As great as BOTW and TOTK are, many Zelda fans miss the old style of games. Are they just looking at the past through green tunic-tinted glasses?
SUMMARY
- While BOTW and TOTK have reached new levels of commercial success for the Zelda franchise, many fans of the classic games miss the older formula.
- There are plenty of things that classic Zelda games still do better than BOTW and TOTK such as providing a greater sense of progression and containing more consistent lore.
- The open-air formula was a great stride forward, but traditional Zelda mechanics are beloved by fans for genuine reasons beyond simple nostalgia.
Breath of the Wild was a defining moment for the Legend of Zelda series in a way that the series hadn't seen for quite a while. The Zelda franchise has always pushed gaming forward ever since its first entry in 1986, but only a few games in the franchise have had the kind of impact on the gaming landscape that BOTW has. The major key to BOTW's success was the new "open-air" gameplay philosophy which flipped the classic style that many fans came to know and love on its head. it took to even greater heights with its direct sequel, Tears of the Kingdom.
This new style of Zelda game has brought in a plethora of new fans to the franchise, many of whom are wholly unfamiliar with pre-BOTW Zelda, or are even actively disinterested in it. Even so, there remains a vocal group of diehard Zelda fans who are entirely opposed to the newer open-air Zelda, even going so far as to claim that BOTW and its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, aren't real Zelda games.
Producer Eiji Aonuma, who has worked on the series going all the way back to Ocarina of Time, does not share this sentiment with fans of the more traditional Zelda formula. In a recent interview with IGN, Aonuma expressed his feeling that Zelda fans who miss the older style of games "have a tendency to want the thing that we don't currently have", and have "a bit of a grass is greener mentality." While it's certainly true that fans have a profound connection to the games they grew up with, that's only part of the story. There are plenty of reasons classic Zelda games are loved by fans, and while nostalgia is a factor, fans of traditional Zelda miss those games for good reason.
What Makes Classic Zelda Different From BOTW?
Classic, or "traditional Zelda" as the fandom often calls it, is a type of game that could almost be considered its own genre. It has even sometimes been called "Zelda-like" in the same vein as Souls-likes or Rogue-likes. With that in mind, whether players enjoy traditional Zelda games will largely be based on whether they enjoy the Zelda-like gameplay loop.
The traditional Zelda gameplay loop was well-defined. It consisted of the player traveling through an overworld map to a dungeon, receiving a dungeon item in the process of exploring that dungeon, and then using that item to unlock a new section of the overworld map. From there, the cycle would repeat, though there were of course ways that the formula was mixed up at times. It's a simple formula that worked well, which is why it was so popular for decades until BOTW and TOTK shook the format up. While it's largely a matter of preference whether a player enjoys one style of game over another, the traditional Zelda-like gameplay does have real advantages over the recent open-air Zelda games.
One of the aspects of classic Zelda that fans miss the most is the feeling of true progression that the games delivered. The traditional Zelda-like gameplay loop provided a very specific pattern of linear progression over time that never felt forced. It allowed players to explore the overworld to move forward, using exploration as a sort of puzzle that players had to figure out with the tools they had. This contrasts with BOTW and TOTK, which provide players with the main tools for exploration right at the start of the game. This newer method gives players more freedom at the outset, but it’s at the cost of giving that same sense of progress.
That's not to say that TOTK doesn't allow Link to grow stronger throughout the course of the game — it certainly does. However, that growth is less about completing the dungeons and more about gaining heart pieces and stamina, finding Koroks, and fusing stronger weapons. Players can do all of those things without completing a single dungeon, which takes some of the weight away from Link's journey to rescue the people of Hyrule. Instead of being a hero who grows from his experiences and lessons, the Link of the Wild games is more like an RPG character who levels up through grinding.
Storyline And Lore Matter In Video Games
The openness of open-air Zelda presented another new problem that has been heavily cited by critics of both BOTW and TOTK. Namely, that their non-linear method of story-telling damaged the integrity of their stories. In a vacuum, most fans had no issue with the plot of TOTK itself. The voice acting and cinematic nature of the cutscenes provided a great foundation for a story befitting the Zelda franchise. However, because of the open-ended order in which players could experience those cutscenes, players lost a lot of the emotion that should have accompanied the game's most powerful moments.
Another way that the open-ended philosophy impacted the Zelda tradition is in its treatment of the overarching lore of the franchise. Aside from the classic gameplay formula, a unifying thread between every game was always how the greater history of Hyrule played a role. Even when games took place in an entirely different time period, they were always connected to one another by the established mythology of the Zelda franchise.
Repeated concepts like the Golden Goddesses and the Triforce became staples of the series and made players feel like archeologists when they dove into the series' greater lore. However, not only are both of the aforementioned concepts missing from TOTK, but other aspects of the lore even between BOTW and TOTK have become muddled at times. An infamous example of this is when series Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi recently explained in an interview that the Sheikah Tech which was so prominent in BOTW had simply disappeared in TOTK. The openness to change and evolve with the times is a virtue, but ignoring the series' greater lore has had the unfortunate consequence of making the Wild games feel disconnected from the rest of the franchise.
Sometimes, Less Is More
The Zelda lore and mythos always made the universe of the series seem overwhelmingly large, even when the Kingdom of Hyrule and Link himself were small. With the Wild games, this larger mythology seems to have been replaced with a larger physical world for Link to explore. It's almost as though, now that Link has access to explore more of the world, the mystery of the unknown has become less prescient. That larger open world was certainly one of the biggest achievements of both BOTW and TOTK, but it is by no means without its downsides.
No fan will forget the first time they dove from the Sky Islands to see the large open world of Hyrule in TOTK. Unfortunately, the more they dove deeper, the more the emptiness of its world became apparent. Many fans have since noted that having a smaller world with more to do in it gives more incentive to explore every little crevice of a game, which adds replay value. Part of the beauty of Majora's Mask was that, even though its world wasn't very large (mostly consisting of one main town), Termina was so full and brimming with life that players would never run out of things to do in that limited space. The large open world of TOTK is truly awe-inspiring, but there is also a lot of empty space that isn't rewarding to explore. While some emptiness can make the environment feel more organic, too much makes the world feel lifeless. That's the main criticism that many have for the Depths and Sky Islands in TOTK: both environments are great concepts, but both lack much reason to keep returning to them after the initial shock wears off.
It's easy to criticize a game by appealing to the past because — as Eiji Aonuma rightfully pointed out — people often "want the thing we don't currently have." However, instead of wanting something entirely different than TOTK, there's a reason many longtime fans of the series miss the traditional Zelda gameplay loop and dungeon exploration. Newer doesn't always equal better, and that's even more true when looking at a series with a track record of consistently great games like Zelda.
Were Classic Zelda Games Actually Good?
When talking about any art or piece of entertainment, games included, it can be difficult to say what's objectively good, because there are so many factors to consider. People have completely different tastes and gaming is such a varied medium that what's good about one game may actually make another game bad. Forcing players to stop and choose their attack would be disastrous for a shooting game like Call of Duty, but that's the entire thing that makes a turn-based RPG like Dragon Quest or Baldur's Gate engaging.
While taste and preference are always factors, the one way that the objective greatness of a game can be quantified is through its influence on future games. In that way, many of the classic Zelda's are undeniably great. For example, the first The Legend of Zelda for the NES single-handedly defined what the action-adventure genre was all about, while ALTTP further expanded the dungeon crawling, puzzling, and notably — the story. With OOT, the Zelda series once again redefined what an action game was supposed to be like, this time setting the standard for 3D action and exploration that many games still follow to this day. In all these ways and more, early Zelda games were objectively great achievements in gaming, and fans who played these games when they first came out were understandably blown away because they were like nothing else at the time.
Why the Most Popular Version of Link Shouldn't Be in The Legend of Zelda Movie
The question of whether classic Zelda games still hold up today is a different one entirely, though. Because the original The Legend of Zelda and Ocarina of Time had such an influence over everything that came after, their biggest innovations went on to become status quo. Nowadays, there are plenty of games that utilize the lock-on battle mechanic that OOT invented, or the dungeon crawling and puzzling that ALTTP mastered. The Legend of Zelda has always been a series that pushed gaming to its limits and gave players an adventure like no other, but new players who play the older games today may feel underwhelmed because they've seen many of these tricks before. Even so, there's a reason that many new games come out that emulate the style of early Zelda games — even as the Zelda franchise itself continues to branch out and try new things.
While Eiji Aonuma is absolutely correct in his assessment that Zelda fans look at the older games through rose-tinted glasses, fans are nostalgic for those games for a reason. Traditional Zelda games were objectively great games that pushed the entire medium of gaming forward. Even as Aonuma and Fujibayashi continue to push the boundaries of video games with each new entry in the series, that doesn't change the fact that the core principles of Zelda games worked so well because — above anything — their core principles make them fun to play. The underlying fundamentals of classic Zelda are what longtime fans love about the series, not because they miss the games from the past, but because they want to play more games like that in the future.
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