very funny to me to see TP fans pissed about the new game announcement instead of a remake and complaining about the art style as if the TP art style isn't the most boring thing to look at LMAO
ok ignoring the true and correct digs at tp for a sec i feel kind of like im insane whenever the concept of remakes comes up in the zelda fandom because i appear to be the only one who recognizes the clear and obvious rule they've been operating with irt remakes for YEARS now. each game gets at most one HD remake. oot is not getting a switch remaster because it already had one, for the 3ds. twilight princess is not getting a switch remaster because it already had one. on the wii U. wind waker is not getting a switch remaster. it had one. on the wii U. skyward sword HD wasn't the beginning of a giant plan to remaster every mainline game for the switch it was just the standard thing they always do, which is remaster and rerelease the game after we're 1 or 2 generations removed from its original console. it was rereleased because it hadn't already been rereleased. same goes for link's awakening. if you want to play twilight princess in HD you're gonna have to buy a wii U
Rhoam, OoT Rauru, and Magda I understand... but what did the Hero's Shade do??? T_T Aside from being in Twilight Princess and being the tragic end of OoT Link.
sigh. ok yeah let's do this again lmao. i can't stand the way he's written bc i think it does a huge disservice to the story of oot and mm. i think that to take a character whose story is fundamentally about growth and healing from the trauma he's endured, a story which CRUCIALLY ENDS ON A VERY OPTIMISTIC NOTE, and turn him into a gritty, dark, nihilistic mentor is an insane choice and I liken it to destruction of the character. the hero of time was someone who spent his entire adolescence being controlled by adults, being told that his feelings don't matter as long as he can fight when he's told to, being ignored and dismissed and treated as a weapon. the hero's shade as a mentor treats link the same way he was treated. he explains nothing to link. he stresses duty and courage above all else. if you can't perform that duty you're a failure. if you can't fight im going to HIT YOU until you can. "tough love" if you desperately want to call it that ig but it's not the right way to treat a kid whose been thrown into this shit with no experience or explanation and the hero of time of all people KNOWS THAT and the hero of time has DONE THE WORK TO UNLEARN WHAT HE WAS TAUGHT AS A CHILD. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF MAJORA'S MASK. and yet the hero's shade STILL treats link that way. the writers insist on forcing him to continue the cycle of abuse despite his own source material being about him breaking out of it. the hero's shade is not the hero of time he's some dickhead that the tp writers slapped time's name onto for cheap emotional damage. anyways that's why im suffocating him to death in the iron lung sub
okay so feel free to delete this message for asking you about TP crimes. but I'm curious if you have any purely aesthetic thoughts about the Link + Zelda designs, as well as the Zora designs, in TP? like how do you feel about the designs on their own, even apart from your distaste for the general atmosphere + story. again feel free to ignore this for TP crimes and no harm done!
yeah ok. disclaimer for those who don't know. i don't like twilight princess and i think the art direction was almost as bad as the story. do not argue with me about this. let's get into it. link first
from a purely character-design standpoint I don't think this design is bad, but I don't think it's all that special either. it's very evocative of oot link, which I'm SURE was intentional based off everything else in the game. it does a decent job of complicating the outfit to the standards of tp's setting without going too overboard in terms of little details. the long hat looks stupid but i understand what they were going for. my biggest critique of the design itself is the desaturated color scheme, which I understand was present in the game at large but. I don't like it. I honestly do think that taking away the vibrance and colorfulness of loz takes a lot of the fun out of it. these games were originally for the NES. we're working off of 8-color pixel graphics. link's tunic should be eye-searingly green no matter how dark and brooding you want his story to be, because without that brightness and vibrance the games cease to feel like loz imo.
anyway. the real PROBLEM with this design, and with most of the art direction in tp, lies in how it was actually handled in-game. twilight princess was a game for the wii & gamecube, released in 2006. while advancements in graphics were GETTING THERE, the models were still relatively low-poly. The franchise had already seen a lot of success working with low-poly models in oot and ww, specifically because they leaned into the limitations of low-poly graphics and went for a more cartoonish, unrendered art style which made the blocky models seem purposefully stylized instead of limiting. twilight princess, however, did a complete 180 with the art direction and decided to attempt to HIDE the low-poly graphics behind over-rendered textures. this combined with the desaturated color palette of the character designs makes everything look very flat and lifeless.
in every close shot of link throughout this game i was constantly distracted by how awful the textures made the model look. the rendered folds of his tunic being slapped onto a flat surface, the rendering in his hair being an obvious coverup for the fact that it's one mass on the model with no physics, etc etc. the textures seldom rendered perfectly smoothly on the wii either, so the painted rendering would be strangely pixelated or blurry compared to the model's sharp edges. the game's lighting also seems to operate entirely in harsh black gradients, making the color and rendering choices on the model all the more obvious. Again, I understand that these are limitations of the medium the devs were working with, but i think that art direction that takes the medium into account and works WITH it instead of AGAINST it is almost always more successful than attempts to cover your ass after the fact, and i think that twilight princess could have been a more visually pleasing game if the art direction hadn't been so focused on covering the flatness of the models with hyper realistic textures.
onto zelda. again, we have a theme here of taking the oot design and overcomplicating it. i think the color choices are better here than they are with link, but i would have liked a brighter pink on her bodice. I also think that the dress's neckline was... pretty obviously a sexualization attempt. there's a reason men love this zelda. imo if they were going to keep oot zelda's shoulder armor they should also have kept the breastplate-ish piece in the middle and the high neckline from that dress. you cant say ooh look shes a swordfighter see she has armor!! and then leave her fucking jugular exposed. no wonder she got possessed by ganon immediately. other than my general complaints with the over-rendering i don't have much else to say about her tho. shes fine
the zora tho... this is where i start to get pissed off. HOW ARE YOU GONNA DESIGN A SPECIES OF FISH PEOPLE BASED ON TROPICAL FUCKING FISH AND THEN REFUSE TO PUT A SINGLE SATURATED COLOR INTO ANY OF THEIR DESIGNS. the way these designs could all be improved by about a hundred percent if you just TURNED UP THE GODDAMN SATURATION. GIVE ME A REAL RED. IM BEGGING. UGGHHHHHHHHHH. i also think the ugly rendering REALLY shows through on these guys because they don't have a lot of detail on them to cover it all up. someone needs to explain to these designers that you don't shade with black. like. god. the designs truly are not bad in terms of like creature design i dont think but they are so DESPERATELY in need of color that it's fucking distracting. color is not your enemy guys please
So, the discussion about Twilight Princess got me thinking, and I can't help but feel like that game was very much trapped in a "We can't do another Wind Waker, that was too cute, we need something dark and gritty and mature and grown up, like the other seventh gen consoles!"-kind of mindset. And how much that mindset limited what the game could have been.
I mean, just look at it: Low contrast browns and greys and greens everywhere? Check. Agressive Bloom levels that will sear your retinas right off? Check. Large but Empty open areas? Check. Story and Characterdesigns that REALLY try to be more "grown up" and "mature" and "gritty"? They are everywhere. Spectacular bossfights against huge enemies that look awesome but often end up rather straightforward? Yep.
I don't wan't to dunk on TP too hard, it still has lots of good elements in it, heck, I actually enjoy most of those bossfights, BECAUSE they look and feel spectacular! Some of the armor and weapondesign in this game is really good (whenever you can actually see the armor and the sea of blurry, low saturation colors, that is.).
Midna is the best.
But it feels so much like a game out of place, that was made as a knee-jerk reaction instead of truly considering what would and what wouldn't work on the Wii.
yeah. all of this. I think that tp definitely suffers from the devs attempts to make an overtly grown-up and gritty game, not necessarily because gritty, dark, atmospheric games are BAD, but because the zelda franchise is not a franchise targeted solely at adults. these games are very often coming-of-age stories centered around children and young adults. they are bright and colorful and very narrative-driven because they're meant to be enjoyed by anyone who is old enough to pick up the controller. children who can't enjoy the more difficult dungeon and fighting mechanics will still be captivated by the story and characters. some of my favorite zelda-related conversations i've ever had were with my three-year-old student who LOVED the vibrant characters and story of botw. (revali was his favorite.) twilight princess, in its quest to read as more gritty and adult, lost both its visual appeal AND its narrative appeal. what story it did have relied on nostalgia and plot from oot, alienating younger fans who hadn't yet had the chance to play that game. in order to compensate for its lack of narrative direction it padded itself with filler which showed off its willingness to go darker and scarier in terms of subject matter (look! we're going to kill this child if you don't rescue him!) so much so that the pacing and cohesiveness of the game noticeably suffered. so many elements of tp feel as though they were just thrown in because they looked cool and dark and freaky (the hero's shade, the bokoblin bridge fights, the aforementioned child-stealing segment, hell even the fucking wolf form didn't have any real narrative weight or significance!!!) with no thought to how they might actually impact the pacing and theming of the story. what results is a game with great dungeon design and boss fights but... not much else to speak of. we're left with a poorly-told, barely-comprehensible story that seems almost as if it was an afterthought, held together by some good dungeons. and it's fine if you like the dungeons and don't CARE about the story that much, but insisting that the game has a well-written narrative is just. wrong.
I know you're not fond of Twilight Princess, but what would you think if they brought back worldbuilding elements from it (the Twilight world and Midna, mainly) to a newer game? I'm not familiar enough with the series to know a whole lot, but that stuff at least seems really neat to me from my secondhand knowledge, but if Twilight Princess was as bad as you say... I would love to see them revisit it somehow with the BotW/TotK continuity.
i have this. thing about twilight princess. we know this. but genuinely even looking at the lore from an objective standpoint i think trying to pull any of it into other games is a bad decision at best and actively detrimental to the new game in question at worst. there are two main reasons for this:
the first is that mainline, non-sequel zelda games have a general rule about standing alone. in order for the games to remain accessible to players of all ages and backgrounds, every original (non-sequel) zelda title has to be able to function as an introduction to the franchise, meaning any lore required to understand the story must be exposited WITHIN the story of that game. the few lore-points that HAVE been adapted from other games (sacred realm, oot ganondorf, talking sword) are generic enough that they can be explained briefly within the story without taking too much time away from the player's journey. while those of us who ARE versed in the lore might have a deeper understanding of the overarching implications of these elements, NOT understanding the history behind them isn't going to impede your understanding or enjoyment of the game. for example, this is likely the practical reason why fi was never named or appeared in botw beyond her generic sound effect and the glowing of the sword, because even players who don't KNOW fi are able to tell from context that the sword is magical and is speaking. not knowing who fi is doesn't impede your ability to understand how and why the sword is speaking, given the rest of the context of botw's story. the two elements of tp that you mentioned, the twilight realm and midna, are VERY difficult from a writer's standpoint to work into a game without requiring the player to understand the plot of twilight princess. neither element easily fits into a new cycle's story without requiring a ton of expositional explanation which will inevitably take players out of the story, and relying on convoluted lore that new players won't even be familiar with to drive your story just sets you up for failure.
the second reason is that, from a writer's standpoint, neither midna nor the twilight realm were well-written enough in TP to be compelling. lmao. If you're going to adapt world-altering lore like the twilight realm into consistent canon, you need to have a firm grasp on the implications of adapting it. even the writers of TP had no fucking clue what the twilight realm was or where it came from or how it tied into the existing world of hyrule at all. literally the first sentence on the zelda wiki for twilight realm history is "The Twilight Realm's full history is incomplete." adding something like a new dimension to your consistent canon is world-altering. when you do something like that, it HAS to be thought-out and for good reason, or you're just confusing your audience unnecessarily. IF the twilight realm was to be brought back, it would HAVE to be with explicit knowledge of of how it effects the narrative and theming of the story its being written into, something that wasn't even present in the game where it was introduced. the same goes for midna; if you bring her back, she needs a reason to be there. she needs narrative weight and thematic consistency with the entire rest of the game, things that were barely present in her original story. ripping these elements out of their own game and tossing them into another only makes them more likely to feel out-of-place and confusing to players. And to be completely honest, almost anything that writers wanted to accomplish with the twilight realm could be done just as easily utilizing the sacred realm, an element which is already in consistent canon and is much easier to write into a given story than something as mysterious and confusing as the twilight realm. with midna, almost anything that she would accomplish could be accomplished by a game-specific guide character, which is already staple of loz anyway. using a game-specific guide character would also remove any potential confusion for new players who lack the context of midna's past appearances. the only reason you might NEED midna as a character is if you ALSO have the twilight realm and specifically require a twili guide character to explain it, but. for all the reasons stated above. you shouldn't have the twilight realm. lol
Hi, I just saw you TP art direction critic, so I was wondering as someone who doesn't really think about design but realllly likes skyward sword, if you had any thoughts about SS ? Like, my friend loves TP but doesn't want to play SS because of the artstyle :( Is it that bad ? 😭
I honestly think sksw is one of the better examples of 3d art direction in the zelda franchise! I think they clearly learned from the mistakes they made with tp and that's why sksw seems like such a total 180 from its predecessor. sksw is characterized by brightly-colored, cartoonish graphics similarly to wind waker, but it contains just enough rendering and variation to give it a more modern feel. I'm genuinely not sure what your friend might find fault with in sksw, other than just... the fact that it looks nothing like TP? in my opinion sksw's bright, colorful art direction is much more faithful to the origins and general vibe of loz and also does a better job of working with the 3d models and lighting engines than tp ever did, but. well. i digress. the one thing that took me out of sksw a little bit was the rendering of the characters' skin, specifically their lips, which for whatever reason were never actually modeled onto the characters so they always looked weirdly overlined. other than that tho i think sksw generally reads as a faithful 3d adaptation of early 2d pixel graphics, which is a really cool way to call back to the games' origins!
I just started a play through of Twilight Princess and you’re so right about Midna. My least favorite type of characters are ones who try to annoy your character/player on purpose. Like at least Tatl had a reason to be mad at/insult Link, she blamed him for being separated from Tael. But Midna is so smug and annoying for who knows what reason. (Also her imp design makes me so uncomfortable T_T)
But also I completely agree about the Twilight Realm. I feel like I’m just playing Kingdom hearts when I see the Twilight enemies. This game would’ve been so much more interesting if they tried to expand more on the Dark World/Lorule. It’s a little jarring trying to figure out what the Twilight is and constantly being reminded that it isn’t the Dark World. It just feels like it tried to take the concept of the Dark world and make it edgier and branding it as something completely new.
But there’s def things I like about the game too and I’ve seen pretty interesting lore theories from this game. But this game feels like it was trying to cater towards Hot Topic by being outwardly edgy rather than using darker tones and themes in storytelling like in Majora’s or even ALTTP.
the comparison between the dark world and the twilight realm makes me crazy. because alttp came out TWENTY YEARS before twilight princess, and yet it manages to do basically everything twilight princess tried to do, but better and without fucking up the overarching lore. The timeline in which alttp takes place is the timeline where the hero of time falls in battle to ganondorf during oot. the dark world that appears in the game is NOT a brand-new, previously unheard-of dimension a la twilight realm. it is explicitly the sacred realm (established in oot) corrupted by the influence of ganon, who was sealed in there by the seven sages as a last resort after the hero of time fell. already we have a world-switching mechanic which serves narrative purpose without fucking over the integrity of the overarching worldbuilding, unlike twilight princess. aside from that, the dark world ALSO includes a form-switch that link can't control, just like wolf form tp!! the difference is that the bunny form he takes in alttp has 1. narrative significance beyond looking cool and 2. IS EXPLAINED BEYOND WEIRD VAGUE HAND-WAVING. truly the thing that pisses me off the most about tp is that they make such a big deal about the wolf gimmick and then never once think to actually write it into the game. like, it's a thing he can do. why? what does this super obviously significant form-switch mean irt link's character? idk man it looks cool dont think about it. if you ask midna she'll yell at you. And like on a certain level i understand that alttp and tp arent quite comparable since alttp actually came out 7 years BEFORE oot and therefore wasn't REALLY an intentional sequel to it but DESPITE THAT it still manages to be a better sequel than tp. ugh
If you took TP's character designs (ignoring the zora they're beyond redemption imo) and like updated it to modern graphics and maybe did some minor refining on a few details, do you think the improved visuals would affect your overall opinion of the game if you were to play it again.
no <3
well ok. here's the thing. I'm assuming you mean purely improving the character MODELS themselves in terms of like poly count and not doing anything else about the art direction of the game. and i know i went hard on the juxtaposition of low poly models and rendered textures on that post but my problems with the art direction go way beyond that. tp to me felt so absolutely devoid of any color or contrast. everything was the same muddy desaturated ass gray. improving the models might make the actual cutscenes look slightly better but it won't change the fact that the game is virtually unplayable if your vision is bad or you have visual snow or you like to be able to see your character on the screen because everything is in the exact same goddamn spot on the color wheel. graphics are an issue but good art direction should be able to work well even with bad graphics capabilities. the fact that I get hung up on tp's low poly graphics is a testament to the fact that the art direction DOESN'T work and purely improving the models isn't going to fix that.
i can also confidently say that remastered graphics would not affect my opinion on the game whatsoever because art direction, while important to me as an artist and consumer, is NOT my main focus when playing a game. what is most important to me, and the area in which i feel tp is most severely lacking, is story. great graphics do nothing for me if the story i'm playing is unengaging bullshit. tp could be the most beautiful fucking game in the world and it still wouldn't be a good game to me as long as the story went unchanged. writing in games is something i value above all else and tp just fell so horribly short imo so. there's not much that an HD remaster could fix for me lmao
