I honestly suggest you read this. It's a short read but pretty much sums up why he's so good. I really wish we could get a Zelda game fully directed by him tbh, just to see what he could do.
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The Legend of Zelda’s Storytelling: Expand it or Leave it as is?
- Thread starter OfficerRaichu15
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I honestly suggest you read this. It's a short read but pretty much sums up why he's so good. I really wish we could get a Zelda game fully directed by him tbh, just to see what he could do.
OoT, MM and WW are still the high point for me in story telling in the series. They struck the right balance when it came to traditional narrative beats and story telling without relying on a great deal of dialogue and exposition to tell their tales or provide emotional and evocative scenes. Some of the most striking moments in the series come from those games and are usually devoid or feature very little actual dialogue. It's all about the scene direction and use of audio/visual queues. That to me is what I want out of Zelda the most story telling wise. In terms of content, yeah side content as seen in MM is still a highlight in the series. Those smaller, more personal stories can be really powerful. But OoT and WW with their strong central plots are good too.
probably pulling out my 'old man yells at cloud' card here but i prefer the pre-OoT approach: you're a guy with a sword, go kill shit and solve puzzles, all with a little lore on the side.
there's some valid ways to explore both ends of the spectrum but brass tacks i don't care about how zelda has an affair with the zora prince or whatever and i don't need a bunch of cutscenes and questlogs explaining it. you're a guy with a legendary sword, you and a princess and a demon are connected to a holy relic... no need to make it more complicated than it really is
there's some valid ways to explore both ends of the spectrum but brass tacks i don't care about how zelda has an affair with the zora prince or whatever and i don't need a bunch of cutscenes and questlogs explaining it. you're a guy with a legendary sword, you and a princess and a demon are connected to a holy relic... no need to make it more complicated than it really is
Exactly. The cutscenes feel so flat. Especially when for some of the characters, the only interactions you have with them are flashbacks 'showing' Link's relationship and history with them. It was really hard to feel connected to them when Link is blankly staring at them.
In game he has some great little expressions and animations. A lot of detail went into that. But they wanted to push the Link is just an avatar thing, even though avatars often express accordingly.
Yeah, and since there's barely any character development the champions just end up being one-dimensional. Revali is a jerk, Daruk is basically a Darunia clone, Mipha is the shy girl with a crush on you. Urbosa was the only interesting one for me since she was badass and served as a mother figure for Zelda. Groose in SS was a jerk just like Revali, but since you actually see his relationship with Link evolve as the game goes on, it makes him feel real, it gives him depth. And most of all, it makes you care about him as a character.
I agree with all of this. I would add that those three games also have the maximum duration of cutscenes I would want in a Zelda game. TP and SS both were a bit too cutscene-heavy for my tastes.
Precisely.
I despise Skyward Sword's storytelling, despite quite liking the game itself. It's just dreadful. Sophomoric writing, overlong cutscenes and saccharine characterisations pulled straight from a Japanese high school drama. It seems after Ocarina of Time, the series eschewed all of its Tolkienesque European fantasy influences and leaned fully into Japanese whimsy. Link's Awakening was the first game to fully embrace the whimsical/bizarre tone, but it works because it's a dream. Ocarina of Time restored some of the pared down Western fantasy tone from Link to the Past, but was the last game to really strike a good balance between the two philosophies.
I like Breath of the Wild's tone for the most part because of the return to a pared down narrative experience. It has the classy minimalism of a Ghibli film in its cutscenes, but you still meet the staple whimsical/bizarre characters in the overworld (like Kilton for example). There might be a more elegant way of delivering the story than the memories, but minimalism is the way to go.
They definitely need to move back more towards Skyward Sword in character and storytelling. BotW is a great game, but the lack of a real narrative in the present sucks pretty much all of the tension and motivation out of completing the game. There's certainly motivation to explore, but beating Ganon doesn't feel like it has any real stakes to it or anything, and the fact that you can just go straight to the castle and beat him in your underwear with a stick is a neat bullet point for the novelty in relation to the rest of the series, but hurts the narrative and world building.
But Spirit Tracks did it better than any other game yet. Best Princess Zelda in the series and the co-op mechanics are well done.
I would agree that the high point of story in the series was Majora's Mask and Wind Waker (and for its time, Link's Awakening). The main issue with Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword is that they spend too much time on cutscenes and story, when the actual writing isn't even particularly great. TP's only real big thing that people remember is Midna (who I like but not nearly as much as most people seem to), and SS's writing was pretty average overall. Groose's development was alright and Ghirahim was a decently memorable villain, but overall the game wouldn't be anywhere near my list of "games that are worth playing for their story".
If the writing and characterization were significantly better than then spending that much time on cutscenes and such is fine, but I personally find it difficult to believe Nintendo would really improve much in that department unless Koizumi or someone else with similar talent gets free rein to stretch their creative muscles.
And if that's gonna be the case I would rather have a minimalist story like the Ueda games where the atmosphere and gameplay do the heavy lifting.
If the writing and characterization were significantly better than then spending that much time on cutscenes and such is fine, but I personally find it difficult to believe Nintendo would really improve much in that department unless Koizumi or someone else with similar talent gets free rein to stretch their creative muscles.
And if that's gonna be the case I would rather have a minimalist story like the Ueda games where the atmosphere and gameplay do the heavy lifting.
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It could be a lot better. BOTW has a solid framework for most of the video game storytelling trick in the book for now: it has the dialogue system, its character model and graphic style is convincing enough for actual cinematic storytelling, its world has all the potential for good environmental storytelling.
I don't need them to suddenly become Witcher or What Remains of Edith Finch in terms of storytelling. They just need actual good writers to write actual good story for current system they have. Not this current half ass lazy stuff they call main quest and side quest in BOTW.
I don't need them to suddenly become Witcher or What Remains of Edith Finch in terms of storytelling. They just need actual good writers to write actual good story for current system they have. Not this current half ass lazy stuff they call main quest and side quest in BOTW.
I'm cool with only having as much storytelling as we got in A Link to the Past. Zelda is about exploration and adventuring. Talking to people and reading text is secondary, though it can add to the experience.
That said, I'm ready for a fully voice-acted Zelda, but you never know with Nintendo.
That said, I'm ready for a fully voice-acted Zelda, but you never know with Nintendo.
I'd be fine even if they did less story, to be honest. It's the awesome puzzles and dungeons that draw me in.
I love BoTW, but it could do more with its storytelling, both through the main story and fleshing out the world. Like, I loved exploring and the environment telling the story of what happened in the intervening 100 year, but the side missions could have done so much more for the world.
Combine that with a slightly more invested main story and I'd be really happy. I think Majora's Mask got the mix spot on, so basically I just want that kind of thing in an open world setting
Combine that with a slightly more invested main story and I'd be really happy. I think Majora's Mask got the mix spot on, so basically I just want that kind of thing in an open world setting
I'm with you guys. I wish they at least did a Naughty Dog style, Fujibayashi on the Game Director role, Koizumi on the Creative Director role in the next 3D Zelda.
Would be a dream.
I'd definitely prefer more storytelling. Or at the very least, more character depth. I love BotW, but it always ends up feeling extremely lonely to me towards the end of the game. Majority of the quests aren't unique enough and there's next to no character growth anywhere. Once you beat an area it's just completely done with; no more relevance, no optional updated dialogue from any characters that live there, nothing. I would have preferred more story in general, but honestly just a little extra character flavor would have been nice and gone a long way imo.
I love how MM handled the quests, and how interwoven they were. That'd probably be hard to do in most games given how it revolved around reversing time, but certainly they can do better than fetch me some bugs lol.
I love how MM handled the quests, and how interwoven they were. That'd probably be hard to do in most games given how it revolved around reversing time, but certainly they can do better than fetch me some bugs lol.
I'd like more of it, yeah. Every time they dip their toes in the story pool, I'm always left wanting more. Zelda does characterisation well, but it rarely amounts to much because the frameworks where these characters exist in tend to be so barebones. What they can dial down though, is flavour text that explains game mechanics or puzzles in in-universe terms. That stuff rarely works for me, and somehow always tends to be so long-winded. Just give me a tutorial pop-up screen that tells me what's up in dry mechanic terms.
i just hope they don't sideline zelda to flashback hell again, or have her sitting in a castle dungeon for half the game like wind waker. i'm still bitter about all the squandered potential they had with tetra, lol.
something i'm hoping for is a new aesthetic that's as big of a departure as wind waker was. i could see a stark, minimalist zelda by way of shadow of the colossus, or something more surreal like some of the concept art they showed with the giant gothic cthulu spider.
something i'm hoping for is a new aesthetic that's as big of a departure as wind waker was. i could see a stark, minimalist zelda by way of shadow of the colossus, or something more surreal like some of the concept art they showed with the giant gothic cthulu spider.
The English voice acting needs to be better but I have no interest in going back to the style of previous games. Ideally, they would look at the small personal stories they had in Majora's Mask and put those into the big and open world of Breath of the Wild. The constant interruptions of Skyward Sword are pretty much a no-go.
They need to expand it. It's doesn't need to be like The Witcher 3 but, personally, if BOTW had a way better story, I would have enjoyed the game much more.
Ideally, I would want to see lots of small touching stories across the world and something like Shadow of the Colossus or The Last Guardian for the main story, minimalist but still very important.
And it's probably an unpupolar opinion but I wish Link talked. The guy saves the world but he seems completely clueless during cutscenes.
Ideally, I would want to see lots of small touching stories across the world and something like Shadow of the Colossus or The Last Guardian for the main story, minimalist but still very important.
And it's probably an unpupolar opinion but I wish Link talked. The guy saves the world but he seems completely clueless during cutscenes.
As much as Twilight is what I'd generally expect, hopefully the 'botw' sequel expands on the story from botw
The main story is Ok like this, they can't do much about it if you want to keep the same freedom everyone enjoyed.
I think most of the work should be done with sidequests. BOTW was a bit short on content/innovation regarding sidequests.
Kass is a good example to expand upon. Each time you encounter him you get the possibility to explore a bit of the past of some characters.
So more and more complex sidequests where you interact with and learn about characters and stories, and make the world move forward.
I think most of the work should be done with sidequests. BOTW was a bit short on content/innovation regarding sidequests.
Kass is a good example to expand upon. Each time you encounter him you get the possibility to explore a bit of the past of some characters.
So more and more complex sidequests where you interact with and learn about characters and stories, and make the world move forward.
Focus on the adventure and quest, so long as the story doesn't get bogged down in narrative dramatics that caused pacing issues in SS and TP and even WW; I'd be fine with a bit more development on the fringe. Helps enrich the world, but it's the sort of thing you should uncover and not be force fed.
It's when the core journey gets buckled under the weight of rigid cinematics or overt expository and focused melodrama that it stops feeling like my personal journey and just a bunch of hoops. BotW sidelined a lot of that to great success.
It's when the core journey gets buckled under the weight of rigid cinematics or overt expository and focused melodrama that it stops feeling like my personal journey and just a bunch of hoops. BotW sidelined a lot of that to great success.
Please expand... one of the trailers it looked like BoTW gonna have deep story telling ,but nah it was pretty basic and gameplay focused. That was the only thing killed it for me for BoTW everything else is perfect.
World building, cool charming character moments, and beginning and and end of game minor exposition. Please don't ever have Zelda "walk alongs" or 3-7 min cut scenes mid game.
I actually liked most aspects of the story and storytelling in BOTW quite a bit. My only issue is Link himself -- I think he should either be made into a real fully realized speaking character, or he should be a complete blank slate for the character to inhabit and customize. Having one foot in each of these isn't good IMO.
Personally, I'd prefer to see them allow full character customization of Link and have characters regard him a little more vaguely. This seems like the logical conclusion to all of this. ("Link" was incepted as the "link" between the player and the game world. He's always been meant to be a player insert)
Personally, I'd prefer to see them allow full character customization of Link and have characters regard him a little more vaguely. This seems like the logical conclusion to all of this. ("Link" was incepted as the "link" between the player and the game world. He's always been meant to be a player insert)
Dark Souls and Bloodborne showed it is possible to make an amazing narrative and lore without shooting it at your face all the time and in an open world nonetheless. That's what Zelda team should learn. I don't want the style of Skyward Sword were you had to deal with Fi repeating shit no one cares about every 10 minutes or have a barren stupid story like Breath of the Wild.
Honestly the best fragment of storytelling I got from a Zelda was basically Ganondorf in Wind Waker explaining why he was like that.
Honestly the best fragment of storytelling I got from a Zelda was basically Ganondorf in Wind Waker explaining why he was like that.
I want more sidequests and also more optional exploring of lore like is possible in Bloodborne for instance.
I don't really mind the main story format as is. Perhaps there are ways they could make the stories more interesting, but I don't want a much bigger emphasis on it.
I don't really mind the main story format as is. Perhaps there are ways they could make the stories more interesting, but I don't want a much bigger emphasis on it.
Honestly feel like BotW had plenty of storytelling. Improve the quality a bit (voice acting, for instance), but I like my Zelda's to be mostly about gameplay, exploration, puzzle solving. It felt cumbersome and prolonged in TP and SS at times, especially the introductions.
There seems to be a fairly even split on this topic:
People who want Nintendo to double down on the Skyward Sword approach, with a linear story told through cinematic cutscenes.
People who want a minimalistic story told mainly through gameplay, reminiscent of a Ueda or Souls game.
I'm firmly in the latter camp, but it highlights the dilemma Nintendo have going forward.
People who want Nintendo to double down on the Skyward Sword approach, with a linear story told through cinematic cutscenes.
People who want a minimalistic story told mainly through gameplay, reminiscent of a Ueda or Souls game.
I'm firmly in the latter camp, but it highlights the dilemma Nintendo have going forward.
Breath of the Wild's discoverable/optional story with stuff like the memories, the diaries and the individual town sidequests worked really well until the ending, which felt far too short and underwhelming by comparison.
Give it a stronger finale and I'd be fine with the level of storytelling staying where it was.
Give it a stronger finale and I'd be fine with the level of storytelling staying where it was.
OOT and MM was the perfect balance. Skyward Sword was too story heavy and BOTW was too disjointed, it had great potential with the champions but they didn't do much with them. Generally though, I prefer less story focus rather than more. Keep the cutscenes short but effective, and interrupt my gameplay as little as possible.
It really is!
I think the magic of the narratives here is that they follow a Hero's Journey kind of arc but they keep it minimally complex. It's a boy who sets out on a journey for a macguffin, in Wind Waker's case that would be Link's little sister, which quickly turns out to be more of a hurdle than was anticipated which set up the actual conflict of the plot, which is Ganon. Then the hero has to go through trials in the form of dungeons which takes the most complex deliberations to get to in terms of writing and after he has finished those trials he is taken to a further expansion of the scope, then crosses the threshold to get his sister out for good, but still can't touch Ganon. Then you have to get the magic elixir which is the Master Sword, point of no return as you set back into the area which culminates the plot, rise to defeat Ganon and become the hero.
They basically locked everything clearly into the beats of a Hero's Journey and they avoided needless minutia inside of the main quest, leaving probably just pages of dialogue for the whole thing, and yet it has an incredible thematic resonance and even subversive themes applied over the Hero's Journey kind of plot, and even make allusions to the timeline which ties the game to Ocarina of Time, yet it's just vague enough that it was open to interpretation whether there was a real canon timeline or not. That is unlike recent games prior to Breath of the Wild in which the timeline became such a focus, likely out of fan demand, that they stopped seeing the forest for the trees, and Breath of the Wild even is a good example of how rabid the Timeline following had become with people not even looking at what the story of that game was but only considered whether it had any expansion to the timeline and canon. Yet, Wind Waker is a fantastic standalone plot, and Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask followed similar patterns albeit, with MM being the more subversive of the two.
Breath of the Wild is one I don't know what to say about. It uses fragmented, non-linear storytelling and I think they didn't really apply any narrative method or structure to it. It feels more like an experimental anime and it really does lack a hero's journey, unless they intentionally tried to make the open-ended game-structure itself into a "Hero's Journey". It certainly is the Player's Journey, but that can go in a thousand different direction, some of which have almost no dramatic flavor to them not to mention not really much character, so I'm left feeling quite cold in how Zelda told its story in that game. In Skyward Sword something was also amiss. Like I said, timeline deliberations trumped giving the game a more intended theme I thought. It was the "origin story" about how Zelda came to be the princess of Hyrule or just how the Sky people found Hyrule really. It too felt like more of an Anime OVA stuck into a game in terms of plot-structure. I'm not sure how well the Hero's Journey applied but it was certainly there at times. It just felt the opposite of WW in that it had too much text and too much needless exposition that didn't revolve around enough around actual themes that would pay off later.
Verdict:
OoT, MM, and WW is sufficient, and beautifully simple storytelling, and they're actually good stories too.
TP and Skyward Sword are heavyhanded and over-delivered narratives that are kind of bad stories, in spite of their certain enjoyable moments, let's be honest.
Breath of the Wild is pretty much an RPG for the player. The story is what you make of it. All of the prescripted story is achronological, fragmented and seems experimentative and has bad voice acting to boot. It lacked a middle-piece in between the introduction to its main dungeons and confrontation with Ganon. It's not particularly satisfying and definitely needs to change.
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My hot take: BOTW has a great story, the narrative is a bit lacking, but the visual storytelling takes the cake for me, all itens descriptions and the level design. I just loved it.
If I had to rank top 3 Zelda stories: 1 botw, 2 wind waker and 3 Skyward (with TP very close).
If I had to rank top 3 Zelda stories: 1 botw, 2 wind waker and 3 Skyward (with TP very close).
I don't want more plot, by any means. If anything, I think the setups for the action sequences to get you into the Divine Beasts was TOO MUCH intrusion of plot into the open-world exploration.
What I'd really love to see is the creators go ham on lore. There's tons of stuff in the Creating a Champion book that could have been used to enhance the environmental storytelling that already existed. I loved finding the various diaries in Hyrule Castle, or the Zoran tablets in Zora's Domain--would loved to have seen more of that kind of lore-drip as a way to piece together the history of more places.
What I'd really love to see is the creators go ham on lore. There's tons of stuff in the Creating a Champion book that could have been used to enhance the environmental storytelling that already existed. I loved finding the various diaries in Hyrule Castle, or the Zoran tablets in Zora's Domain--would loved to have seen more of that kind of lore-drip as a way to piece together the history of more places.
Stories have always been my favorite thing about the series. although I'm not a fan of the gameplay I love skyward sword story so much.
When Skyward Sword focused so much on the story the things it introduced to the canon retroactively made me like the other games less, so If they are going to go with more of a story focus, I hope it's self contained instead of having implications across the entire franchise.
I'm more than okay with Breath of the Wilds environmental storytelling versus the standard Zelda narrative, I want more to be learned about the world/lore via gameplay versus simply being told about it. I'm definitely of the belief that BOTW had tons of storytelling, it just wasn't through dialogue or cutscenes.
It was amazing exploring the battleground where the last stand took place a century ago (and where link originally died) and figuring out in my head what happened there completely on my own, far before any NPC told me what happened.
I'm more than okay with Breath of the Wilds environmental storytelling versus the standard Zelda narrative, I want more to be learned about the world/lore via gameplay versus simply being told about it. I'm definitely of the belief that BOTW had tons of storytelling, it just wasn't through dialogue or cutscenes.
It was amazing exploring the battleground where the last stand took place a century ago (and where link originally died) and figuring out in my head what happened there completely on my own, far before any NPC told me what happened.
I don't really have an issue with the idea of the game having a cinematic story told through cutscenes, but the problem is I don't have a lot of faith in Nintendo to write an actually compelling story and characters after how lackluster TP and SS were, and in general that kind of story has never been the forte of the company anyways. Mother is the only exception of note and that was mostly because they got an outsider from the videogame industry that was a well-established writer in his own right.
Conversely I'd say delivering a strong minimalist through gameplay is something they are much more likely to get right.
Leave it as it is. One of the reasons I like the story is because of its simplicity. As someone who likes sci-fi more than fantasy, I appreciate a game with swords, magic, etc not having a deep lore I feel I need to know in order to fully appreciate the story/world.
