A book Zelda should take a leaf out of...

None of you guys got Lord of the Rings. One of the major goals was to show the horrifying length of time that happened before it, the crush of years that makes even the great things that happen in it seem a drop in a vast ocean. Tolkien built up his enormous world and everything in it, all those thousands of pages of notes and scraps of poetry, as an excuse to create a language.

Zelda is a video game with a bunch of made up names in it and stuff designed to make thematic dungeons.

Originally Posted by GreenPhazon

Can it be done without having that timer ticking away the time you have left to do everything you want to?

The timer only increased the feel of urgency and saddness.

Originally Posted by GreenPhazon

A book Zelda should take a leaf out of...
Lord of the Rings

What do you think?

Absolutely not. LotR fanboys take enough credit for everything as it is (Zelda included). As we all know, J.R.R. Tolkien single-handedly created the fantasy genre (and the universe too according to fans) and if you create something that's even remotely close to the fantasy genre, then you owe him some serious royalties!

But seriously, do you really want to take out Gorons and Zoras, the most original Zelda characters/races?! That's crazy. If anything, Nintendo should stay away from LotR, unless you want a very clichéd Zelda title.

Yes, I said it - LotR is a cliché. It may not have been when it came out (I wasn't around back then) but it sure is now after its latest revival (Damn you Jackson!).

Originally Posted by CookieConjurer

None of you guys got Lord of the Rings. One of the major goals was to show the horrifying length of time that happened before it, the crush of years that makes even the great things that happen in it seem a drop in a vast ocean. Tolkien built up his enormous world and everything in it, all those thousands of pages of notes and scraps of poetry, as an excuse to create a language.

How does this affect Zelda? Sure, Nintendo could also spend 20 something years to create THE MOST AWESOMEST ZELDA TITLE EVAH, complete with made up languages that nerds could learn, but no one would be willing to wait that long to play it.

Originally Posted by CookieConjurer

Zelda is a video game with a bunch of made up names in it and stuff designed to make thematic dungeons.

Sigh
Sure, Nintendo (a.k.a. EVIL CORPORATION) wants our money and their ambitions may not be as noble as J.R.R. Tolkien's (Did he give away books for free?). But Miyamoto and Aonuma (and hopefully most of the programmers/designers and other Nintendo staff) care about it a lot. If they didn't, we would probably be playing Ocarina of Time 8 by now and they would still be running the same game engine, milking the game for all its worth.

I'm not saying that Zelda is better than LotR, but there is no reason to trash it.

+1 for reading comprehension.

My point was that the Zelda franchise has a different purpose for its world than Tolkien did. And they should treat it like that.

Originally Posted by GreenPhazon

Can it be done without having that timer ticking away the time you have left to do everything you want to?

No actually, it can't. You can't make a world seem alive without an element of randomness, and games without a "reset", ala MM, can't do that. No, nothing the characters in MM did was random, but you could only predict it because you had lived those three days before.

With a, say weeklong, cycle, you don't get that. Take the bomb lady Sakon robs. You can't have her come in just once, or even just once a game month. She'd be missed way too easy. On the other hand, in MM, the bomb lady comes only once, yet she is easy to catch, because you can live the moment over and over again. The world seems more real, and the gameplay works as well, and the timer is what makes that possible. Termina lives and breathes and feels so alive because of the timer. The people in MM don't do the same thing every day because of the timer. It is a thing to be celebrated, not complained about.

[/endrant]