Game devs Superbrothers praise retro Zelda, criticize new Zelda

The Superbrothers weighed in recently on what makes a game great. In their article, based off an interview of Jordan Mechner by Eric Viennot, the Superbrothers praised retro Zelda and spoke a little bit about why they think the series has gone downhill. Read their thoughts, after the jump!

In their article, the Superbrothers explained that great games are ones that are less talk, more rock. That is, games that communicate in an audiovisual style (what they feel is the native language of video games), without unnecessary words.

In pointing to an example of a good game, they turned to the original Legend of Zelda, saying that it did an excellent job of pushing the simple, driven story along without needless text or unimportant fluff.

“It’s dangerous to go alone. Here take this.”

Were pretty much all the words that they (and one might venture, Miyamoto himself) felt the game needed. After that, it was pure rock, from the time you left the cave with your sword until Ganon was defeated.

Unfortunately, and maybe I agree a little bit, they feel that more recent entries in the Zelda series haven’t exactly escaped the trap the original game was fortunate enough to not fall prey to-

“Meanwhile, (in) our modern day Hyrule videogames, well, there’s a sadness here isn’t there? The sadness is that the man who pioneered all this rock has allowed committees and middle managers and random stakeholders to choke these videogames with needless, often incoherent, and always disruptive talk.

Sometimes there are spaces where the old magic exists, when you are seeing things, hearing things, spotting patterns, flowing through spaces, experiencing moods and locations. But often our experiences are pierced by disruptive, dissonant elements: overlong and condescending tutorials, over-explained idiotic stories and a million other stupidities.

These kinds of things stir our intellect, forcing us to switch gears and pay attention, but what they have to offer generally isn’t worthy of our attention. To me these kinds of things are repulsive, evidence of a deficient imagination or a lack of videogame literacy on the part of the creator, or simply evidence of a committee. These things break the spell, they’re an invitation to quit, and they exist in 99% of the videogames I’ve played.”

What do you think? Do you agree? Maybe you feel that because games are more complicated you can’t get way with “less talk” anymore?

Check out the article, in it’s entirety, at Boingboing and leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Source:Boingboing