain; they actually act as if they are part of Hyrule and have a stake in it. You can go to Castle Town and find that there are some Gorons there; selling things, talking to people, etc. But the Zora are nowhere to be seen. Even when the Zora prince is missing and the Zora should be sending out soldiers to locate him, search parties, envoys to Castle Town… there is nothing. You can talk to some of the Zora and they’ll talk about how worried they are for the prince, but you never actually see any action taken. It is possible for a group to be isolated and still feel like a cohesive part of the world, if they have reasons for it, or a history of being that way. But that is not the case here. Nobody ever mentions or talks about how Zora are reclusive and stay in their own little corner of Hyrule; there is no justification for that anywhere in the game. It’s not a terrible thing; most races in all previous Zelda games work the same way. But it is disappointing to see the development team improve one race so much, while letting the other one stew in Ocarina of Time-era isolation.

One problem that both groups suffer from and always have is that there is no individuality from person to person. Every Goron, with the exception of the named ones, looks the same. Every Zora, with the exception of even fewer important ones, looks pretty much the same. This problem is especially apparent for the Zora: only two Zora, the dead Queen and the little prince, stand out at all. None of the rest have names. None of the rest do anything. The Gorons, although not perfect, are much better in that regard. There are several Gorons that stand out from the rest, not because they look different or have names, but because they have specific roles or do specific things. There is the hot spring water merchant in Castle Town, the one that crushes through that rock barrier for you south of the Castle Town, some shopkeepers, etc. There are one or two Goron children, and they stand out by virtue of being kids. And pretty cute ones, considering they’re made of stone.

Outside of the unnamed members of both races, there are some more important members of each. The Zora, once again, failed to keep up with the times. The prince and his dead mother, although better than all the other Zora, didn’t do much for me. They were depthless. I don’t even remember their names. The Prince shows some growth at one point, but it’s pretty forced and unconvincing. Which is too bad, because I think that was a good opportunity for a great character. Ruto and her father were both more memorable than the Zora royalty of Twilight Princess… which means the Zora characters took a step backward.

The Gorons fare better. We get the four Goron elders: Gor Coron, Gor Amoto, Gor Ezibo, and Gor Liggs. None of them are hugely important or involved characters, but they have cool designs and, especially in Ezibo’s case, entertaining dialogue (“Brudda,” heh). And they’re memorable; unlike the two Zora characters, I actually remember their names. I especially liked Gor Coron, because it seemed like he exemplified everything that the Goron race was supposed to be in this game. On the other hand, the Goron chief, Dargus, was a let down. Previous experience with Goron leaders, such as Gor Coron and Darunia, lead me to expect a pretty cool guy. Dargus ended up being a dim-witted thug. It was also such a contrast to the other, intelligent Gorons that it was noticeably out of character for them to have a leader like him. On the Goron front, he was the biggest disappointment.

The Twili were utterly pathetic. I disliked their design; very ugly creatures. And if the Twili were descended from Hylians who were banished to the Twilight Realm by the Goddesses, than why look so bizarre? They certainly don’t resemble Hylians in any way. I wasn’t expecting the Twili to be as important as the Gorons or Zora, but I at least expected to be able to talk to them. No such luck. All I got to do was turn them from really hideous monsters into ugly monsters that still couldn’t talk to me. If it weren’t for the fact that Midna and Zant were Twili, then the whole race would have ended up a more colossal failure than the Zuna, from Four Swords Adventures.

There were other disappointments, too. Throughout this article, I have been talking about the way that Twilight Princess’ characters showed more involvement than the characters of previous Zelda games. The way that Nintendo managed to use the events that were happening to give added depth to even minor characters like Beth’s father. There are many examples of this, some of which I have already named, some not. This sort of thing greatly enriches the game and its characters, making it more immersive, giving us the sense that Hyrule and its people make up a living, breathing world… but it only does so for the first part of the game.

Twilight Princess suffers from one of the same problems that the Wind Waker had – it’s absolutely amazing until you reach a certain point, and then the quality suddenly drops off. In the Wind Waker, the whole game took a turn from masterpiece to average as soon as you finished visiting Hyrule Castle for the first time, and didn’t pick up again until the grand finale. Twilight Princess’ drop wasn’t nearly as drastic or damaging… but it was still disappointing to see its handling of NPCs take a turn for the worse as soon as you got the Master Sword or so. Past that point, the new areas suddenly become barren and lifeless – there is not a single person to talk to in the desert, let alone a bunch of characters to interact with. Snowpeak? Please. It’s a single linear path that leads straight to the dungeon. Aside from the two Yetis, there isn’t any character interaction there. No new characters are introduced, very few new events featuring characters you’ve already met happen, and on the supporting character front the game pretty much dies off.

The first three or four dungeons are spaced out by tons of stuff you can do with different characters, locales, and smaller quests. You have events like escorting Telma’s wagon, you get to see Renado and Barnes deal with the children at Kakariko Village, you rescue Colin from the Moblin lord, you free the Zora from the ice; the list goes on and on. All of this shows us other characters being involved in the game world… and it all stops after the Master Sword. You still get a little bit here and there, mostly during the sequence where you finally restore Ilia’s memory, but compared to the first half of the game it is miniscule. Which is really too bad.

On top of the poor pacing during the second half of the game, there were character-related problems elsewhere. As I said, Twilight Princess’ supporting cast is brilliant… what there is of it. Sadly, I found a distinct lack of interesting people in places like Kakariko Village and Hyrule Castle Town, despite the fact that cities and towns should have the greatest concentration of NPCs. Traditionally, Zelda games have always featured their strongest groups of minor characters in the villages. AoL’s characters were all in villages. Kakariko Village in LttP was the foundation that the series has built on ever since. OoT took that even further, and Hyrule Castle Town and Kakariko Village were packed with interesting people, nooks and crannies, minigames, shops, and buildings we could go into. We all remember the Skulltula house, Dampè the Gravekeeper, the Windmill guy, the woman and her dog Richard, the wounded soldier… the list goes on and on. The Wind Waker one-upped even that, in many areas; I never ran out of things to do and people to interact with in Windfall Island. The Minish Cap’s central town was simply amazing. And Majora’s Mask? Clock Town was the greatest town in any video game, period. A masterpiece. I certainly never expected Twilight Princess’ towns to compare to Clock Town, but I at least expected them to equal Windfall Island. What a surprise these developers had in store for me!

Kakariko Village was desolate. Empty. Devoid of life. There were a grand total of three characters living there. This is partially masked by the Gorons and Ordon children who are temporarily occupying the space, but they fail to truly hide the emptiness of this Kakariko. When you first arrive you overhear Barnes talking about how a woman is killed by the Twilight monsters, and how a bunch of the other villagers rush forward to try to save her – too late, of course. There’s a partial explanation right there; that the Twilight monsters killed off most of the population. But that doesn’t cut it. If that’s what happened, then why are there not more signs of it, more mention of the catastrophe that has befallen the town? Why don’t the surviving characters offer us some show of grief?

If Nintendo had depicted it as a small outpost, then it wouldn’t matter. But it is clearly depicted as a village, complete with multiple buildings, Barnes talking of other inhabitants, mention elsewhere in the world, a “village shaman,” a sanctuary with an ancient statue in the basement, and a graveyard that suggests a long history.

At least Kakariko Village had Renado and the Ordon children to tide us over and mask its emptiness. Hyrule Market had no such luck. It would be a mistake to call it empty, or desolate; it was actually teeming with more people than any village or town in Zelda history. But there is a catch: you can only talk to a small fraction of them. No, the Market was not empty, but it was soulless. Where are the interesting NPCs in every corner? The minigames? The sense of bustle… but with characters I can interact with? Where are my sidequests involving gossiping mothers, or the Elvis impersonator, or an awesome pictograph guy? Why am I stuck with only two alleys and a few buildings to go into? Hyrule Market is designed and presented to us as if it is a large town, but it is really the narrowest, smallest, emptiest town the series has ever had. Even the residents of LttP’s Kakariko were more memorable and enjoyable than this town’s selection.

And then there is the lack of public awareness in the town. Remember when you first meet Zelda in Twilight Princess, and there is a flashback to the invasion of Hyrule Castle? We see Zelda with her knights arrayed before her, ready to fight for the future of Hyrule. Then Zant and his monsters come in, crush the resistance, and force Zelda to surrender. Here, at last, was a sight of the Knights of Hyrule fighting or their Princess and their Kingdom. Here is our first glimpse of a Hyrule that is at war.

We never see that again. Throughout the game, as I traveled through the different areas and saw all the different denizens of Hyrule, I noticed that nobody seemed to remember that there was actually an invasion of Hyrule Castle, before the land was covered in Twilight. It didn’t bother me, because these people were either isolated and not really the sort of characters who would be concerned, or they had problems of their own. But the people of Hyrule Market lacked that excuse. Zant must have fought his way through Hyrule Market to reach the castle. Judging from the flashback, the Knights of Hyrule would have put up a fight at every step, before finally being forced back to their innermost sanctum. But where are the signs? Where is the talk? The NPCs in the market fall back to the old problems of being completely oblivious to the dangers that are befalling their kingdom. Not only is there no apparent memory of any attack amongst the populace, but even the soldiers that guard the Town act as if nothing has happened.

The pinnacle of this obliviousness comes a bit later, when Hyrule Castle is encased in Zant’s twilight barrier. You can see this barrier from miles off; it’s visible from almost anywhere in Hyrule field, in Zora’s Domain, on Death Mountain… and in Hyrule Market. But there is no mention of it. The people of the market are completely unaware of the fact that there is a barrier a mile high around the castle that overlooks their town. The castle that should be the center of their town, and a source of pride for them. There are exactly three people that notice, as far as I am aware. Two of them are the guards at the castle gates… and their reactions are hardly authentic, just puzzlement and the vague idea that they should keep it a secret. The third is a Goron, who expresses a bit of worry; a Goron who doesn’t even live in the town, and is just there to sell some things.

You almost wonder whether such absent-minded buffoons deserve to be saved from Zant and Ganon.

Twilight Princess had flaws on the character side of things. It had some flat characters, it had a disappointing town, some oblivious NPCs, and the later stages of its quest were less eventful than the first. And when characters become less believable, the player’s ability to stay immersed in a game or story is lessened. Such flaws certainly damage the game… but not enough to dim the brilliance of the Ordonians, or the Gorons, or characters like the children. Next to it’s successes, Twilight Princess’ character flaws fade to background complaints, mere annoyances that, although a bit irritating, can be brushed aside as inconsequential.

Finally seeing characters give Link the respect and admiration he deserves is a wonderful thing. Seeing the four adventurers storm into Hyrule Castle to save Link is something I will remember for a long, long time. Malo-Mart? Hahahah! Telma and her winking… The heartbroken reactions of the Ordon parents when their children are kidnapped is the stuff masterpieces are made of; simple down-to-earth characters that shine with a feeling of authenticity rarely found in the world of games.

Of course, supporting characters are only half the battle, and arguably the less important half… what of the main characters? How did Zelda, Ganon, Zant, Midna, and Link himself fare in this installment? I was originally planning on tackling them in this article, but I ended up writing a hell of a lot, and I suspect that those main characters are going to get several more pages out of me. I’ll deal with them later.

For now… Twilight Princess, I am proud to see you join the ranks of the Zelda series.

I admit it. As I played through Twilight Princess, I worried. I loved every minute of the game, reveled in its beauty and magic and, of course, cut the grass and liked it too. But despite all that, it did not feel as strongly of Zelda as I thought it should, not even when I first turned on the game and got see this new Hyrule. Am I too old, too lost to such youthful wonder, to immerse myself in Zelda? Had I grown to the point where even a new Zelda game fails to touch me like they once did? And so on.

I just finished the game about ten minutes ago. When the credits finally stopped rolling, leaving me in a powerful silence with the echoes of that final note ringing through my mind and the words “The End,” I sat there and looked at the screen for a good five minutes. Drinking it in, reassembling my scattered thoughts and wishing that the game were not over. And I had my answer, resounding loud and clear from the quiet of those two words: Twilight Princess is still Zelda, possessing all of the magic and artistry that the series has always had. It still has the power to touch and inspire me. Experiences like this are why I play video games. They are why I love the Zelda series in particular. I go out and run fansites so that I can relive this, and share it with my readers. It is moments like these that have shaped my life and made me into who I am today. My ultimate goal, my dream, is to be able to someday help create games that can inspire this in others.

Yes, I definitely just finished a Zelda game. And if you have not yet done the same, do not read on.

But, as I said, it is a bittersweet thing. Throughout history, all of the greatest victories are accompanied by sadness, that lingering sense of sacrifice that makes you treasure the victory even more. Would the ending of Link’s Awakening have been so powerful and moving if Koholint had not disappeared, taking all of its denizens and the world you just grew to love with it? Would Ocarina of Time have had such a lasting impact on us all if the celebration at the end had been everything, without the sadness of seeing the Sages stand apart and alone from the world they just saved, without the clear grief in Zelda as she sent Link back in time? Majora’s Mask ended happily for almost everyone – but what about the Deku Butler, who we last see grieving over the petrified body of his son, all or the sadness and heartbreak we watched Termina go through? The Wind Waker is perhaps the biggest culprit – we defeated Ganondorf, but at what a cost! We watched as Hyrule, both land and King, were buried beneath the sea to the accompaniment of those stark piano notes. The world of Hyrule bleeds and sacrifices so that we may emerge triumphant, and it is these things that temper our victories into something more, something to cherish and remember. Something to stick with us, leaving us with emotions that can be very difficult to name, let alone share with those who don’t understand. I’ve been told that I’m too obsessed, that I take the Zelda series too seriously. I shrug it off; if these people want to dismiss the power of such an experience, then that is their choice.

Twilight Princess certainly carries on the tradition. I think it is safe to say that this is one that will stick with me, carrying it into the ranks of the true Zelda games. What an ending it was! So many sacrifices, these characters giving their all and more. Seeing Midna’s involvement and passion during those final scenes was a powerful thing; when Zelda awakens and Midna’s face is quivering, on the verge of tears, I know that I felt a distinct sympathy for her. And I’m not someone who cries easily.

Things ended pretty well for Hyrule, in the end. The world is saved and healed, everyone is rescued, and even the moblin lord continues to harass Hyrule field in peace. But… the goodbye between Link, Zelda, and Midna fulfilled the Zelda series’ need for bittersweet endings. I never like goodbyes; the emotions involved are too charged, even in a video game.

And… why Midna, why? I am still struggling to understand why she decided to cut off the worlds of light and shadow forever. It fit the game, it was powerful, but the part of me that sympathizes with the characters and the game is still crying out. That’s skilled game development there, to get such a response.

The music during the final parts of this game was amazing. Throughout the Zelda series, it is always the music that takes all the elements of these amazing endings, the sadness and triumph, and cements them into place as the amazing moments in gaming that they are. Think back to the Ocarina of Time ending. Remember the final scene, when Link walks into the castle garden, and Zelda turns around? Link and Zelda stand there, looking at each other, worlds of meaning storming through the screen. Everything goes still, the screen turns golden, and “The End” comes up. And the music takes all this, and turns that scene into one of the most lasting and powerful endings in gaming. Twilight Princess’ ending works the same way.

There is one aspect of these bittersweet endings that I am happy to see was not continued. In every other Zelda game, Link stands apart from the world he saves. After doing all this, after saving the world and reaching such heroic heights, how can he return to normal life? I always get a sense of sadness about Link’s situation. In Link’s Awakening, everyone and everything you knew from the game disappears before your very eyes. In Ocarina of Time… Link has nowhere to go. He could never fit in among the Kokiri, or any place else. Majora’s Mask… he leaves the world of Termina behind him. Even the Wind Waker ends with Link sailing away from his home. But our final view of Link and many of the other characters in Twilight Princess is of them returning home, to a village that is welcoming them back. Finally, a Zelda game that ends with Link being accepted into Hyrule as a person, and not raised on some untouchable, lonely pedestal. A small touch, but one that was very important.

In the end, I loved Twilight Princess and its ending. I am proud to name it one of the series’ greats.

Addendum: It has been a few weeks since I published this article, and I have received several emails pointing out a mistake I made in the last paragraph: Link is riding away from Ordon at the end, not towards it.

Pipking: TP has been out for both GC and Wii for a bit now. There are already debates raging all over the internets about which is better. That’ll likely be the new, exciting irritant in the Zelda community for a while – at least until Phantom Hourglass gets everyone rattled about cel-shading again.

Before TP was released for anything, Mirren and I each posted our thoughts about which version you should pick. Mirren said the new control would put a welcome shine on an old formula – I said the GameCube deserved a great goodbye.

It’s funny how things turn out sometimes.

Maybe the universe was trying to teach us lessons about stuff. I ended up with a Wii and TP, and Mirren got it for his trusty old GC.

So, Mirren, first things first – how does it feel to be back in Hyrule?

Mirren: It’s nothing short of awesome. I’ve only played for a small amount of time, but seeing just a portion of the game is still enough to wow me. This was a game that I was already excited about before I was even in highschool, so to finally be able to experience it now is something truly remarkable.

I’ve always been a big fantasy-buff, as you know, and one my favorite things about the genre is how detailed and in-depth the worlds are in the stories. The Zelda franchise was actually what sparked my interest in fantasy as a whole, as well as my interest in writing stories, so it’s only natural for me today to look at the kingdom that we have in Twilight Princess, and be enthralled by how well designed it is. From the artistic beauty, to the many different characters, to the many creatures and landscapes, to the culture that’s in Hyrule, it’s obvious that Nintendo has created a wonderful world for us to adventure through. And I’m loving every second of it.

Now allow me to ask the question on everyone’s minds; what happened to “One last grace for the little system that couldn’t, but tried every step of the way.” ?

Pipking: Yeah. That.

I still believe it, and stand by it: TP is the game GC owners were owed. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if Nintendo kept it as a GC exclusive, because that’s what it was designed for. There are some glitches in TP Wii that are entirely a result of the switch – my biggest beef by far with the Wii build is how you can tell TP was designed with camera control in mind. I don’t think being on Wii makes the game better – and I think GC owners are getting a more authentic Zelda experience. But at the end of the day, Twilight Princess is a killer app, period. No matter what system you get it for, you are getting one of the best games of all time.

So that’s my little diplomatic aside. Here’s the shameful story of why I betrayed the ‘Cube.

I was always going to try TP on Wii, just to see what it was like. But once the final build was available for review – once people gave a very-nearly unanimous pass to the Wii controls – my interest got a bit more serious than just grudging curiosity.

I think that’s the main thrust of it, anyway. Opinion had changed drastically from the last E3 demo – many First Ten Hours reviewers essentially called out anyone who preferred the GC build as silly and stuck in the past. It wasn’t their elitism that convinced me – because quite frankly I could give two farts about what Matt C. or Jeremy Parish think of my choices as a gamer – but the fact that they were so passionately championing the Wiimote made me sit up and take notice.

Plus I can’t deny that I got caught up in Wii fever. I was always a big fan of Nintendo’s new focus; everything I had heard about the Wii made me itch to try it. You could even say if it weren’t for Elebits (which every Wii owner should run out and try RIGHT NOW), I might have been able to wait for my Zelda fix. But since I was always hoping to get a Wii, and since actually getting a Wii looked harder each day, I became obessed with tracking one down.

My Wii Hunt is a pretty standard story, except I got a happy ending. Friday after launch, I did my daily round of drop-ins and phonecalls with no luck. I was tired of it. I had thrown in the towel.

Then I remembered a Wal-mart lady said I should check back in the afternoon, so I figured what the heck, one more phonecall wouldn’t hurt. And I hit it, literally the moment they dollied the boxes into the department.

I have never in life felt such joy and panic about consumer goods. I have also never run to Wal-mart. Generally, Wal-mart is something I run away from. But not this day.

So that’s the story – a bit of capitalist, market-driven passion, a dash of great advance buzz, and luck. Quite a bit different from your story, I suspect – trouble getting your hands on a Wii?

Mirren: More trouble than what’s good for my health.

From attempting to get to a store early to get a pre-order, to making several dozen phonecalls, to having my mom wait at Target at 7 in the morning, I tried just about everything possible except camping out over night (I would’ve done it, but the parents wouldn’t permit), and I still couldn’t get a Wii.

So I sat there for a couple weeks, staring at the TPWii copy that I bought the day it came out. The irony hurt, but it wasn’t enough to break.

What was enough to break me was seeing some of the discussion across the web, watching video reviews etc. The excitement was too much, and the impatience got to me…

However, I don’t really regret ’settling’ for the Gamecube version. Because when I finally decided to pick it up, I had realized something; all the time I was waiting to play the game, it was simply because of the controls. TPWii is no different from TPGC outside of something different motions, and a widescreen mode (also a lack of camera control, and slightly worse sound). To me, I no longer felt like it was worth it to spend weeks, maybe months not enjoying the game and discussing it with fellow Zelda fans because I was so determined to play it Wii-style.

It’s an excellent game, the way it plays is great, and I have a title that I’ll be able to kill many of my Christmas vacation hours with. I don’t think I could be more content, even with the Wii version.

Well, okay, it felt a bit wierd to see some of the mirrored imagery that I had seen in the Wii version first, especially the Start Screen video. Did you have any similar experiences with it being flipped?

Pipking: Even while I was playing, I had this niggling little thought in the back of my mind – because I knew the whole thing had been flipped, I kept trying to imagine it the other way around. Just KNOWING I was playing a mirrored version of the original was distracting. I’m kind of an art guy, so I guess I was hung up on the fact that it was designed to be viewed the other way.

I can’t say it affected my enjoyment, though. It was just a constant “Hmm.”

I haven’t seem much of GC build (except the title screen – which yes, gave me the twitches at first), and that’s intentional – I’m going to buy it.

I’ve played TWW three times to the end – Triforce Hunt and all. Each time I played it I discovered something new – there’s so much to do that’s not necessary for finishing the game that I can still find things if I spend the time. Twilight Princess is totally like that. I played TP for about a week after I finished it, then forced myself to stop (also, Elebits came out). When I’m ready to play again, I want the experience to be fresh – I don’t want to have found every secret in one playthrough. That’s actually one of the reasons I think Zelda endures as a stellar franchise – because you can play once as a Completionist, or play three/four times, top to tip, discovering different things along the way.

Just out of curiosity, Mirren, which are you? Completionist or Repeat Casual?

Mirren: Repeat Casual, I’d say.

When I play a game with a campaign mode for the first time through (especially one that I’m hyped for like Twilight Princess), I’m most concerned with playing through the story, and experiencing the part of the game where the most effort when into. That section is always going to have the most depth, and it’s going to be the best representation of what the game is all about. Most of the time, multiplayer, sidequests, extras, any of that isn’t going to have more substance than the story mode.

I’ve been waiting for over two years to play Twilight Princess, to see this new Hyrule and to watch the epic story unfold, so it’s not like my first priority with the game is collecting all of the Poe Souls. When I’m done with the campaign, then I’ll go to the extras that I feel have the most detail, such as Malo’s Mart or the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess, the ones with a lot of meat to them. Eventually, I admit, I’ll lose a bit of interest in the game after I’ve completed a lot of it, and when new games come out TP will go the side for a while.

Then, when I want to go back one day and experience it all over again (I already want to replay the Forest Temple because of the monkeys) I won’t feel as ‘uptight’ about focusing on the aspects of the game with the most meat and potatoes, because I will have already seen a lot of them, especially the ones that are most discussed amongst fans. I’ll feel a bit relaxed, and then I can explore through every nook and cranny of Hyrule to find new secrets, or complete all of those collection quests. I’ll have already seen what the majority of the fandom is talking about the most, and I’ll probably have conversed about it with them, so it’ll be time for something new.

Speaking of side-quests, it appears that Twilight Princess doesn’t handle them the same way previous Zeldas have. It only contains a few real missions, like the Trading Quests were in other entries of the franchise, and instead is packed with all kinds of secret caves, collection tasks, mini-games and places to explore. As someone who has played the game more thoroughly, what’s your take on the way TP manages sidequests?

Pipking: To be honest, I’m a bit mixed.

There are two ways Zelda does side-quests – communication and exploration. My favourite is communication – you talk to person X, who tells you to talk to person Y, who suggests you go to location Q, where you find person Z, who tells you their sad little tale of woe. None of it is necessarily relevant to the main quest, but it helps deepen the sense of the game world being a real place, with real people and problems. Majora’s Mask and tWW relied heavily on communication side-quests – I think that can be counted as Aonuma’s greatest contribution to the franchise. In those games, I felt invested in the NPCs. A communication side-quest is more about finding out what happens in a minor chapter of the bigger story than it is about a piece of heart or wallet/bomb bag/quiver upgrade.

TP, not so much. It feels very Miyamoto – explore, explore, explore. Lots of bombing and digging and clever environmental puzzles. There are three main NPC-dependant side-quests, and two of them are just long fetch-its with very little emotional payoff. Very material-reward focussed – and really, getting yet another heart-piece (or Rupee you can’t fit in your wallet) seems to me a bit lazy and shallow. I want new items with cool uses. I want to play a small role in the continued happiness of well-defined NPCs. If there is anything that I felt genuinely disappointed about in TP, it’s that.

Of course, TP makes up for it in the best mini-games ever in a Zelda. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say I felt very satisfied with the varied gameplay offered by the mini-games. Especially fishing. I want Nintendo to come out with an interim Zelda for Wii called Hyrule Angler. Big map with lots of different ponds, rivers and lakes; tons of sidequests for new lures, bait and rods; several ellusive big fish that can only be caught at the right time, with the right items. Essentially, a game made entirely off the excellent TP fishing mechanic and communication side-quests. They could even use WiiConnect24 to keep things interesting.

Sorry, pipe-dream tangent.

I want to go back to the NPCs for a moment. What are your thoughts so far on the characters? How do they stack up?

Mirren: With the NPCs, I don’t exactly find them memorable. But I don’t mean to say this negatively, because they’re all pretty cool, though it seems like most of them are so realistic that they don’t really stand out as much as some of the other outrageous people in the series. However, what does make the NPCs in TP so great is that they really help to set the mood of each area.

First there’s Hyrule Castle town, which a lot of fans have complained is too empty and lacking content. This is true, but I find that Nintendo did it for a reason. Initially I was disappointed that you couldn’t talk to a lot of people in the town, and that they’d just be walking around doing their own thing. Then it hit me, and I realized that it was perfect for the mood that was trying to be established. Hyrule Castle Town is full of wierdos, gossips, and pompous, cocky aristocrats. That is not the same settlement in OoT, this new one is where all of the rich, upper-class gather, and I don’t mean to imply anything offensive to the more wealthy people in our world, but those in Hyrule Castle Town are definitely hard to like.

To me, it seems fitting that these people wouldn’t want to talk to someone like Link, a normal, ‘middle-class’ adventurer fresh off a long journey through the fields. So much about the people there make you feel like they’re stuck-up, or just plain unlikable. There’s all of the arrogant, cowardly soldiers, there’s the price-gouging at the general store, the fact that they wouldn’t let you in at first because your shoes were ‘too dirty’, or monopoly it caused, putting the Gorons out of business. Then there’s all of the people believing that the fortune teller really can read the future, that the townsfolk laughed at Jovani for his misfortune, that the only place in town where they are respectable people is stuck behind a bunch of allies (Telma’s Bar). You really get the feeling that Hyrule Castle Town is not the place for a regular, humble young man such as Link.

Then there’s places like Ordon, which is a secluded area, cut-off from the rest of the world. When I see that place, I see a very calm, serene village. And the people there only reinforce this, because of how laid-back and meek they are.

As for Kakariko, that’s another region that fans have labled as ‘lacking’. However, the fans don’t seem to understand the mood that area is trying to get across. Kakariko, like Ordon, is a very humble settlement. It’s been on very hard times, with the recent attack by monsters, that the Gorons abandoned them for so long, and simply being set up in the mountains has to be difficult. That place is just trying to get along, trying to rebuild itself, so the fact that there’s not a whopping amount of activities there makes sense. There’s not a large population of people, naturally, and all of them are very welcoming to an outsider like Link. They don’t think for themselves, they think for others; the Gorons are especially devoted to fixing up the village, the original residents are very open to helping out the Ordon kids and Ralis, and together, they’re all trying to stop the monopoly at Hyrule Castle Town’s shop (i.e, the Malo Mart quest).

The NPCs in Twilight Princess don’t exactly standout, in my eyes, but they do accomplish something great by establishing the feel of each area, something that the rest of the NPCs in the series haven’t done anywhere near as well.

Now see, I was going to ramble on about my thoughts on the main characters as well, but if I did, this reply could very well be a short-book, so I’ll let you express your thoughts on the cast this time around.

Pipking: I have to disagree with you. Overall I’d say the NPCs are actually some of the BEST of the series – which is why I’m disappointed they’re not more fully used in side-quests. And for some reason, when you’re talking to an NPC, it doesn’t have their name at the top of their speech bubble like every Zelda before has. So I have a strong impression of certain characters whose names always escape me.

But there are definitely standouts. Ilia. Colin. Talo and Malo. Rusl. Telma. Jovani. The Zora Queen and her son the Prince. The lady in the Hidden Village. Yeto and Yeta. I could keep going (but it’s a pain to look up all the names). All these characters left an impression on me. Their fates are woven into the main narrative – instead of being tangents, they are catalysts for the quest. With a few exceptions, once they’ve played their part in the story there’s not much left to discover about them. But the fact that I want to makes TP’s NPCs, in my mind, some of the best of the franchise.

And that’s not even counting Midna, who is the single greatest NPC ever seen in a Zelda game. She’s so well realized as a character it’s hard to believe that earlier in TP’s development she was just a floating arm on the back of Wolf Link – a gameplay mechanic. She’s really something special.

Zant is pretty cool for the most part; menacing and mysterious until you have to confront him, at which point things get loopy. A good addition, but he goes from strong to sympathetic too quick. Could have used a bit more balance.

Link is Link – he takes his shirt off in this one, so that’ll keep some of the lonelier fanficcers happy.

I’d say I’m satisfied with both Zelda and Ganon in TP, but their appearance is more of a guest shot than a starring role. Like I said in my review, TP is about Midna, so I don’t mind that two parts of our Triforce Trio are hanging about in the background without much to do for most of the story.

I do agree that the NPCs in general serve their environments well – Kakariko is a nearly-deserted town; Hyrule Castle Town is all bustle but few open doors; Ordon Villiage is rural and laid-back (except for the occasional escaped goat). But again, I think both the towns and their denizens are not used to their full potential. Especially coming off The Wind Waker, where you could walk through pretty much any door in Windfall and find something worth looking in to. That’s what I wanted for Castle Town and Kakariko. But the way things are, it just confirms my belief that Twilight Princess is very much the perfect ‘traditional’ Zelda, where communication takes a back seat to exploration and adventuring.

Mirren: Apparently, I misunderstood you.

When I was saying before how I didn’t think the NPCs were memorable, I meant those that just stand in one place for the entire game and have all of one speech line (the many Gorons, Zoras, Hylians in town etc.)

I love the cast of the story, they may very well be my favorite characters in the franchise. People like Ilia, Telma, Renado, Ralis, they definitely shine throughout the game. They all set themselves apart from most other characters in the series, which I find pretty amazing considering just how many people we’ve seen now in the thirteen titles. I truly enjoyed every last one of them, and whatever part in the plot they played, whether it was Ralis regaining his composure, the Hero’s Shade training Link to be a skilled swordsman, Colin and the kids ‘growing up’ a bit and finding a way to help out in Kakariko, Zant being a real creep, or even the chilling wisdom and courage that Zelda had in her few scenes. Heck, I even started laughing during Frye’s sequence of repairing the cannon to the sky.

Then there’s Midna, who as you said is something special. The best thing about her is the fact that she develops, much more so than any character in the series, and much more than the majority of characters in all video games. At first she’s just sly and playful, almost as if she’s taking the quest as a joke. Then when things go bad, or better yet, when she realizes that she needs to take things more seriously, she opens up and reveals the kind of being she really is. I found it very touching how she grew more attached to Link over time, and saw him as more than just a tool. She might be my favorite character of any Zelda game yet.

Some people say that Twilight Princess doesn’t do much that’s different from the rest of the series, and while that may be true on a gameplay level, there’s no doubt that TP sets itself apart by it’s epic and in-depth storyline. This was the Zelda where we got a real plot, and real progression of it. As a big storyteller yourself, how’d you think it was handled?

Pipking: Good question.

Tough question, too, because while I feel overall the story was fantastic and well managed, the game was a little front-loaded.

Everything leading to the Arbiter’s Grounds built up narrative momentum – like all great epics, the story of Twilight Princess starts small, with our unassuming hero living his simple life, not knowing that Big Events are lurking around the next corner. While some have complained about the ‘tutorial’ section that opens the game, I thought it was excellent – well paced, varied, draws you in subtly so that by the time you’re left unconcious in the healing spring, you are eager to face the real adventure that awaits you. There is little wasted time in TP – every stage of the first leg is motivated by characters you begin to know and care for. I was genuinely moved by the story of Rusil and Rutela, genuinely thrilled by the chase across Hyrule protecting Telma and Ilia, genuinely concerned for Midna when Zant attacks her at the end of the Lakebed Temple sequence. TP keeps it up all the way through to the point where Ganon first makes his appearance, and then the focus on character-driven action seems to shift to something more predictable and level-based. When Link becomes directly involved in Big Events, the focus shifts from story-telling to gameplay.

I think a big part of it has to do with Telma’s bar as the not-so secret meeting place for the Resistance, which drives the game to its conclusion. I absolutely loved this idea (in fact, I’ve used it in a few fan fics), but it too neatly breaks up the second leg of the quest into four distinct parts. Go to Telma’s – look at the map – find the character missing from the group and you’ve found your next trial. And even though there’s a nice little payoff to your interactions with the bar group, it lacks some impact simply because of how the bar group is used.

Snowpeak Ruins is my hands-down favourite temple in Twilight Princess. I loved everything about it – the atmosphere, the canon and block puzzles, the pacing, the Ball & Chain (which I’ll talk about more later). Yeto and Yeta are fantastic characters, and I loved how their story plays out. Snowpeak Ruins is just so different from any Zelda temple that’s come before – Zelda games generally keep their temples stocked up with puzzles and monsters, but rarely characters that live there and drive the action. I hope to see much more of this in future games.

But whereas collecting the Tears of Light in the beginning was seemlessly interwoven with the building narrative, every temple after the Arbiter’s Grounds felt staged. I didn’t discover Snowpeak – I was told to go there. I know this may seem like splitting hairs, because I was told to go everywhere else, too. I guess it’s just that before Ganon shows up there is a real sense of mystery and intrigue – after, the focus shifts to dungeon crawling and item collecting that, for all its many gameplay surprises, seems pretty standard Zelda fare. They built a great narrative in the first half but didn’t take it to the amazing places I hoped it would go in the second.

Still, I can’t say I was dissatisfied with the story – just how it plays out over the course of the game. Hopefully the next Zelda will carry its story all the way through in a way that makes us rethink what we expect from a Zelda narrative. TP almost gets it right – with more main-quest narrative built into the last batch of temples (which in all fairness are really the best of the series), I’d be all over it.

There is some debate about TP’s ‘lacklustre’ conclusion – not the gameplay, but how the narrative wraps up. Because I see TP as the story of Midna, it made sense. It is a very simple and subtle ending, depending almost entirely on the connection players built with Midna throughout the adventure for its emotional payoff. It worked for me. I think any disappointment from fans comes from the fact that we don’t get anything between Zelda and Link – they are, at the end of the day, merely players in Midna’s story. TP takes what could otherwise be a standard Triforce narrative and gives it a renewed sense of purpose and meaning – makes it somewhat fresh, even in its familiarity.

I guess you’re much further along in the game now than when we started this Roundtable – what are your thoughts?

Mirren: Well, I finally beat the game now, and I think it’s safe to say that this is my favorite Zelda game yet.

I won’t talk about my thoughts on every last piece of the game, but I will explain this, I liked how it closed out. I feel the need to talk about this the most because it seems to have started some controversy with the fans, and I definitely have the feeling that a lot of fans who haven’t finished the game yet will be surprised to see how everything ends.

Hyrule Castle was pretty cool. I had always wanted to see it in full-scale for one of the games, and I liked all of the puzzles and action sequences for it. It was very well-designed, and the lonely atmosphere of it was great.

Then there’s Ganondorf. When I got that stairway that leads you into the throne-room, the one that’s outside right before you meet him, I started feeling pumped. To me, that entire location was amazing, with the dark storm in the background, and the huge hall that held all of the fights. And Ganondorf only made it better. For this game, I felt more intimidated by him than in any other title. I think the fact that we never met up until then made the initial contact more chilling, and the way that the game portrayed him as an all-mighty entity went a long way to making that encounter with him very powerful. In the end, Ganondorf didn’t feel like a human; he felt like a ‘god’.

Battle-wise, almost everything turned out alright. The Possessed Zelda was nothing but a more enjoyable form of Ocarina of Time’s Phantom Ganon, but the Dark Beast Ganon was really neat. I especially loved his design, however the strategy to fighting him was creative, and he was pretty challenging. Then the battles with Dark Lord Ganondorf was where the game really gave me a surprise. I never expected to see the Horse Combat, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and after seeing him in beast form, I didn’t think the final duel would be a sword fight. That was a very well-done battle, it may’ve not been very original after the WW’s last boss, but in TP, Ganondorf was much harder, and his fighting style was excellent. Interesting location for all of that conflict, too.

As for the cinematic ending, I can expect a lot of fans to be somewhat disappointed, however I for one, loved it. The credits were very good, being able to see all of Hyrule at peace was cool, and even the cutscenes were great. From the surprise of seeing Midna in her true form, to her bittersweet farewell to Link and Zelda, everything made me attached to what was going on. And I felt that it did a great job with Link, from afar, just showing him riding off to another adventure. I thought that was perfect for the quiet guy that he was. Everything really fit the overall mood of the story, which was a lot different from the rest of the series.

Pipking: I was also impressed with the multi-tiered Ganon fight – you come to expect that there will be stages, but I had no idea the final battle would essentially take everything you’ve learned up to that point (and not just in TP) and find some way to integrate it into one sprawling, massive confrontation.

The Zelda stage was a great nod to past games – not too challenging, but satisfying in a “I’ve been here before” kind of way. Fighting Ganon in Dark Beast form took advantage of goat-wrangling and what you learned as a wolf – the horseback sequence was, for me, the most satisfying part of the battle, because it turned the fight into a thrilling chase. And the duel at the end was great – not as fast and furious as the swordplay in tWW, but especially satisfying when you crossed blades and essentially had to will Ganon into submission (by rapidly pressing A). Because the fight is taken outside, the one thing that would have made it absolutely perfect for me – an escape that mimicked the sprint at the end of OoT – couldn’t have worked. But man… everything about that last confrontation was entirely epic, and it summed up the entire franchise in four clever, challenging battles that I believe were designed with long-time fans in mind.

Boss battles overall were pretty spectacular. It’s hard to pick a favourite (not counting the end, which is cheating anyway because it’s supposed to be the best). As with every game of the series, each boss is vulnerable to some use of the item you picked up in their Temple – it could just be a matter of perspective, but I thought TP did an incredible job using clever items in statisfying ways.

Mirren: I noticed the same thing, and what especially intrigued me was just how much emphasis the battles put on them. In TP, even though it was the only way to kill a lot of the bosses, I felt like it had really taken a backseat to the other weapons. In a few of the fights, you didn’t need to use the sword at all, like with Armogohma and Blizzeta. For others, it was obvious that the new item took up all of the spotlight, such as the great use of the Double Clawshot against Argorok, or the Spinner against Stallord, where both objects ended up creating two of the most exciting, epic battles in the series. And we can’t ignore the original Clawshot against Morphael’s second form, which was truly a nod to the awesome feel of Shadow of the Colossus.

Twilight Princess certainly didn’t reinvent the way Zelda boss fights went down, but it seemed to improve on them much more than in the past. Perhaps Nintendo is on the verge of adding a fresher feeling to them, but keeping old, and good traditions intact.

Pipking: It’s good you mention freshness versus tradition – because I think that sums up TP pretty accurately. Everything from story to items to (Wii) gameplay sits neatly between surprise and expectation. Twilight Princess perfects a lot of what made Ocarina so revolutionary to begin with, so long-time fans holding out for the Zelda promised in that infamous SpaceWorld vid many moons ago should be completely satisfied. It acts as the perfect capper for the franchise as it has been – so where will it go?

I wasn’t comfortable with that question in my review, but since then I’ve found myself opinionated on what I want from a true ‘new-gen’ ZeldaWii. I’d like to indulge in a little speculation/daydreaming before we close this out.

No question that TP is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Still, there are some things that I liked more about Wind Waker – namely the art style and the seemless overworld exploration.

Don’t get me wrong – I think TP is a beautiful game. But I can’t say it looks better than tWW – the slavery to texture resolution in TP occasionally took me out of the adventure in a way that tWW never had to worry about. I like Zelda coloured in vibrant primaries – I like the ‘living cartoon’ approach much more than an attempt at realism. It’s purely a matter of taste, but I’d love the next Zelda to balance the incredible art direction of Twilight with the simple beauty of tWW’s cel-shading. I think cel-shading was either abandonned too quick or adopted too early and deserves to be revisited in some way.

TP’s Hyrule is certainly huge, but it never felt as vast to me as the Great Sea in tWW for one reason – loading between different sections of the map. A minor quibble, really, but coming off tWW’s massive overworld, where you could take ten minutes to sail from one end to the other without pause, TP’s Hyrule seems like a bit of a step backward. The trade off is more things to do and greater variety in TP’s environments. Hopefully with the ever-so-marginally increased power of the Wii, the next game will be able to achieve a stronger balance between seamless vastness and variety.

I also hope the next Zelda uses the Wiimote in a completely different way. TP used it to perfection for ranged weapons and fishing – combat was satisfying and immersive but not appreciably better for the waggle. My concern is that because TP’s traditional GC controls were very competently mapped to the Wiimote, Nintendo might think there isn’t much they need to change. But I’ll be disappointed if the next game doesn’t take advantage of the possibilities afforded by the Wii’s interface.

Which ties into my pie-in-the-sky finish – the next Zelda should be all about flight.

It’s the one transportation mechanic that’s only been flirted with in previous games. The Wiimote strikes me as a natural fit – imagine using the nunchuck to move and the Wiimote to aim, or vice-versa. Link could soar around Superman-style or have some sort of winged mount, like a dragon or pegasus. The environment would then have to be large and free – it could even return to the Great Sea, but instead of a huge ocean with small islands, have a few big, well-populated, mountainous/cavernous land masses where a lot of the exploration is vertical. Items would be a mix of old and new, a lot of ranged weapons. And that’s just scratching the surface. If this game is really going to re-invent the franchise, I think flight would be a great place to start.

So that’s my hope – graphically stunning but simplified, seamless overworld and a new transportation mechanic to revitalise fundamental exploring. This is pure baseless fanboy speculation so take it as such.

Bring us home, Mirren: after having played TP on GC, what do you think about the future of the series? Where do we go from here?

Mirren: Wow, funny you should mention the flying thing, I was just recently thinking about how a Zelda game could incorporate that. Personally, I think it’d be awesome, the idea of being able to soar over Hyrule just to see the landscape, or have aerial dogfights sounds amazing. If they decided to make it the ‘gimick’ of the next game, they definitely could make it work. You could start off with just a Hang Glider or something for limited flight, and then later on the game Link could start using animals like Griffins or giant eagles to fly on, and then eventually, he could maybe get his own pair of wings and be able to sail through the air on his own.

That’s what I wish the next Zelda is, but what I think the next Zelda will be is something totally different. Okay, maybe that’s not an accurate description, because I still haven’t really decided on what I believe it’ll be; how can anyone do so when they know of Nintendo’s ability to come up with such outrageous ideas?

However, after we’ve been told that Twilight Princess is the “last Zelda game as you’ve known it”, I have a feeling that there are going to be a couple aspects that will go through major overhauls.

One is combat. For years, we’ve seen that pretty much every Zelda title has easy battles; the enemies aren’t vicious enough, they don’t do enough damage, and your weapons seem too powerful most of the time. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but something tells me that Nintendo is going to put a lot more emphasis on combat for the next title. The enemies will be more difficult, you’ll have to fight guys far more often than before, the boss strategy of figuring out how to stun them with the new item will be replaced, there will be large scale battles with dozens of NPCs brawling it out, there will be seige missions where Link will either be trying to break into a fort or defeding it, Link will be able to learn many different attacks, with his sword, his items, and magic etc. I, personally, would love being able to draw rune symbols with the Wii remote for him to start casting lightning bolts and meteors.

Another thing is the dungeons, which I believe will be put on the back-burner for a little bit. I don’t expect them to be removed, but I see them being used less often, and not as they were before. They won’t feel ’staged’ anymore, like they’re there because they contain one of the *insert random magical shard here*, instead they’ll be used for Link to rescue prisoners, to defeat a general, or to break the enemy’s control over a certain region of the land. That, and I can see them being more balanced. Instead of all puzzles, there will be a lot more combat and platforming being involved.

Then of course, there’s the topic of storyline. To me, Twilight Princess’s story was the best one in the series, and I highly doubt that Nintendo will take a step back for future entries. I expect a lot of the usual plot-twists, but also more characters that develop and change as the story goes on, many more gritty and emotional events (including death sequences) and of course a main plot that’s different from the usual “collecting items to reach the final boss” situation. Perhaps a great war? I wouldn’t mind seeing it.

Of course, as I said, Nintendo’s such a whacky company that it’s hard to be sure of anything. But we do know that they’ll be doing something out of the ordinary for the next Zelda, and probably for many future titles as well. I think that alone is enough to get fans intrigued.

This is an unprecedented time for Zelda fans. Never before has a Zelda game released with the launch of a console. Never before has said release coincided with the introduction of a revolutionary new control method, a new way to immerse us into the game experience. Right now, when people think of their first experiences with a 3D world, their thoughts tend to gravitate towards Super Mario 64, the first game that gave us a sense of an open, 3-dimensional world. This time, Zelda is in that position, the flagship game for a new dimension of control that I believe will be just as important to the growth of the industry as the introduction of 3D environments was ten years ago. In ten years, people will look back on this upcoming release (less then three weeks away, now) in the same way they look back on Super Mario 64 and the advent of 3D gaming: with memories of awe and excitement, overpowering nostalgia and the knowledge that gaming is where it is today because of the trail blazed by this game and this system. A new generation of young Nintendo and Zelda fans will wake up on Christmas morning this December, open their new Wiis and Zelda, and be transformed in the same way I and many of you were by your first Zelda games. I almost envy them the upcoming experience, because nobody can get as lost in a game as a kid.

Zelda is poised to take the gaming world by storm, riding on the wave of the Wii to alter the course of gaming forever, and I love it.

Am I perhaps giving Zelda too much of the credit that is rightfully owed to the Wii? Probably. Am I being overly dramatic? Hell yes. Am I being realistic? Only time will tell. But that is the feeling I have now, the same thing I feel coming from the heart of the Zelda community: This game will be amazing, it will be a success, and it will propel the Wii to heights that Nintendo has not dreamed of since the days of the mighty Super NES. It is hard not to get caught up in such excitement, and why shouldn’t I? One of the best parts of being a fan of something is that overwhelming sense of anticipation, that feeling that you are balanced on the edge of your seat, about to take the plunge into the world of Hyrule once more. That feeling that always comes before a new game in the series is released.

The first game I ever experienced such excitement for was Majora’s Mask, six years ago. A lifetime ago, it seems like. I was 12 years old, and it was going to be the first Zelda game I got at release. I had, at this point, finished Link’s Awakening, A Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time, my three favorite games (and they’ve remained that way ever since, and probably always will), and the thought of a new Zelda game sent shivers down my spine. I preordered it online, from Amazon if my memory serves. I had already downloaded and listened to the complete soundtrack from Zeldapower.com, and I was as psyched for the experience as it’s possible for a person to be. It took almost a week for the game to arrive at my house, and I think it was the longest week of my life. I spent the entire time outside in my family’s hammock, enjoying the fall weather and reading while I watched the road, just waiting for that UPS truck to stop at the end of our driveway. It was a beautiful fall, if I recall correctly. And I do; that week spent out on that hammock is branded into my mind. Hah, I just remembered something I always thought was hilarious: Majora’s Mask was released on the same day as the Playsation 2, Nintendo’s defiant message that they could combat the PS2 with just Zelda.

Zoom forward a bit, and you’ll find me waiting for the Wind Waker. I preordered it online again, but this time I wasn’t willing to wait a week! I paid for 1-day mail, at some ungodly price. Once again, I was consumed with excitement, the feeling that a new Zelda game was coming and the future of the gaming industry was bright. Then my Dad told me that we were going on a two week vacation to Florida in the beginning of March. Right when the game was released. Oh, woe was me. I think I take it back, the week I spent waiting for Majora’s Mask wasn’t the worst week of my life… That vacation in Florida was much worse. I eased my pain by spending the entire two weeks, except when I was forced to go out to the beach, on Zelda forums. I think I got almost two thousand posts at Zelda Universe alone during that time, and something similar at Zelda Legends, solidifying my future as moderator and more at both of them.

And here we are again. Time has worked it’s horrors on me; I am no longer an excitable kid of twelve, or even of 15. My sense of excitement is more sluggish, harder to call up, and I will never be as excited for a game as I once was for Majora’s Mask. But it’s still there, and I am determined to enjoy it.

Savor this excitement, because in a scant month or two, we’ll all have finished the game. Hopefully we’ll all have loved it to death, and with any luck I and the other webmasters will be working our asses off trying to appease everyone who wants TP content. If there is one thing I have learned over time, it is that there is one terrible thing about a Zelda game’s release: The excitement, which has been boiling over for so long, keeping us on a Zelda-induced high, leaves us. It takes quite some time to get used to normality again, and the knowledge that we now have a few more years to go before the next big Zelda release. When I finished the Wind Waker, after a scant two weeks of purposefully drawing the game out longer so that it didn’t have to end, I was a very sad person. It is a bittersweet joy, to finish a new Zelda game, to face reality and know that the magical experience, however complete, is now over. And one I will have to taste once more, soon.

So for now, my friends and fellow fans: enjoy this time, and pay no overdue notice to the melancholy ramblings of this old fan.

Wii are not amused.

Well, at least I’m not. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

Nintendo’s press blitz finally put an end to months of speculation, hype and fanboy hyperbole. Now we know pretty much everything we’ve wondered about, straight from the horse’s mouth. I take no issue with the price, the launch date (two days after PS3’s monstrosity lumbers into stores), the bundle, the Channels or the VC pricing structure. I dig it.

Predictably (re: To Wii or Not To Wii), I’m irked by the staggered release of Twilight Princess – Wii version November 19th with the console itself, GameCube version on December 11th. I can’t fault Nintendo’s logic. A Zelda game at launch = a license to print money, and Nintendo is leveraging people’s excitement for the game to move consoles. As a business decision, it’s flawless. But it sucks that as a diehard fan who wants to experience TP as it was originally designed I have to wait yet another month. I bite my thumb at you, Nintendo.

There’s a lot of fodder for discussion about TP and the Wii events, so I’ll end my petty tantrum there and open it up to the rest of the crew joining us for this Roundtable. So guys… what do you think?

GDwarf

I agree that the staggered release seems like a slap in the face to the Gamecube fans, I know that for the longest time I was worried that TP would be Wii exclusive, back before I wanted to buy one. However, I honestly can’t fault Nintendo for doing that, the one true ‘killer app’ that they’ve got for the Wii’s launch is Twilight Princess, and if you could get it on the GCN at the same time then the Wii would be launching with 20 or so games that are undoubtedly decent, but hardly console sellers.

Mirren

First let me get this out of the way- I cannot explain how pleased I was by Nintendo’s conference, and I’m completely in favor of TPWii, so yes, I will be will be acting like a little Nintendo minion here, but for good reason.

As for the delay of TPGC, I don’t blame Nintendo one point. I’ve said this in many places, and the simple truth is, Nintendo needs a boost. Gamecube, much as I loved the thing, was a disappointment, and it ended up tossing Nintendo behind Sony and Microsoft in the console races. TPGC is not going to help the company; sure, it’ll give them some money, but no one cares about Gamecube anymore, no one’s cared about it in months. Having a game get all kinds of hype, great reviews and incredible recognition on a past console is one of the most painful things for a company, because it’s not doing anything to brighten their future, despite the wonderful results. Gamecube’s out, Wii’s in, and if Nintendo wants to regain respect in the video game world, they have to make sure that Wii succeeds. TPWii will be a great help to make that happen (and it makes the launch awesome).

Lozzie

Let’s see:

I never understood the point of delaying information about this and keeping it so secretive. The fact that the NY Times were able to post the exact release date and price a few hours before the conference even started that night showed that it really wasn’t all the secretive to begin with. Plus, they got so many people linking to their site, so it even helped them.

I have to agree with Mirren on the Wii In/Gamecube out deal. Nintendo knows they have to move forward in order to be a big competitor in the new market, however, I do believe pushing back the GC version was a dumb move. Many preordered this game when it was a Gamecube game thinking they would only have to pay $50 to get it. Now, if you want to play it when it comes out for the first time, you have to dish out $300 just to play it. Dumb marketing move on Nintendo’s part. I understand they want to push the Wii out quick and make them the best, but pissing us off for a little extra exposure isn’t the best of ideas.

I guess one of the better things to come out of them holding the information could be the goof on Sony’s part. Them having to push back their release date from the spring to the fall was a bad business move, having promised the spring and having to delay, and we all know how much we love delays.

…I guess i’ll stop for now.

pipking

You know what bugs me the most? I’m probably going to buy it. So I’m a hypocrite – but in my defense, it’s not just because I can’t wait the month.

Word from New York on the gimmicky control is getting better; after E3 Miyamoto talked about developing something that felt more natural, and that was always my biggest concern. I don’t want the experience to be cheapened by broken mechanics. If you can’t do better than a traditional controller, it shouldn’t be on the Wii.

The latest gameplay trailer is eye-bleedingly gorgeous. I want to take that footage to a movie and make out. I know Nintendo once said that aside from control the games would be identical – could just be that final bit of development polish, but… damn.

And finally, I’m getting a Wii anyway – it was just a matter of when. If word stays positive on the controls, I may just go against my better judgement. And if it sucks there’s always old faithful.

Regarding Wii control in general: while I’m excited for Elebits and Rayman’s Raving Rabbids, word on some of the other games has me worried. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is being developed for all platforms. For Nintendo, it has all this Wiimote functionality tacked-on to what is essentially a dungeon crawler, and from what I’ve read it really overcomplicates what can be done better with buttons. My feelings are the same as TP – if the game is not designed specifically for the system, how will Wii controls fare? Even Metroid and Red Steel are struggling to make FPS mechanics work fluidly and intuitively, and while each successive update seems to improve matters, the difficulty developers are having with non-traditional control in traditional genres makes me think the Wii won’t really hit the ground running.

GDwarf

About Wii control:

I agree that devs seem to be having far too much trouble making it work right. You’ve pointed out all of the examples I was going to use, but it’s still discouraging that something so similar to a PC control setup is, apparently, so hard to get to work right. It also raises questions about how many multi-platform titles will make it to the Wii, or rather, will make it successfully to the Wii. The only titles we’ve seen so far that, apparently, use the Wiimote well were either developed by Nintendo or are Wii only.

Grabbing the topic and running the other way with it: not all of the games using the Wiimote are having trouble with it, apparently Wii sports plays like a dream, as do a few other titles.

Bringing Zelda back into the topic, apparently controlling Link with the Wiimote is the same as pushing the ‘B’ button in the Zeldas of old, there is no mapping of your movements onto Link’s actions, which raises another question: Why did Nintendo mirror the entire game? If it doesn’t matter which hand you use to control Link, then what’s the point?

Mirren

Apparently the mirror factor came about simply because of Link would interact with the environments, such as doors, gates, and a few select objects. Since going back and individually editing all of these would take some time (probably another delay, according to most critics), Nintendo decided to just simply use some kind of coding that would mirror the entire thing.

Nonetheless, as pipking said, this game looks beautiful, and any visuals that we haven’t seen before won’t look any worse because they’re mirrored. One thing I expected about this game was that we’d see jaw-dropping graphics, despite the Wii’s limited hardware, and the fact that this is one of its first games. Zelda has a tradition of making great imagery without anything flashy or photorealistic, they make it amazing through awesome art styles. And, quite frankly, Twilight Princess probably has the best one yet.

Even the controls seem fine, at least from what several sites have said. I know it’s not smart to automatically believe something because one person says it, but it really was a relief to know that Gamespot found the controls to work well. Out of all video game sites, they’re easily one of the most critical, to the point where if they say its good, chances say it really is good.

I don’t get how one could say developers are having trouble with the Wii controls, at least as of yet. Yes, UA needs some work, but everything else seems to be coming along nicely. Metroid Prime 3’s expert controls are supposed to be excellent, Project Hammer played well, other than some turning issues, Excite Truck is apparently easy to play. Sure, these are all first and second party games, but thus far, Ubisoft seems to be having little trouble. Red Steel has improved incredibly since E3, and Rayman has been said to play very well. Heck, even Atlus has been doing fine with Trauma Center. Thing is, very few third party developers have introduced their games to the public, so we only have a couple games from Ubisoft, Konami and Atlus to go on, and those have been moving along smoothly. Once we see more companies showing off their titles and how they work, can we truly criticize their methods of using the Wii remote.

pipking

You’re right, Mirren – it is a little early to be predicting doom and gloom. But I remain dubious; Nintendo is trumpeting the Wii as an entirely intuitive new way to play games, but from what I’ve read a lot of titles – Metroid and Red Steel included – fail to be improved by the new control scheme.

For all appearances, I think you can justifiably compare the Wii to the DS. For it’s first year, the DS had very few worthwhile titles – until developers got comfortable with it’s new take on the interface, and it’s library started to shine with genuine innovation. Right now, the DS is unstoppable – it’s the fastest selling game system (counting both consoles and handhelds) of all time. While the Wii has tons of potential, I don’t think it’ll be realized with traditional genres. It doesn’t just represent a new way to play games – it’s about a new way to think of games as a whole, just like DS. DS is responsible for renewed interest in the ‘point and click’ adventure genre, something that hasn’t been relevent for ages. I tend to think of Super Mario Galaxy as Wii Jesus – everything I’ve read about it suggests it rethinks not just how to play a platformer, but what a platformer can be.

I don’t want to drop this topic if there’s more to be said, but I do think we should talk about the biggest point of contention regarding the Wii – price. Nintendo always said they would come in under $250 and they have – by a penny. Not to mention $40 Wiimotes and $20 thumb-chucks (sold seperately). Wii is supposed to be about playing together, and with very little online support at launch, how much of a risk is Nintendo taking by not including two controllers – especially when Wii Sports is supposed to a fantastic multiplayer experience? Is $250 a good price?

Lozzie

I think if they were smart, they would start a bundle at launch for like $279.99-$299.99 for a two-player set up. That way you save some money for an extra controller and you have the multiplayer setup.

But I do agree. Why give us Wii Sports, a real multiplayer game, and only one controller.

Mirren

pipking, you hit the nail on the head. The Wii remote isn’t going to improve games (because seriously, how much more can we do to see drastic improvement?), but what it does instead is add a completely new and unique way to playing the games. For the first time in years, the FPS and Beat-Em-Up genres have a chance to bring out a swarm of high quality titles. Think about it, if Red Steel, Project Hammer, and Samurai Warriors Wave were all on Gamecube, with traditional controls, how well received would they be? Chances say, not with the most excellent reactions, because there’s really nothing special about them outside of the motion controls, but because of the Wii remote adding some originality to them, they have the potential to be solid games, something we especially haven’t seen out of the Hack ‘n’ Slash genre in years.

As far as the pricing goes, I have my ups and downs. I think the fans hyped themselves up too much for a 200 dollar or lower price on the system itself, so $250 may be a bit depressing, but it’s hardly bad, in fact, it’s awesome; $150 less than 360, and less than half the price of the PS3. And hey, you get some nice stuff to boot; Wii Sports, a Wii remote, AC Adapter, online browser, photo storage etc.

The prices for the controls though is far from cool, however, sixty dollars for that is ridiculous. Even if they just bundled them together for fifty, it’d be better, but right now, it’s not something I consider to be nice. Though, it’s not going to affect me all that much, because there’s not many superb multiplayer games at launch, so buying an extra controller right off the bat would be useless to me. I plan to get Red Steel for Christmas, but I’ll just have my parents get me that and a remote. Once more multi games come out (Smash Bros. Brawl and Battalion Wars II for me), then I’ll be more concerned on the cost.

GDwarf

I’m also very disappointed with the cost of the Wiimote, I was expecting a $50 price, tops. Instead we get $60. Now, it is actually rather nice of them to sell the Wiimote and Thumb-chuck separate, as not all games will use both.

Moving on to some of the Wii’s other features, what do you all think of the various channels? They seem rather gimmicky to me, I know that I certainly won’t be editing photos/movies on my Wii. Although I will admit that I tend to be very behind on current events, so the news channel might be useful.

pipking

I dig the channels – remember, Nintendo is trying to seduce the non-gamer market. Adding information feeds is relatively easy to do (I’d assume), and relatively easy to ignore if you don’t like them. But from the perspective of a non-gamer, it might be the thing that tips them over into purchase territory.

I think the Mii channel is ten kinds of awesome. Now I get why Wii Sports is so graphically simple – you use your Mii avatar in the game. Plus you can store your Mii on your own Wiimote and take it with you to a friends place. I’m just guessing, but I figure you’ll be able to pop it on your DS at some point, too.

The only thing I don’t like about the channels is how each Virtual Console game appears to take up its own channel. Could get messy, after a while.

Mirren

I got no problem with them. I still love the idea of the Virtual Console, and I may even end up using some of the other features once in a while. It’s a good idea from a hardware standpoint, because obviously Wii can’t compete with 360 and PS3 in terms of running systems and graphics, but now it’s got it’s own set of interesting stations. Also, this helps to even out the recent announcement that Wii won’t be able to play dvds.

Honestly though, it just looks good on the resume. It makes the Wii look better for Nintendo and fans to say that their system can go web browsing, that it can store all kinds of photos and images, that it has its own character model editing system, that it can download and play hundreds of region-free games from past consoles, that it can download extra content for Wii games, that it has its own messageboard for all of its customers, that it can give you all kinds of news for the recent events in the world etc.

It’s not exactly conventional, but it seems to work well, exactly what I’d expect out of Nintendo.

pipking

The only problem I have with the web browsing – you have to pay for the Opera browser. I’m sure it won’t be much, but I consider it one of a few small mistakes Nintendo has made with the Wii. Overall, I’m entirely chuffed, but expensive controllers, ported games with tacked-on functionality, pay-for-web and a few other things keep me from saying Wii is exactly the system I want it to be.

Only time will tell.

Mirren

I think paying for the internet browsing is just a way for Nintendo to compensate the free online play. But I don’t intend to use it that much unless my current comp crashes sometime in the future.

Ported games with tacked on functionality? We really haven’t seen enough conclusive evidence to show that many Wii games are like this. Ultimate Alliance is like that, but otherwise, TPWii seems to have gotten a lot of attention from Nintendo (and has said to have good controls), and other ported titles such as FarCry (but even that has a bunch of new content), haven’t shown serious flaws just yet.

It’s almost funny to think of this, because we’ve been talking about it for the last two years, but Wii and Twilight Princess are now only two months away from reaching our households. I don’t know what all of your thoughts are for this, but man am I hyped. The fact that I now know for sure that one of Nintendo’s best consoles, and possibly their best game yet are soon to be on the market really gets me excited. I’ve dreaming about play TP since I was fourteen, and soon I’ll be doing that (with Wii). I can’t wait to see just how long the game is, will it really be 100 hours just as Nintendo says? I can’t wait to see all of the settlements, structures and landscapes of Hyrule, I can’t wait to see all the redesigned and brand new enemies that will challenge Link, and what the difficulty will be like after all of this waiting. I can’t wait to see what Midna, Zelda and Ganondorf do, I can’t wait to see how epic the story will be, and if it’ll have an ending that will finally blow Zelda fans away.

I can’t wait to visit Hyrule once again.

GDwarf

2 Years… It’s hard to believe that I was 14 when that first trailer for TP was shown, with the ironic “Coming soon” at the end.

As for the internet browsing, I seem to recall IGN stating that Opera would be free to download until summer of ‘07, but then again, I don’t recall them ever citing a source, and it is IGN, so I guess I’m not counting on it. Not that I was ever too incredibly keen on internet browsing with the Wii. I don’t have any way to connect it to the internet, for starters. Besides, I suspect that the ‘fun’ factor of surfing the web on the Wii will wear off fairly quickly. (although I fully expect the people on our forums to have a “Post here on your Wii” thread up on the 19th.)

Anyways, it is hard to believe that the waiting will soon be over. I mean, in two months, 61 days, I will once again be roaming Hyrule, fighting Ganon’s vile minions, and saving the ever-lovely Zelda. I’ve arrived late on the Zelda scene, and TP is the first game that I’ve actually been around for from the beginning, it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like after I’ve finally got it in my hands.

I’ll echo Mirren in saying that I cannot wait to visit Hyrule again, especially this time, when it is apparently bigger and better then ever before.

pipking

So, Wii – we’ll see you soon. I think it’s safe to say the true test of the system will come when you hold it in your hands. I look forward to meeting you.

And Twilight Princess…

I’ve missed you terribly.

Nintendo reps keep telling us Twilight Princess will be the definitive Zelda experience. I believe it. My excitement had begun to wane; it’s hard to keep hope alive when a year passes after the deadline, the game jumps consoles, and no real ‘new’ information comes out.

But we’re here, now – coming to the finish line. I can feel my fingers itch.

It is time again to fight. Time again to save the princess – to weild the sword of evil’s bane. Time again for adventure, and mystery, and wonder.

Link is the oldest friend I have in gaming. His adventures have kept me interested for twenty years.

I cannot wait to see him again.

“All New Zelda GameCube shots released. Don’t be too excited, you might not like what you see if you’re over the age of 12. Click Here Only if You Don’t Mind Being Disappointed”

I simply shrugged it off, figuring “How bad could it be?”. Then when I finally saw what the next big Zelda epic would be, I had a very different reaction…which involved quite a few obscenities…

Honestly, that’s pretty much along the lines of what I first said. I was furious, because at that time, I had no experience with cel-shaded graphics, and I was obsessed with the idea of Zelda being a more serious series that had to have adult Link in a realistic, mature world. I wasn’t alone, either, there were enough people on Earth that laughed at Zelda for becoming ‘kiddy’, and there are still a lot of people that feel that way for the Wind Waker. But, alas, over time I learned to accept the art-style, and to this day the game is my favorite entry into the Zelda series. Imagine that.

A few years ago, that was the surprise of the century for video games, but if it had happened today, I don’t think it would’ve had as big of an uproar. Cel-shaded games have become rather popular in this generation, and a lot of high-quality games have sported them. The other thing to note is how Nintendo has made a habit of shocking fans with new creations. Just a couple of months ago we found out that Revolution was named Wii, and before then we had learned that the controller for Wii would be the Wiimote. Nintendo knows how to draw attention to themselves, and they’ve been able to do it quite a few times using the Zelda franchise.
Wind Waker’s first showing of Cel-shaded graphics might be the perfect example, but before that, go back a few years ago, prior to the Gamecube’s release. The big thing then was the Spaceworld Demo of an untitled Zelda game. It featured highly realistic graphics of an adult Link battling Ganondorf in a sword fight. At that time, it was a visual masterpiece, and it had gotten fans all hyped up for the next title.

But there was a problem; the Spaceworld Demo wasn’t a video of any gameplay from any game, because it was just a brief clip made to demonstrate the Gamecube’s graphical capabilities. Naturally, people didn’t immediately think that it was just an exhibition for the system’s visuals, despite words from Nintendo concerning it. And, unfortunately, everyone went into the summer of 2001 expecting Zelda to be like that.

Then in August, every Zelda fan realized just how wrong they truly were. Everyone had figured that what we saw at Spaceworld was the next Zelda game, while in reality; it had always been the colorful, cel-shaded Wind Waker. The change was simply astounding, to the point where many gamers lost all respect for Zelda because of the way the Wind Waker looked. Sure, some people were ignorant of how good the visuals could be, but it’s understandable how some might’ve been disappointed. You ended going from a Zelda game that featured the popular Adult Link in what were some of the most stunning graphics at that time, to a game where our hero was a skinny squirt in a world that looked like it was ripped right out of a cartoon.

And yet, Nintendo wasn’t done there. Fast-forward a couple years to May of 2004, where perhaps the biggest news about Zelda was revealed; Twilight Princess. It made just as big of an impact on the gaming population as the Wind Waker did, but for different reasons. With the Wind Waker, most people were dissatisfied in the way it looked, whereas for Twilight Princess, fans and non-fans alike were enthralled that a more realistic, older Link was returning.

It was particularly a huge revelation because unlike with the Wind Waker, we had almost no knowledge whatsoever of what the next Zelda game would be like. As common for Nintendo, they left us in the dark for quite a while, withholding all information from us about Twilight Princess. This event was something like a homeless man living on the streets for a year, and then one day finding a bag in an alley with thousands of dollars inside. It was completely unexpected, so we ended up getting the full impact at one time on how great Twilight Princess would look.

Just like that, in one swoop, Nintendo had given the fans what they loved; realism, a teenaged Link, and a more extreme environment. You can simply consider it Ocarina of Time’s older brother, and that’d be an accurate description. Twilight Princess has the most popularity of any Nintendo game in years, maybe the most in their entire history, and it’s still a few months away from being released. Could there be so much hype if it was Cel-shaded, or 2D? What if all we knew about it only came from interviews?

Nah, it’s all about a couple videos, official artwork and a batch of screenshots. Seeing is believing for many.

Did you notice a similarity between the impact of the Wind Waker’s and Twilight Princess’s first showings? Besides the fact that they were monstrous? The key for their effect on the fans was that they played off the past. Perhaps it wasn’t done intentionally by Nintendo, but because of the major Zelda games before them, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess had huge entrances.

Before the Wind Waker, we had Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, two of the most serious games in the series. We also were able to see the Spaceworld Demo in late 2000. Then, out of the blue, came the bright, light-hearted tale that was the Wind Waker. It really wasn’t anything new; Cel-shaded graphics were around long before that, but after two mature games and a video demonstration with some of the most realistic visuals for a Zelda title, Wind Waker stuck out like a sore thumb.

For Twilight Princess, it had the good fortune of having the Wind Waker be the major Zelda title before it. The video game world didn’t go absolutely crazy in May of 2004 simply because Adult Link was returning. The reason they went wild was because what came prior to it was a cartoony adventure, and just a few 2D entries. For so long had the franchise been without a gruff and tough hero, and a lifelike world, until we saw the first images of the next big Zelda epic.
I think it’s great when something like that happens, when a new report is able to stir up so much discussion amongst the fans. When a game company does that, it makes us interested in what’s going on with our video games, and it makes us active in the community. People become enthused in the new topic, whether they agree or disagree with it. It’s win for both the corporation and the fans; the corporation gets a huge deal of advertisement, and the fans get some new, crazy subject to argue about all across the internet.

And, between you and me, I love it when I bound out of my computer chair at the sight of some whacky announcement.

[And thus, much to the general relief of the community, the joke finally died.]

Four months (at minimum) stand between you and the moment you make that decision. Last time I talked about versions – how between handhelds and consoles the franchise was at the risk of spreading thin, loosing cohesion in favour of bigger market penetration. So Nintendo stuck out its tongue at me – do I stick to Zelda as it has been, or do I see what it could be?

Aonuma helped me make up my mind. “This will be the last Zelda game as you’ve known it.” I assume he knows what he’s talking about. So I’ll take it as I’ve had it, and loved it. Not because I’m future-phobic and can’t cope with change; because before the experience changes entirely, I want one last game from the good old days.

Mirren recently published “He’s a Rebel”, dealing with the same issue but from the perspective of one who’s really looking forward to TP Wii. I agree with most of his points, and he makes a compelling argument for looking at TP solely as a Wii title.

But.

Console controllers have come a long way. Some ancient gaming tech looks like a phone and a keyboard fell in love and had sins. Atari’s joystick got it right – or at least, right enough for the time and the games; every console since has refined input. Unlike most technology-driven industries, videogames have been in a ten-year groove without any significant upgrades or lateral shifts. More buttons, better graphics. Nothing to really shake things up. The analog stick was the last real jump in terms of how games are controlled. The interface could use another idea. And after around a decade of stagnancy, Nintendo is doing something different. Nintendo doesn’t necessarily pioneer technology, but they’ve got a knack for using it well. I can see the Wiimote as a clever collusion of both technology that a mass market is comfortable with, and how nascent gamers twitch when they’re trying to make Mario jump. I’m genuinely excited about Wii and the games designed for it.I recently got a DS Lite. I’m now living common law with it and we’re discussing kittens. It has saved handhelds for me, which until this point I’ve always treated like a bit of a burden, something I should have and should play but never do. It’s renewed my gaming interests in general, which has waned somewhat in recent years. The first time I saw Wii, I was ecstatic. Strange as it was, it didn’t feel like the next Virtual Boy. It felt like the DS’s late-blooming older brother. It felt like something new – a new configuration for playing videogames.

And that’s what Wii represents. Another idea for gaming. One I’m genuinely excited to try.

But not Twilight Princess.

When TP was announced a billion years ago, the “Codename: Revolution” was still a sparkle on the horizon. The GameCube was chugging along, doing it’s thing, largely ignored by everyone but the franchise fans that have been Nintendo’s bread and butter for so long. 2005 was supposed to be the best year for the little system that couldn’t – starting in February with Resident Evil 4 (a then exclusive) and ending in November with the much-anticipated “realistic” entry in the most beloved of game series, The Legend of Zelda. RE4 came out swinging, but come November, Zelda was nowhere to be found. The speculation was instantaneous: Twilight Princess was going to jump the Cube and go straight to next gen. Nintendo denied it for a while; when they finally admitted the delay was tied to a Wii port of the game, they assured loyal gamers that TP would still hit the Cube as promised. Sometime in the interim, Aonuma made his ominous statement about the end of Zelda as we know it.

Thing is, TP for Wii doesn’t represent the future. It is not the next step for the franchise.

It’s a port of a GameCube game.

Sure, it’s being retro-fitted with tomorrow’s technology, but the majority of the lengthy development cycle was dedicated to creating Zelda’s last great traditional console adventure, complete with the familiar controls that set a new standard for action-adventure gaming. It’s not that I’m so enamored with the “old” gameplay I can’t see the future when it’s staring me in the face – it’s that Twilight Princess Wii takes a concept designed for the “old” and tries to make it a thing of the New. When I play Zelda on Wii, I want it to be its own thing. An evolution. What Nintendo is giving us is our old jacket with some new buttons sewn in.

I am curious, of course. I don’t think Nintendo is so anxious for mass-market acceptance they’ll do a shotty job mapping the controls to the special functions of the Wiimote; it’ll be fun and “intuitive” (I just had to email Nintendo a dollar for using that word). But the fact remains the entire game was designed ground-up for a different system, and Twilight Princess Wii isn’t a genuine “new generation” ($2) experience. I’ll be buying my Wii for Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime – each developed with the Wiimote in mind, taking a hoary old game concept and giving it new life with spastic hand-twitching. And I’ll wait patiently for the Zelda that TP Wii isn’t – a game where, like with the upcoming Phantom Hourglass, genuinely thinks about how the franchise can work in this different way.

None of which is to say I think people should steer clear of TP Wii. This is a personal choice, and each gamer can defend and debate their reasons until the next Zelda is released (approximately 865 years from now). While videogaming is more a social activity than ever before, Zelda is still a solitary experience. It’s just you and a world full of troubles and treasure. What the Wii version represents is just another option for how you experience that world. For myself, and judging from internet chatter a good number of you as well, I choose to do it on the GameCube. One last grace for the little system that couldn’t, but tried every step of the way.

Wii has shown that they’re still one awesome company. You had the excellent presentation of the system which brought some of the longest lines recorded, and a legion of exciting videos. The Wiimote was finally given to the public, and so far it appears that it will make our gaming experiences all the better come Q4. And of course, we were shown quality titles like Metroid Prime Corruption, Project H.A.M.M.E.R, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Red Steel, and even Twilight Princess Wii.

…oh yes, Twilight Princess Wii.

Most of us thought it’d be just on Gamecube this November, but instead, the hottest Zelda game will also be a launch-title for Nintendo’s new console, featuring a unique control system exclusive to the Wiimote. At E3, visitors were allowed to play a short demo of a dungeon, which sported combat and puzzle solving. Both of those gameplay elements had you using your trusty items via the Wiimote, whether it was just pressing some of the buttons, or aiming to throw the Gale Boomerang and shoot arrows. You could also play a relaxing fishing game, which had you using the Wiimote like a real fishing rod.

A lot of people liked it. There wasn’t a Gamecube on the floor at E3, so to play Twilight Princess, you had to play the Wii version. The overall consensus of those that played it is that it played well enough, but it still needs a bit of improvement. However, there’s also a lot of people that don’t like it. Whether it’s from the visuals on Wii, or how the game will play, Twilight Princess Wii has not warmed up to everyone just yet.

Me? Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not one of the people. I’m not planning to buy Twilight Princess for the Gamecube; I’m too hyped to play it on Wii. You can say that I’m just following Nintendo like a dog, or that I’m too quick to jump, but there are definitely some good things about the Wii version, and there are reasons why I’m so excited to play the game in the new style.

I’ve seen people gripe about the graphics, saying that as a Wii game it’s unimpressive. I hardly agree; there’s a noticeable difference between what we saw on Gamecube and what we saw at E3. On Wii, the lighting’s beautiful, the texture and details are better, and the colors are simply stunning, whether they were brighter, or just had more tone than originally seen. Those aspects are the most important things in the way a game looks; with them, you set the entire mood of the game.

The Wii is not looking to make its games photo realistic, either (thank God), it’s just looking to enhance them in terms of color, lighting, polygon count, frame rate etc. Twilight Princess isn’t going to look like Call of Duty 2 or Heavy Rain; it’s going for its own art style instead of trying to make everything look like real life. It’s creating graphics with the basics of video-game imagery; and that’s exactly what the Wii is improving on. I don’t see why people are complaining about the graphics when what’s being boosted is what matters to Twilight Princess’s visuals.

Furthermore, there’s still so much time before it’s released. In six months, there’s a ton of tweaking that can be done to make the game look much better. We’ve already gotten a few reports about additions to the Wii’s hardware since E3, which will in the end, help it in one way or another. If Twilight Princess looks as good as it did at E3, then come October, November or December, I can guarantee that it’ll look even better.

Of course, the big reason for my enthusiasm for the game is the Wiimote. I’ve been a fan of the thing since day one. The moment I saw it, I realized that it had so much potential to give gamers a whole new way to play games, and in the long run, make it so much more interesting and enjoyable than before. I simply like the controller as a whole.

But, I’m not interested in every single Wii game and how it uses the controller, so a part of why I’m looking forward to Twilight Princess Wii so much is because of the specific controls for the game. So far, they don’t look bad at all. From the presentation at E3, they were far from perfect, but they were also far from being poor. The only major problems that I noticed, or that were prevalent among gamers were the bow and arrow shooting, and the camera.

The bow and arrow gave us a bit of an awkward aiming system with one or two glitches, but it was hardly unplayable. As for the camera angle, it’s not so much that it’s bad, but that there’s not as much freedom with it as there was in the Wind Waker. You won’t be able to move it all around Link during gameplay. But when you think about it, the camera angle for Twilight Princess Wii, at worst, is like Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask. Frankly, I don’t see much of a problem with that based on how well those two games played.

However, one problem I have with those games, as well as Wind Waker, is their difficulty. In the 3D Zeldas, puzzles have all been easy, and the combat has rarely been a challenge. I remember when I first picked up Wind Waker, I had no trouble getting used to the controls, as it had been right after I finished the Master Quest of Ocarina of Time. Then once I got into the deeper elements of the gameplay, including the use of my items, I grasped it instantly, and I was tearing through the game with little trouble.

I now know why- it’s because I had basically mastered the controls after playing the Master Quest. The Wind Waker’s controls were so similar, and I was already great with them going into the game, but then I as progressed through the adventure on the Great Sea, I became more and more confident with them, to the point where I knew them so well that I couldn’t get much of challenge from anything.

I fear that for Gamecube’s version of Twilight Princess, I fear that I’ll be so used to those controls that I once again will be able to play through it with no trouble at all. I know Nintendo has said that it’ll be more difficult than previous installments of the series, but we’ll all still be so fluent with the controls that I can’t imagine finding true difficulty anywhere. I’ve been waiting a long time for a challenging 3D Zelda, and I believe that playing with the Wiimote’s new controls will make that possible.

The Wiimote, plain and simple, is going to bring a totally new way of playing Zelda, and personally, I’m enthralled by that idea. The franchise has been around for twenty years now, and while some games have brought several new things to the series, there’s never been a significant change to how the gameplay goes down. I’m ready for something new, in fact, I want something new. I’m the kind of person who loves to see fresh ideas and mechanics incorporated in games, especially for sequels. If Twilight Princess is going to be as huge as it appears to be, bringing in a unique way of controlling the journey will make it have all the bigger of an impact.

I have no problem with tradition, and I have no problem with any fan that shuns Twilight Princess Wii because they want to play one last Zelda game the way they have all their life. But to me, it’s time to start a new tradition. I feel it’s time that Zelda goes down a new path, to give us new, creative experiences in our adventures with Link. And I couldn’t think of a better time to start it than with what I believe will be the grandest Zelda game of all time.

Yeah, right.

Can you imagine? A new Zelda game, coming at us like clockwork. There would be an international day of celebration, like Christmas or Beer Monday (which is Canadian for ‘Civic Holiday’). Sounds amazing, impossible, too-good-to-be-true.

And, of course, it is. Not just because Nintendo is the kind of company for whom ‘deadline’ means ‘soon-ish’. And not because long, irregular development times ensure that each game is up to a certain standard. It is partially these things, but I think there’s a darker force at work. Twenty years is a long time for anything. The longer Zelda continues, the more trouble Nintendo will have keeping the quality up to par; the greater the temptation will be to shop out the franchise to different gameplay styles and formats; and the less like ‘Zelda’ each game will seem.

In its twenty-year history there have been some close calls, with every indication of more on the horizon. When any franchise – game, book, television show or film – goes on for a long time, it runs the risk of outlasting its best ideas, with the most recent version only a pale imitiation of what first spawned it.

There is a question we are fond of considering in BtR – what is Zelda? What sets it apart from everything else as the gold standard of adventure gaming? And the reason we keep revisiting this question is because it is unanswerable; and not solely for reasons of personal bias. Zelda isn’t just one thing. There are versions, variations; while at first the differences could be seen as a franchise finding its footing, the more time passes the more it comes off as trying to be all things for all people.

When considering the franchise as a whole, most don’t include the CD-I iterations as genuine Zelda. The strikes against them are obvious – beloved characters shopped out to a new format in the hopes that brand recognition might inspire more people to pick up the player. It isn’t a particularly strange idea. On Nintendo consoles, Zelda has always been a system-seller – which is clearly why the oft-delayed Twilight Princess was held for so much longer. TP is now a Wii launch title. Nintendo isn’t dumb. They know that people who skipped out on the Cube might consider picking up the (reportedly) price-friendly Wii specifically for Zelda. The Wiimote-enabled functionality the delay ensured both suggests what direction the franchise will take on the console, and acts as a user-friendly introduction to Nintendo’s “new” generation gameplay as it relates to traditional games. CD-I Zelda was an obvious attempt to cash in on brand recognition, nothing more; as such, it usually generates little more interest than as a franchise footnote, easily forgiven and forgotten by fans. It’s existence does nothing to damage the reputation of Zelda.

But it showed early on that Nintendo was not above whoring out its popular brands when it suited them. When there was profit to be made. Every company exists to generate income for its shareholders – this is big-C Capitalism, and Nintendo is no different from Sony or Microsoft in that regard. Nintendo has blown its own horn loud and proud in the past few years, trying to position itself in the market as a true innovator. But that’s only half the story. For every Odama and Chibi Robo, there is a Mario Party 56 and Pokemon Octamaremerald.

At what point do you look at Mario with contempt? When does a brand that used to represent quality come to stand for an exercise in exploitation?

(Answer: Mario Party 8, released ten minutes after Mario Party 7.)

Like any brand that sells, a Zelda game has been developed for every new piece of hardware Nintendo offers. With each iteration of the franchise, Zelda becomes something new. It redefines its parameters, pushing the boundaries of what’s expected to forge new territory. Think about the difference between The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link. Not content to rest on their laurels, Nintendo took the franchise in a vastly different direction for its second outing. Certainly a risky move, and one Nintendo broke away from when it came time to develop a new game for the SNES. Many fans consider Zelda II a step in the wrong direction and were glad when the series returned to its top-down adventuring roots. Zelda II represents an early blip in consistency – though by no means a sub-par game, it wasn’t “Zelda” as Zelda had been.

There are three streams of Zelda development – continuation, which tows the line; evolution, which responds to change, and dilution, which attempts to cash in on familiar characters by mutating the experience to make it more palatable to a wider audience. Continuation is expected, an largely unimportant to this discussion. Evolution is necessary; dilution is profitable, but always runs the risk of corrupting the integrity of the brand.

Zelda II represents a bit of both the latter streams. Before A Link to the Past, there was no telling where the series would go. Two very different games each bore the Zelda crest – the future could have gone either way. As it was, Nintendo chose to continue in the vein of the original, and so unofficially declared what defined a true Zelda game. What was originally an evolution became, in retrospect, a dilution.

Link’s Awakening continued the ALttP tradition on GameBoy. It wasn’t the gameplay that changed this time – it was the system. To understand the unique character of experience, one needs to consider all aspects of any given stimulus. It’s not just about the content, but also the delivery. I confess that handheld Zelda never really did it for me, but it wasn’t until the Four Sword saga that I began to see how close the franchise was flirting with the Mario line. Still, there is nothing in Link’s Awakening as a game that defined another significant dilution of the Zelda brand – aside from the system, it continued what ALttP refined.

But from Link’s Awakening, we come to Ocarina of Time. The differences between these two games are legion. Hardware got an extreme “next-gen” upgrade, and so did Zelda. OoT defined 3D adventure gaming. Shortly after release, it was hailed as the Best Game of All Time. Everything – from the story to the control mechanics to the graphics – was a huge step away from what Zelda had been in the past. But it was an evolution, necessary to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of the buying public. Majora’s Mask was more of the same, and cemented what Zelda would be for years to come.

And then came the Oracle games.

While I haven’t played them, I know the score – the gameplay was limited by the system to be exactly like AlttP. While it could be argued that the Oracle games were a continuation of AlttP, the series had already evolved in OoT. The Oracle games represent the first true dilution of the brand. Zelda was now officially two different things – a then-gen 3D console experience with all the bells and whistles, and a 2D handheld game that didn’t stray far from the franchise roots.

I’m not saying the Oracle games aren’t true to the series, or are solely an attempt to cash in on both GameBoy and Zelda popularity. But I’m not not saying it, either. At the very least, the Oracle games showed that Zelda had two (profitable) faces, and opened the door to further dilution.

Dilution like the GameBoy Advance port of AlttP. In order to take advantage of the new system’s interconnectivity, we were given Four Swords. Suddenly, Zelda found room for multiplayer. This lead to Four Sword Adventures on the Cube, which took the old-school sensibility of AlttP and new-school multiplayer functions, and entirely ignored the franchise evolution represented in The Wind Waker. FSA is to Legend of Zelda what Mario Party is to Super Mario Bros. Something that takes elements of a tried-and-true franchise and puts them in a different context to cash in on name-recognition. Again, I make no judgements on the game as a game – but for Zelda as a franchise, FS and FSA shows little more than a market-savvy Nintendo taking advantage of a popular brand to demonstrate its gameplay innovation.

And let’s not forget the near-miss that was Tetra’s Trackers. A multi-player fetch-it game using Wind Waker graphics – might as well have called it Zelda Party. The fact that it was dropped from North American release after intensely negative fan reaction when it was shown at E3 suggests Nintendo values the integrity of Zelda, to a point, and such a strange departure from all the elements of either a 2D or 3D Zelda game was more than the market would bear. Releasing Tetra’s Trackers as a Zelda game would put the franchise on par with “Mario” who, though remembered fondly for some truly incredible games and not finished by any means, is now known primarily as Nintendo’s top corporate shill.

Soon we’ll have The Phantom Hourglass to contend with – touch-screen Zelda is likely to be a bastard child of both its handheld fathers and its console cousins, with new gameplay mechanics (complete touch-screen control) thrown into the mix. Perhaps this was the game that was once rumoured to be a Tingle outing – or perhaps Tingle will eventually pop up on his own to titillate and annoy. It’s not unlikely. It’s a matter of time. Because the more platforms Nintendo offers, the more gameplay innovations it trumpets, the more the franchise will become diluted; the more it will cater to different styles and attitudes. And the more the fans will buy, until such time as Zelda only means a memory of something great.

…

That’s pretty much a sample of the things I’ve finished with the Wind Waker. I managed to beat the game once more during my Easter break, and since then I’ve been working to find every last secret, collect every last item, and complete every last side quest. The list up there is only a portion of what I’ve actually finished, but that doesn’t mean that I’m anywhere near 100% completion.

I’ve always known that the game had loads of things to do in it, but it’s somewhat overwhelming when I try to figure out just how much I have left to do. Whether I’m looking through the back of a Prima’s Player Guide I bought years ago, or I’m just sailing along and going through the list in my head, I honestly can’t believe how much Nintendo managed to stuff into the game. There’s probably double, maybe triple the amount of hours in the side-quests than there is in the main campaign.

And you know, I love it.

I’m a sucker for side-quests, no matter how simple or useless they are. Let’s face it, no matter how many little missions the Zelda series has given us on the side, the rewards have never exactly been grand; Heart Pieces, Lots of Rupees, cool but often unnecessary items etc. Nevertheless, no one should be able to deny that the Zelda games sport some of the best side-quests in all of gaming, maybe the best.

There’s one thing for sure that you can expect out of them, no matter what game they’re incorporated in- you can end up getting anything. You won’t find yourself playing through just battles, or puzzles or fetch-quests; you’ll get an excellent variety in your tasks. Being that most of the games are crammed to the rim with them, it makes it even better that you’re given different missions. This allows for you to actually have a choice, if you will.

If you only enjoy finding all kinds of enemy hide-outs and taking the baddies down, then go with that. If you like using your brain to crack difficult codes and puzzles, then by all means figure them out. If you like traveling across the world to find and deliver items, then journey to your heart’s content. And, if you’re like me and enjoy completing any of those, then the Zelda series will more than satisfy you, because it gives a lot of all of the types of quests. It doesn’t take the easy route and just make everything the same, it makes them unique.

Now, there’s been repetition here and there, such as the use of the Trading Sequence in five or more titles, or that a lot of the concepts are re-used. But each game has its own personality, so the tasks that can be viewed as ‘re-hashed’ still have their own character. Ocarina of Time was a game that often dished out intricate puzzles, so naturally, when you went into the Gerudo’s Training Ground, you were solving puzzles and getting past obstacles most of the time. In the Wind Waker, which had some of the most frantic combat, when it came time to go through all of the Savage Labyrinth, you were battling grunt enemies by the dozens.

Ocarina of Time’s puzzles were superior to the Wind Waker’s, and Wind Waker’s sword- fighting was superior to Ocarina of Time’s, so for two side-quests in the games that both had the same basic idea, you were forced to overcome different challenges, which corresponded to the game’s strong points. Or better yet, as I said before, their personalities. But, of course, that’s just a small example of what I’m talking about;

Ocarina of Time had dozens of secrets hidden in Hyrule, such as the Cuccoo in the Kakariko Windmill, or the famous Forest Stage to show off your mask to the Deku Scrubs. Wind Waker had tons of hidden caverns scattered across the Great Sea, many of which required you to go into a chaotic melee with endless enemies. Even the puzzle orientated quests had you using elements of the game, like playing golf with the giant Deku Nuts and your Deku Leaf, or throwing curled-up Magtails onto switches to clear the fire from thin pathways. Simply put, they carried the character of the franchise, as well as the character of the games they were put in.

Every side-quest felt like that, no matter how major or minor. If you were merely traveling across Hyrule in the Minish Cap to fuse the Kinstones, or working your tail off to reunite Anju and Kafei together in Majora’s Mask, you knew that you were playing a Zelda game, and you knew what exact title you were playing because of the feel and execution of that task.

Probably the best thing about the side-quests, though, is that they add value to the games. Now this isn’t no ordinary value- we’re talking hours worth of time put into the titles from these little distractions. The main campaigns for the games aren’t exactly endless; I can’t understand how you’d spend more than fifteen hours on any of them. That’s not a bad length, but you always want more out of what you play, and the sheer multitude of extras in the Zeldas is sometimes mind-boggling.

Let’s just look at what is almost always put into the games; a few dozen Heart Pieces to earn, several mini-games, many of one item to find (Golden Skulltulas, Treasure Charts, Rings, Seashells etc.), and the fact that a good third of the series features Trading Quests. Those right there warrant a good deal of time, but then you have your many secret dungeons in the Wind Waker, all the Masks to collect in Majora’s Mask, the Magic Beans to plant in Ocarina of Time, the Figurine Gallery to complete in the Minish Cap and so on and so-forth. Honestly, you could probably play for a couple days on end with some of the games, and still not be done.

They just never seem to end, either; you finish one, and it just opens up to more. It was such an amazing feel to get Epona in Ocarina of Time, but then I was also able to race around the ranch to get a cow, or play the Horseback Archery in Gerudo Valley. After I completed the great Trading Quest in Wind Waker, I had a ton of fun decorating Windfall with the flowers, flags and statues. And seriously, who wasn’t amped to kick some serious butt with the Fierce Deity’s mask after finding all the masks in MM?

The games themsleves are so high quality, too, especially the main quests. Almost every entry into the series is phenomenal, even with all of the stuff that is jammed into the disk or cartridge. We all know its Nintendo’s biggest series, but you have to be impressed by the continual success. They always put in enough effort and work to make the experience awesome.

I know that I often end my articles with hopes for Twilight Princess, but I’d just like to tell all of you just how confident I am that this game will feature more extras than ever before. Nintendo’s been working on this thing for years, and they claim for it to be the biggest, longest, grandest Zelda game of all. We’ve been told that it’ll feature “100 hours of gameplay”, and I’m sure that we all know that it’s probably a stretch, but I doubt it’s a stretch that this game really will go beyond any of the others in terms of length. If Nintendo could give us so much in games like the Minish Cap, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and Wind Waker, then I honestly believe that Twilight Princess will give us more than we ever imagined.

I feel the same for Phantom Hourglass. It’s kind of unfortunate for the game that it’s coming out during a time when most eyes are on Twilight Princess, but I think we should expect a quality title for the DS. Better yet, being that this game is a sequel to Wind Waker, we can probably assume that it will have a ton of extras just like the predecessor. Nintendo’s had a good run so far with side-quests; let’s hope they keep it going for Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass.

Ah, heck, who am I kidding? Let’s hope they keep it going until we’re all as old as Rauru.

So, is Nintendo afraid of the dark? Well, I highly doubt that a corporation of fully-grown men and women are afraid of shadows and such, but that’s not even the dark I’m talking about. I mean the atmosphere, the design, and the overall feel of something. Gothic might be a good way to describe it, demonic maybe, horrifying etc. Heck, you don’t even need black everywhere and devils spewing flame to make something dark, all you need is to make the aura very tense, gloomy and dismal.

You don’t usually see dark things come out of the Nintendo, as it just doesn’t seem to be their style. Yeah, the Castlevania series ran on their platforms for years, but Konami was the company in charge of those, and even then, 2D sprite-games just don’t always emanate a grim feeling. In Metroid Prime Echoes for Gamecube, Samus often found herself in a Dark World, but it wasn’t a devilish type of dark, it was more of a mysterious world devoid of light, and where just plain bad things resided. Though, there was the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time…

The Kakariko Well and Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time would be the first attempt by Nintendo to put some real darkness into the Zelda series. This wasn’t just a bleak atmosphere that was physically dark; they were going for the look and feel that could creep us out, and make us disturbed by the gruesome and frightening surroundings. The easiest way to say it, though, is that it didn’t work.

The biggest problem is that it just doesn’t fit with the rest of the series, let alone just Ocarina of Time. Zelda isn’t about scaring us, and it isn’t about horrifying things. When you had four games beforehand (several more Zelda games afterwards, at this time) that didn’t feature any bit of this dark aura, it stands out like a sore thumb. It’s not even about an idea that it didn’t work just because of some 3D Transformation; every other area of Hyrule in Ocarina of Time felt like fantasy, not creepy. You have dense forest, tall mountains, a clean lake, running streams, a wide open plain, a royal castle, and then a black dungeon with zombies, skeletons and ghouls everywhere. Can you spot the odd one out?

Another reason why it doesn’t work is because of the enemies. The Redeads had the freaky scream, but by that point in the game, we knew about it already, so it’s not as if we’re going to be surprised to hear it. Same thing went with the Floormasters/Wallmasters, but big moving hands still isn’t anything scary. Then you have things like the Stalfos, Bubbles and Dead Hand, who might’ve been scary if most of them hadn’t had such goofy expressions on their faces. But besides, just looking at them, they just don’t seem to have any kind of ‘truly evil’ appearance to them.

Luckily, all was not lost. The one good thing that came out of that part of the game was the big enemy; Bongo Bongo. I’ve heard complaints from people about him, even in players guides, that he was a disappointing boss for what was a dark temple. Some people say that he was just plain stupid-looking, and didn’t fit the rest of the feel for the segment. Well, that’s true, but it was smart on Nintendo’s part. Bongo Bongo wasn’t meant to be scary, and he probably would’ve felt odd if he was. Instead, he was something better; mysterious. I don’t know about you, but in the cinema sequence where he bursts from the well and attacks Shiek and Link, I was wondering what on Earth he could be. Then when I saw him up close, I really wondered what on Earth he was. He was this unexplainable spirit that made you cock your eyebrow and remark “Whoa…what the heck is that…?”

That works; mystery and Zelda are a great combination. Nintendo seemed to grasp that, as their next title, Majora’s Mask, would have a mysterious feeling throughout the entire story, and that was just one of the many things about the game that were awesome. The odd musical score (this is a good thing), the bizarre happenings, the fact that you’re turning into entirely different beings but putting on masks with their souls in them, the fact that there’s a moon with a face coming down onto the earth; the game is just plain weird!

But yet, it was superb. With the mystery aspect, Nintendo doesn’t need to take away the fantasy, adventurous feel of Zelda, while when they tried a dark-approach with the Shadow Temple; they took away that Zelda feel. With a mysterious air, you don’t really have to remove other designs in the level layout, or any other kind of feelings/emotions, very much unlike what you have to do a dark ambiance, and that just eliminates what makes Zelda, Zelda.
Twilight Princess approaches, and even though there’s so much that we don’t know about the game, we still have been told a wealth of information. The most important thing is what the game is based around; the Twilight. Basically, we’ve learned that it’s this atmosphere that has begun to descend on Hyrule, turning the creatures and inhabitants into monsters and other crazy things. What more, everything is grey, black or white. Already, we’re baffled as to what it is, and I’m sure that even when the game explains it, we’ll still be scratching our heads in disbelief of just how astonishing it is.

It’s like the Dark World from A Link to the Past put on steroids. The Dark World we knew was the ravaged Sacred Realm that Ganon warped while he was trapped inside of it. If you went in, depending on what kind of person you were, you got turned into a monster, or some other animal (Bunny Link, anyone?). Very straightforward, it was just some region devoid of good with all kinds of evil beasts. The Twilight though is a much more interesting place, because it doesn’t focus on using the easy ‘darkness’ tone, but instead, the eerie. Just look at it; it’s all grey, it’s dismal, and there’s some of the oddest creatures we’ve ever seen in there.

If anyone remembers my first article, I talked about those strange things that fell from the magical portal in the sky. These are probably the most unique Zelda enemies I’ve ever seen, purely in their design. I mentioned that they could be robots or cyborgs or something, and while I doubt that my first assumptions were correct, I still have no idea what to truly call them. They just drop from black hole, have stone heads, and explode into a storm of shards when they’re killed. What can you make of them?
So, yeah, Nintendo’s keeping that mystery aspect in Zelda. Good job Nintendo, you’re on the right track. But they’re not off the hook just yet. There’s still something that really needs to be added to Twilight Princess that we haven’t seen in most of the Zelda games; severity.

We don’t need a blood-bath, we don’t vulgar language, we don’t need disturbing actions, we don’t need any kind of mature theme, heck, you don’t even need that to create a very serious nature to the game. But, you do need something that will get a reaction from the gamer, something that will get them enthralled with the storyline. That doesn’t mean that Zelda needs to become an adult series (and it better not), it simply means that Nintendo needs to put some emotion into the plot. Make the characters get fired up, make the characters act passionately, make our villains downright wicked and detestable, add some drama, add some fury, add some tragedy etc. It doesn’t require the elimination of all humor, happiness and light-hearted moments, but instead just a good combination of it with the seriousness. You know the old saying; moderation in all things.

This also includes our enemies, and good old Ganon. Personally, I was getting kind of tired of the same old Moblins, Stalfos, Iron Knuckles and Darknuts coming at me in the games. It’s not that I don’t like them, but it just seems that after being used in the same way game after game, they losing their magic. That, and let’s face it, if we’re going to be fighting the soldiers of this mighty dark being, they shouldn’t be a bunch of goofballs (bad boy, Wind Waker). Make a bunch of them vicious; make them look intimidating, that’s all I’m personally asking for. And most of all; make them something new.

Wind Waker was a mixed bag with the enemies- there were only a few that could truly be called ‘new’, and a lot of the new designs looked pretty mediocre. I understood that it was meant to be a more cheerful adventure than other Zelda games, but many times I felt unchallenged by them, in both their appearances and battling styles. Luckily, Twilight Princess seems to be giving us more attack-orientated enemies, and some nice new enemies; skeleton bulls, the Twilight ‘things’, the Balrog rip-off, and it also looks like they’re creating new designs; Stalfos, Dinolfos, giant spiders etc.

Then we have Ganondorf. What can I say about him? Well, first off, he needs a personality. He looked radical in Ocarina of Time, but he had no interesting character, unlike the Wind Waker’s version. He needs to be made different from every other villain who wants world domination. More importantly, he needs a new look, at least for the Ganon form. I’m really getting sick of the Pig-Ganon, I admit it. Not only am I growing bored of it, but I’m also losing my respect for Ganon as a daunting adversary. It doesn’t look particularly frightening, and it’s been done to the death now.

Ganon needs a new look, it’s as simple as that. Don’t just bring back Ganon from Ocarina of Time, Nintendo, do something new with your number one bad-guy. Look at Dracula from the Castlevania series; he’s been pretty much the same in his humanoid form for every game, and that’s fine, but what shines about him is the multitude of forms he’s had afterwards. He’s gone from giant demons to giant gargoyles, to huge bats, to a winged beast formed from his cape, to a monstrous dragon, to even a thing that can only be described as a giant skull cracked open to reveal half a brain, an eye, and a giant claw. Even if Ganon isn’t turned into a whole new entity like Drac has, and he remains to turn into just a giant mammalian beast, it should be something new. It’s not hard for you, Nintendo; you’ve given us unique stuff hundreds of times before.

Nintendo seems to be trying to appeal to teens and the older gamers as of late, putting a lot of attention to the Metroid series, becoming a home for Resident Evil games, and such. Will Zelda ‘mature’ at all? It might, it might not. We know that Twilight Princess will be rated Teen, though that may be a result of the more realistic graphics, and realistic violence. Who knows? But in all honesty, I really don’t think it’s a matter of how serious Zelda becomes. Instead, I find it to be the matter of, in whichever situation, if it’s done right, and it feels like Zelda.

“Good things come to those who wait.” It’s an old saying, a tired saying, a dry, used-up cliché, a boring piece of conventional wisdom. But it is true, and I will now tell you why.

By now, all of you will have heard the news. Twilight Princess is delayed until the fall, and this time the news is from a trustworthy source: Reggie Fils-Aime himself, marketing VP at Nintendo of America and one of the best known figures in the gaming industry. He was interviewed by SpikeTV, where he confirmed the planned fall release.

So. Another five or six month delay. Not our first, either, since we were previously expecting to get Twilight Princess in the fall of 2005.

I’ve been browsing some forums, some websites, my own comment system, getting a feel for the reaction of the community. Predictably, people are angry, infuriated. Like impatient children, expecting to get greatness when and where they want it, refusing or unable to acknowledge that almost anything really worth having is also worth waiting for. Most of the complaints have little thought put into them; they’re just knee-jerk reactions from disappointed and angry fans, trying to find ways to overcome the fact that they suddenly have to wait longer. As if their angry or sullen reactions matter or hold any depth. I’ve even seen some people claiming that they’re thinking about not getting the game at all, out of… what? A futile desire to hurt Nintendo? A childish and sullen urge to make a scene of themselves? I laughed when I read these claims; if they’re big enough fans to get angry over a delay and come to Zelda sites at all, then they’re the ones who are most likely to get the game, come hell or high water.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: If Aonuma and the Zelda team need or want an extra six months to complete the game, than I am more then happy to give it to them. I don’t trust Aonuma’s judgment as much as Miyamoto’s, but I trust him well enough, and Miyamoto still stands in the background of the development team, offering his expertise. If they judge that the game would benefit from more development time, then who am I, or any of us, to argue?

Nintendo has a long history of delays. Majora’s Mask was delayed. I don’t remember the specifics, but I remember being an impatient young fan, angry at delays. I remember being angry about delays a lot, because Nintendo was always delaying its games. I wasn’t following gaming news at the time, but Ocarina of Time was delayed… numerous times. Ocarina of Time was in development for five years. Granted, a year and a half or so of that can be chalked up to poorly planned development and Nintendo changing it’s mind so often, but even so, the result can hardly be denied. Is there a single one of you who claims that OoT was not worth every agonized moment we had to wait? I didn’t think so.

I honestly have no idea whether LttP or LA were ever delayed, but I wouldn’t be surprised, and I’m sure the delays were worth it.

And now let’s look at the Wind Waker, which was delayed, but not very much. Not enough. The Wind Waker always felt unfinished and even rushed to me. Sure, it had a glut of sidequests and treasure hunting – far too much of it, really – but the main quest was short and reeked of a rush job to me. There was no dungeon or town for the third Pearl… I would have dearly loved for Greatfish Isle to be an actual big island, a la Dragon Roost, which you could go to, and with an actual dungeon to go with it. I’m willing to bet that they had originally planned it that way, too. And there were originally going to be four elemental dungeons – wind, earth, fire, and water/ice temples – which they had to cut down to two due to time constraints. The Fire and Ice temples were turned into little mini-isles, where you got the iron boots and power bracelet.

As a result of all that stuff they couldn’t do, they turned to cheap sidequests, half-assed Triforce-piece hunting, and other feature bloat to try and fill the void. That, my friends, it what happens when a major Zelda game is not given enough development time. Sidequests are meant to be a more subtle addition to a worthwhile main quest, not a replacement for absent pieces of it.

I loved The Wind Waker, and the cel-shading impressed me more then any other graphical style before or since… but it had its flaws, and several of them can be laid directly at the feet of whoever decided to listen to deadlines instead of delaying again.

I believe that delays, especially for the Zelda series, give the development team some extra room. Time to sit back and look at the game as a whole, finish what needs to be finished, judge what needs to be toned down or up, add things where they need to be added, remove them where they don’t contribute to the game. Give them more breathing room to make calmer and better judgments, and just tweak things so that we get a brilliant masterpiece rather then just a great game.

I mentioned that most of the complaints about the delay were shallow, knee-jerk reactions that were not thought out at all. But there are some concerns that are valid, and I will answer them as best as I can.

I know a lot of people that were angry because they thought that the purpose of the delay was to add extra functionality for those who were playing with a Revolution controller. Perhaps a bunch of minigames, or even an extra dungeon. I won’t go too deeply into why this annoyed people, since it would take pages, but to sum it up… people didn’t like the thought that they wouldn’t be able to get everything out of a Gamecube game without a Revolution. Nor did they like the idea that a game that should be designed for its own console was being delayed in order to add functionality that many GC owners would never access. I understood and shared in these concerns.

Luckily, Reggie has confirmed that these last two delays had nothing to do with any desire for Revolution compatibility, so these concerns can be laid to rest… although I would still expect a Revolution minigame or two, if I were you.

The most interesting concerns I’ve read were voiced by one of Zelda Legends’ members, called Anime James, in the comment system. He had this to say, and hopefully he won’t mind me quoting him directly:

“Now I’m pissed. This isn’t about waiting. Being human, I can only suppress my impatience to a certain extent, but it’s more than that. If Twilight Princess is such a good game, it really shouldn’t need more. If the essence is there, and one delay has already contributed greatly to the gameplay factor, there is no reason to push the date back even further. I want Nintendo to cut the crap and release the thing. They can add all the new enemies and side-quests they want – I’ll just yawn at them. In OoT I mostly did the optional quests out of boredom, and now that they’re screwing this project with obscure details – pushing the game back till the end of ‘06 – I think I’m gonna scream. …

For some people this delay is a necessary burden, but I like my Zelda with a touch of simplicity, and now I find myself waiting much longer than I should by a game that seems it will have very little.”

Before I go into the meat of his complaint, I’ll address one common misconception: He says that it will be released a year after it was finished. He and others seem to be operating under the assumption that TP was actually ready to be finished in time for its fall ’05 release… I don’t have any inside info, but I am willing to bet that the game was NOT ready to be finished… whence the delay. Nobody, not even Nintendo and its Zelda team, would delay a game a year just to tweak it. Actually, Blizzard might do it, but that’s another subject entirely, heh. But aside from that, Anime James’ worries really got me thinking, because his opinion of feature bloat seems to be similar to mine, and I had to sit down and think for a moment about whether he might be right.

Look at music. Without the slight silence in between notes and tones, and the variations in pitch and volume throughout, music would just be a wall of incomprehensible noise, rather then anything worth listening to. The silence in music is just as important as the sound, as a means of contrast and a way to highlight certain sounds.

The same can be said of video games. When developers try to cram as much extraneous, heavy-handed sidequests and extras into a game as they possibly can, we get the gaming equivalent of that wall of noise.

To a lesser degree, The Wind Waker suffered from this sort of feature bloat. There is nothing wrong with sidequests, but when they are so forcefully thrust upon you, integrated so heavy-handedly into the game, they detract from immersion and the overall experience. Look at the way that there was one island in every square, how every single island had at least one treasure or sidequest on it. It was formulaic, totally destroying any feeling of a natural world. The figurine quest? It felt out of place, and the way you had to go about doing it detracted from the experience by forcing you to only take three pictures at a time, and wait a day and a night before they were ready, etc. I could go on, but you get the picture. A disturbingly large number of the sidequests in tWW were heavy-handed and obvious, totally lacking in any subtlety or quality.

Now, look at Ocarina of Time. That game… if you stand back and think about it for a moment, it had a ridiculous amount of detail and extras thrown in. Even today, I am still experiencing new stuff when I play that game. Just a few months ago, I finished the Gerudo Training Ground and got the Ice Arrows for the first time (pathetic, I know, but bear with me). A year ago, I got the Loach at the Fishing Pond for the first time. I discovered the cave in the Lost Woods, where the Deku will react differently depending on the mask you’re wearing, years after first finishing the game.

Ocarina of Time was absolutely stuffed with sidequests and details and quirky little things to do… but the difference is that they were skillfully woven into the game world. They were seamless. They were subtle and effective, the epitome of what sidequests should be. They were there, they were fun, but the game did not try to thrust them upon you, nor did it try to use them to make up for the lack of something else. The fact that even I, almost seven years later, am still experiencing new stuff, still finding joy in that sense of exploration… it speaks volumes. And all these details, all these wonderfully seamless pieces of the game world of OoT… they were not just thrown in quickly. It took developmental genius, and lots of time, to get those into the game. On the other hand, it takes very little time to put in heavy-handed and formulaic sidequesting like we saw in tWW.

Do you know what I believe they will be doing with these delays? I do NOT believe they will just be adding ridiculous amounts of features, like Anime James here worries about. I believe they will be, among other things, spending a lot of time carefully integrating the features they already have, plus a few more, into the game. Adding the sound of silence between the notes, so to speak. Adding the sort of detail and immersion that drew us into the world of OoT without ever really distracting us from the main quest.

Perhaps I am being overly optimistic, and the Zelda team really has fallen to a new low… but I don’t believe it. If you’ve been reading the interviews from Nintendo Power, you will be getting a glimpse into just how much effort and care Nintendo is putting into this game’s development. It is a phenomenal effort, and I don’t believe that Miyamoto and Aonuma will fall into the trap of feature bloat.

David, founder of Zelda Legends, offered us this quote as his only response to this delay.

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.” –Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Look at the long-time fans of the Zelda series, such as myself, David, even Mike (TSA) of The Hylia… Most of the long-time fans, those who have been in the community for years and followed the Zelda series for a long time… we are not up in arms. We have learned, like Lindbergh’s beach, to wait calmly and patiently. We have learned to trust the Zelda team on some things, and this is one of them.

There is one final issue to confront… with Twilight Princess being released at the very end of the Gamecube’s lifetime, a few months before the Revolution is expected to release, there are worries that it will not get the attention it deserves, and that it will not sell as well as it might. And you know what? The people saying this are absolutely right. It very likely will sell worse then it should, and make a smaller splash then it should, due to the timeframe it’s being released. And you know what? I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me if the rest of the world doesn’t appreciate it as much as it may deserve, I will still get Twilight Princess. And I have faith that it will be a good game, because Nintendo seems to be delaying it to make it a better game, even though they would be better off financially if they release it earlier. And this is just the way I like it. I’d rather Nintendo take a risk and maybe sacrifice some sales, if the end result is a better game. Maybe even one that I will treasure as I have treasured OoT, LttP, and LA. There is no loftier goal, in my eyes, and this is the first time in years that I’ve dared to hope that a game might reach those heights.

A few extra months of waiting? Hah! A small price to pay.

That would be the religion, something you probably wouldn’t think twice about when you see the tiny of hints of it in the games. But in fact, the religion in Hyrule is evident all around, and it’s actually quite similar to many major religions practiced today. When you really sit down, do some research, and just plain look at the evidence, it’s very clear that an interesting religion was created over the twenty years in which the Zelda series has been produced. Moreover, it’s somewhat obvious that the details of it are inspired by the major religions of today. Let me start off with something simple:

The Symbol. Every religion has one (or even several) major symbol/s. Christianity in all of its branches has the Cross or Crucifix, Judaism has the Star of David, Islam has the Star and Crescent, Taoism has the Yin and Yang etc. What does Hyrule’s religion have? I think any Zelda fan should know; the Triforce. Now what’s interesting about it is that it’s not exactly a ‘symbol’, so to say.

You’re probably thinking I just shot myself in the foot, but in all actuality, the Triforce isn’t just a metaphorical image or anything, it’s a real object (or at one time, was real), similar to the Crucifix with Jesus. Although, in several games we don’t get to see it, the Triforce at one time was a physical, concrete thing. And in whatever titles we don’t see the full thing, in some way or form; whether on the hand of our green-clad hero or in the Sacred Realm, it’s there.

Next in line would be the idea of the gods, and for Hyrule, I think we all know that there was Din, Farore and Nayru. Now, I don’t know of any major religion in our world today that believed in only three gods exactly, but I do feel that the trio of goddesses is similar to Christian belief of the Holy Trinity; God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Now, as many may know, Christians believe that there is only one God, just that the Trinity is like the ‘faces’ of God. So this is a difference between the Trinity and the three goddesses, but when it all comes down to it, did the goddesses not combine their power into one ultimate source? (i.e. Triforce) I don’t know about you, but I see a heavy similarity there.

Then of course, Hyrule gave us a few deities, which for the most part were huge beasts seen as holy titans. The first one we ever really see in the series is the Wind Fish in Link’s Awakening. This wouldn’t be the end to whale-like monsters, of course, as Jabu-Jabu came in Ocarina of Time, and later as Jabun as the Wind Waker. I personally feel a connection to Jabu-Jabu especially to Leviathan from the Old Testament; both were creatures under the righteous god/s, both are whale-like beasts (the most common image of the Leviathan), and at least in Ocarina of Time’s case, both swallowed a hero, I refer to the story with Jonah in the case of the Leviathan, if you don’t know.

In Ocarina of Time was the introduction to another deity, the wise Deku Tree, who would return again in the Wind Waker. But that game would bring a new deity to series; Gohdan. Good old Gohdan, serving the goddesses after all those years and being there when they needed him to test Link’s strength and courage. Going further, we got to see Zephos and Cyclos, who I can’t describe much better as ‘frog’-like spirits that controls the winds of the oceans, also aiding Link in his quest.

Another new edition to the group that the Wind Waker brought would be Valoo, the first ‘good’ dragon in the series. I was happy to see that, but also surprised at it as well. I suppose that’s how many people feel when they learn of the various religions in China and Japan, in that most of their dragon gods are righteous, instead of the evil dragons like seen in Christianity and other European religions. The Japanese dragon gods, such as Ryujin and Tenryu, are highly admired by the Japanese people, and then there’s a multitude of other different holy dragons.

When we head down the line of important religious figures, we’ll find that that Hyrule has an array of mortal beings that possess very holy powers. I’m talking about the Sages. We first started with the seven (Saria, Darunia, Ruto, Impa, Nabooru, Rauru and Zelda) from Ocarina of Time, and then in the Wind Waker we were able to see Medli, Makar, Laruto and Fado, and if you go outside of Hyrule, Labrynna and Holodrum had the oracles; Din, Nayru and Farore.

I like to see the Sages as the “Saints” or “Judges” of Hyrule’s religion; they started their lives as normal beings, but in truth they all had a very strong holiness in them. The description fits even better with the Seven Sages from Ocarina of Time, because like the Saints of Christianity (or any holy human beings for any religion), they became extremely famous in the world of Hyrule.

Not only did they have beautiful stain-glass windows created to remember them inside the Master Sword’s Hall in Hyrule Castle (for the Wind Waker), but hundreds of years after their death, in the era which Zelda fans know of the game called “The Adventure of Link” there are towns named after them, all except Zelda and Impa. I find that to be an amazing show of respect to the Sages, especially over such a long period of time.
Now then, what does this all come to? Well, I think I’ve proven something after all that; Hyrule’s religion is a very deep subject of the Zelda series. But, not as much as how upheld it is in the Zelda world.

What I mean by that is how important the religion appears to be in the games. I’ll come back to the Triforce again, which as I’ve said is the most revered image in the Hyrulian religion. That specific object is everywhere, I mean; you can’t go to one inch of Hyrule without finding it carved, painted, tattooed or drawn somewhere. In Ocarina of Time’s World Atlas it’s on there, it’s on the actual Ocarina of Time, the Master Sword, and the Hylian Shield, heck, shields throughout the Zelda series would continue to bear the Triforce. Then, even in the Wind Waker, with the original Hyrule miles beneath the ocean waves, we see the Triforce in select places, such as on the door inside Link’s house. Really, over time, it seemed as if the Triforce became the official symbol for the Hyrulian culture, rather than purely a religious object.

That’s just the beginning of it. In the Wind Waker, the religion is still being followed, even after the tragic flood, where practically the entire world was lost. The Koroks are keeping Farore’s Pearl safe and sound, and the Ritos are keeping Din’s Pearl safe and sound as well, or at least, Komali and his grand-mother were. Also on Dragon Roost we saw the Wind Shrine, where Zephos hangs out, and where Cyclos used to hang out.

It seems though that the entire reason why the religion stayed around during that time was because of the deities; the Deku Tree, Valoo, and Jabun, and maybe Zephos and Cyclos. Those five watched over their ‘worshippers’, and protected them, while Jabun even took it upon himself to secure Nayru’s Pearl. That quintet really seemed to be the heroes for the religion during that era. And hey, we can’t forget about Gohdan now can we, he still remained loyal to the goddesses as an honorable servant.

The examples go on and on. As I’ve already mentioned there’s the fact that the Seven Sages from Ocarina of Time become so respected over time, with stain-glass windows in Wind Waker’s Hyrule Castle, and towns named after them in the Adventure of Link. The Book of Mudora is written by the people, first seen in A Link to the Past (though believed to be created much earlier), which becomes Hyrule’s equivalent to the Bible or Qur’an. We can even mention the peoples’ labors to build sacred temples like the Temple of Time, the Crystal House in the Minish Cap and the Church in A Link to the Past.
I’m going to echo two things that I said at the closing of my last article. One is that what I’ve said in this writing is only a portion of what could be completely documented, which makes this topic even more interesting, because there’s still a plethora of information on Hyrule’s religion waiting to be discovered by us fans. The second thing is that I can assure everyone that we’ll see more of the religion in the Twilight Princess, and maybe get some answers to the mysterious elements of the faith. It could even fill some of those gaps and completely tie it all together, who knows. I’ll keep looking into it, and I hope that by writing this, I can get more of you can jump in and take a gander.

After all, there’s always something new to be discovered in the Zelda universe.

Remember that, as January fades softly into February and April looms bright and green in the distance, infinitely far when counting the seconds but next door to now if you pull back and look long at the whole year. Most northernly North Americans are currently looking ahead to the Spring, anxious to shake off the frosty weather and see grass grow again. There’s a certain restlessness that comes in the early year; Winter is tired, old, played-out… last year’s dance. I want sunshine and flowers and a blue sky peppered with birds.

Unlike most nothernly North Americans, however, my longing for Spring is not purely a product of Vitamin D deficiency. Because though Spring is eventual and inevitable, this year it also holds the promise of Zelda. Sort of.

We’ve been here before. Most recently this past November, when Twilight Princess was set to debut on GameCube in time for the ever-lucrative holiday season. What I remember from E3 2005 was an irrepressible excitement, all through the lead up and in the aftermath, as the teasing trickle of details first came as rumour, then flooded as speculations confirmed and dated, and finally flowed out on a promise – Twilight Princess, November ’05.

But as November came and went, Zelda never showed. Like that hottie who asked you to the prom while their friends snickered nearby, it was too good to be true.

It’s tempting to go all out and cry, “The HORROR! The HORROR!” But realistically it’s more like, “The BOTHER! The Mild IRRITATION! The HURRY UP, WILL YOU?” Lives do not hang in the balance; at a certain point, anyone who takes themselves seriously has to look at how much importance they attach to their hobbies.

Luckily, I am no such person.

I’m here to sing the Fanboy Blues.

The Blues is music born of oppression, suffering and the basic human will to triumph. It’s an odd mix of despair and soul, hope couched in hopelessness; it’s a testament to the spirit that when things look their worst you sing it out, and rise above.

These ain’t those Blues.

These are more the I-want-what-I-want-when-I-want-it Blues. All fans sing them to some degree. It doesn’t matter what the object of obsession is – be it film or music or sport – the song is the same. We want. We’ve found something that strikes a chord; we band together and form communities based on mutual interest. We buy, buy, buy, and once we have the whole history covered, we wait for the next installment with bated breath and open hands.

As Zelda fans, more often than not, our hands stay empty longer than expected.

At best, we get a sweaty little note scribbled on a napkin: Er. We’re sorry, but your game isn’t quite finished yet. Here’s another release date to hang your hopes on. Wish us luck.

Twilight Princess was delayed from November 2005 to “sometime first quarter 2006”, then, ominously, “2006”. We know it was near enough done at E3 for Nintendo to project a holiday release date; moreover, we know from Aonuma and Miyamoto that the delay is not because of problems, but rather an abundance of possibilities they were compelled to pursue to the fullest extent. A good game soon is fine – but even the most ardent fan has to admit a great game later is better. Lesson learned, Wind Waker.

It still sucks. Depending on the fan, it might be enough for good geeks to step on their own glasses and say to heck with it. I’m not a sportif, myself, but I know many a man who threw out a perfectly good baseball cap because they no longer believed in the emblem on its crown. Too many bad seasons, too many broken promises – too much stick and not enough carrot. It’s tiring, and after they’ve shrugged it off they realize it didn’t mean much to begin with.

These people don’t know the Fanboy Blues. The Fanboy Blues are for those who stick it out until the last, who may moan about delay but will sure as shitake be standing in line when Drop Day comes.

If you’ve been a regular reader of this irregular column, you might notice a minor obsession of mine – the culture of fandom. I find it fascinating (to be fair I also dig infomercials and mayonnaise, so, well, there you are), and BtR has allowed me the opportunity to examine its many permutations both as an observer and as a participant.

The past few months have been a little rough for ZU. There’s no news. A nibble here and there. When a game’s been delayed, regardless of the stated reason, and the new release date approaches, resounding silence is discouraging. Could mean they lied, and there are a whole slew of terminal problems getting in the way of release. Could mean they’re saving it all up for a big splash. Could mean they’ve forgotten us, or are taking our allegiance for granted. Whatever. What truly makes a fan is how you weather the silence. If you’re the kind to say screw it and walk away, fine; be gone and good luck. If you’re likely to throw yourself in front of a bus rather than wait another second, I recommend a nice cup of tea and a few calming chapters from The Tao of Pooh. But if you’re like me, content to pine away without knowing the outcome, I suggest you sing the Fanboy Blues.

It’s easy, and catchy, and makes the wait a little warmer.

I ain’t got no game to hold me down,
Like a fool in love I’m set to drown,
Until that day I’ll run this town
Singing Lord, give me a sign.

Yeah, it all works out in time,
And I still be waiting in line.
A little bit country, but you get the idea. Sing loud, proud and long. We’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again. At least we’re here together.

Keep the faith, fanboy.

PS: Bobslob did a bit of wailing, too – here’s his take on the Fanboy Blues, Robert Johnson style.

When’s it comin’ out? Wish I knew.
Uh, when’s it comin’ out? Wish I knew.
Got the low-down Zelda fanboy-blues

Thought, oh Lor’, that game’s pas’ due
I thought, oh Lor’, that game’s long pas’ due
I got me those low-down Zelda fanboy-blues