TP Flight ideas!!! ( long read )

Sitting waiting for 3 loads of laundry, one can ponder the possibilities of what TP has in store for us. We have constantly heard that this game will break new boundries and when various sources questioned the great Aunoma <-- sp? about the possibilites of flight...he simply chuckled.
Here is a list I have compiled about my ideas how they will handle Link in flight, if done at all...wich is almost a certainty.

1) Dragon- Probably wont happen , because its too "never ending story-ish"..but still cool.

2) Hanglider or Glider - This is personally what i would LOVE to see happen. Imagine being on the the peak of Death Mountain,( probably the highest peak in Hyrule), and selecting your glider from assigned shoulder button...getting a running start, and jumping and gliding off into the horizon for miles. If done properly, this could be very dam cool. Think of the possibilities..this is how you could access the much desired Sky Temple. Jumping off a peak..and knowing wich way to travel in the sky to reach the temple..take the wrong route for just a second, and the temple is unreachable, but timed right and following hints from villagers about wich route to take..the temple glistens in the clouds. The Glider could glide literally for miles..and can cover much ground...silently too! You could even soar above territory that you want to inspect first...and then drop down on your unssupecting foes. Long story short....if anyone has seen "The Ewok Adventure"...you know what type of Glider im talking about. Made from Sticks and Cloth....nothing too fancy like the Silk fabric gliders of today...very rustic and old.

3) Airship- Nuff said...think the Airship from FFXI online. You board the airship only by attaining an Airship pass from an NPC...by completing a very important task. The Airship would be all wooden and operated by large helicopter like propellers. ( Not likley this will happen)

4) Hawk or Eagle - We see Link in the village with a pet Hawk very early in the game...could this Hawk , later in the game, revisit Link later in his journey...fully grown to an enormous size! I think so! This is a very likley possibility , and a cool one. Imagine it playing out like this..wich is very emotional and would add very cool character arch and style. Link, the farmboy has a pet Hawk in the early stages of the game. As you round up cattle and spend your first 3 hours of the game in Tarou..you call the Hawk a couple of times to complete certain tasks. As you do this, your building a special relationship with your feathered friend, like 2 brothers. When it comes time to embark on your epic journey, and leave your home village...you must say goodbye to your winged friend and Link sets the Hawk free...and we have a shot of the Hawk flying off into the Hyrule horizon...with Link watching his friend fly away to a uncertain life.
When Link sets off on his journey...Hawk grass, or whatever it may be called, is suprisingly not found....at all! Even if Link travels back to his village...Hawk grass is no more. The impending Twilight has affected things outside of twilight in Hyrule and things are much harder to find. When it comes time for Link to visit temple number 6 ( Lets hope that its the Sky Temple)...Link is stumbled upon how to reach this Castle in the Sky. Link visits a sprawling town looking for anwswers on how to get there...and when Link spots a very old merchant in town....this merchant just so happens to have one single peice of Hawk grass!. Link exits the town...and with a gorgeous sun setting in the distance...Link lets his solitary peice of grass fly off into the wind...but theres no Hawk. Link looks to the clouds with a very sad face...thinking that his feathered friend from the past hasnt survived the impending doom on Hyrule...and is no longer alive. Just as Links head falls and looks to the ground...we hear a huge screeech...as Link lifts his head...a Hawk 10 times the size of your original buddy arrives..and swoops down from the clouds...ready to take you on your journey...and defeat all that is evil in the skies...and conquer the Sky Temple!. Link pets his friend and hangs on tight to the special harness that is on the Hawk. As Link lands on a platform outside of the Sky Temple...and begins to enter..he looks back and tells his Hawk to stay and wait for his emergence from the temple...when all of the sudden, the Hawk is struck by a huge bolt of black lightning, coming from the peak of the temple. The hawk...the friend you once had..has been killed...but a powerful rage coming from inside. This will make for one of the most intense and emotional boss battles ever! Defeating the evil that threatens Hyrule and killed your longtime friend.

Thoughts welcome...these are my ideas, and im sorry i got a little carried away on the last one..it probably should have gone into the story section. But im sure that all of you will understand the magic that is Zelda..and read this with an open mind. Later.

to elaborate on your hanglider idea, imagine if in TP, there was no teleportation spell, and the fastest way to get from place to place was in fact to travel on the air currents, but of course, early on in the game this is difficult because like you have said, the only jump off location would be a plateau on death mountain. So what if, midway through the game, there was a sidequest, which, if completed, would have link collected all the parts to make a feasable propellor engine, after collecting all the parts a goron smith or a hylian engineer would assemble the peices so that link could bring the glider/plane to any area and take off anywhere he wanted.

The only good idea was the hawk or eagle

I liked the hanglider. But if its gonna be a bird then it should be an eagle not a hawk. Or maybe a giant cucco! Or maybe mr. Aunoma means that the cucco gliding is the flying part!

My guess is that the "flying part" is simply just a fancy way of teleportation. you call your giant hawk or whatever, and fly to some position in a few seconds. *Link flies away, white screen, Link lands*
Maybe we can watch as we fly above Hyrule, takes a little longer to reach that destination, but it would be way cooler.

Now getting to your, I must say quite cleaver ideas, I think the last one is the most fitting. And also the most possible to become reality. Hanglider woud be awesome though. But as you have to start from a high point, it would be rather useless. Unless it is a one way transport, getting to that sky temple and back.

In the second trailer, we saw Link riding on a bokoblin boar. Is it possible that he could take enemy flying steeds as well(if there are any, and I'm not talking about those pteranodons)? That would be awesome.

Originally Posted by AzKicker

My guess is that the "flying part" is simply just a fancy way of teleportation. you call your giant hawk or whatever, and fly to some position in a few seconds. *Link flies away, white screen, Link lands*

That was in Majora's Mask, the owl statues did the same thing.

I'd like to see Link escorted by the hawk to the Sky Temple. He would only be escorted to the temple and back again, he wouldn't be able to call upon a flying ability at will as that would effectively shrink an otherwise huge landscape. The same can be said about teleportation. While it's a great time saver, it makes the game feel smaller. In OoT for example, what if you couldn't get from A to B via the ocarina, but were limited to horse or foot. Wouldn't Hyrule feel bigger that way? As much as I would enjoy flight in Zelda, it would have a similar effect on the scale.

Maybe the flying could just be teleporting with the Twilight...using its portals, like the ones that were shown in the demos. Although flying on some kind of creature would be awesome..it probably won't happen, though it would be cool

Originally Posted by -Zora-

Maybe the flying could just be teleporting with the Twilight...using it portals, like the ones that were shown in the demos. Although flying on some kind of creature would be awesome..it probably won't happen, though it would be cool

I also think it will be something like that too.
The Hawk or Eagle idea is good, Me likes =)

Thanx for all your replies.

I think collecting the hanglider parts from a goron smith is a great idea...adding new parts to it along your journey, eventually adding a propeller to it....but as stated in above posts, it would probably make the game feel smaller...and shrink the size of hyrule. I personally would just like one flight experience...just to get to the sky temple and back....once back from the sky temple...the Hawk flies away...and you can no longer fly, and must resort back to Horse travel or Foot travel.

Originally Posted by Zill

the owl statues did the same thing.

now hold on a sec. The owl statues are for saving, am I not right? Teleportation is song of soaring.

Originally Posted by Zill

In OoT for example, what if you couldn't get from A to B via the ocarina, but were limited to horse or foot. Wouldn't Hyrule feel bigger that way?

I'm not sure about "bigger", but I know for sure what it would feel like to die in the water temple, press continue, go all the way to a fairys fountain to get your bottles filled, and then return, all on foot/horse: exhaustingly boring.
Sure, some may like to travel around like that, and thats ok, becuase the teleportation is something you don't HAVE to use at all.
Although I doubt anyone constantly sailed the Great Sea without teleport...

As for flying in general, flying as a "common" transport (like the horse or the canoe) seems like the natural next step. We had horse riding in OoT and MM, sailing in tWW. Land and Sea done, only thing left is the air. Ok, possibly the mole gloves returns in TP and you will be able to dig your way underground, but I really doubt that.

Something like link controlling the sea gulls in Wind Waker might be kind of neat, but a hang glider, airship and dragan arn't very apealling to me at all. The hawk is kind of neat but it makes travel to easy. Im not sure I would like it, but you never know, Ideas can grow on me.

I like the dragon idea, it seems very fitting for the Zelda series, as well as the hawk. There has already been two different gliders invented (maybe more) known as the Deku Leaf and Roc's Cape. I don't know about the airship though, it kind of seems too advanced for the Hyrulians. Though those are all great ideas, keep up the good work!

Originally Posted by AzKicker

now hold on a sec. The owl statues are for saving, am I not right? Teleportation is song of soaring.

That's correct, I've not played it in a while. The owl does appear though, then it white-screens, then Link arrives. That was my point.

Flying does seem like a natural progression from riding/sailing but it would need limiting factors. Like, why climb Death Mountain if you can just fly to the top? Most obstacles take advantage of the fact that Link is land bound, I don't know how they could delay a flying Link.

The Hawk/Eagle seems most possible and I really like the idea actually, beside it dying =(
I"d like it more if you could get an instrument just to summon the Eagle so you can call him whenever you want.

Though, as great as this sounds, like someone else already said in this topic, I think it'll be something like MM where you just transport from one point to another.

I agree with the "alternate teleportation" theory. Zelda, as a game, has always been a zone-based game, meaning that the world is divided into discreet zones with defined boundaries, separated by portals and, usually, small periods of loading. Judging from the E3 demo and the trailers, it appears that TP will be the same.
Sadly, a free-form flight system is not possible in a zone-based game. Often, the zones don't actually fit together in any sort of actual geography. Interiors are often larger than exteriors, and zones would often overlap if they were actually layed out in an ordered fashion. Then there's the problem of art resources. In zone-based games, there's no reason for the art team to create resources for areas between zones. You never go to the area directly between Death Mountain and Hyrule Castle in Oot, therefore it doesn't exist. If a full-featured flight system were to be implemented, the art team would either have to fill out those zones, or create serious boundaries on the player's movement.
Even boundaries, however, might not be enough. Zone based games can usually get away with visual tricks to create a sense of distance and scale. For example, Hyrule Castle as seen from Hyrule Castle Town is merely a single textured polygon placed at the extreme of the player's vision. When the player enters the castle zone itself, THEN the castle is rendered as a full 3D object. If the player were simple able to fly up to the zone, the programmers would either have to implement rather severe fogging, or implement LOD-scaling, which is a large system drain.

I would say that flight should be limited to places where you have gone before. I do like the idea that there would be a "cost" to flying, like how the Deku Leaf cost you magic to use. Maybe you could only fly a short distance without spending any magic, but longer distances would consume magic in proportion to how far you go--and crossing more than half the width of the map would always cost enough magic that you would have to use a green potion in-flight. Having to use updrafts like in WW to gain altitude (although less frequently than in WW) would be neat too. Basically, then, it would be kind of like using the Deku Leaf to fly in WW, but you would be able to fly farther for a given amount of altitude/magic, plus you could not use any weapons except the bow and hookshot while in flight.

Well, that is very true about the different zones....but it has been said by the games creators that there will be NO loading times! Wich means that it could be technically possible to fly into different zones. Also, it has been said that TP will be one huge overworld...and that there will be no "missing space" between these diffrent zones...so thats another point. But if it came down to it..they could always put an invisible wall in the sky preventing you from flying any further into the distance. The only time you would use the Hawk is to fly to the Sky Temple and back..and that would only take place in One zone. So it wouldt be possible for you to fly into different zones, because you wouldnt have to.

I think that nintendo will have an all new game for flight that fits into the "Last Zelda in its current form." description; meaning the rev. contoller will allow flight controls.
P.S. For updated info on the revolution, go to:
http://revolution.qj.net/