DP Challenge Part 4/100 - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Game: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Ranking: 3/100

Average Score:  94.51%

In the twelfth game of the series, Hyrule’s least observant hero discovers he’s the chosen one and has to save the kingdom. Again. Seriously, Link, you should have got the memo by now. Will the playable character’s chronic long-term memory problems hamper my enjoyment of the game?

'Hey, is that the rare and endangered...? Oh. I guess it's even rarer now.'

Intro

The manual has an 'olde worlde' design, which is in keeping - it gives you a brief prologue to the game and the instructions/controls are spaced out and concisely explained. The opening credits and cutscenes gave you a feel for the world straightaway, and the instructions were fairly self-explanatory. The music was suitably ethereal and gave a nice atmosphere.

By the time I read the words, 'At some point in the game, Link will turn into a wolf...' I instantly thought, 'Spoilers!' Seems a bit of a shame to give that away without hinting at it anywhere else in the manual.

It would have been nice to keep the Wolf Link a bit of a surprise and have the instructions for playing as him within the game. I would also have liked to hear proper dialogue for the characters along with subtitles; the random 'Hey!'s sound a bit strange, and the digital-thimble-along-a-washboard sound effect used to denote speech grates fairly quickly.            

Getting Going

The use of extended, playable cutscenes to ease you into the game's controls and style of gameplay is a nice subtle way of teaching you without making you overtly conscious of it. The NPCs you meet have really obvious dialogue so you can't go wrong with what you have to do at the prologue stage - the section you play which is effectively the premise explained in the manual. The whole prologue stage allows you to practice all of Link's key moves in a way that makes it barely noticeable. By the time you get into the main part of the game the controls are second nature.

The prologue stage drags on, however. At times it really did feel like a chore when you had to chase cats and herd goats for what felt like an eternity before you even got into the main story.

It would have been great to make the initial prologue section of the game more concise and allow the player to get into the thick of it a bit more quickly; the game hand holds you through anything vaguely new anyway.

Insert joke about Link liking pussy here.

Fun

'Twilight Princess' is definitely enjoyable, and there's a nice balance between point and click style adventuring and battling enemies or platforming. The different gameplay styles are also mixed up well so it never feels repetitive. The music is used very well to convey an atmosphere; certain musical cues are used that have genuinely sinister overtones when enemies are in an area, for example. The story develops in a way that really makes you want to keep playing to find out more, and the character who becomes your guide for most of the game has a delightfully quirky personality - often choosing to mock you if you ever ask for help.

I've already complained about goat-herding in the tutorial, but seriously, all that faffing about in the village before the story gets going is like Mogodon for the soul. Although the story is engaging, it is incredibly cheesy; there were plenty of eye-rolling moments - case in point; there is a dramatic reveal that Zelda is known as the Twilight Princess, which would probably work were the game not called 'The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess'. Also, many of the characters are really, really bland; the main protagonist being one of the worst offenders. It says a lot that Link has far more personality as a wolf than he appears to as a humanoid.

The game swiftly becomes fun and addictive once the prologue section is out of the way - which sadly takes a long time, so I'd like to see that section shortened. It would be nice if the NPCs you talk to had a bit more personality - every single one of them likes Link and never really react strongly to anything that happens. Notable exceptions are Midna, who is hilarious; and Ilia, just for actually being cross with him on occasion. Giving some of these NPC a bit more bite would make the interactions a little more interesting and possibly help in making the prologue section feel less long winded.

'Wow! You're the Twilight Princess?'
'Did you not read the box?'

Visuals

The visuals are used very well in this game; the initial cosy forest areas are suitably twee and lush-looking. Once the game progresses and the kingdom is taken over by the twilight world, everything takes on a darker, harsher and creepier feel. The fact that you're in areas that have previously been light-hearted and pretty really helps to convey an atmosphere. There's a 'senses' mode you can use when playing as Wolf Link, and the grainy, short-range vision you get there has a very 'Blair Witch Project' feel to it. Despite the fact that it looks like Link's village and Hydrule have been invaded by Tron, it's still effective; there's a dissonance between the natural forest and the pseudo-electronic design of the Twilight elements. You're not just being told everything's at stake, you're seeing it first-hand. The map functionality is also good, as it shows the location of key items so you have an idea of where to go, and it expands as you progress to prevent you from being able to think too far ahead.

Sometimes the art can be a bit samey within a single area; this becomes an issue when you have multiple doors in different areas of the same room and the simple act of entering through a door you haven’t yet tried becomes problematic.

In enclosed spaces where there are multiple pathways, it would be useful to have more distinguishing features to help you orientate yourself within a scene.

Disney called; they want Tron back.

Intelligence

The enemies that attack you will only attack when they can see you, and once they see you, they don't leave you alone. This is logical and means you can try and sneak past them by climbing onto ledges and platforms, or you can simply attack them, giving you multiple choices for dealing with any potential threats. 

There are moments where the NPCs really act like idiots just so you can pass them even though the game has been set up so they should be after you - when Link is a wolf, he returns to the village and a couple of the villagers try to get rid of him, thinking he's an evil beast. One of them is easily scared, but the other one simply doesn't notice as you wander past him from about an inch away. Either make the NPCs deliberately unaware, or have them try to attack you. There also doesn't seem to be any difference to the enemies besides some taking more hits than others. Oh, and the boss fights are a joke - they're so obvious, each one might as well just be accompanied with step-by-step instructions on the screen.

It'd be nice for some enemies to have greater awareness or different tactics than others. There are some enemies who can bring each other back to like if they're not killed at the same time, but they still behave exactly the same as all other enemies. Also, credit your audience with some intelligence and make them do a little work to figure out how to defeat the bosses - the way you end up utilising skills you've learned in the previous quest is a good, organic feature, but a little twist in the formula would make things more challenging.

This is probably the only time Link reacts to anything ever.

Immersion

The game is very addictive once you get past the prologue; I only realised I'd been playing it for around five hours because my Wii Remote ran out of battery. It employs a combination of short quests that make you think, 'Oh, go on, just one more', as well as using reveals that make you eager to find out what happens next and thus keep playing.

The whole prologue section is a double-edged sword; on one hand it makes you get a hang of the controls without even noticing, but on the other, it really makes it difficult to get into the game. One tiny issue I had was with the floaty cursor - or rather, the noise it makes whenever you so much as twitch your wrist - gets very annoying, very quickly. It took around fifteen seconds of the very first playable scene for me to try and find a way to switch its sound off.

Why does the cursor even have a noise? It doesn't need one! Other, more pressing areas that could be improved are the meandering length of the prologue section; it serves its purpose, it could just do with being compressed.

Link, showing his age by wearing the blank-faced look adopted by most adolescents.

Cameras

On the whole, the cameras work well; you can see what you want to see, there's a button that puts the camera back into a position where it faces whichever direction your character is in, there's an option to view the surrounding area in first-person.

One down side is that there is no real option to look down, which can make it tricky to see if your about to plummet to your doom from a ledge. Also, sometimes enemies are maddeningly just out of shot during battles, which can disadvantage you.

Adding a 'look up/down' option would enhance the camera capabilities a lot.

Controls

The controls are reasonably intuitive, and the way the gameplay is set up, you'll be forced to practice enough that they'll become second nature. They are simple to use, so you won't generally be stuck in a fraught battle scene trying to figure out what you have to do to attack. You can set a number of items to be selectable with the Wii Remote directional pad, which does cut down on the amount of times you have to go into your inventory to do anything.

It is a shame that you have no ability to be able to peer over a ledge; it's a small thing, but there are many moments where it would be really beneficial to be able to do this.

There isn't really a way to improve on the controls without over-complicating the mechanism, however. The simplicity is a definite bonus in this game.

'Yep, you're still the chosen one.'

Ideas

I was very dubious about the gimmick of Link becoming a wolf, until I actually played it. The gameplay style is so different, and Link actually gets a semblance of a personality. Another great thing about this is the rather amusing ability to talk to animals - which is actually quite fun when you go back to the village and get to hear what the animals think of you (and yes, they have more personality than some of the human NPCs). This style of gameplay really comes into its own as a narrative device when you return to the village as Wolf Link; you instinctively try to open doors and so on, which you clearly can't do as a wolf, so have to find other routes into people's homes and around the area. This not only adds an interesting dimension to the game, but it shows you just how disorientating such a transformation must be for your character.

However, for a game that tries to feel like an RPG or adventure game, it's astonishingly linear. There was really very little I could do outside of the prescribed order of the game.

Given the worlds you have and the range of skills at Links fingers (or paws, depending), it would be nice to see a little more of a sandbox element to some of the areas. There are some really interesting locations; give us a chance to explore more, game!

'This demeans us both, Midna.'

Memory

This was a game I definitely switched off wanting to play more. The evocative look of the twilight-engulfed world was definitely distinctive, although I was expecting Kurt Russell to start following Link on a cyber-bike. The controls were easy to get to grips with and the bite-sized little quests made it a pretty difficult game to put down. The tutorial character of Midna is delightfully antagonistic, which makes a nice change from the bland, exposition-spouting characters you often get in this types of game.

It did seem a little easy; maybe in later levels it ratchets up, but for five hours I was making very comfortable progress. Plus the game made it very aware that it wasn't going to let me do anything outside of its own remit. Also, despite having played the game for over seven hours, I have no clue who Link is. Sure, I know he’s ‘the chosen one’ and has to save the kingdom of Hyrule, but is he pleased about this? Does it annoy him? Does he want to smack the little urchins who follow him around the village and idolise him? I have no clue, because he reacts to everything with a blank stare. I’m supposed to be guiding this dude towards his destiny; it helps if I care about him a little. The only thing he seems to take some interest in is finding items he’s never found before and holding them up to you. When he’s a wolf, he actually shows some emotion, and he’s all the more engaging for it.

A little more challenge in the earlier levels and a bit more leeway into finding your own route through the adventure-style areas would definitely be a bonus to this game, as would a Link who didn’t wander around as though the blank-slate state he was born with hadn’t persisted into his adolescence. Let him react to NPCs and events; show me what kind of a hero he is.

Despite the fact that the storyline is kind of predictable and that with Link, I felt as though I was playing as a brick wall, ‘The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess’ is very entertaining, engaging and absorbing. It combines the scope of an RPG with the more immediate gameplay style of hack-and-slash combat and short-term puzzling, and utilises an effective tutorial-style prologue to subtly help you master the controls. The length of each quest within the game is ideally set to make the experience rather addicting.