Just a random idea I've been working on for a future Zelda.
It would be called 'The Legend Of Zelda: Surreal Stretch', and it would be for DS.
The game would directly follow up a previous Zelda game, possibly Phantom Hourglass, but I've not put a whole lot of thought into that. It doesn't take place in Hyrule though, so it's definately a sequel game.
The game takes place in a land called Eadon (a reference to EAD, the Zelda dev studio), a land ruled under an idiotic king. This king is not evil, but simply ignorant and unintelligent. When Link first arrives in Eadon, he speaks to the people in Eida Village (the main village/town, slightly bigger than Hyrule Town in MC, and heavily influenced by ancient Chinese culture), and is informed of how residents of the land go missing everyday, victims of the fabled 'Surreal Stretch'. Nobody who has ever aspired to see 'Surreal Stretch' has ever returned to tell their tale. Upon obtaining a Sword and Shield, you're on your way.
Link, on his way to Eadon Castle (upon being told to do so by the villagers) meets up with a red Parrot called Torrip (I know, how original) who claims to have lost his family to The Surreal Stretch, but also tells of how no-one quite knows what the phenomenon actually is.
Torrip joins Link as the new companion (and replacement of Ciela as the Stylus pointer) as they head for the castle.
At the castle, Link has to perform a mandatory stealth session to see the king. He has to sneak around the courtyard, scale the face of the castle, walk around the roof and drop down the back.
Through the window, you catch the king 'sentencing' a citizen to the Surreal Stretch. You then have to follow the guards around the map to an empty field, with an arrangement of trees in the middle that form a sort of lowercase 'n'. They throw the citizen into this arrangement. Link hastily runs in as well.
This arrangement of trees, whilst seemingly innocent, is far more sinister. If you walk around this area it looks like a lowercase 'n', but if you walk into the gap at the bottom of the 'n', you are seemingly walking on forever, almost as if this 'n' is bigger on the inside.
This is The Surreal Stretch. An everlasting vertical stretch of land (with trees blocking on the west and east side, making it a narrow path) that isn't what it seems. It is the stuff of dreams, and in a quite literal sense too. In this land, dreams come true, nothing is what it seems and consistent laws of physics aren't quite the way they should be. The sky takes on a glistening rainbow vortex of colours and whatever you wish for becomes a reality. Link and Torrip, taking full advantage of this, wish to be taken out of the Surreal Stretch. A wand appears in front of them, and Link hastily grabs it. The wand gives him the ability to leave the Stretch at will, but as a consequence means he is exempt from the normal laws of the Stretch; to a normal person, the Stretch is like a lucid dream where anything can happen, but by creating this rod, Link's experiences in the Stretch are more like nightmares, in which he has little/no control over what happens. Everyone who ever enters the Stretch has a dull blue glow in their eyes (instead of black) which signifies their eternal connection to the land.
He reports back to Eida Village and find the village elder, who is surprisingly very well informed of the ways of the Surreal Stretch. Though the stretch seems everlasting to those of little knowledge, four Fable crystals exist in the land of Eadon that one by one grant Link further access to the Stretch.
Thus, normal Zelda questing ensues. Each Fable Crystal is in the possesion of each of the races of Eadon. Link can do these four quests in a somewhat flexible order as long as he each time returns to the Stretch to unlock a further section, traverse it, and discover more about the origin of said land.
The last two Fable Crystal quests involve a knight from the Surreal Stretch, Raadas, who can change and manipulate peoples memories by looking them in the eyes. The player (not Link himself) is the only one who realises what he is up to.
Exploring The Surreal Stretch is normal gameplay is quite... surreal. It uses a camera angle that leans forwards so you get a good view of the colourful sky and objects in the distance. However, objects that appear to be in the distance could in fact be very close by, and things that look solid may not be. People randomly appear and disappear, and even the most normal looking things like a sign might try attacking you. The Surreal Stretch goes on in a loop - if you walk for long enough, you'll appear back where you started. Each Fable crystal adds a new area to this 'loop', each with a hidden dungeon that, at the end of it, gives you a clue about the origin of the Surreal Stretch and a puzzle piece. These dungeons also follow the wierd and wonderful guidelines of the Surreal Stretch.
The story slowly revealed is that an entity named Insene (a play on the word 'insane') lived a life of sorrow and despair and with his dying breath, used his incredible sorcery skills to create a land where wishes come true and people can thrive in whichever way they'd like. There is also a side-story involving eight ancient knights and their experiences in the stretch. They each had a magical scroll that, when written on in the stretch, makes the writing appear on a replica scroll in the real world. They came awfully close to discovering the secret of the stretch before they went insane.
Once you've obtained all four Fable Crystals and in turn, obtained all four of the Puzzle pieces they lead to, a new area of the Stretch's loop is opened up. This section contains only a large stone wall with a square for the puzzle pieces to fit, and some carved writing which says "Here lies the truth of the Surreal Stretch". Upon inserting the four puzzle pieces the stone crumbles and reveals a hole in the ground.
There, after a long dungeon that makes full use of every dungeon item in the game, Link and Torrip find Insene. Insene is not who they thought he'd be. He is infact a being of pure darkness similar in appearance to Gigyas from Earthbound. As it turns out, he is a being who thrives on the mind of those who enter the Surreal Stretch. Everything the player was told is in fact a lie - he didn't create the Stretch to let people live in happiness - the Surreal Stretch supposedly knows no origin, and Insene has always existed inside it to devour the mentality of those who enter; when someone enters the Surreal Stretch, their mind becomes forevermore connected to Insene so he can feed off of their dreams and imagination, until eventually the host has no more to offer the parasitic Insene, so he leaves them, prisoners of their own mind. After an epic boss fight and few different transformations of said boss, Insene is destroyed and the screen goes white.
Link awakens, along with those who were lost in the Surreal Stretch, in the field where the entrance to the stretch was located. Generic Zelda ending story ensues.
The game then drops some hints to leave the player with a very dark cliffhanger - If anything can appear to happen in the Surreal Stretch, did Link really save those people? Did he really take part in an epic quest and destroy Insene? Or was that just a dream, fueled on by the awesome power of the Stretch when he entered it for the first time? Did he really escape it?
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Gameplay-wise, the game is similar to Phantom Hourglass; it runs on the same engine, it keeps the stylus control and whatnot, but involves no boat.
Instead, travel is done by flying carpet - Roc's Carpet, a carpet crafted by the feathers of the legendary Roc bird. The carpet is given to you by the Eida village elder once you escape from the Surreal Stretch for the first time. It cannot be used freely however. For the most part, you travel by foot, but upon finding a Roc Panel, you hop onto your carpet and are given anywhere between five seconds to a minute (varies for each panel) to fly wherever you'd like. The camera angle one the Carpet is the same as normal. Moving the stylus around makes it move (just like with normal Link), tapping Link whilst he on the carpet makes him ascend and when you aren't moving the carpet it slowly descends. The carpet is mainly just used for getting over holes, but there are occasionally some pretty complex puzzles that involve height. The carpet can be used in dungeons, but not in the Surreal Stretch.
Bottles and pieces of heart return, but only three peices are needed to get a new heart.
There are two more significantly smaller gimmicks to the game as well; smoothies and Starsigns.
Smoothies are drinks made by fruit you find on the trees of Eadon. By taking fruits of different types to the smoothie girl in Eida village, one can use different combinations to create smoothies with different effects (such as making you stronger or making rupees easier to find). These are stored in bottles.
Starsigns are a new way of interaction with the NPC's. Every character has one of four starsigns - Eldin, Lanayru, Faron and Ordona, each represented by a different symbol (the four season symbols from
OOS). Different starsigns get along better with other starsigns. For example, Eldin gets along well with Faron and Ordona but not Lanayru. The only way to change a persons starsign is to give them a Spirit Star. Spirit Stars are relatively common and come in the four different starsign variations. They are held in the Star Satchel. Let's say two people are of conflicting starsigns. They don't get along. By giving them Spirit Stars to change their starsigns, you can make them get along, thus somehow opening up new opportunities for the player. Interactions with NPC's are kept in the Adventure Journal so you don't forget what has happened to who.
Old items return as well as about 7 brand new ones. Since the happenings in the Surreal Stretch are apparently not real, the items that are obtained there cannot be used anywhere else. So if you catch a fairy in a bottle there, it disappears upon leaving, but returns when you do. Surreal Stretch items have a dark aura around them in the menu. You can eventually use your dungeon items from the Surreal Stretch in normal gameplay when you obtain the Dream Lens, but at the cost of a magic meter. Some returning items include the Gust Jar, the Cane Of Somaria, Pegasus Boots, Magnetic Gloves and the Spinner. Some new items include the Bloom Glove (forces growth in sprouts, seeds and vines), the Power Rod (lights fuses from afar, reactivates broken technology, etc) and the Water Rod (functions like FLUDD, but
LOZ-style).
The game is about as long as LTTP, but the land is compact like Termina and just as technologically advanced.
The music is composed by Kazumi Totaka who also worked on Link's Awakening, and the game consists of four main themes - the Surreal Stretch theme, the Love/Friendship theme, the depression/past theme and the Eadon theme. They are all works of art that stand up to Totaka's earlier tunes (Ballad Of The Wind Fish included). The overworld theme starts off like a remix of the Eadon theme, but quickly starts showing elements of the games other three themes and the
LOZ main theme. The Eadon theme itself is the theme that is most reocurring throughout the game, much like the main theme in Super Mario World - Towns, caves, forests and even the castle all have music based on the same basic melody.
The game would feature many unique and memorable characters, all of which serve some sort of purpose to the game. For example, Pat, the ghostly postman who lives in the postboxes, and Norton, the face of Eadon Castle. He is a face (that looks almost like a friendly thwomp) who is part of the walls of Eadon Castle, giving friendly advice and fun facts. One important character is Elle (A Black-haired girl with cat ears and tail), a sort of love interest to Link (like Saria). She is stuck in the Surreal Stretch. It is unknown, however, wether or not she is real or dreamed up by the enchanted Surreal Stretch, making Link sometimes question his adventure to uncover and destroy the prison-like land. The four races that hold the Fable Crystals are the Anouki, the Korok, the Rito and a brand-new turtle-like tribe called the Gordo's who reside in the mountains as the long-time evolution of the Gorons.
The game sees a return of day/night and weather effects.
The island of Eadon is arguably wierder than any Zelda lands before, with strange qualities such as big Easter Island heads (Moai?) being scattered around the island (replacing those gossip-stones from
PH), more Mario enemies on the island than in any other Zelda (though that's not to say there aren't any Zelda regulars), and some of the oddest, creepiest (in a Tingle/Mask Salesman kind of way) game characters you'll ever meet.
The island is also rather tropical, not that it matters. That means things like beaches, Jungles, a desert, and so on.
The four races are each located in their respective homeland - the Gordo's in the mountains, the Rito in the desert, the Anouki in the Snowchant fields and the Korok in the jungle. It would seem as if it would be incredibly simple to get to each homeland, but that is not so - for example, to get to the Gordo village, one must embark on a trading quest all over Eadon in an attempt to find a top hat for a Moai, who moves away to reveal an entrance to the swamp. Across the swamp is the mountain, with Gordo village on top. After inevitably doing some sort of favour for the Gordo's, you are given the key to their dungeon which could be anywhere on the map. The Gordo quest comes first, followed by the Rito quest, and then the Anouki and Korok quests can be done in any order. As well as the nine mandatory dungeons, there are four additional dungeons for the hardcore (the kind of people who can handle a game like Zelda II).
So in other words, it is to Phantom Hourglass what Majora's Mask was to Ocarina - darker, more vibrant, and a little less clichéd. The difference is that Surreal Straight is LONGER than its predecessor.
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Areas of interest in Eadon:
Eida Village - Oriental-based central village with a river running through the middle.
Eadon Castle - Y'know, generic castle-y stuff. Near Eida Village.
Surreal Stretch - 'Nuff said.
Animal Village - a village populated by animals. Many AC characters (Totakeke included) make cameos here.
Dusty Docks - Docking station at the beach. Tetra and friends start the game here.
Wavespan Beach - The beach that stretches across the whole of the south and the west of the beach. Various events like fishing tournaments take place here.
Grimly Graveyard - Generic graveyard. The remnants of the ancient Eada's (those who created the Moai) lie here.
Tarlat Swamp - generic swamp. Leads to the mountain range.
Halon Mountain - Enormous mountain stretching across the north of the map. Massively affected by weather conditions.
Gordo Village - Homeland of the Gordo's.
Stone Titan - An outrageously tall stone soldier that wanders around the map. It contains the Gordo dungeon within, complete with giant stone mechanisms at work on the inside.
Lake Eida - A lake. Unlike Lake Hylia, it is quite advanced, with an underwater tunnel system.
Itnaran Desert - Egypt-inspired desert that seems to know no bounds.
Rito Oasis - Homeland of the Rito.
Pyramid Plains - The lost pyramids of the ancient Eida's. Each contain a mini-dungeon. Upon completing these seven 'Mini-dungeons', you fight a boss and obtain a Fable Crystal as normal.
Enchanted Hedgemaze - Think Maze Island from
PH, only bigger and more confusing.
Jungle Underlayer - a confuzling maze of a jungle that is located past the hedgemaze.
Jungle Overlayer - Treetop-based Korok society. Involves Roc's Carpet to efficiently move around.
Skytrunk Temple - A temple held afloat in the sky by the tallest trees in Eadon. Involves lots of outside areas.
Endless Bridge - a long bridge that stretches from one side of Eadon to the other.
Randona Ranch - Generic ranch area.
Snowchant Fields - A large field of Snow that is homeland of the Anouki.
Spooky Sandstructure - a stone archway on the beach. When you walk through it, you appear to be still on the beach, but upon closer inspection, you are on a different beach entirely, with various floors underground (thus serving as the Anouki dungeon).
Fear - The first dungeon in the stretch.
Claustrophobia - The second dungeon in the stretch.
Paranoia - Third dungeon in the stretch.
Misery - Fourth dungeon in the stretch.
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For all that artistic style is worth, it is quite similar to Flagship's art style. The palette is bright yet soft, the trees have bulb-heads (like LTTP, LA,
OOS,
OOA,
TMC) and the characters are very quirky. In the Surreal Stretch, artistic style is significantly more abstract, and the horizon is slightly curved (like in AC:WW). All of the menus (they use the same system as
PH) have a colourful blue colour scheme, and the title logo is blue instead of classic red.
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That is all.
02-25-2008, 10:31 AM
