Game of the Week [12/13/02]: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- May 01, 2003 19:29 PM PST
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Why didn't we trust Nintendo when they told us that Zelda would turn out just fine? Take a look at our Wind Waker hands-on preview, then become a smarter gamer with our recap of the week's news.
For the past year or so, Nintendo game producer Shigeru Miyamoto has been repeating himself more often than a ditzy old woman teaching her cockatoo how to say 'Good morning, Hazel'. In nearly every interview he's given during the 21st century, he's been forced to answer variations on the same question over and over again: "What were you thinking when you made Metroid and/or Zelda look like that?" And Miyamoto, the most patient person in the gaming industry, has given variations on the same answer over and over again: "Wait until you play the game before forming your opinion."
The Wind Waker, as the game's designers mentioned in their interview with GamePro.com last week, takes place in a land where the events of Ocarina of Time are already the stuff of legends. Every boy in this world receives green clothes when he comes of age, much like the clothes of the hero that saved the world on the N64.
Link, or the Link that you control in this game, is no different, except that in his case, the green outfit isn't tucked under the bed forever after the birthday party's over. Right after his grandmother gives Link his clothes, a giant bird comes swooping across the island he lives on and drops a young girl from its beak. The girl, as it turns out, is from a band of pirates fighting against a cadre of monsters who've overtaken a nearby island. Then the bird comes back and takes Link's sister. Which just goes to prove: if you have yellow hair and green clothes on, then you're just asking for trouble in Miyamoto's world.
From a pure gameplay standpoint, you can think of The Wind Waker as an exhaustively reworked version of Ocarina. The basic controls for running and using items is the same?you can assign tools to the X, Y, and Z buttons, and the L trigger is used to target stuff?and anyone who's played an N64 Zelda will have no problem making Link hop about.
The fighting's taken a major step up, however: If you press the A button just as an enemy's about to attack you, Link parries the attack and counters with a move of his own. For example, if some huge armored goblin comes up and stabs at Link with a spear, you can press A at just the right moment and send Link flying like Strider Hiryu over the goblin, whacking the guy on the head in the process. This is actually the only way to defeat some guardians: if their armor's too strong for Link's sword, then he'll just have to aim for the head and take off the guy's helmet. You can also pick up any dropped weapon, such as the goblin's spear, and use it against your attackers, a masterful touch that makes this cel-shaded world seem a lot more real than many "serious" RPGs.
Deku Leaves have all sorts of fascinating properties in The Wind Waker. You can flap them to make gusts of wind (useful when you're on a raft), or you can use them to float gently across the air in large caverns.
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While one hates to parrot Miyamoto and director Eiji Aonuma, Zelda really does look far better in real life than in screens. The amount of time the Zelda team must have spent animating everything, making Link's eyes focus on interesting stuff and giving every townsperson a specific set of personalized behaviors, must have been staggering. The environmental effects are just as amazing: there's a volcanic dungeon not too far into the game which has embers floating in the air and beautifully-animated columns of fire that're like nothing we've ever seen before.
Even with the short amount of time we've spent with the Japanese version of Zelda, it's already obvious that the two and a half years Nintendo spent perfecting the game were worth it. Just like Miyamoto's insisted all this time, you really don't care about the graphics while playing The Wind Waker. The game's too engaging, and the atmosphere too engrossing, for anyone to worry about them much. Trust us.
Take me to the Wind Waker screenshot gallery
Take me to the Zelda bonus disc screenshot gallery
Take me to GamePro's interview with the producer and director of Zelda
This Week's Main Events
The scene at Bic Camera earlier today.
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Famitsu was also on the ball with coverage of Zelda's Japan launch earlier today, a launch that saw lines extend from Tokyo's large electronic stores for much of the early morning. "We had several thousand reserve customers," commented the manager of Bic Camera in Shinjuku, "which is something we've never had with any game before." Even with all these reserves, the fact that lines still appeared in the stores?and the fact that many of the people in line were buying GameCubes along with their Zeldas?shows exactly what kind of support Nintendo has with its core brands over in Japan.
Take me to the Famitsu ProNews page
Anyway, on with this week's news:
Miyamoto Discusses Next Projects (12/10)
While it was pretty obvious that Nintendo's most well-known game designer wanted to make another Pikmin (he's said as much in several interviews), it comes as a bit of a surprise to see Shigeru Miyamoto pick on his own game so soon after it came out. Although he's right, as usual: Super Mario Sunshine is a crowning achievement among platformers, but some bits (such as the blue-coin Shines) are just plain boring and made the game drag terribly after a while. Miyamoto's obviously frustrated that Mario hasn't broken a million copies sold in any region yet (Super Smash Bros. Melee is still the most popular GameCube title worldwide), and it looks like he won't let himself make the same mistake twice.
By the way?anyone who reads Wired magazine got to see Seamus Blackley (former Xbox guru) and Lorne Lanning (Oddworld designer) pick on Miyamoto for not making more "adult-oriented" titles. Puh-leeze.
Nintendo's GameCube Discount Deal (12/10)
TDK's Software Discount Deal (12/12)
This holiday season's going to be a very tough one for many companies. Case in point: TDK, who is giving away a free copy of any game in their current library if you're nice enough to buy Robotech. Or Nintendo, which is offering discounts on all sorts of hardware and software if you could just have pity on them and buy some GameCube stuff. As a gamer, I really don't see the allure of the TDK offer (a free Shrek isn't much better than a $49.99 Shrek, really), but the Nintendo deal makes the Cube that much more enticing if you haven't gotten around to picking one up yet. And you really should. Metroid Prime is out in stores now, you know.
Datel Dumps GameShark (12/9)
The Action Replay GameCube package from Datel. Will this box actually appear in stores before 2003? |
Datel's GameCube Action Replay ships on December 17?next Tuesday?according to EB, which means that this rather messy split between InterAct and Datel must have occurred a while ago. ARs for other systems are slated to hit stores sometime in January. InterAct, meanwhile, has already promised to contract some other company to make GameSharks for them from now on. They even say that an Xbox GameShark isn't too far off the horizon?welcome news for me, considering I'll never have enough time to finish Morrowind normally, but unwelcome news for those worried about Xbox Live cheaters. Ah well?if it happens, Microsoft will find some way to quash the hackers. (And probably a lot of innocent online gamers, too. So it goes.)
