Twilight Princess Comparisons

[February Eve]

Twilight Princess wasn't the first Zelda game I played, but I hadn't played all of them like other people have. The more Zelda games I play, the more I realize how many "call backs" TP has to other games, though I don't know enough to say if its more or less than usual. Some similarities I like, but I can see why others thought they might be derivative. So which things did you like being included in it, and which ones did you wish were not?

I liked that the Cave of Ordeals was there (its predecessor being - at least - the Savage Labrynth in Wind Waker.) It's a fun challenge in that I usually don't worry about how efficient I am with my health but I have to be there.

I love the way the Temple of Time was revealed, by striking the pedestal with the master sword. I'm unsure about the stairs to the temple looking the same as the stairs in Windwaker (I forget where...Tower of the Gods?) On the one hand, I like stairs of light, but on the other, I just don't know if it was too similar.

I disliked the Deku Toad - he seemed similar to Wart of Majora's Mask. Though you didn't hookshot the fish around him. It may be because I'm not a fan of either battle that I'm making that association, heh.

I liked return of the poe quest, but not of its reward. Can't we get something better than unlimited rupees? They're almost pointless by then. At least TP did have the magic armor that used them up, but I never remembered - or needed - to use that.

...Incidentally, it's still my favorite game. I think it's a habit from writing to continually poke and see what could be tweaked. Still, obviously fans and nonfans both are welcome in this thread!

 

[blubb]

Oh, there are like a million things in TP relating to older games, but I can't think about all of them right now even nearly, too much stuff to remember, so I might update my post here when more things come to my mind. By the way, my opinion on Twilight Proncess is, that while having really great potential, it wasn't used to its full extent (fx very cool dungeon designs but too little elaboration on it - in the end it was too easy, but there's another thread on that so I won't go into further detail here) So let's start a list (I won't list the totally obvious similarities here, like fx return of the Gorons and Zoras or recurring enemies like the Iron Knuckle, but rather the smaller things):

- Arbiter's Grounds: The 4 poe souls were clearly a reference to OoT's forest temple (even the last poe resembled the prurple poe with that "cloning" thing)
- Arbiter's Grounds: The statue in one of the rooms reminded me of the great statue in OoT's spirit temple
- Hyrule Castle: The music is remixed from aLttP's Hyrule Castle + aLttP's Ganon theme
- Master Sword: The music is practically the same as aLttP's Master Sword pull-out music (also used in OoT and WW)
- Lakebad Temple: Looked like a strongly simplified version of OoT's water temple to me (new things were used but IMO it should've had the size of OoT's water temple, that is: 3 floors instead of 2 and 4 directions to go instead of only 2)
- Zelda: Return of Zelda's Lullaby, first introduced in aLttP after rescuing her in Hyrule Castle's dungeon
- Sacred Grove: re-used Lost Woods/Saria's song theme from OoT
- Howling Stones: most of the songs came from previous games. Song of Healing (MM); Prelude of Light, Requiem of Spirits (OoT), a Windwaker song
- Temple of Time: entrance music from OoT
- Poe Quest: I think they made it similar to OoT's Gold Skultulla quest by giving something totally worthless as the final reward (I imagine Shigeru Miyamoto with an evil grin, thinking "Ha, we fooled them TWICE with the same method, har har har" )
- Sword techniques (Hidden Skills): Maybe inspired by the sword upgrades of AoL (up-/downthrust)
- ... (to be continued)

There are also proposed relations to other games, many of them are found in the "Zelda Easter Eggs" thread:
- Fyer has a tattoo of Bullet Bill from SMB
- The music in the overpriced shop is similar to Mario 64's castle hall music
- The Cave of Ordeals is said to be another Mario reference (IIRC something in Paper Mario GC, haven't played it yet)

One idea I've come up with on my own is a relation to Final Fantasy III (the one for the NES/FDS, not the mislabeled FFVI for the SNES!). I played it shortly before TP and here is the comparison:
In FFIII, there is a villain called Zande who first seems to be the main boss but in fact he is controlled by a higher power (Dark Cloud) while in TP we have Zant who is believed to be the main villain - but here too, we learn that he is in fact controlled by a higher power/"god" (Ganon). This makes me wonder if Zant/Zande or similar is maybe an actual japanese word meaning "pawn" or something like that (?)
Further more, you have 4 "light crystals" in FFIII whose power must be restored while in TP you have 4 "light spirits" whose power must be restored. In both cases they are somehow protectors of the light world. The existance of a small "dark world"/"Twilight Realm" in boith games could be another hint.
Finally, in FFIII the aim of the Dark Cloud is to turn "everything to void" by merging light and darkness. Doesn't Ganondorf say something similar in TP too, like "darkness and light shall finally meet"? And they talk about "dark clouds" in TP too. I don't know if all that is pure coincidence or not, I'll replay both FFIII and TP soon and look for more similarities, because on my first playthroughs I didn't pay too much attention to the story.
EDIT: found another resemblance. I think the music of FFIII's Dark World has some similarities to TP's "main them" (which is used in Hyrule Field, Midna's Theme, Gerudo Desert...) the one that fits best is the Hyrule Field main theme, especially the passage from 0:28-0:34:

Now compare that very passage to the following theme (from 0:00-0:12):

 

[February Eve]

Wow, good reference! Thanks for posting all those. I was also wondering which ones people liked or thought were overkill to keep it from just being an "easter egg" thread. For example, I'm one of those people who loves the remixed music from old games, though I know some people want something new. I also liked the way the clawshot was similar enough to the hookshot but was upgraded this time around to a double clawshot. On the other hand, I felt the slingshot was a bit pointless this time around, since you got the boomerang so soon after - it worked better in OoT for me.