 |
| Hey link! You smell. Yeah. |
The Plot:
As a reminder, we left off last time with the Great Deku Tree's untimely death. His final instructions to you are to take the green super-stone to Hyrule and talk to the royal family. When you return to town, The Great Mido, another Kakari boy, accuses you of killing Mr. Deku. Mido is a tool; we do not like Mido. You manage to convince him that you did not commit arborcide, and he skulks away to pout about something.
At this point you're given no direction whatsoever. Sure, I know what I'm supposed to do eventually, but I have no idea how to get there. I decided to wander into The Lost Woods -- it seams reasonable to assume that Hyrule's on the other side of the woods. This was apparently the wrong decision, so after half an hour of traipsing around the woods, I decided to return to the village and talk to a few people.
The other Kakari talk about how they're unsure of why Mr. Deku would send you on this quest, since if you leave the forest you'll die. Great -- I love it when that happens. With faith unwavering, I continue out the actual exit of the forest, only to be stopped by your best friend, Saria. You have an emotionally touching moment; she sure will miss her linkie-winkie. Before you leave, she gives you an ocarina. Aha! I see why this game has that in its title now. Of course, she doesn't bother to teach you any songs, or explain why it might be useful at all -- so far as I'm concerned, it's a momento at this point.
With the cutscene ended, you finally make it to Hyrule Field. But wait, there's another cutscene. Please meet Mr. Owl. We like Mr. Owl; he's a hoot. From here on, you can count on him for advice. You see, you may already have a magical advice fairie, but it's the owl who gives you direction.
This encounter with Mr. Owl is focused on teaching Link how to read a map and wander the countryside. I like to think of this as his hoot-torial. Also, just in case pressed B and accidentally skipped everything he said because the text appears so slowly, he asks to make sure you caught all that he said. What a guy.
Finally. Fresh air. Wait. Aren't I supposed to be dead now? I mean, I left the forest, and we're not actually supposed to do that. I'm sure someone will totally explain this to me (spoiler: they don't). Oh well, I'll just walk over here and, what the!? Great. Hyrule's apparently infested with skeletons which count out at night; night which comes every 3 minutes, roughly. Zelda's an exploration game, so I take this chance to wander around the small countryside, and go everywhere but the castle. This involves saying hi to Lon Lon Ranch, and trying to get to the other places which are not yet available. This takes entirely too long for absolutely no reward, so I won't bother you with the details.
Anyway, with all this dilly-dallying, let's hope that the princess is not yet in another castle. I head to Hyrule only to find out that there is more to do in Hyrule than the rest of the game I've seen combined. hundreds of shops and homes, thousands of pots to break, and even some grass to slash. It's link heaven. I gamble away my meager living on slingshot contests, and pout as the bomb-bomb-bowling is not yet open. Eventually I make my way toward the castle, where I'm supposed to save the world.
It turns out that you can't just introduce yourself to the guard as "Hi, my name is Link, and I'm here to save you!" Apparently there's nothing to save them from. In fact, they're very busy meeting with someone from the desert.
Being the determined young lad you are, you decide to bypass the guards and sneak your way into an audience with the royal family. Unfortunately, some perv in town recently tried to spy on Princess Zelda, who may or may not have prophetic visions, so the guards are on much higher security than normal. Mr. Perv is nice enough to tell you exactly how to get into the castle; what a guy.
So, what ensues is a ridiculously dated stealth portion of the game, where you run past guards as they're not watching. This is no Metal Gear Solid here; there's no crouching behind a box, or knocking on walls to distract them. To sneak past the guards you just have to wait for them to walk out of site for a second. The most difficult part of the whole ordeal is working with the camera angles they give you.
Thankfully, after not too much effort, you manage to sneak up on Zelda. Did I mention she's prophetic? After a startle, she immediately decides you must be the savior of the world who she has dreamed about. She has been terribly bothered by dreams of the destruction of all things good recently, and she just knows you can help here.
Oh my god, you have an ocarina!? You must learn this song. It's no big deal or anything, just a long protected secret song of the Hyrule royal family. It's a good thing Mr. Perv didn't find her, because she's clearly delusional.
Anyway, she's convinced that the recent guest her father has been entertaining is completely evil. Her reasoning (I kid you not) is because he is brown, and from the desert. Hello, Racism 101. I mean, she's not wrong in this particular case, but wow.
Racism aside, that jewel you have is really powerful, and Ganondorf (who's mother clearly hated him to call him that) probably wants to get his hands on it and its two brothers. If he can do that, then he could control all the power of the gods. So, obviously you have to collect themfor him to stop him. Word on the street is that the Gorons have one, so you better hurry up and convince them to part with their gift from the gods.
My Thoughts:
The game has aged surprisingly well. I suspect that many of my issues (such as how terrible it is to aim your slingshot) stem from me playing a GameCube port of the game on my Wii; my good gamecube controllers did not survive Super Smash Brothers: Melee, so I am using a third party controller. Also, for those wondering, I received this copy of Ocarina of Time, along with Master Quest as a pre-order bonus for Wind Waker. I may not be a Zelda fan, but I'm not unfamiliar with the series.
Mechanically, I believe OoT was very well polished for its time. However, some of the areas were clearly given more attention to detail than others. I don't find the textures uniform at all; some areas are clearly better than others, and it doesn't appear to be correlated with importance. For example, your beginning hut is absolutely atrocious, and it's not just the style; most of the time the art is nicely done though..
My biggest complaints thus far are all plot related. I don't mind throwing Ganon[dorf] under the bus early on. It's okay to know who the primary antagonist is. However, their reasoning is flimsy at best. Also, collecting all three stones together is the worst idea. If you're worried that he's going to use them against you, don't bring them to him. This can only end badly.
 |
| It's dangerous to go alone! Take this. |
The other Kakari talk about how they're unsure of why Mr. Deku would send you on this quest, since if you leave the forest you'll die. Great -- I love it when that happens. With faith unwavering, I continue out the actual exit of the forest, only to be stopped by your best friend, Saria. You have an emotionally touching moment; she sure will miss her linkie-winkie. Before you leave, she gives you an ocarina. Aha! I see why this game has that in its title now. Of course, she doesn't bother to teach you any songs, or explain why it might be useful at all -- so far as I'm concerned, it's a momento at this point.
 |
| What do you mean 'start'!? I just saved the whole forest. |
This encounter with Mr. Owl is focused on teaching Link how to read a map and wander the countryside. I like to think of this as his hoot-torial. Also, just in case pressed B and accidentally skipped everything he said because the text appears so slowly, he asks to make sure you caught all that he said. What a guy.
 |
| "Go to the castle," they said, "It's important," they said. Yeah, time to visit the cows. |
Anyway, with all this dilly-dallying, let's hope that the princess is not yet in another castle. I head to Hyrule only to find out that there is more to do in Hyrule than the rest of the game I've seen combined. hundreds of shops and homes, thousands of pots to break, and even some grass to slash. It's link heaven. I gamble away my meager living on slingshot contests, and pout as the bomb-bomb-bowling is not yet open. Eventually I make my way toward the castle, where I'm supposed to save the world.
 |
| Me: "I'm here to save the world!" Guard: "Get out of here with your weird outfit, kid." |
Being the determined young lad you are, you decide to bypass the guards and sneak your way into an audience with the royal family. Unfortunately, some perv in town recently tried to spy on Princess Zelda, who may or may not have prophetic visions, so the guards are on much higher security than normal. Mr. Perv is nice enough to tell you exactly how to get into the castle; what a guy.
So, what ensues is a ridiculously dated stealth portion of the game, where you run past guards as they're not watching. This is no Metal Gear Solid here; there's no crouching behind a box, or knocking on walls to distract them. To sneak past the guards you just have to wait for them to walk out of site for a second. The most difficult part of the whole ordeal is working with the camera angles they give you.
 |
| "I'm very trusting -- that's why my father has so many guards." |
 |
| "We don't have brown people in Hyrule -- he must be evil." |
Thankfully, after not too much effort, you manage to sneak up on Zelda. Did I mention she's prophetic? After a startle, she immediately decides you must be the savior of the world who she has dreamed about. She has been terribly bothered by dreams of the destruction of all things good recently, and she just knows you can help here.
Oh my god, you have an ocarina!? You must learn this song. It's no big deal or anything, just a long protected secret song of the Hyrule royal family. It's a good thing Mr. Perv didn't find her, because she's clearly delusional.
 |
| "It's 'cause he's black." |
Racism aside, that jewel you have is really powerful, and Ganondorf (who's mother clearly hated him to call him that) probably wants to get his hands on it and its two brothers. If he can do that, then he could control all the power of the gods. So, obviously you have to collect them
My Thoughts:
The game has aged surprisingly well. I suspect that many of my issues (such as how terrible it is to aim your slingshot) stem from me playing a GameCube port of the game on my Wii; my good gamecube controllers did not survive Super Smash Brothers: Melee, so I am using a third party controller. Also, for those wondering, I received this copy of Ocarina of Time, along with Master Quest as a pre-order bonus for Wind Waker. I may not be a Zelda fan, but I'm not unfamiliar with the series.
Mechanically, I believe OoT was very well polished for its time. However, some of the areas were clearly given more attention to detail than others. I don't find the textures uniform at all; some areas are clearly better than others, and it doesn't appear to be correlated with importance. For example, your beginning hut is absolutely atrocious, and it's not just the style; most of the time the art is nicely done though..
My biggest complaints thus far are all plot related. I don't mind throwing Ganon[dorf] under the bus early on. It's okay to know who the primary antagonist is. However, their reasoning is flimsy at best. Also, collecting all three stones together is the worst idea. If you're worried that he's going to use them against you, don't bring them to him. This can only end badly.
Plot in video games is rarely very good. I recently played through Metroid Prime (from the Trilogy Edition release); after finishing the game, I read about the differences between the original and European/Trilogy Edition version.
ReplyDeleteSpoiler alert.
Samus spends most of the game gathering 12 artifacts which open a magical barrier erected by the Chozo, to seal off a phazon meteor crater. After opening the barrier and entering the crater, Samus fights Metroid Prime who lives in the mine. In the original release, a note on a Space Pirate monitor says that they are designing new weapons using research from Prime. This is impossible, as Prime is sealed off in a crater that the Space Pirates couldn't get into. This happens in a game that doesn't have dialog.
What seems a little nuts to me is that this is something that was fixed easily by removing the note from the monitor, but this wasn't caught before release.
I agree; video game plot rarely makes sense.
ReplyDeleteFinal Fantasy VII is another great example of a popular game whose plot makes no sense. You wander from Big Disaster to Big Disaster until the world is threatened by a giant meteor via some flimsy plot line. I still like the game.
Because I'm playing through OoT now, I might pick up one of the latest Zelda games to see how much really *has* changed since it. One of my long standing issues is not that OoT itself is bad, but that every game since then has been OoT N.0, at least mechanically.
Part of what has frustrated me thus far is that OoT was clearly trying to be The Elder Scrolls before that was popular. It's a very open ended game, filled with as many side quests and mini games as they could think of. Good for them! However, there's a reason why TES are known for that, and not Zelda.
Anyway, the point is that while I joke about the plot, I'm not going to write the game off because of it?
I've been thinking some about how lousy plots work in video games, and in a few words, my idea is that the purpose of plot in video games is to motivate gameplay. I've been playing Mario Galaxy recently, which I thing has some neat mechanics and doesn't need a plot at all to be fun. The game is surreal in a way that would only be hindered by a plot. In the Zelda and Metroid games, I think some of the sword fighting or blastering or what have you can get to be repetitive, and the plot isn't that great, either, but the gameplay is good enough to keep you from thinking a lot about the plot, and the plot is good enough to motivate some of the gameplay. Whether or not this is enjoyable is a matter of taste.
ReplyDeleteIf you've played any number of games based on movies, including the plots, they're universally bad. (That is, TIE Fighter is great, Super Star Wars isn't.) There's probably some continuous trade-off between depth of plot and depth of gameplay, and this is seen between games and even within a game; a lot of the deepest and most complex gameplay in a Zelda game takes place in dungeons, where almost no exposition takes place.
With that said, there's a difference between shallow plot and bad plot. That is, implausible plots are probably necessary for must games, but there is no need for games to have plots that are not internally consistent, and in cases where plot can misdirect the player regarding what they should do, that's a clear negative and uncalled for. I think you're picking up on some good instances of this here.
There's no excuse for the lousy plots in Final Fantasy games. The gameplay is just menus; there should be plenty of room for great plot.
Have you played Journey? It's a great art game. There's no dialog. I think that the themes presented in the game are presented in a very strong way, but in a way that wouldn't work in any other medium. If you were to write down the plot, it would make a bad novel or movie script, not because it's a bad plot, but just because it can't translate well.