Daily Debate: Should Link’s Awakening Have Been Less Faithful To The Design of the Original Game Boy Game?
Posted on November 10 2019 by Sean Gadus
Link’s Awakening has been a massive comercial success with 3.13 million units sold in less than twelve days. Overall, critics and fans have praised the game for its lush art style and for the smart tweaks made to the controls/inventory.
Despite the overall positive reception, there has been a small but vocal constituency that believes Nintendo may have been too faithful to the 1993 original. These fans and critics assert that the game could have been even better if Nintendo revised design elements of the game. For example, some fans assert that the areas in Link’s Awakening could have been expanded for the Switch. Other fans wonder whether the restrictive nature of the overworld still works in a post Breath of the Wild landscape.
With this in mind, do you think Link’s Awakening should have been less faithful to the original Game Boy game? While the Switch version does have some inventory tweaks and a beautiful new art style, it still plays like a Game Boy game. The game maintains the traditional set up buttons for two items and one for the sword despite there being more buttons on the Switch. In addition, the game retains its largely linear structure. The trading question, a key part of the game, could potentially feel obtuse to new gamers. These are some of the elements that Nintendo had the chance to adjust but chose not to change.
This issue is likely to divide fans depending on their philosophies about remakes and releases. Some fans of the original may want the developer to closely adhere to the original game design, while others may want Nintendo to craft a game that fits better with the design philosophizes of our modern age. While the recent Resident Evil 2 and the upcoming Final Fantasy VII remakes have made an effort to modernize their games with present conventions, Nintendo opted to stick more closely to the original blueprint of Link’s Awakening.
What do you think? Is Link’s Awakening on Nintendo Switch too faithful to the original Game Boy game? Let us know in the comments below!
Sean Gadus is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon. His first Zelda game was Ocarina of Time, and he loves all of the 3D Zelda games from 1998-2011. The final battle of Tears of the Kingdom is one of his favorite final battles in the entire series. He wants to help build a kinder, more compassionate world. You can check out his other written work at The-Artifice.com.
