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If I had never played Zelda:


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#1 TheLegend_njf

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Posted 12 February 2017 - 01:35 PM

If I had never played Zelda:

 

With the near release of Breath of the Wild, I decided to create an interesting topic of discussion that everybody can participate in.

 

This topic might be a controversial one or may come across a bit of a debate encouraging topic, but it's an interesting subject I thought of today to see how much nostalgia plays into me being a fan of the Zelda series, and how I would view the series with my current attitude in gaming if I were not already a home grown fan. So throughout this first post I'm am going to create a hypothetical story of how I would approach Zelda today if I had never played it in the past.

 

I ask people to please keep an open mind as most of this post I will not be reflecting my actual feelings towards Zelda but perceived feelings by how I view other games that are similar to gameplay approach, art style, and console it is being built on.

 

I'd also like you to respect that much of this speculation will be built on what I believe will be superficial looks at the series from an outside perspective, so I may say things about the series that you might clearly not agree with because I feel as an outsider I would have a level of ignorance to the series. So I'm not trying to open up a debate to defend the series since I am not even looking at this from my own feelings or perspectives. 

 

Also, a final reminder that this entire post is hypothetical, so please keep an open mind.

 

 

Before we Begin:

 

While this is a hypothetical situation, this could have in fact been my reality as I was convinced by a friend to play ALTTP. I was very reluctant to play the game, and if I had just stuck with my preconceived judgments towards Zelda during that day, I probably wouldn't have been a Zelda fan today, so this hypothetical situation was pretty close to have becoming a reality if my friend had not convinced me. 

 

 

The Breath of The Wild Trailer:

 

Assuming that today is the day that got me interested in Zelda, it would have certainly been the Breath of the Wild trailer that somehow grabbed my interests. Chances are, if I were not a Zelda this entire time, I probably would have saw every game until now with a level of doubt, and probably would have seen this trailer with doubt too. I would have seen it as an attempt by Nintendo to chase games like Skyrim, Fallout, and the Witcher 3, but for kids due to the art style and my current feelings that most Nintendo's 1st party lineups are kid-like. But still, there's no denying the quality that went into that trailer, and it would have gotten me interested in what I may have missed in this series.

 

 

Ocarina of Time:

 

So because my information on the Zelda series is very limited, I would be interested in seeking out what is the best game in the series from a shallow perspective. In other words I'd start with pure ratings and legacy alone. Even though I know that isn't everything that makes a game, it's where I would still start because of my limited perspective of the series as a whole, I would have no other choice but to trust it's legacy. 

 

Unfortunately here, I may find myself disappointed. I would feel the whole "Young Link" experience to be flat out annoying because I'm just not into that kind of thing. Also, with the underwhelming graphics and the very experimental gameplay of the 64 bit era, I would certainly not think of this game as highly as I do now, and I would have probably just flat out skipped Majora's Mask for these reasons and the fact that it was the more controversial Zelda title of that era. 

 

 

A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds:

 

I would have then decided to go back farther and play A Link to the Past. Fortunately for this game I am very open minded to retro games and have found love for retro games I have not grown up with. I certainly probably wouldn't have had the nostalgic feel for the game as I do now, but I would have appreciated the overall level of design quality in the game, even with some of it's flaws. This game probably would have surely convinced me why Zelda is a highly regarded series.

 

A Link Between Worlds however wouldn't have impressed me so. Without the power of nostalgia, I wouldn't have seen much of what this game offers. I've been replaying it recently and I feel this game is really overrated. I want to like it as much as I did the first time I played, but I dunno, I'd rather play A Link to the Past any day. That's not to say A Link Between Worlds is bad, I'll still play it and beat it, but probably not without the nostalgia glasses I wear. 

 

 

The NES Games:

 

I would have certainly tried these games, and I feel my impressions in these games would be no more different than they are now. I like them both, but I have an overall preference for Zelda 2. I would have certainly seen the first 3 Zelda games as the best in the series at this point. 

 

 

The Mobile Zelda Games:

 

I'm not even sure I would even give any of them a chance really. None of them come off as impactful enough to even garner my interests as an outsider, and I would be a bit overwhelmed by the amount of mobile titles there are that I would probably just stray away from them. 

 

 

Zelda Classic:

 

Probably would have never been interested. Sorry to say. :P I would have seen it the same way as I see Mario Maker right now. Something fun to play around with, but outside of that, forget it. lol

 

 

Wind Waker HD and Skyward Sword:

 

I wouldn't turn to the orginal Wind Waker because I'd probably try the new if I ever did try it, but I feel for sure I wouldn't warm up to the art style. The only possible way I could even get into this game today is if I got it for my son. Even then I would have been completely turned off by the bland and empty overworld experience of the great sea. I would not have beaten this game if I even took interest to play it.

 

Having already a low opinion on 3d Zelda games, I wouldn't have given this game much of a chance because of the huge investment of Wii Motion controls. I seriously don't care for Nintendo's gimmicks today, and I would see this game as a testament of Nintendo's foolish nonsensical ways. 

 

 

Twilight Princess HD:

 

At this point I probably would have given up on 3d Zelda games, considering that Ocarina of Time of time and Wind Waker are probably considered the bests. I would however try this game at a very reasonable price, and you know what, I think I still would have very much liked this game. I feel Twilight Princess in general is very underrated, and today still stands as my favorite 3d Zelda experience. Though at my age now, I would have probably been turned off by all the strange and weird NPCs that used to crack me up during my pot smoking days. I would have just seen many of these characters as annoying and immature, but I would have still loved the game overall.

 

 

In Conclusion:

 

My impressions in Zelda would be mixed and bias towards the retro games over the newer games. I would have certainly felt that Zelda is a series that didn't age well and would have seen this as another reflection of Nintendo's current failures. My favorite games would probably be the first 3 Zelda games and maybe Twilight Princess, but I wouldn't care much for everything else. I certainly wouldn't have thought of the series as highly as I do now, and I'd probably only play these games once and maybe never pick them up again, except for the retro ones. 

 

Would I play Breath of the Wild? Actually, yes, there would be enough in the series to have convinced me that Breath of the Wild would be a "good enough" game, but I wouldn't see it as ground breaking compared to the heavy competitive market in gaming today, I would have just seen other games like Witcher 3 for example as far superior. I still do consider Witcher 3 to be superior, but only time will tell if this game will truly shine or hit the shelves to disappoint. 

 

So what is your story? Looking at your current views and attitude towards gaming, how would you have looked at Zelda series by watching the Breath of the Wild trailer if you had never played a Zelda game in your life? 


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#2 Anthus

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Posted 12 February 2017 - 03:29 PM

This is an interesting topic. I'm not so sure how I'd feel about Zelda if I have never played it, since I've grown up with it, and it has impacted my life in a lot of ways. It's inspired me, it's made me think about a lot of stuff, and I don't think I'd be the same person today if I had never played ALttP on my dad's SNES when I was a kid and got hooked. Would I have liked Final Fantasy instead? Would I have never really got into games in general? I dunno.

 

What I will say though is, BotW is going to be huge. I have two good friends who haven't played Zelda. One friend actually doesn't like the games he's seen, and the other friend is just generally uninterested in it, but doesn't think it's bad (He is a Pokemon guy). But, both of these people say BotW looks "really different" and that they might try it.


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#3 Avaro

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Posted 12 February 2017 - 03:37 PM

This is hard. Had I not played Ocarina of Time (my first zelda game), I would have found out about Wind Waker or Twilight Princess sooner of later, because I had both a gamecube and a wii.

 

Either way, even if I only today would have started getting into the series, I'm pretty sure I'd love it. Any of the mentioned games as a starting point, I'd enjoy a lot, because I just like every zelda in it's own right. With the exception of the NES games, but that's because I never played NES games during their time.


Edited by Avataro, 12 February 2017 - 03:39 PM.

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#4 Kivitoe

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Posted 12 February 2017 - 08:52 PM

Hard to think of this considering The Legend of Zelda has always been in my life. I've been playing them since I was 2.

 

By now if I've never played Zelda, I wouldn't be here on Pure, and would have thought that Mario Maker was the most advanced Nintendo game maker ever. I would still probably be intrigued with Breath of the Wild from the super bowl ad and the Nintendo Switch Presentation. So I would probably still end up with Zelda because of all of the advertisement along with the Nintendo Switch. :P 



#5 Moonbread

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Posted 13 February 2017 - 12:19 PM

There is something I've actually been wondering about from people who aren't normally interested in Zelda but do like open-world RPGs, and it's that if the art style is something that really, really appeals to them, even if they don't know it.  Because the thing is, the genre is generally handled by western developers these days, and it's all, well, starting to blend together.  Sure, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, and The Witcher all have their distinctions for sure in gameplay and story, but they're all gunning for the same kind of aesthetic.  So here comes Breath of the Wild out of left field, another open-world RPG, but with a very different look from everything else in the most refreshing way possible.  Not like Twilight Princess where they were emulating the Lord of the Rings style as well (which of course was very popular at the time), but instead, it's home-grown Japan.  It's like they're trying to make a Miyazaki movie in the form of a game, especially in its ambiance and music.  A lot of other games want to look as gritty and realistic as possible and have these big, booming songs (like Skyrim's main theme), but BotW defies those western conventions.  And I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the big reasons that Breath of the Wild is so greatly anticipated by so many people.  Sure, there are people who probably do think it looks kid-friendly, but I think some people are in for a culture shock that things that look kid-friendly can be very daunting and dark, especially when they're from Japan.  This isn't a My Neighbor Totoro, this is a Princess Mononoke.


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#6 Castelia

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Posted 13 February 2017 - 03:34 PM

If I wasn't into Zelda, I probably wouldn't have even touched Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, or even the N64 titles. I'd probably still play the 2D games, though, since I do like my top-down adventure games. If I hadn't decided to get OoT 3D four years ago, who knows what my opinion on Zelda would be.



#7 Magi_Hero

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Posted 13 February 2017 - 03:37 PM

If I never got into Zelda, I might've cut my teeth earlier on JRPGs, rather earlier than the time I started playing them. I also wonder what would've happened if I never played Mario Bros either. The Nintendo had some big players back then... I also might've been more into NES Mega Man games as well.

#8 Mitsukara

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Posted 13 February 2017 - 06:46 PM

This is a pretty interesting thought experiment. In a way, I'm weird because the NES I first grew up with didn't have any Zelda games and, being homeschooled, I didn't know anybody who did. Instead, I played games like Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) I and II, and Legacy of the Wizard, long beforehand. But I first played a Zelda game when my cousin let me try Link's Awakening when I was about 9 (this would've been around 1997/1998 I think). And then I saved up and bought a copy once I got my own Gameboy Pocket. A few months later I bought A Link to the Past purely on name recognition, without really knowing anything else about it, because Link's Awakening was so good. Obviously I wasn't disappointed, and I went on to try Zelda 1 and 2 via, ahem, 100% legal methods, and then I got a copy of Ocarina of Time, all in the next couple years- and I was so into it all that my early internet searching led me to find good old Zelda Classic back in 2000.

 

But what if my cousin didn't let me try Link's Awakening? Surely I wouldn't have bought LTTP. I don't think I'd have gotten OoT as a gift either, because no one in my immediate family would know about Zelda either (that was mostly from me playing LTTP, after all). Would I have still tried Zelda 1 and 2? Maybe- that's how I heard of Megaman and Kirby around then, just trying big-name games we'd never owned when I got access to them via the internet. I'd probably have liked them, although they're not as immediately inviting as LTTP and LA so it would've been a little different. But what if I didn't even do that, either?

 

My Dragon Quest obsession probably would've been even bigger, for one thing : P

But also, I wouldn't have been paying attention when Majora's Mask came out. I may never have heard of Zelda Classic, either- which would actually have shifted the whole nature of my social life considering that my first two serious relationships were with people I met on AGN and I was only going to AGN because of ZC. Very different possibilities there.

 

As far as game bias, hmm... I'd probably have gone around comparing puzzle things to Legacy of the Wizard kind of a lot. I never really followed the bleeding edge of new games though, always spending more time going back to experiment with old systems, and (when I had money for it) maybe a bit of previous-gen stuff. I only even played current gen games if I was given the system as a gift, and it wound up being only a handful of things. For example, my entire PS2 collection consisted of Dragon Quest VIII and Castlevania Lament of Innocence. So I guess most likely I'd have just heard of Zelda a few years later via Zelda 1, 2, LTTP, or LA, because I'd have been trying them on an emulator once they were 'older', instead of having real previous-gen copies like I did.

 

But if I'd gone all that time until around the present day without doing that for some reason, and we were to assume my social life somehow turned out basically the same, then... actually I probably would be paying even less attention to new Zelda games than I do now. The last new one I even finished was Minish Cap, in real life, sooo... yeah.

 

Now that said, I was always interested in game maker software. I might've poked at Zelda Classic, but if it was before 2.5.... I probably wouldn't have done any more than I did with it back then, and I wouldn't have looked back to discover 2.5 after the fact the way I did. I definitely wouldn't have made the one quest I released without that childhood obsession.

 

Maybe I'd have made a Super Mario Bros X game instead though? : P


Edited by Mitsukara, 13 February 2017 - 06:46 PM.


#9 Russ

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Posted 14 February 2017 - 03:50 AM

I like this thread, cuz it's not hypothetical for me. I wasn't into Zelda. I got into Zelda because Mario Galaxy wasn't a Wii launch title. I wanted a game at launch, and Twilight Princess looked interesting. I knew of Zelda but had never played it, so I went back to the very first game and played that. That's ultimately what brought me to Zelda Classic too. Which... whoa, my life would've gone down a very different road, seeing as I met the person I'm currently in a relationship with because of ZC. Weird to think of it that way...

Regardless, hypothetical time. Had I not gotten into Zelda at Twilight Princess, I imagine Skyward Sword would've hooked me, because I'd wanted an adventure game with realistic-ish sword motion controls since the Wii was announced. The DS games wouldn't have caught my interest. I remember playing a Minish Cap demo and being very "Eh" about it, so I imagine the trend would've held. After that, Breath of the Wild probably would have. Anybody who knows me knows that Xenoblade X, with its open world mentality, was like crack cocaine for me, so seeing "Here's a game like that but action instead of RPG and with bright cartoony graphics" probably would've hooked me. And inevitably made me go back and try to emulate the original.


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