gamesdoneslow

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PlayLog - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #7

Alright, it’s been a while since I put down Twilight Princess, time to share my thoughts about the plot. I’ll lead with a warning: when it comes to narrative, you get me at my most critical. Some will say that it’s not fair to attack a video game, especially a Zelda game, for weak narrative. After all, the story here is window dressing; it’s a paper-thin reason to go pilfer dungeons and collect hook-shots. I would reply by saying that OoT, a game that was similarly terse, had a more profound effect on me. Considering that, I would suggest that even a token narrative can have a huge impact on a game experience. 

What’s the deal with the Zora prince? - Plot threads dangle at the end of this game. There are lot of NPCs that are established, given arcs, and then kind of forgotten about in the last act. I realize that there are probably side-quests that resolve some of this stuff, and maybe I missed them. But I feel like these kinds of games like to wrap up by revisiting all the kooky NPCs you’ve met along the way, and I was sort of expecting that. Instead, the most you see of them are the backs of their heads during the credits. That may be fine for the Yetis, but that Zora prince was left orphaned.  I kept checking in on the brat, had some philosophical conversations with him about finding the will to lead without the guidance of a parent, blah blah. I kept waiting for this thread to resolve into something, but no. After hanging out around his mother’s grave for weeks, he catches a glimpse of her ghost during the credit sequence, the end. That feels kind of lazy, no? 

Foreshadowing nothing - In an earlier post I brought up Link’s creepy dream sequence. I was hoping that it foreshadowed some kind of plot twist - maybe one that questions the black and white nature of morality in the Zelda formula. Or at least something interesting happening between Link and his girl-next-door romantic interest. Instead, things go pretty much according to script. There’s no ambiguity between the good guys and the bad guys, and the day is won when Link uses all his scary magic gear to kill the villains. So I guess the “power corrupts” message was all a reference to the events of the tragic backstory, and had no real implications for anything the current heroes were dealing with. Oh well.

Rumors of her death were greatly exaggerated - Didn’t Zelda die? It was strongly implied that she was dead after the second encounter in Hyrule castle. She Obi-wans into nothing, while Midna shouts in protest.  Then Midna says something to the effect of “she gave everything she had to give.” A little later the game hints that some part of Zelda is living inside of Midna, which, fine, I’ll accept that. It would explain Midna’s complete personality flip at least - she loses her snark at this point and becomes a Zelda-brand-vanillia justice-warrior for the rest of the game. But then when it’s final boss time, we see Zelda strung up in the castle throne room. So... where’d she come from? Where did she go, if she wasn’t physically part of Midna? Does it matter? Well, yes! You can’t write a character out and then forget to write her back in! Especially if you’re suggesting she had previously became one with the force.

The star of the show - I get that Link is a silent protagonist, and it is tradition to give your mute hero a chatty sidekick (although that has always felt like having one’s cake and eating it too, in my opinion). Midna takes this a step further though, and becomes a full-on protagonist in her own right. Some might say, THE full-on protagonist. Let’s look at the evidence. Firstly, she accepts all the quests. This is, of course, typical work for the chatty sidekick. But then she proceeds to swear an oath of vengeance, develop personal ties to both the main villains (and their backstories), collect her own ancient weapon of power... hell by the end of it she seems to have her own romance going with princess Zelda.  I felt personally embarrassed for Link during one late-game cutscene where, after a long dialogue between Midna and the rest of the main cast, she tosses it back to you with a “Oh yeah, and Link will help out too!” “He can cut stuff with that sword when I tell him to. Who’s the legendary hero? Yes YOU are!” Link just smiles blankly and nods, grateful to keep his halitosis a secret for just a while longer.

The writers forbid your love - Deep spoilers for the ending here - Why does Midna destroy the passage between their worlds? There’s a tearful goodbye scene, wherein Zelda reminds everyone that they have a nifty portal, and that using this portal they could all get lunch together sometime. Midna agrees that the portal would allow this, and then she destroys it, with much sadness and regret. Tis truly a tragic fate, when two unlikely friends are driven apart by the cold hands of - wait, why? Why would she do that? It’s well established by the ponderous and recurring backstory that the world’s predicament was the result of ambitious evil men. Evil men from both sides of the portal, by the way. Nothing is gained by destroying the link between the worlds, especially now that both kingdoms have benevolent princesses calling the shots. Actually, I thought that uniting the kingdoms was kind of the reward for all Link’s adventuring. It’s certainly suggested in the backstory, and in the way Zelda talks about providing reparations to the Twili. It felt like the writers wanted a profound and bittersweet ending, but instead of setting it up properly they just dropped one in at the last minute. Personally, it didn’t land.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play through videogames new and old. More to come!

[gamesdoneslow]

PlayLog - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #6

And done. So what I figured would be ~30 hours of game came in at closer to 50 (topping the average complete time by 10 hours, which is where’n I got the name for this here blog). I’ll save my thoughts on the story for the next post, cuz I have a bunch. For now let’s talk about the final hours and some overall feelings.

The game’s greatest strengths - lie in its visuals and its puzzles. I talked about this way back in the first post, but the attention to detail in the world and character design is wonderful. Everything I said then is still true, so I won’t repeat myself too much. I always forget this, but the meat of the 3D Zeldas (at least, in my experience) are the puzzles. The combat is fine, it works, and I’d say the same for the story. The challenge are the puzzles, and overall I was rarely too stuck to get frustrated or too clever to get bored with them.

The greatest weaknesses - There’s a lot of little frustrations I have with the game, but if I boiled it down, many of them have to do with the context controls, actually. I’ll talk in detail about this in the final boss section, but sometimes your entire success or failure depends on whether you can catch the writing on the context button prompt in the 3 frames that it is active on screen. Similarly, it feels like having the Navi/Midna buddy system in place is ideal for providing puzzle hints (a-la codec calls in Metal Gear), but nine out of ten times they have nothing useful to say. And you know what else I’d consider a weakness? The goddamn mounted combat. We’ll get to this in a second.

Clever touches - I like that the goat-catching section at the very beginning of the game is echoed in the Goron mini-games, and then again during the final fight with Beast Ganon. I like that the Beast Ganon fight becomes a beast vs. beast thing. I like that Link’s relationship with animals is part of his defining characteristics this go-around, and that it pops up in interesting ways throughout the game, whether he’s riding them, wrangling them, talking to them or collecting them.

Items and the using thereof - I heard a complaint by a friend of mine that the item interaction in this game isn’t great when compared to other Zelda games. I can see the potential for more interesting applications and interactions of these items, but in general I liked what the game had to offer. Top three for me, in no order, are the Dominion Staff, the Spinner, and the Lamp. Dominion staff would be a clear winner if not for it’s very limited use cases. The Spinner was just dumb fun, I only wish it had more combat applications. The lamp feels very true to the spirit of the franchise, and was one of the few items that had recurring applications from start to finish. Iron boots get honorable mention as well for their many varied use-cases. In terms of worst item, I feel like the slingshot not only doesn’t do much when you have it, but becomes completely obsolete when you get the bow.  It could have hidden applications, but I don’t think I touched it after the third hour of the game.

Biggest boss - I’m conflicted. When I think about the final boss fights conceptually, I really like what they’re doing. Between Zant and Ganon, they recall a majority of the item tricks learned throughout the game, and that’s good. They’re tricky enough to keep things interesting - I didn’t die to either, but if not for a hidden fairy in the very last Ganon bout, I totally would have. These are all good things on paper, AND YET... I found myself gritting my teeth through most of it. The Beast Ganon fight should be great, but it’s one case where Midna has to talk you through the trick to have any shot at figuring it out (see the bad context control argument above). Also, even when you’re doing the right thing, it’s very easy to get stun locked and miss your attack window completely. 

Wild stallions - And you know what? Maybe if horse riding was going to be such a key feature of the game, they could have made it suck slightly less. Legitimately, the horseback sections were terrible for me. Yeah, maybe this is a me problem. But also, I’d like to point out that this particular horse-riding system was introduced in 1998. The gameplay of these sections is about matching speed with mounted enemies, something that is very hard to do when your only control is an awkward turning speed and a “boost” button.  I’ll admit, there’s nothing that gets the heroic juices flowing like seeing Link and Zelda riding tandem on horseback, weapons drawn. Marginally less heroic, however, is slowly crawling back into the saddle for the fifteenth time, only to be side-swiped again by an off-screen Ganon. Over... and over... Someone get the license plate number of that black mustang.  If the mounted combat leading up to this point had done anything to prepare me, then maybe... but no. It’s simple enough to bounce off enemies randomly for most of the game, failing forwards through escort missions and the completely baffling bridge-jousts.

Armchair design moment - Put a throttle on that horse. Some way to slow down without grinding to a halt would make the handling on these sections so much better. Not great, mind you, but I understand that there is a degree of verisimilitude in the controls that you wouldn’t want to give up. Maybe increase the damage on hits received while mounted and decrease the chance of being knocked off - which is something that quickly steps on the neck of the encounter pacing. Whatever, the horse riding is in the past now, where it belongs.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play through videogames new and old. More to come!

[gamesdoneslow]

PlayLog - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #5

So yeah, it’s taking a while to finish this thing.  Last night found me lost in the yard of Hyrule castle, staring down a truly confusing triforce-themed puzzle. But the end is in sight, and I, for one, am ready to put this thing to bed.

An eco-pology - In an earlier post I complained about the game economy, which commits the crime of maxing out your wallet long before it gives you anything to buy. Since then the game economy has leveled out some. There quickly becomes a good number of ammo-based weapons that need re-filling, and a few donation boxes that let you dump your surplus loot towards various side-quests. The end result of one of these quests is Link’s magic armor, which makes you invulnerable at the price of slowly melting away your rupee count. I’m into this, it’s a clever way to keep the currency collecting meaningful in the end game once you’ve bought everything there is to buy. There are also late-game sections that require large sums of money to complete, which I think are intended to drive you towards the mini-dungeons hidden around the world, many of which reward you with big ol’ gemmies. 

Agitha - There’s also a girl who is loaded and will pay you disgustingly well to supplement her bug collection, which makes for a fun ignorable fetch-quest scenario. Seriously though, the way Agatha is written makes me queasy. It’s the kind of revulsion I imagine a girl having for her boyfriend’s body-pillow collection.  I’ll admit, I first came across this character in Tecmo’s “Hyrule Warriors” musou game, and based on that I had assumed she would play a larger role in TP.  I guess I was thinking she’d be a dungeon NPC, along the lines of the strange Yetis that inhabit the accursed Ice Temple. But no. It’s clear to me now that she made it in there on fetish value alone. Whatever she’s doing with those bugs, it’s probably immoral. 

Temple of Time - has been my favorite dungeon so far. It could be that the Dominion Rod is just the best - such a cool item that sadly only gets real good use in this area of the game. I could be wrong, not having the context of playing the early games, but it feels like the enemies in this section are supposed to evoke monsters from earlier Zelda games, in both their function and their visual design. The puzzles were cool and interesting. But it’s probably my favorite because I breezed through, start to finish. Ahhh.

City in the Sky - It’s not that I dislike mechanical design of this temple, but damn. Why’d it have to be Ooccoos. This is the first time I’ve been 100% turned off to a temple’s aesthetics. I guess I was prepping for some kind of ancient, clockwork, bird-peopled contraption. Instead it was more of the freaking nightmare harpies and some kind of UFO/stonework interior design. Points for using the cucco-drifting as a puzzle mechanic, points for double-clawshot, which is a fun evolution of the item. Maybe it should’ve just been a cucco temple, how funny would that have been? In a game where you can talk to animals, I’d love it if the cuccos were actually descended from a race of sky-faring smart-chickens. Maybe they are? Ugh, the Ooccoos’ language sounds like the screams of burning children. Whatever, it’s done.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play through videogames new and old. More to come!

[gamesdoneslow]

PlayLog - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #4

Hey Ganondorf is in this game!

I’ve crossed the threshold, passed my previous attempt, and am now in uncharted waters. The master sword is obtained, the fused shadows are gone (so much for that?) and a new 4-part collectable has reared its ugly head. Let’s talk about realism in videogames. 

Blades will Bleed - this phrase was featured in an E3 trailer for Twilight Princess in 2004, and has since become a bit of a joke in the gaming community, held up alongside “angry kirby” as an example of bad-assifying game properties for western audiences. Blade do NOT bleed in this Zelda game, much to the dismay of many a 12-year-old back in 2006. But I think the message had more to do with winning back a fanbase that was put off by the “Toon-link” design of Wind Waker, a game that history has held in much higher regard than Twilight Princess.  I mention all of this mostly because I beat the Arbiter’s Grounds dungeon last night, and I need to talk about where “Zelda for Adults” works and where it falters.

New poes suck - Arbiter’s Grounds is definitely an attempt at the scary dungeon, complete with a spooky backstory - an abandoned haunted prison with a bit of a mummy’s tomb vibe to it. Some of the creepy stuff works - it’s strange how desensitized I am to skeleton-with-scimitar, but little baby skeletons with scimitars, that freaks me right out. There are some clever touches like the ghosts rats, that only reveal themselves once you switch to doggo-assassin-view and realize that you’re literally covered in them. A cute surprise built around the mechanics, which I appreciate. Now about the Poes - this a good example of where I think TP’s “mature” aesthetic hamstrings itself some. They are creepy, in a ghost-of-christmas-future sort of way. Visiually though, they are a far cry from the glowing misty balls of doom I remember from Oot. The old poe’s  visual design may not have been scary, but it was iconic and cool, and added to the magical setting of the game. Much like the ghost rats, the tension came from needing to use mechanics to defeat them.

dun-Dun-DUN - dunnnn? - Now seems like a good time to talk about where I first fell off Twilight Princess back in 2006. The quest starts with Link trapped as a wolf; he needs the master sword to break his curse. “The master sword!” I thought, full of boyish enthusiasm. “This is where things get REAL! Blades will BLEEEEEEEEED!” - or something along those lines.  Remember, my previous experience with LoZ was Ocarina of time. In Ocarina, the master sword was key to the whole story. Three dungeons worth of web-burning, bomb-throwing, fish-hauling action had taken place JUST to get through the door, and once obtained it changed the entire game world into a Back to the Future 2 nightmare. By contrast, TP’s master sword is hanging out in the woods, guarded by skull kid and a block puzzle. Pulling it from the stone gave me the ability to use my gear again, and that’s about it. Midna whispers “The sword chose you!” or something, and I said “I wonder if the swords bleed in Okami.” Looking back on it now, I can appreciate that TP is not a beat-for-beat OoT remake. I’ve already remarked that this game’s story is a little bit subversive towards the LoZ formula, and I think that is ultimately to its credit. At the same time, it’s worth noting that OoT’s success had as much to do with its narrative strengths as its gameplay innovations, and that’s one area where I think TP is having a hard time measuring up. So far, anyway.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play new and old video games. More to come!

[gamesdoneslow]

PlayLog - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #3

Today let’s talk about weirdness!

I’ve only played a few Legend of Zelda games, and have only finished one to date. Besides Twilight Princess it’s been Ocarina of Time and the divisive Majora’s Mask - a game that seems to mark a high point in the series’ unbridled weirdness. By contrast, OoT hews much closer to the narrative roots of “hero saves princess with magic weapons” - a narrative structure that purposefully evokes myths, fairy tales and, well, legends of the past. Twilight princess seems to try and straddle these two styles, presenting itself as traditionally Zelda on the surface and bursting with bizzarritude underneath.

Ooccoo gives me nightmares - In the other games mentioned, the Ocarina was occasionally used as a tool for quick navigation in and out of dungeons. Twilight Princess has no magical instruments, and its solution for this mechanic is to create a being of pure horror that Link can carry around on his belt like a sack of bombs.  Ooccoo defies description, but if I had to try I might go with “David-Lynchian Chicken-Fairy.” Huh, you know I just realized there aren’t any fairies in this game. Perhaps Ooccoo and her disembodied, flying-head offspring ate them all.  The surrealness of running into Ooccoo is only compounded by her overwhelming friendliness. I can only imagine the forced smile on Link’s face as he trades pleasantries with her, his legs leaden and sluggish, his heart frozen in the icy grip of terror. She even writes you a nice letter after every dungeon you visit. SHE HAS NO HANDS, AND YET THE LETTERS COME. 

These stories are creepy - The three magic fairies-of-color made the lands of Hyrule and populated them with fluffy critters.  They made the Triforce of Power, because they’re so great, and then evil men came and tried to use it for badness. This is an abridged rendition of the LoZ lore as I understand it from OoT. It seems to be largely intact in this game as well, although this time the story was a little... wiggy. The third (fourth?) spirit of light returns you to your human form, and then says he has some backstory to fill you in on, but warns you that you may not like it. In this version of the legend, the “evil men” seem to be represented by Link himself, or shadowy versions of him, with creepy pupil-less eyes. Links gf Ilia is there too, but at one point she pulls a knife on link, and also loses her pupils somewhere.  Then the spirit cautions link that those seeking the power to change things will often become corrupted by that power; this warning set to a creepy scene of Ilias raining from the sky.

I kind of dig the implications - Again, sticking close to the fairy tale theme has advantages. The narrative in LoZ games is almost elemental - few people are put off by the child-like fantasy of them, and there’s something comforting about knowing what’s going to happen based on the trappings of the tale. When link pulls a sword from a stone, or talks to his fairy sidekick, it triggers your brain to say “oh I’ve heard this one before. Now’s the part where I go smite evil.” What these narratives lack is intrigue. It’s hard to build suspense when the audience knows the punchline. I said all of that to say this: I really like this creepy cutscene. It implies some darker themes masquerading as the elf-boy adventures we know and love. The bad guys look like you, decked out in “hero” garb. The threat comes from the doe-eyed girlie you’re supposed to be saving, and the warning that “power corrupts” is directly at odds with a game about collecting powerful weapons. This resonates well with Midna’s taunting attitude towards all things traditionally heroic, and the generally discordant mood of the twilight zones.  Whether or not these ideas pay off, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, the intrigue is there.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play new and old video games. More to come!

[gamesdoneslow]

PlayLog - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #2

The epic journey continues.  Just finished with the second temple - goron mines - and some of the cracks are beginning to show.

Frustrations with the controls - Given link’s native impulse to lazily chuck himself off of any ledge he runs towards, I’ve found i need to be much more careful around the analogue stick. Mechanically speaking, this means navigating the game’s environments is an important part of play, “watching where you step” as it goes. However, since modern design has largely come to the conclusion that moving your character around should be almost reflexive, it’s taking my old brain some time to adjust. This problem is exacerbated when the floor is made of lava. Suicide by ledge hopping counter: 12.

Frustrations with rupees - Whenever I’m at my resource cap in an adventure game, I wonder what went wrong. Since so much of the game loop involves exploration, and your reward in many cases is money, when you have all the money and nothing to spend it on, that’s a problem. It’s a problem that instantly de-values the money itself and by extension de-values exploration - and that’s a big deal in LoZ. I spent most of the last 5 hours of the game with a full wallet and no gear to buy. If my wooden shield hadn’t been burned up <brag> and it took a while for that to happen </brag> I would still be sitting on a full purse. With the kakariko town shops open it looks like things are improving on that front, at least.

Frustrations with beast mode - This is something I remember from my first play through waaaay back in the days before 16:9. The wolf sections are tedious. The first one was an interesting change of pace, the second was a slog. I’m dreading #3. LoZ survives on the strength of its puzzles, which are at their best when asking you to apply your ever-growing kit in new and interesting ways. Wolf mode strips all that away, giving you two basic mechanics and asking you to use them over and over in what is (almost literally) an easter egg hunt. I know that I will find the next twilight bug by digging and using wolf sense, not necessarily in that order, and I’ll do it 12 times before I get my bombs back. What makes these sections worse is the knowledge that there will be nothing new - no new abilities, no real story progression - it almost feels like punishment. I have sworn off talking to the spirit NPCs. It’s mentioned multiple times that they may have important things to say, but it’s only ever been some derivation of “ah i’m scared, what’s going on?” And in the rare case they have something useful to say, it’s delivered in a cutscene anyway. If I had fangs, I would use them to bite.

The boss fights are good at least - Personally I like the bossfight-as-puzzle thing. Despite some clunky control stuff getting in the way, the actual solutions to the goron mines fights are clever and satisfying, and took me just long enough to figure out and then execute. Looking forward to the next.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play new and old video games. More to come!

[gamesdoneslow]

PlayLog (Plog?) - LoZ: Twighlight Princess (2006) #1

Booted up the ol’ gamecube and popped in one of the many Zelda titles I’ve started but never finished. It’s been at least a decade since I last spun this one up, my memories of the first half of the game are foggy at best. At ~5 hours in, here’s my initial takeaways...

It’s a pretty one - The game looks good. I mean, despite the SD haze and 4:3 ratio, a lot of artistry went into it and it shows. The color pallets in particular are eerily beautiful, the twilight zone is dominated by hazy burned oranges and pale greens, and the overall effect is otherworldly and incredibly cool. 

There’s depth in the details - Everything has subtle textures and patterns on it - clothes, buildings, items - and these give a sense of culture and a lived-in feel. I noticed it most after meeting the first forest spirit. Up to that point you’ve seen a lot of glowing lines in the twilight zone’s “magic” effects, and while the spirit is also introduced with glowing rock carvings, they have a much more celtic, natural feel to their shape. It imparts the idea that this world has an established magical history, and that the twilight works on another level that is completely alien to it.

I kind of like Midna - She feels like a direct response to the Navi hate from OoT. So rather than giving you a nagging do-gooder who constantly interrupts you with hand-holding prompts... well ok so the hand-holding is still a thing. But Midna’s playful-dom attitude is a little more interesting, and couching the game tips in condescension makes sense for the character. It also adds some conflict to the Midna/Link relationship that you can see in his (and your) annoyed reactions. Also worth mentioning that there’s less overall interrupting and random prompts, for the most part she only pops up when you call her.

The lock-on jumps are still lame - This is a nintendo thing I don’t get. It’s like in Mario Kart when they launch you out of a cannon, there’s a sense of “woooo!” but no actual mechanical effect or advantage. Locking onto Midna to perform the wolf-jumping in the game is similar - they try to make it a challenge(?) by giving you time-sensitive events, crumbling blocks, etc. But at the end of the day it’s dead simple and adds nothing to the world traversal.

Games Done Slow is a play log where I record thoughts and criticisms through a game-design lens as I play new and old video games. More to come!