They made the best commentary about Zelda that I've read (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, April 03, 2019, 09:27 (1849 days ago) @ kidtsunami

If that writer, I should say. His/her head is planted deep up his/her own ass, IMO. Utterly devoid of self reflection or self-ownership. The kind of person who will spend 20-30 hours playing a game and “hating every minute of it” just so they can turn around and trash the game with extra vitriol (like, how about you just stop playing?). Uses writing about video games as an excuse to dump on everything that commits the sin of being both “male” and “white”, as is all too fashionable, all without saying anything of actual depth or substance or worth.

Basically just a self-entitled downer, IMO.

Saving Zelda

I had a pretty emotional response to playing Breath Of The Wild because of it.

If that article were written as a post here on DBO, it would get raked over the coals for the grandiose hyberboli combined with opinions presented as facts. It is very clear to me that the writer’s opinions are shaped as much by nostalgia as by the actual games being discussed. The way he describes The Legend of Zelda is utterly detached from reality. It was one of the better games of its time, when the medium was so limited that hardly anything was possible. And for those of us who were 4-7 years old when it came out, it was captivating. But it is not the holy grail of video games that this writer makes it out to be. Nor is it vastly superior to the subsequent Zelda titles that the writer trashes. He was just older when he played Ocarina of Time, and therefore the game’s mechanistic underpinnings were more detectable for him.

To be frank, most games from that era are vastly inferior to the average game today. There is a niche, nostalgia-driven market based around vintage video games, but if those games really were as good as writers like this make them put to be, then kids today would be playing them instead of Mario Maker, Pokémon, Fortnight, or Minecraft. They were great in their day, but they are far less great TODAY

This isn’t to say that none of his points are valid. There are significant differences between those older Zeldas and the direction that the franchise went over time. It’s the axiomatic position that “original Zelda = good, all other Zelda = bad” that I take issue with. His argument is an emotional one, but he refuses to recognize it as such. Other Zelda games don’t don’t make him feel the way that the original did. And that’s perfectly valid. For me, Ocarina of Time was that game. The level of detail and atmosphere that they achieved in the world was unlike anything I’d experienced at that point. The artistry with which it was all realized was gorgeous. I was absolutely captivated and enthralled. But I’m not going to sit here and ramble on about how every Zelda since then is garbage, because none of them made me feel the same way. It was a wonderful game for its time, and I was just the right age when I played it. For other people, that game might be Super Mario 3, or The Witcher, or Horizon Zero Dawn.

I think there are a lot of great points in this piece about the spirit of the original Zelda, and how Breath of the Wild is in many ways a return to that spirit. Personally, I think it would be a far better piece if he’d left out all the aggrandizement, rose-tinted glasses, and opinions presented as facts.