Three More IGN Zelda Features

Sadly, Zelda Informer and IGN just don’t seem to get along, ever. They’re either accusing us of plagiarism or something else, and we’re always dissecting their Zelda features and saying their Zelda knowledge is poor. Nevertheless, I do enjoy their features, and its great to see such a big player as IGN really getting excited by the big upcoming Zelda releases this year.

We didn’t have much positive to say about their Skyward Sword theories, or their Hyrule field guide. Jump inside for two new features that we overlooked in all of the recent Ocarina of Time news and one older one that we missed completely, along with my thoughts.

Hyrule Times: The Impact of Ocarina of Time (April 29 2011) – This piece looks at the impact of Ocarina of Time on the Zelda series, and how it was the first game to focus on character development, large scale exploration, 3D and cinematic storytelling. As always, I can’t love everything they say because Link quite simply isn’t a “badass” and The Song of Time is not how Link travels through time.

Road to E3 2011: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (May 10 2011) – An extremely brief recap of what we know about Skyward Sword and what IGN expects to see at E3. There is a lot more they could have written about than what they did, which was disappointing. The “what we know” section would be better titled, “what we knew a year ago + the GDC trailer backwards”.

Upgrading The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (November 23 2010) – I don’t know how we missed this feature, because this is actually one of their better Zelda features. It covers 10 things they’d like to see in the Ocarina of Time 3D remake and given all of the recent news, it looks like they’ve gotten a lot of them. Although they didn’t get their dream of orchestrial music, they’ve gotten everything else inlcuding better graphics, an overall tune up, utilization of the touch screen and new features.

IGN also requested for Ocarina controls not like the Spirit Flute and wanted the core gameplay and story kept in tact – which they have been. Although they desired more of Sheik and Skull Kid along with less mystery, they won’t be getting that – unless they come under the “minor” script changes Dan Owsen spoke of. Personally, I am happy with every decision that Nintendo has made with Ocarina of Time 3D so far.

Sorry to say, but while these features have some good points I can’t find them that informative or necessary. In the end, I think IGN’s features are better for you if you’re a casual Zelda player, moreso than a dedicated fan. If you played Zelda passingly, then these features are informative, but if you’ve played them to death like we have around here, IGN won’t be able to tell you anything that you don’t know.