Daily Debate: Will Another Zelda Game Ever Be as Highly Praised as Ocarina of Time?

Before you all go insane and yell at me in the comments section: no, I’m not saying Ocarina of Time is irrefutably the best Zelda game, or anything like that. It’s not even my favorite. But I think we all know how incredibly well Ocarina of Time is regarded in the wider gaming community: after all, it does have the highest Metascore of any video game ever made, and is widely regarded to be the best game in history by hundreds of gamers and game critics. Its influence on the wider gaming community was incredible, as one of the first fully-fledged 3D action-adventure games that wasn’t a massive failure, and the pioneer of tons of major concepts like enemy lock-on, which have become industry standards.

It’s important to be able to understand those things, and even if you hate Ocarina, just be able to accept that it’s so highly praised, rather than spend your life wishing it was Majora’s Mask or some other game that was getting all the attention. Yeah, I wish people looked at Wind Waker the way they look at Ocarina, but I’m just proud of Ocarina for all it did, and I understand why it gets the top spot for many people.

The question that we have for you guys today is something I’ve been rather interested in discussing for some time: will another Zelda game ever be regarded in this way? In the eyes of the world, will Ocarina of Time be topped? My answer is, quite simply, no.

I don’t think another Zelda game could be seen this way, because Ocarina of Time came at a time when the gaming industry as a whole was going through a massive revolution, after the release of the first 3D consoles. It invented hundreds of concepts and managed to pull together it world in a way that no other game had ever been able to do, and that’s why it was so influencial; if a game exactly like Ocarina were to come out today, I doubt it would be as highly rated or as loved by the gaming community.

Zelda U could theoretically be the greatest game we’ve ever seen, and it could blow away the entire gaming world in every possible way, but it couldn’t possibly go down in gaming history the way Ocarina has, simply because the community doesn’t have as big of a hole to fill.

However, maybe there will be another revolution as big as the 2D-to-3D debacle back in the 90’s. Maybe Nintendo will pioneer virtual reality or whatever with a fantastic Zelda game that changes the world. But that’s more of a question of where the gaming industry is actually going, and what Nintendo can do with it.

Or maybe I’m just entirely wrong, and Ocarina of Time is just famous for being an awesome game, and not for its role in the 3D revolution. Maybe Zelda U could beat it just by being a kickass game.

What do you think? Will another Zelda game ever be as highly praised as Ocarina, or is it impossible? Are you going to leave a very passionate comment about how much you hate Ocarina of Time? Is just famous because of the hole it filled in the industry’s revolution, or are there more reasons? Let us know in the comments!