No but games with little story are the sort of games found in arcades. Pac man for instance. And TLOZ would be perfectly at home in an arcade as well. You wouldn't release a full game like that these days and charge £40 for it. It would be put in the arcade section.
Breath of the Wild should Zelda U focus on story?
- Thread starter Spirit
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No but games with little story are the sort of games found in arcades. Pac man for instance. And TLOZ would be perfectly at home in an arcade as well. You wouldn't release a full game like that these days and charge £40 for it. It would be put in the arcade section.
Djinn
and Tonic
Honestly if it just had an evolving story that would be a huge step in the right direction.
Typically the NPCs of a Zelda game remain the same no matter what you do unless their reaction is specific to the quest, or have something to do with defeating a dungeon. Normally everyone in the village goes on about their lives as if nothing happened and the dialog never changes through the game. I want things to change as you progress through the game. Not just for a couple important named people but people in villages, and your home village. SNES games accomplished this twenty years ago.
Typically the NPCs of a Zelda game remain the same no matter what you do unless their reaction is specific to the quest, or have something to do with defeating a dungeon. Normally everyone in the village goes on about their lives as if nothing happened and the dialog never changes through the game. I want things to change as you progress through the game. Not just for a couple important named people but people in villages, and your home village. SNES games accomplished this twenty years ago.
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No offense, but did you play the first Zelda game? Do you know what an arcade game is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_game#Arcade_genre
You're right in the sense that it doesn't have to be found in a tall box in an urban pizzeria, but "not having any story" is not one of the defining characteristics that make a game "arcade style".
The first Zelda was a game that required a lot of personal investment. The progression was non-linear and the game wasn't approached with one simple goal in mind; you would often conclude to your own goals in the process of trying to meet the game's goals. In other words, Zelda is not casual enough to be considered an arcade game.
An "arcade game" today would simply be a game that we play on our phones while on the toilet. Are you really comparing The Legend of Zelda to games like Agar.io, Super Hexagon, and Temple Run? Because that's seriously what you're implying when you say that the original Legend of Zelda is an arcade game. A game doesn't need story to have depth.
If Zelda 1 was released today with modernized graphics, better dungeon design, and less obscurity, then it would definitely be worth the $40.
SinkingBadges
The Quiet Man
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- May 30, 2011
Ok, before it sounds like I'm ranting I'd like to know one thing: what is it you have in mind when you say "arcade game"? I think we have a difference in understanding of the term. I'll explain my reaction so you see where I'm coming from:
I undertsood what you were saying up to this point, but I don't get how you can call LOZ (I assume you mean the NES one) a game you'd expect on arcades. You say it's because of a reduced emphasis on story, but that doesn't make much sense. A lot of the better console games (at least in my opinion) also have reduced emphasis on story. Besides, it's nonsense to say LOZ might as well be an arcade game because while you could probably make an argument for the combat being arcade-inspired (based on dominating skill-based systems across short play sessions, which to my knowledge was mostly an arcade tradition until consoles like the NES came around), the general structure of the game was not made to acomodate arcades at all. It was made with the assumption that the player would be able to save and would have to finish the game across several sessions of play. If a game with more unique assets than a player could reasonably be expected to see in one or two sittings was put in an arcade game, it would just be a waste of time and resources for the developers and a short-change for the player. If anything it's more like the big console games that come out today; even if the scale is comparatively smaller to games of the same type these days, the goals it tried to achieve were the same.
I get that I probably come off as heated with the last paragraph, but I'm genuinely curious. Feel free to ignore this post if you think I'm being unreasonable. I mean, if all I managed was to turn you off this conversation then I should probably watch my tone more. My aim is to understand so I can follow your line of thought better, since I don't think I entirely disagree with it.
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What I mean is it has a very simple play style and virtually no story. Rescue the princess from Ganon is your story. Anyone can just pick it up and do a section of it(if they can bear to) because it has only one simple objective. You could insert money every time you die to revive and see how far you could get.
With OOT, MM, TP and WW, where you are in the game depends on what your objective is and it is only clear if you play the story from the beginning to end. You couldn't possibly have it as an arcade game nor pick it up from any particular point.
Lozjam
A Cool, Cool Mountain
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Are we saying that Metroid is an arcade game?
Metroid doesn't tell you a story, it shows you it. You learn the story through gameplay, and it is your story. Especially with the original and in Metroid Prime. You learn by playing, you see the story unfold as your playing. You can pick up the Metroid games at any point, and miss very little. That doesn't mean it is an arcade game. Cutscenes and dialogue doesn't mean a game is bad. Actually, it makes it all the more clever integrating Gameplay and Story into one cohesive whole like in Metroid Prime. It's all about the development of yourself, your character, and the world around you.
If Zelda U can pull that off, then that is the most fantastic thing that can become of the series.
SinkingBadges
The Quiet Man
- Joined
- May 30, 2011
I can understand why you'd make that distinction, but I'm pretty sure you'd be misguided to attribute simplicity to a game being on an arcade. For one, you mention Pacman, where people tend to establish their own win states. I've seen people compete on Pacman for either score, time they managed to last until they lost all lives, and sometimes even both. That's because since the games are short, more ambiguous objectives are possible and not as strongly defined. Sure, there are people who basically just optimized their play until they had an impossible score to improve or lasted longer than most people would care to, but the designers most likely did not intend that, they most likely designed the game so people could see most of it in short sessions, which is why games like Pacman basically get away with re-purposing maze layouts while it would be frowned upon in a console or PC game. That kind of limitation actually encourages more complex win states in order to make the game more attractive if you ask me. Console and PC games usually are the ones that are better off simplifying their objectives or reducing the number of them to not be overwhelming to most people if you ask me. They can always afford to make the objectives longer in even if they are simple.
That is what drives arcade design as far as I know. A developer probably wants players to see most of what they made, so arcade games have to be able to work that way in short play sessions as much as they can. They are made more with short term progression in mind. This doesn't apply to LOZ because a part of the game is the sense of progression, which would be lost if you were to jump into any random part of the game and suddenly have more or less items than the last person who played. If everyone was to start at the beginning, how could most people be expected to muster up the patience to beat the whole game if they have to start all of it (it's longer than arcades games usually are, there's a reason the game has a save feature) every time they die? What would be the satisfaction in jumping into any part of a game that was meant to be experienced as a whole? What if someone was to randomly start in Ganon's dungeon and died because they weren't able to improve with the help of the game's difficulty curve?
I agree. I'd just add that you couldn't do that with LOZ either.
ectoBiologist
Still Fandom Trash
I think a story is important to a game, so if there's going to be one, it had better be good. A game would be better off without a story, than with a bad one. So, yeah, I think a story-driven next gen Zelda game will definitely be worth the purchase.
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- Jan 12, 2016
Yes i care about stories in Zelda games so i hope it's good and there.
Twilight Princess stil has the best story imo... Oh and while Skyward Sword has the worst Zelda gameplay ever imo it still had an epic story (Fi was just bad though especialy the weird dancing...and being a calculator that talks).
The new characters of Zelda games and their stories and the games main stories is why i like the series. sure the gameplay is also very good but i play Zelda for story also.
Take MGS V for example what if a Zelda games story was that bad.... No matter how good the gameplay it would still dissapoint me. (and MGSV's gameplay is epic but im still dissapointed at that game)
Thats also why open world worries me... I hope they do it right there are a few open world games with a good story imo.
Also what if we never had Midna(my fav character in a Zelda game still) Groose' Ghirahim, Vaati, Zant and more ofcourse but the list would be huge if i name al unique npcs.
A game with just Link, Zelda and Ganondorf and only some generic npcs like most open world games would be boring to me.
Twilight Princess stil has the best story imo... Oh and while Skyward Sword has the worst Zelda gameplay ever imo it still had an epic story (Fi was just bad though especialy the weird dancing...and being a calculator that talks).
The new characters of Zelda games and their stories and the games main stories is why i like the series. sure the gameplay is also very good but i play Zelda for story also.
Take MGS V for example what if a Zelda games story was that bad.... No matter how good the gameplay it would still dissapoint me. (and MGSV's gameplay is epic but im still dissapointed at that game)
Thats also why open world worries me... I hope they do it right there are a few open world games with a good story imo.
Also what if we never had Midna(my fav character in a Zelda game still) Groose' Ghirahim, Vaati, Zant and more ofcourse but the list would be huge if i name al unique npcs.
A game with just Link, Zelda and Ganondorf and only some generic npcs like most open world games would be boring to me.