The Legend Of Zelda: Branches Of Entropy

To those of you who remember me, you'll recognise me as having an enormous soft spot for intricate Future Zelda ideas. I love to read them - and I especially love to create them. You'll also know that I have a love for Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask, Zelda II and Phantom Hourglass; the "stranger" games in the Zelda series.

After having a strange dream on the subject of time-travel, precognitions and the end of the world, I set out to twist and warp my dream into an idea that would be feasible as a console Zelda title. One thing that has particularly bugged me about the LOZ series is the frankly abysmal use of Time Travel - in both OOT and OOA, it's basically used as a copy of the Dark World idea, and whilst it is put to far better use in Majora's Mask, it'd be so nice if they many intricacies of Time Travel were used as a gameplay mechanic. To be able to freely traverse a time period and discover the delicate balance of actions and reactions. In fact, you'll probably be able to draw parallels between my idea and Majora's Mask, although that was somewhat subconscious and it had not occurred to me until I had already devised the idea.

My idea is called The Legend Of Zelda: Branches Of Entropy. It would be a Wii game, and a sequel to Twilight Princess.

As far as basic design choices go, the game follows the same sort of graphical style as TP, only much more vibrant. The gameplay, however, takes it's cue from Phantom Hourglass; the camera is mostly locked in a 3/4 bird-eye view, and gameplay is done by pointing and using the B trigger (Aunoma suggested that he would like to take some of the ideas from Phantom Hourglass and take them further). The musical score would be done almost entirely by Nintendo's orchestra, "The Wind Wakers" (most notably having done the music for SMG).

The game starts with TP Link sailing in to an Island named Mimayata, a tropical-yet-asian themed island, at midnight. You have the option of tutorials, for the more casual folk, but if not you can just skip on to the central town of the island.

At an empty town square, you reach a water fountain. Suddenly a cutscene starts. Link finds himself in a crowd of people at the centre of Mimayata Town. Children are crying whilst their mothers cradle them, water from the fountain is rising into the clouds. The stars in the night sky start to disappear, and everybody starts floating. Now in first person view, you watch through Link's eyes as everything turns white and foggy. One by one, townsfolk scream in agonising pain before splitting into their individual polygons, which float away into the white nothingness, as disturbing, out-of-tune instruments play a depressing tune. With nobody left but Link, you can hear him screaming, and the screen then "shatters".

A few seconds later, the screen fades from black back into the scene of Link standing in front of the fountain with nobody about. People emerge from their houses, mortified. A quick discussion with some of the townsfolk confirms what you may have been thinking - everybody in Mimayata had the exact same dream, at the exact same time.

Dazed and confused, Link must spend the day using the Wordbank tool (yes, I love the Wordbank idea) to gather snippets of information from people in Mimayata. The Wordbank tool lets you save important vocabulary from NPC dialogue and question other NPCs about said vocabulary.

At the end of the day, if Link does not gather sufficient information, then at midnight in-game (each day is 60 minutes), Link's vision comes true, the world is torn to polygons, but then the polygons rematerialise to show the scene of Link standing in front of the fountain, at the beginning of said day, in a Groundhog Day-esque twist. After the first repitition of the day, you'll notice that people have vague recollections of what happened during the previous playthrough of the day.

If you do gather sufficient information, you will come to learn that the same day is being repeated over and over by an evil being named only The Manipulator.


The manipulator - an incoherent creature that babbles in a sqeaky tone and moves in an almost musical way. It has infinite grasp of the many intricacies of time, the laws of time and how one thing affects other things.

After learning of The Manipulator, you find out the location of a strange old man. He tells you that the only way to stop The Manipulator is with the eight Strands of Entropy (that's right, MacGuffin fetch quest). Unfortunately, the Strands of Entropy exist in strange circumstances - for example, to obtain one requires you to fulfill criteria that will make obtaining the others impossible, and so forth. To ensure you collect them all, the old man gives you the Entropy Sword and The Box Of Reversal.

The Entropy Sword allows you to freely travel through time on the day. Well, sort of. You can rewind whenever you please (with the - button), reversing every action you have partaken in, and do things differently next time around. However, anything you put in the Box Of Reversal (which can contain three items, as well as the Strands Of Entropy) comes with you, unaffected by the passage of time. There is a little, 2D representation of the timeline of the day across the right hand side of the screen. At any point in time you can put a "Pin" on your current point on the timeline, of which you can have five pins in play at one time. By putting a pin in play, you can reverse time and perform differently, causing a new timeline, whilst still being able to return to the pinned point on the other timeline, allowing you to bring items (through use of the Box Of Reversal) and also information (by way of the Wordbank) from one timeline to another. This timeline business allows you to experiment with your game - by pinning down near the end of the game, you can reverse to whatever point you please, play through it in an alternate timeline and return to where you where. It also allows for interesting puzzles - you could get stuck at a point, to discover that you need to use a recent item in an earlier scenario. Pinning your current time, you can then return to that time, use your item (thus making a new timeline branch) and obtain a key that you need to use in the future. Returning to your pinned point, with the key in your Box Of Reversal, you can now open the door you was stuck at.

Eventually you gain the eight shards, locate The Manipulator and defeat it. After that you are left with a grim note; for that one timeline you have saved from eternal repeating imprisonment, you have created hundreds of potential parallels that have gone unsaved.

I know I haven't gone very indepth with the story, but the point of this thread was to highlight my new Time Travel mechanic idea.

The mechanic has infinite potential; you can see how the inhabitants of Mimayata behave under the differing circumstances of the different potential timelines, you can go back and redo events time after time without affecting the main quest, and there are dozens of puzzles that can only be solved by timeline hopping and bringing items back in time. There are dozens of outcomes, dozens of ways to work your way through the game - all fueled by this system. There would also be a system (inspired by Miyamoto's hint patent) that allows you to, when stuck in a dungeon, call forth WFC to view another persons playthrough of that area. This would be easy to do because everything a person does in the game is recorded anyway to allow you to reverse time, meaning that the data merely needs to be published to WFC.

So what do you think? It's all first draft at the moment, I need serious feedback.

Seems cool. Only things i don't like are the 3/4 view in a Wii game and the idea of The Manipulator

Seriously, Mr. Game & Watch as the new villain?

Originally Posted by TourianTourist

Seriously, Mr. Game & Watch as the new villain?

:/

That was a quick five-minute doodle of him in GIMP. I do not imagine him to seriously be a monochromatic, 2D character.

Originally Posted by GamenerdAdvance

:/

That was a quick five-minute doodle of him in GIMP. I do not imagine him to seriously be a monochromatic, 2D character.

Just draw him with angry eyebrows, and he's fine.

Overall, your idea is nice, a tad complicated though. Would be pain in the ass to do an engine that could run all those parallel timelines.
And I don't like the change in the basic controls, pointing and 3/4 view doesn't just feel like a positive change for a full 3d-game to me.

Originally Posted by Otuz

Just draw him with angry eyebrows, and he's fine.

Overall, you idea is nice, a tad complicated though. Would be pain in the ass to do an engine that could run all those parallel timelines.
And I don't like the change in the basic controls, pointing and 3/4 view doesn't just feel like a positive change for a full 3d-game to me.

I'm not sure how well a Phantom Hourglass viewpoint would work out on Wii, but Aunoma HAS stated interest in taking it further. It would be pretty interesting, if only for one game, to see what changes it could bring.

And yes, the biggest problem I see with the timeline idea is that to function, it would have to save all of your actions from each timeline into RAM to be able to access it again. That's alot of info to hold. It could possibly just take "snapshots" (recording of object variables and co-ordinates at a given time) of the action every five or so seconds, but that would make the online video help idea impossible.

The view idea is bad, I think.

i like the idea and it seems pretty cool except for that Word Bank Tool thingy. i have experienced that in the past and it really bothers me. it just seems like an excuse to come up with dialogue or something

I think it would work a little better if everybody remembered the basic things that happened instead of what exactly happened that day. People tend not to remember dreams too well, you know.

It's a very interesting idea, though. Would be fun to watch. :P