Daily Debate: Should the Zelda Series Continue Expanding To Other Genres?

When most fans think of the genre of The Legend of Zelda games, they think: “Adventure”. They expect to crawl though dungeons while solving puzzles and searching for treasure. There should also be deadly foes to face off against and a boss at the end of each dungeon. Of course, the player has to control Link as well; he’s the protagonist! What would a Zelda game be without all of that?

It would be Hyrule Warriors. Oh sure there are plenty of deadly foes, far more than in most main Zelda titles, but there aren’t really any dungeons to explore and many of the other standard elements are missing or substantially changed. As for controlling Link, that happens, but the player spends far more time total controlling a wide cast of other characters ranging from Ganondorf to Agitha. Yet even though Hyrule Warriors is in a completely different genre than most titles in the series, it is a Zelda game that a lot of people really enjoy.

A non-traditional Legend of Zelda game doing well, like Hyrule Warriors has, opens the door for more crossovers and branching out into unexplored territory. It may have been a joke over a year ago, but a Zelda and Assassin’s Creed crossover could actually be conceivable. I, for one, would like to see Link crawling up Ganondorf’s castle and sneaking in through an open window instead of going through all the death traps that the Demon King set up. How about a Zelda RPG? After all, Mario has had like nine of them at this point, so Nintendo certainly has experience with converting their beloved characters into turn-based tacticians. Perhaps Nintendo could even try Sim City: Hyrule where the players manage the daily goings on of the kingdom in between sieges by dark forces. That one might be a terrible idea, but it could work if the right people were involved.

What do you guys think? Should the Zelda series continue trying out other genres or should Hylian Creed remain a joke? Let us know in the comments!