I mean, I hated both of them so as a lifelong Zelda fan I am starving. Skyward Sword remaster and the LA remake helped for sure, but I need more.
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Who's more starved right now? Traditional 2D Zelda or 3D Zelda fans?
- Thread starter AppleKid
- Start date
I mean, I hated both of them so as a lifelong Zelda fan I am starving. Skyward Sword remaster and the LA remake helped for sure, but I need more.
It is kind of a rough case for both parties. It has been really long time since last traditional 3D Zelda, SS even itself has several caveats to that. On the other hand, there is some content in BotW/TotK (even moreso) that I feel like a 3D Zelda fan can enjoy even if they don't like the overall package.
2D Zelda is just as dire, though I'd say there is more hope there for a new iteration. Even the last one of those had the whole non-linearity aspect which turned me off of it as well.
2D Zelda is just as dire, though I'd say there is more hope there for a new iteration. Even the last one of those had the whole non-linearity aspect which turned me off of it as well.
i mean considering how much anyone who's fan of Zelda II has been told to eat shit over the years, I find that interesting.
Let's not act like we didn't spend the prior 20 years perfecting the AlttP formula to very little success either.
We were waaaaaaaaaaay overdue something that wasn't just the old thing forever and now that the new thing is actually popular it really IS best to let the old battered formula to rest.
Seriously how many franchise get to take a stab at the same thing for over 20 years?
There's a reason for that, it's super hard to do.
OoT is literally Alttp in 3D clothing.
I think Tears of the kingdom gave a few drops for traditional 3d zelda fans, even if it was not 100% traditional.
The last original 2D Zelda was 10 years ago
Also there is nothing stopping them of doing a 3D traditional zelda that instead of doing child/adult link or regular/dark world or hyrule/lorule, they do a 3d zelda/2d zelda thing where in the past you play like a traditional 2d zelda
The last original 2D Zelda was 10 years ago
Also there is nothing stopping them of doing a 3D traditional zelda that instead of doing child/adult link or regular/dark world or hyrule/lorule, they do a 3d zelda/2d zelda thing where in the past you play like a traditional 2d zelda
Idk if you've played Tunic, but that game has tons of fun and challenging puzzle dungeons.
This. I agree with the idea that BOTW-TOTK are good games, but not Zelda games. The last 12 hours of TOTK was fucking torture.
You make it sound like it's Skyward Sword.... or WW's triforce hunt.
If botW and totk are not Zelda games then can't really say DS games are Zelda games either.
Heck LBW isn't very zelda either with how non linear it is.
Is there such a thing as a Zelda game at the end of the day?
It matters because it's disingenuous. It's sort of like me saying Forza is bad because I don't like Forza, but the framing matters. I dislike Forza because I dislike racing in general, only limiting my liking to a few cartoony styles (see Mario Kart, etc). As such, I would say Forza is a top quality series in a genre I simply do not prefer, but I am able to appreciate it being a selling point for others.
Since I have grown up with Zelda since its inception, I've been there through the various high and low points, and every phase of its existence. BOTW and TOTK are no less in the soul of Zelda then the rest, even if it's a spin some dislike in contrast to other spins on the formula. Saying something like 'real Zelda' as example, is not a fair wording at all, because you preferring a very oddly specific style of a series does not make you the one to make that decision.
Nintendo broadly iterates its series constantly to keep them alive, these series would not be alive today if they only stayed identical to their origins, see series like Halo which are struggling to live on, and yes, that fanbase was obsessed with 'a single change? Not my Halo'. It's alright to not like a direction and to even say you hate it, but don't try to frame it as anything else other than a personal preference, not some kind of betrayal or something.
This whole thing comes to a head when you run into casual trolls who mutter such things as 'rofl, TOTK is Minecraft not Zelda', which isn't what's happened in this topic, but one could argue it is a much more measured take on that. TOTK and BOTW are real Zelda games just as Wind Waker and OOT are, they are just different and will appeal to different spectrums of the fandom, which is reasonable. Saying you want more of those is fair of course, but hopefully that makes sense. There is an air of arrogance to the 'not real Zelda' folks who have come out of the woodwork with BOTW, yet Skyward Sword is one of the least 'real Zelda' games and is only ignored because one is popular and the other isn't in my mind.
You're right! We're all entitled to feel however. Lol. I'm not trying to argue. My history is ALTTP, OoT (my goat), MM, WW, TP, SS, and then the switch games. So I guess my main definition is the OoT-SS format. My main thing being dungeons. Even going back to them now as an adult, I get lost and confused. The switch games.. Oh here, here, here. Done. 30 minutes tops. Oh wait theres only a handful of them too 😒
But if we're talking the end...
building a fucking mech in Zelda is beyond lame.
Been with Zelda a looooooooooooong time.
I can tell you that if the new game isn't trying something radically different to justify it's existence then it's Twilight Princess.
We even have
I can tell you that playing this (while also not understanding the language because...lol) is the most confusing experience you will have playing a Zelda game.
We even have multiplayer Zelda...twice....even thrice now (albeit the last one looked really lame if you ask me).
It's actually super interesting how if you looked at the Super NES era where most franchises crystalized into what they would end up being (Castlevania/Mario/Zelda/Metroid, etc), it was actually rather disappointing how most of these would end up just refining what they did before when they could have kept being experimental forever (kinda like how FF games went at least visually).
If we have to claim some zelda games are not real and some are real, it means that we'd have to include Wind Waker and keep the Four Swords out.
And the latter is really far more exciting than the former.
I also prefer getting lost in an overworld over a dungeon, the dungeon being a cramped finite space will follow rules meaning that by the time you reach the 3rd one you should have a pretty good idea on what the designer have in mind and how to progress for the remaining ones.
Zelda dungeons are also far too easy after Zelda II so they never prove challenging enough.
Heck Zelda II itself get into a lull midgame and then throw you to the wolf with that last section.
I wanna have another game like Twilight Princess. More linear and story focused with cool dungeons.
Traditional 3D, if only because I think there are some indies that do a decent job of satisfying the traditional 2D Zelda itch.
2D Zelda = top-down view (with the exception of Zelda 2, of course), much like 2D Mario = side-scroller view. It's not about the graphics.
It's really strange. There's a clear distinction and it's not even a pejorative like people are treating it. The older 3D games were more linear and designed around dungeons where you'd get new items in order to progress. That's not even including the emphasis on physics and crafting. It's not the same structure as before, and that's fine too.
So we're still arguing for some paltry, immaginary revenge's sake, against people that probably aren't even here I guess?
Yes, Zelda turned to ALTTP's formula because that was the kind of jrpg structure that was the most popular in Japan at the time, they reiterated it in 3d for years with very mixed results, then switched to BoTW because that kind of open world game is what sells the most nowadays, we can aknowledge that, so what?
We're supposedly in a vastely different gaming scenario now, where there's an audience for everything and traditional kind of stuff is allowed to exist without having to necessarily submit to the old and tired "new=better" marketing dogmas.
Who cares what happened for 20 years, the present is now, and there are enough people that would like to get that kind of stuff again. Why is this a problem.
Who's arguing for some revenge's sake?
What's past is past there's no need to litigate it again.
the older Zelda formula have a ceiling that's about a third of what the new Zelda is doing.
new Zelda is objectively more popular and have far more range and ways to explore over the older one that proved to be far less popular, more limited in what it could do.
There might be an audience for everything but there's only so much resources.
I do not understand why anyone would be interested in the Zelda team redoing the same shit they've been doing for the prior decades when they do not have interest in doing so to begin with and the end result is going to be far less popular than what they're doing right now.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, BotW is more than just a new formula for Zelda.
It's an indictment of the old formula.
While BotW's scope is impressive, there's a lot of what they did there that they could have tried before.
In that regard Skyward Sword and Link Between world let us peak into that alternate possibility (equipment variation and progression really).
There was no reason to limit player's expression and progress to the extent that they did and the games are ultimately far better without the excessive gatekeeping the game did.
And no it's not marketing that new=better in this case.
When new was wind waker, I can tell you that old was certainly better, same with Skyward Sword.
you could mod literally any Zelda games between Zelda 3 and SS to include various elements that BotW have and even go in a far more nonlinear direction and the end result would most likely be better than what we got.
Even just having puzzles that account for multiple solutions would make for a vast improvement.
The games they love still exist and there are tons of them. Folks who want something completely new have only 2 games, and nobody has whatever the next Zelda concept that nobody can even think of yet but many will love when it inevitably comes.
I'd prefer they surprise me with something I don't expect rather than revisit the old well, even though I of course love those games too
I'd prefer they surprise me with something I don't expect rather than revisit the old well, even though I of course love those games too
I did, unfortunately it's going for a completely different style of puzzle gameplay which by the end is veering off into Fez level madness and that ain't my jam.
That said piecing together skills you always had with the instruction booklet pages was top notch.
lol, i completely forgot about that...
"Am I a joke to you?"
Uh, I mean, dang ya'll new-age Ni-no-Kuni-style Belda fans get to eat Baldo too while us True Beldians long for the good ol' days.
Honestly, it's also very likely that, even before any financial or business considerations, Aonuma and the 'series leads' at Nintendo simply... don't want to do any more traditional 3D Zelda games. By Skyward Sword, even Twilight Princess to an extent, you could really see that Nintendo were finding it hard to make things feel 'new' under the incredibly restrictive formula that 'traditional' 3D Zelda represents. They had done things so monumentally well with Ocarina of Time that every game afterwards fell inevitably into its shadow, trying - with differing results - to find a place for themselves. All falling short because, much like when From Software were tasked with following up Dark Souls, you simply can't capture the same magic twice.
Then in comes Breath of the Wild, and you have a new formula that allows for so, so much more variation and creativity. Not because it's inherently better, but because it's simply not even a 'formula.' Where before Zelda was being made under a general blueprint, now it could be made any which way Aonuma and co. wanted, changing things according to their creative whims at any given time whilst still fundamentally being a Zelda game. No worrying about how things were going to fit into the dungeon structure, or how each item has to differentiate itself from both what came before and what came after, or how to design side-quests in a game that must be balanced around easy completion.
As such, it's led to two of the most overall-creative games they've released. TotK, by itself, having more genuinely new gameplay ideas than the entirety of every post-OoT combined (and I'm being serious here). I say 'genuinely' because, seriously, how many of the older 3D Zelda items were just iterations on the same concepts introduced within Ocarina of Time? I don't really care to do so myself, but if you laid it out I would bet that said number is high.
Couple all of that with how very resource and time intensive those older games were, for returns that weren't exactly overwhelming in the first place, and it's no wonder that they just don't want to do them anymore. It'd be like wondering why Nintendo isn't going back to the New Super Mario Bros. style of game, except those games have less of a fanbase so there's less reason to be confused.
It's kinda ironic when people bring up tradional 3D Zelda but still have varying differences what defines traditional.
Open air Zelda is of course distinct from the rest but now there's question about Skyward Sword even though its the most anti BOTW (more linear, less freedom etc) type Zelda there is. If BOTW is untraditional the shouldn't SS be most traditional?
Going back further WW was more or less open world at the time which strayed ways from OOT and MM more linear games. So is WW untraditional right? That leaves OOT, MM TP sharing the same direct formula, the so called traditional Zeldas.
…..but OOT is very clearly built on the framework of ALTTP. I mean if you took ALTTP and plonked a 3D camera in there you get a situation like OG MGS3 going from top down to MGS3 subsistence (and later remasters) being the usual behind the character adventure game camera we're used to. So 3D games are an evolution of the 2D games ideas so maybe there is no such thing as traditional 3D as they stem from 2D games anywhere
……but ALBW had a structure where you could explore almost everywhere and do any dungeon in any order so that flies in the face of the standard set by ALTTP. Therefore not a traditional Zelda right?
……but wait there's still the biggest head spinner: Zelda 1 is a different beast from every Zelda that came after as it was completely unguided and large parts of the world could be explored out of order so it was open world Zelda (was it the first open world 3d game on consoles?) straight out the gate. BOTW is open world and shares many similarities to it so therefore being based on the very first Zelda BOTW and TOTK are actually the most traditional Zeldas and the rest are the imposter untraditional Zeldas.
Phew. Defining tradition is Zelda is more controversial than the series timelines lol.
For what it's worth I personally would call them open world vs non/linear to keep things simple and avoid the clear intention by some to deny some games not being "true Zeldas" based on so called traditions.
As for the thread question eh linear 3d Zelda is likely dead or heavily limited, 2D might evolve in some way to incorporate more open elements like ALBW did.
Open air Zelda is of course distinct from the rest but now there's question about Skyward Sword even though its the most anti BOTW (more linear, less freedom etc) type Zelda there is. If BOTW is untraditional the shouldn't SS be most traditional?
Going back further WW was more or less open world at the time which strayed ways from OOT and MM more linear games. So is WW untraditional right? That leaves OOT, MM TP sharing the same direct formula, the so called traditional Zeldas.
…..but OOT is very clearly built on the framework of ALTTP. I mean if you took ALTTP and plonked a 3D camera in there you get a situation like OG MGS3 going from top down to MGS3 subsistence (and later remasters) being the usual behind the character adventure game camera we're used to. So 3D games are an evolution of the 2D games ideas so maybe there is no such thing as traditional 3D as they stem from 2D games anywhere
……but ALBW had a structure where you could explore almost everywhere and do any dungeon in any order so that flies in the face of the standard set by ALTTP. Therefore not a traditional Zelda right?
……but wait there's still the biggest head spinner: Zelda 1 is a different beast from every Zelda that came after as it was completely unguided and large parts of the world could be explored out of order so it was open world Zelda (was it the first open world 3d game on consoles?) straight out the gate. BOTW is open world and shares many similarities to it so therefore being based on the very first Zelda BOTW and TOTK are actually the most traditional Zeldas and the rest are the imposter untraditional Zeldas.
Phew. Defining tradition is Zelda is more controversial than the series timelines lol.
For what it's worth I personally would call them open world vs non/linear to keep things simple and avoid the clear intention by some to deny some games not being "true Zeldas" based on so called traditions.
As for the thread question eh linear 3d Zelda is likely dead or heavily limited, 2D might evolve in some way to incorporate more open elements like ALBW did.
I feel the need to plug some games on the less trodden paths
It has a kind of old Zelda vibe to it
It's kinda like a lost GBC game, it's on Steam and Switch at least
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6giOJNm9pM
And of course for any Zelda 2 enjoyer there's Elliot Quest.
And it wouldn't be a recommendation post from me without Phoenotopia : Awakening
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3zDZlh8CH0
It has a kind of old Zelda vibe to it
It's kinda like a lost GBC game, it's on Steam and Switch at least
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6giOJNm9pM
And of course for any Zelda 2 enjoyer there's Elliot Quest.
And it wouldn't be a recommendation post from me without Phoenotopia : Awakening
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3zDZlh8CH0
I think you make a good point really, and I also think that people who want to shun the open air design simply lack imagination. The reality is they can make an open air game, and have it go in so many different directions that it would barely seem similar to what we currently have. People treat it like it has to be either or, but the reality is it can become anything, and I find that exciting. I'm incredibly curious what is next for the series, but I don't expect it to be 'like' BOTW, even if it's still open ended, and that's exciting too. I trust them more on the decisions they will make than I would trust a bunch of people who just want it to be exactly like something else that's for sure.
It is a bit bizarre that a genre that has very arguably the best game ever made in it is essentially not made any more. Perhaps that speaks to just how hard it is to make distinctive dungeons with a mix of puzzling and combat.
My friends keep complaining to me that botw/totk took away from 3d Zelda and want a traditional one back and I'm like ok.
Would be nice if they cooked up a small 3d adventure. Same with 2d so my brother can shut up too.
I'd be fine with either, I just crave more zelda
Would be nice if they cooked up a small 3d adventure. Same with 2d so my brother can shut up too.
I'd be fine with either, I just crave more zelda
Decades worth of both. Neither is starving... This isnt a series that had one entry in each and then nothing else good ever came of it... Im glad Nintendo is doing something slightly different with BOTW - helps keep the series from becoming predictable or stale. There's another series where this also rings true...
I mean, that's your opinion and it's ok, but people are entitled to have their own tastes.
We can argue that the old formula was a tad too restrictive and linear, yes, I'd still say that TOTAL LIBERTY and freedom kills a lot of the sense of progression that people liked to feel while playing the older games, having such an huge world is cool but some would rather trade some of that vastness and all that focus on traversal with some actual well made dungeons with an old fashioned linear structure, a lot of the ideas they felt they had to come up to accomodate their gameplay to this new structure feels needlessy overthought and couterproductive like the infamous weapon degradation system, and overall having this non-linear concept as something that makes everything automatically and objectively better (and this is the new marketing lie) is pretty questionable. So, again, this is about people liking the old type better for a bunch of reasonable reasons, whether you think they are or not, and complaining about not getting anything like that anymore, with a bunch of posters coming out of nowhere with a needlessly hostile attitude telling everyone they're not allowed to feel that way for whatever reason, while derailing the topic into this "but what is Real ZeldaTM???" nonsense, wich I think is pretty silly.
Just a reminder that even with the tight constraint they had, they managed to explore grief, the moon, go on trains, hells and a shitload of other creative concepts.
I don't think we can tell what the next games will be like based on what they did before.
Heck the sequel of BotW explore what it's like to have 2 more layers to the world and give a toolbox that's so robust you can go Oppenheimer on the game.
It's bonkers.
i could spend literal months explaining how the weapon degradation is mitigated with various options and how its exclusion would absolutely make the game way worse.
The open nature of new Zelda has a knock on effect that even the most minute dungeon area is far more interesting than the old stuffs.
One of the best Dungeon in traditional Zelda is OoT's water dungeon, it's mechanically complex and require the player to have a deep understanding of the mechanic to conquer.
Yet since it can only have 1 solution and 1 solution only, if the player miss something that should be obvious it becomes this impossible task.
now in a post botW, we could have something as complex as this but with various possible solutions making the place ever better than it was before.
Take just the final dungeon of your usual Zelda game, they may be thematically interesting but they're usually a formality that aren't very interesting to play.
BotW takes that and makes it so hard because you can go at it from a million different ways and before you are ever close to being prepared.
You can prefer the more linear affairs but they're not really what Zelda is about, you can hardly call something that executes like a well oiled plan an adventure.
I mean if you ask you are the ones coming from nowhere arguing that Nintendo should be coaxed against their very vocal wishes to not do this anymore.
And for some reason the more popular critically and commercially vision is wrong because reasons.
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This is a very personal opinion, and I get people will disagree, but I feel like the answer HAS to be 2D Zelda because that entire category and format of Zelda has just been unserved for so long after Link Between Worlds.
Meanwhile there have been multiple 3D Zeldas after Skyward Sword, and I know open air is VERY different than the old dungeon style (which is still quite good btw)
But here's the thing, instead of wishing for a return of the old format 1:1, I personally wish they would double down on open air but incorporate "traditional" dungeons into the giant world. I see no reason why this can't happen and I feel like it would be the best of both worlds. Hell, Elden Ring was successful in this way by merging massive worlds and scale with tightly designed smaller spaces incorporated within the world itself.
I don't know, the whole ordeal seems too narrowly binary, I think a blend would be WAY more exciting to me.
Like I said, just what I think, I know there are others who super disagree. I'm a Paper Mario TTYD fan so I can't scoff too much 😂😂😂
Meanwhile there have been multiple 3D Zeldas after Skyward Sword, and I know open air is VERY different than the old dungeon style (which is still quite good btw)
But here's the thing, instead of wishing for a return of the old format 1:1, I personally wish they would double down on open air but incorporate "traditional" dungeons into the giant world. I see no reason why this can't happen and I feel like it would be the best of both worlds. Hell, Elden Ring was successful in this way by merging massive worlds and scale with tightly designed smaller spaces incorporated within the world itself.
I don't know, the whole ordeal seems too narrowly binary, I think a blend would be WAY more exciting to me.
Like I said, just what I think, I know there are others who super disagree. I'm a Paper Mario TTYD fan so I can't scoff too much 😂😂😂
So, so, so much this. It's some pointless semantic debate *as if* it's not immediately clear what's being referred to. Move past it! No one used it in a negative connotation! Somehow people seem to know exactly which 3D Zelda's don't fall under the umbrella being discussed, yet somehow here we are hemming and hawing and "is this the true soul of zelda thinker.jpg" like no, clearly, people like a certain style, other people like another style, and this topic is about which style has been less on offer recently.
Obviously, if someone likes style A, and someone saying style B is "actually pretty similar" as if we've not discussing some of the most popular games made in the last 7 years, the person who likes style A isn't going to be like "hey I guess you're right it is similar enough I never knew - there never was a split in the series!"
It's not going to change anyone's mind with regards to what is and is not "traditional". We all know what's being debated. Move past semantics and "well actually it's similar ho ho ho". Good lord.
How dare they make a popular and financially successful game, when they should be working on a sequel to a 90s platformer just for me.
I've made peace with the fact that I won't ever get something like Majora's Mask again, by far the best Zelda for me and the new games don't come close to scratching that itch.
Starving for 2D for sure, BUT it needs to be full pixel-based, and not the pseudo 2.5D with weird 3D mixed in that I hate so much.
I get why they created the degradation system and why it was ""necessary"", still I wish they could come up with something better, cause this just hampers' a lot of people joy to discover and use new weapons, introducing an annoying sense of constant anxiety.
Also non linear "dungeons" with disjointed puzzles featuring non-unique solutions are not objectively better in any way, and I don't see why should everyone be obligated to think that.
Anyway I don't want Nintendo to be forced to do anything, we were just arguing about what section of the Zelda fanbase is more "starved".
In the end I hope you're not suggesting that more popular means objectively better. Again, people have their own reason to prefer something else and their reasons are legit even if you don't think so.
2D Zelda fans at least have ZeldaClassic, and some of the games released on there are at least close to the Nintendo quality
