The Legend Of Zelda: Splintered Memory

This game would be called The Legend Of Zelda: Splintered Memory, and it would probably be for the Wii. It's just a random idea I thought up, like a culmination of many of my previous ideas, fused into one great bigass tl;dr post. However the idea I stuck with through creating this idea was that I didn't want there to be one great big dominant gimmick that gets in the way of gameplay. I wanted simplicity ala LOZ, ALTTP and LA.

The game takes on a truly alive, customisable incarnation of a world called Ghenna where all number of variables can be changed, all changes made are permanent, and so on. If you chop down a sign, it will be permanently chopped down. Push a boulder? It will stay in it's new position. Nothing resets - everything can be altered.

The world is customisable. This means you can cut down and plant trees like in Animal Crossing, grow weeds, there's tall grass, all different kinds of trees, you can later on move house, and so on.

The main form of travel in this game would probably be by foot, although I wouldn't mind seeing rivers/canals to travel down in a paddleboat either. There could be a complex system of streams through Hyrule with detailed water physics and wind physics.

As far as technological advancement goes, this game would go far. Spirit Tracks shows a world with trains, fans, mechanical arms and wierd old women with wheels for legs. Splintered Memories would retain this technology, as Link appears to have come from the new Hyrule introduced in Spirit Tracks (but hundreds of years later), but there would be even more technological advancements - the kind seen in Majora's Mask, as well as telephones (as introduced by LA), muskets, and other advancements of the sort.

At the beginning, you are Link, fighting Ganondorf, in a new form that looks similar to his Gerudo form, but different. His head is significantly more like that of pig Ganon, yet still very humanoid. One side of his body glows intense blue, and the other side an intense red, with his armour coloured as such. He has both the Triforce Of Power and the Triforce Of Wisdom glowing on his hand, and his "armour" is almost clownlike in appearance. The two reach stalemate, and the screen fades.

Link wakes up in Ghenna, a world where he has no memories, and for some reason, a symbol of a single eye glows on his chest, glowing right through his tunic. A talking Easter island head (Moai's are the Gossip Stones of this game) informs Link that the only way he can leave Ghenna is by re-retrieving his memories. His memories are found by collecting back some of his old items like his sword, which he lost when he entered Ghenna. The rest of his memories are stored in the 8 Soul Fragments scattered about Ghenna. Fetch quest ensues to collect the Soul Fragments so you can exit Ghenna through the Gate Of The Goddesses, a big golden portal atop the highest mountain of Ghenna.

Ghenna is somewhat like Hyrule, but more colourful and whimsical, and perhaps nonsensical. The geography of it is not much like other Zelda's though - it is 3D, but not empty like most 3D Zelda's, instead offering a jam-packed overworld. The world of Ghenna is a world of illusions. There are some areas in Ghenna where the camera takes on a fixed/tweakable point of view, and the game suddenly plays on optical illusions as a gameplay mechanic, like Echochrome on steroids, or an interactive MC Escher painting, however this mostly just happens in dungeons. I also think it would be interesting to see Ghenna harbour environments not normally seen in standard Zelda's - a jungle perhaps? And a chinese themed town? That could be directly contrasted by a western town on the other side of the country? Why not a beach too? **

You get the Origin Organ later on. The Origin Organ is like the ocarina in that it can play many songs. In appearance, it is somewhat like the Organ Of Evening Calm from Link's Awakening, or a stereotypical mini-organ, and it only has two octaves of keys in view, yet it still make grand noises like the noises you'd hear from a traditional Church Organ. On it you can play many songs, the two main ones being the Melody Of Memories and the Song Of Sorrow. The Melody Of Memories restores the memories of amnesiac npc's whilst the Song Of Sorrow puts to rest those who are near death. These lead to some Majora's Mask and Links Awakening style emotional moments as you restore peoples memories and/or put them out of their misery. You have a scroll in your inventory that lists all the people who's memories you've restored. You can also access from your menu all of the flashback cutscenes that you see when Link picks up an old object or Soul Fragment.

Other items you get include the obvious basics like boomerangs, bombs, and the bow/arrow, but most items otherwise are brand new, with exclusion of the Fire Rod, the Ice Rod, Roc's Cape and the Mole Mitts. For new items, I'd like to see a Lasso (which also serves to swing to other places like a hookshot), a "Minion Jar" (a jar that let's you suck up large amounts of enemies, and then release them to do your bidding at the price of magic), a Power Glove (touching things reactivates them - enemy corpses, broken machinery, etc.), a wooden Musket (shoot me now), an object that allows you to pick up and manipulate items from afar, like a Gravity Gun, and a Water Rod that functions like Mario Sunshine's spray nozzle.

*As for a companion character to Link, I think it would be fitting for it to be a small, green Easter Island head with wings. It would be "assigned" to you as your guide, and perhaps everybody in Ghenna would have a guide of their own.

Each Soul Fragment reveals more of Links previous quest through Hyrule to defeat Ganondorf. This is a brand new Link, so we haven't actually seen him best Ganon before, so the first time you see him do so is through the flashbacks that are induced via collecting Soul Fragments and old objects. Throughout the game however, Ganon's minions are beginning to show up in Ghenna. throughout Ghenna, a normally peaceful land, small pools of slime in red or blue variety (think Mario Sunshine style) have been cropping up, and out of these pools of goop, red and blue monsters of all varieties are spawning.

Throughout the quest to help people and recover your memories, you come across many people. The people of Ghenna are all happy to live together in harmony (although there are various different settlements), despite being of all different races - Hylians, Koroks, Anouki, Rito, and an all-new race of Gerudo-like people called Gelda's, who's body parts slowly turn to stone as they age, as well as having pyromaniacal skill with fire and living in circus-like establishments. For some reason, every person in Ghenna has a glowing symbol of a singular eye on their chest, like the Sheikah symbol. You talk to all sorts of people, and bond with them. There is one particular person you bond with, a black haired catgirl named Laina, who at first has complete amnesia. She is a talented painter and sculpter, which is neccessary for a few parts of the plot, as well as being useful as an equivalent to the fortune teller system (you can simply get her to paint the future, which tells you where to go next). When you recover her memories with the Melody Of Memories, memories come flooding back to her of her parents in Hyrule, who died when she was young. However, you help reunite her with her parents who are actually in Ghenna. There are various other plotlines as well that are somewhat emotional, like a man you find who is massively depressed about his memory loss, but when you restore his memories, his memories drive him to insanity. Other plotlines include some knights of Ghenna who got lost in the Ghennan Mountains for years and never returned to see their children, a band of ghostly beings who stalk you until you bring them their instruments they once used to play, and a bedbound couple who as their last wish would like to see the ocean one last time. Many people in Ghenna also mention a hatred for the pig king Ganondorf, and how he ruined their lives. You even meet Princess Zelda in Ghenna, although she at first does not think she is a Princess at all, and when you restore her memories, she has no idea where her Triforce Of Wisdom has gone.

An interesting thing to note is that many characters look similar to characters from other games in the series, or even ARE the same characters, like how The Minish Cap reused characters such as Malon, the Postman, and Beedle. Beedle returns too, and most if not all of the characters that return come from Adult Timeline games. It is also interesting to note that many landmarks of Ghenna share similarities to those in Hyrule, the Great Sea, and other lands of Zelda.

The game also has a "wordbank" system in which you can pick important words and phrases from NPC dialogue and save them in a dictionary of sorts to refer to later on, as well as being able to ask other NPC's about topics you've saved. What this means is that you could talk to an NPC and they'd tell you about an item like a boomerang. You could then go to other NPC's and ask them about the same item.

After you get the eighth Soul Fragment, you have a final flashback of Link and Ganon in stalemate in Hyrule Field. Link impales Ganondorf and he smashes to pieces, but not before Ganondorf also stabs Link.

Cut back to Ghenna, where Ganondorf's minions are suddenly running rampant, and Ghenna is covered in pools of red and blue goop, from which enemies are spawning (blue enemies are stronger than red enemies, just like in Zelda I). Citizens point you to Three Eye Rock, the spawn point for all of these demons. You go there and there is an underground temple to go through. At the end of it is Ganondorf, who fights you once more out of honour. Since he couldn't take over Hyrule, he intends to rule Ghenna. Three or four forms later, you finally best him, and he proclaims that your time is up in his dying words. However, in his last words, his cowardice shines through, as he cries for mercy not to "die a second time".

As you kill Ganondorf, the Gate Of The Goddesses starts to open. You can finally go up to the Gate and enter into it, leaving Ghenna. The game shows a final scene of Link walking into the gate, and fading away in it's vortex-like magnitude, before the game cuts to shots of people Link helped throughout the game also walking into the gate. The credits roll, and afterwards, there is one last shot of the Hyrule seen in flashbacks, and a gravestone with Links name on it and his face engraved on it.

Oh, in case you weren't bright enough to catch the hints, Ghenna is a form of purgatory in Hyrule, between Hyrule and the next life. This becomes clearer as the game goes on, only really being properly revealed after you've collected the eight Soul Fragments. Many of the inhabitants of Ghenna are either people who have been stuck in this purgatory for a long time (hence Beedle, and other characters from completely different generations), or people who have recently been killed by Ganondorf. As it turns out, prior to the game Ganondorf had a strong grip over Hyrule, killing many, including the princess, and taking her Triforce piece. Link ended up killing him, but in a kamekaze, taking himself down. People in Ghenna can have their memories restored by playing the Melody Of Memories, but this does not include memories of the events leading up to their death.

The game has difficulty settings: Easy, Normal, and Hard. Easy is like PH difficulty, Normal is like OOT difficulty and hard is like Zelda II difficulty. The difficulty lies mainly in distribution of hearts, enemies and damage. There are two additional skill-testing post-game dungeons too.

One of the big changes in this game is the controls. The controls take on a more Phantom Hourglass-esque approach, using mainly the Wiimote-pointer. You use the Wiimote pointer and the A button to move, slash, stab, grab, etc. (just like in Phantom Hourglass), but the camera deviates from the top-down standard we saw in Phantom Hourglass; rather, it is more like Pikmin, with a somewhat top-down view that can be altered and moves by itself. The D-Pad directions can be used to map 4 items. The '-' button brings up the full map, and the '+' button brings up the item menu, with the B button being used to centre camera. The Wiimote is mostly used for pointing and clicking.

Another change to the game which would have more lasting repercussions is the change in presentation. The game tries as hard as possible to mask things like HUD, menus and text boxes to give the game a new feeling. One of the changes is the health meter. The heart meter is normally invisible, but for 5 seconds after Link gets hurt, or if your are below 1/3 of your health, the semi-transparent health meter appears above Link. Link's health is also indicated by his colour - the more health he loses, the less vibrant-looking his palette is, serving as a health indicator even when the Heart Meter isn't there. Heart containers and heart pieces return.

Whilst the game does take certain liberties from PH, in control scheme and layout, it does not overly rely on control-based puzzles. The dungeons themselves follow the same kind of progression structure as PH. Dungeons push the boundaries of what is "normal", being anything from deserted villages, to Lakebed's, to asian-themed temples. The dungeons aren't much longer than PH ones either; there are lots of them, after all. Dungeon bosses are more skill based, rather than being easy tests of pattern memorisation. The bosses are more about raw skill, like the ALTTP ones where you're pretty much getting assraped from every direction. Remember Mothula? I want that kind of manic boss battle back, without attack patterns, with all kinds of crap flying across the screen. It'd also be nice to see overworld bosses, an outdoor dungeon (?), dungeons with a bit more variety than having one item, one miniboss and one real boss, and maybe a decoy dungeon, like the Temple Of Winds in The Minish Cap that didn't actually have the Wind Element at the end.

Graphically the game is very pleasing. It takes a somewhat colourful, cel-shaded style, yet at the same time, the shading is quite heavy, like in Majora's Mask's concept art, with colourful overtones, but heavy shadows. It's basically like MM's graphical style, but with heavier, less-realistic shading. Many graphical design choices hark back to the days of the Zelda of old. For example, all common enemies are either red or blue, with red enemies being weaker and blue ones stronger. The trees even return to their classical, bulbous look from ALTTP. The game relies heavily on symbolism, just as LA and MM do. The game has more Nintendo game references than even LA, with Mario and Kirby enemies galore, things like an Arwing easter egg, and guest appearances from characters like Birdo, Ike and Ice Climbers, although they are somewhat redesigned in Zelda style. Some things that have become staples to Zelda, like bottles and instruments, return, but some things, like Epona, are missing and not even mentioned. As far as HUD goes though, there is little to speak of. The map (which can be drawn on) can be brought up and put away at will with the 1 button, the heart counter is only brought up when you are harmed (although it remains in it's place above Link's head if his health drops to below 1/3 of his health, or 2 hearts), and in fact the only consistent HUD piece is the piece showing which item is mapped to each d-pad direction.

The game thrives on symbolism and imagery. You can tell the properties of something just by looking at it once you've played for long enough. For example, every non-boss enemy in the game is either Red or Blue, red ones being weaker and blue being stronger. Therefore you can tell the strength of an enemy purely by looks. The same goes for other things. You can tell which item Link has equipped to the up-key because he holds an exaggeratedly-sized version of it in his standby pose. You know what key goes where because if you pick up a great big blue skull key, chances are it fits into the blue skull door. As Link loses his health, his clothes turn to tatters and he loses colour vibrancy. The cliches of the HUD and menu are switched up a little too, with the HUD being minimalist and the menu's being intergrated as a book Link pulls out.

The audio in the game takes a step up in many aspects. The game has fully narrated voice-over sections, a first for Zelda, as well as voices for many other characters in important cutscenes (although Link is still the silent guy). Outside of cutscenes, characters mostly speak Animal Crossing-esque gibberish language, with their dialogue being represented by dynamic speech bubbles. Use of speech bubbles means that even when you are not talking to NPCs, you can see what they are saying to each other, without need for the game to pause or anything (as it normally does with NPC interaction).

The music of the game, mostly orchestrated, would take on a slightly different motif to other Zelda games, and would be composed by some people who normally don't get a slice of the Zelda pie; Kazumi Totaka (the man behind Link's Awakening's music), Junichi Masuda, composer of the music for Pokemon games, and Hirokazu Tanaka, the guy who composed for Earthbound, Mario Land, Dr. Mario and even Kid Icarus. Most of the music is brand-new (at least 80% of it), and uses organs, piano's, marimba's and keyboards for a majority of it's core melody, being backed by various other instruments depending on the song. There are few returning tracks, and those that do mostly come from games other than ALTTP and OOT (apart from of course the obvious ones like Zelda's Lullaby), ranging from Zelda II to Link's Awakening to Wind Waker to Phantom Hourglass, giving a varied musical experience. The new music would range from being Earthbound-style happy-go-lucky, to Link's Awakening-esque melodies, to songs with a little bit of an eastern twist, depending on the situation.

As far as customisation goes, you make a custom shield at the beginning of the game. You alter shield shape, and draw a pattern on. It's purely cosmetic and doesn't affect/disrupt gameplay in the slightest. The Mirror shield looks identical to your custom shield, only much shinier. Masks return, with about 8 of them in the game. One is the "Mii Mask", which lets you use a Mii as a mask. Another is the Crayon Mask that allows you to draw the mask. There is a special 9th one that allows you to take a face from a DSi photograph and map it on to a mask. Some other masks include the Bow-Wow mask, the Freak Mask (upside-down head) and the Moai Mask. You can also customise your home, and maybe even your tunic later on (although it will still always be green).

Online is used whilst completely maintaining single-player focus. Aside from areas like the shooting range and racetrack that record scores for leaderboards, you can also save information in dungeons for other people to use. There are points in dungeons called Action Rooms. These are areas where you must get from one side of the room to the other within the time limit (or else you are sent back to the room before it and lose some health), solving puzzles where neccessary. During an Action Room, the game records your actions, and saves them. Upon completing it, the game uploads it to an archive of them. Before an Action Room, there is a special Gossip Stone with a little screen above it, and you can watch other peoples attempts at the upcoming Action Room, to get a good idea of what to do. There are also small areas like this on Hyrule Field, but they are mostly limited to dungeons, with one of the dungeons going as far as being a simple sequence of multiple Action Rooms broken up by corridors. Other online features include the ability to make your own Sword using Spore-like creation tools (and the swords made have different attributes depending on their features), and upload and share swords using an online sword archive. The Map Makers, two travelling men who can be found all across Hyrule, will let you, at a fee of (X amount of) rupees, download someone else's map notes onto your own map. A character like Blanca from Animal Crossing randomly appears in the game, allowing people to draw on their face and send them to random other towns with the face you drew. Since each Wii can have three Shattered Memories save files, you can send letters between them with things like Rupees attached. Many other features like this are included, but they are all relatively minor. For example, you can send letters in bottles across the ocean and they will appear randomly in other people's towns, and you can create your RollGoal (yes, it returns) levels and upload them to an online Rollgoal stage archive for others to play. Another example is the Composition Studio. You can play a song on a Mario Paint-esque music maker, and upload it to the internet, and every day the best 50 or so will be added to the archive.

Aside from making your own swords, shields, and your own RollGoal levels, you can also create your own obstacle course-like dungeony areas to play through, though they are more basic than regular dungeons, more like Zelda I dungeons with simple rooms, block puzzles and so on. You can then share them with friends, or put them online.

There is less of a line between dungeon and overworld. Maybe there could even be some bosses on the overworld? And some dungeons without dungeon items?

One another note, characters have real time schedules like in Majora's Mask There are even more sidequests than in Majora's Mask and Wind Waker. Sidequests are affected by the main quest, and the sidequests affect the main plot. The characters are as interactable like in Animal Crossing, or Majora's Mask or Wind Waker or Links Awakening.

There is a slight amount of westernization in the game. For example, there is a "lasso shot" instead of a hookshot. There are cowboy characters in some places too. However in conflict there are also Asian themes, like kimono girls, and an Asian tower as a dungeon. There could even be the return of wooden trains, albeit as a mere system of shortcut from place to place ala Pokemon HGSS rather than Spirit Tracks where it is a seperate gameplay style.

The system of night and day returns but in real time, but so do seasons, also in real time. The weather of the game is determined either at random or by the weather channel. These affect gameplay alot.

You have the kind of dungeon-to-dungeon freedom presented in LOZ I. However the dungeons are as complex and story driven as in OOT. The overworld is nearly as big as in TP, but it is more jam packed.

*I think it would be great if a Zelda game took advantage of all the software technology Nintendo has developed over the years, too. Pikmins system of being able to control hundreds of characters at once? Why not put segments of the game where you can control lots of people at once, or maybe an object that let's you suck up enemies at the cost of magic, and then release a horde of up to 50 of them later on, now green in colour, to attack on your behalf. The complex systems of water physics they've been developing from Wave Race 64 up until Galaxy? They could put a complex system of canals that has real time waves and wind direction. Galaxy's gravity system? there could be the odd points in dungeons where gravity doesn't conform to it's standards, or a skyworld type area with wacky gravity. Sunshine's goop technology? There was those pools of enemy goop I talked about. Mii's? Incorporate a Mii mask. Nintendo has created so many software solutions and ideas for games so they can push the limits of their hardware, how about putting it all in one game?

But finally, how about bringing the game closer to the atmosphere of the older games, or just old Nintendo, yet still different? I like the atmosphere of ALTTP, of LA, hell, even of LOZ I. Bringing some of that flavour back would be brilliant, especially if they incorporated some seasoning from other older Nintendo titles (hence the Easter Island heads I post in every idea I have - they remind of world 3 of Super Mario Land). A Link To The Past and Link's Awakening, I think, have the best atmosphere of any Zelda games. Plus they could make the game resemble LOZ NES more, palette-wise; make the dirt and the grass a pale beige, and make everything powerfully coloured either red, blue or green.

Any ideas? Hints for improvement? I've repeated myself in this idea alot, and reused lots of my older ideas, but I like this one best.

I don't get why this stuff doesn't get a section of it's own in general Zelda...

It's nice of you to devote your time to coming up with your own ideas and all, but I have to be honest, I didn't read what your idea is but it isn't Future Zelda as it will never happen. It's nothing personal.

Originally Posted by Iroas

I don't get why this stuff doesn't get a section of it's own in general Zelda...

It's nice of you to devote your time to coming up with your own ideas and all, but I have to be honest, I didn't read what your idea is but it isn't Future Zelda as it will never happen. It's nothing personal.

Congratulations! I don't give a crap.

I get that some people don't care for threads like this, but it's not exactly hard work to ignore them. If it's not your cup of tea. Don't enter the thread. Simple as that.

Originally Posted by GamenerdAdvance

Congratulations! I don't give a crap.

I get that some people don't care for threads like this, but it's not exactly hard work to ignore them. If it's not your cup of tea. Don't enter the thread. Simple as that.

You might not give a crap but this is basicly another form of fanfiction in a board discussing future Zelda games, so I don't get why you people post it here, because it's inappropriate.

You got a point, I could've ignored it, but I do care where people post their fanfiction and where people discuss the future of Zelda.

Wow, that was along read. Anyways, critiques.

My only one complaint is that your game perpetuates the young cartoonish style Link. I realize that this is just a personal taste, but I think more American Zelda fans like the more realistic adult versions better than their WW or PH counter parts. I mean, look at how many people hate tingle.

Other than that, you have some really good ideas, like multiplayer aspects and static overworld. I think the story lacks a little creativity, but maybe I'm a bad judge of that.

Originally Posted by Iroas

You might not give a crap but this is basicly another form of fanfiction in a board discussing future Zelda games, so I don't get why you people post it here, because it's inappropriate.

You got a point, I could've ignored it, but I do care where people post their fanfiction and where people discuss the future of Zelda.

cool story bro

If you really want to take it up with a mod, go right ahead, because I too would like to see a section for specific, "fanfic" future Zelda ideas like these. But for now? It's more appropriate here than in fanfics, since it does not really cover the story in too much depth and covers gameplay alot.

Originally Posted by GamenerdAdvance

cool story bro

If you really want to take it up with a mod, go right ahead, because I too would like to see a section for specific, "fanfic" future Zelda ideas like these. But for now? It's more appropriate here than in fanfics, since it does not really cover the story in too much depth and covers gameplay alot.

If that's what it's about then why not make a thread of what gameplay/world you like to to see in the next Zelda, bro? : )

I'll see if I can get this idea through.

One part doesn't make sense. Ganondorf has Triforce of Wisdom.

Wouldn't he be wise enough to stop ruling the land with evil force?

Originally Posted by koipen

One part doesn't make sense. Ganondorf has Triforce of Wisdom.

Wouldn't he be wise enough to stop ruling the land with evil force?

The way I see it, wisdom can still be misused if you're an evil beeyatch. The idea was that Ganondorf had already killed Zelda and taken her Triforce piece.

Originally Posted by GamenerdAdvance

The way I see it, wisdom can still be misused if you're an evil beeyatch. The idea was that Ganondorf had already killed Zelda and taken her Triforce piece.

wat


(I kid, I kid.)

Wow... that's a pretty deep story.

A really good idea for a change, nice to see. I do have a few little niggles with it though.

- Soul fragments, the game pretty much establishes itself as a fetch quest from the beginning. Personally I would disguise it alot more. Have the head tell you where you could find help which sets you on the path to find the first fragment. Don't say you have to get them all, merely make them the end result of investigation

- Control scheme. I don't know if such a thing would work as well on the Wii as it does on the DS. PH works wonderfully but with the Wii, it seems like it would be too loose.

- VA. Zelda kind of thrives of its lack of VA which makes you come up with your own voices that are personal to you. In a game like this, I'd expect this to be even more important with its outlandish art style