kev || tsuni

Don't be mad at what I'm about to say. Ocarina of Time is the essence of the Zelda series' soul. It has depth and invokes feelings that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom couldn't capture. The world, the music, and the connection to the characters in Ocarina really motivate you to get stronger and stop Ganon for the sake of the land you knew seven years ago. The games in the Wild Era are fun and enjoyable Zelda games, but they lacked the connection and the charm that the previous Zelda games had before them. The world in the Wild Era was huge, but it felt very empty. I understood the story and why it was the way it was, but it was still very unsatisfying. Everything looked the same. "Unique" locations were just eye candy, but they didn't feel special and hardly impactful to the story. Think back to Hateno, Lurelin, Kakariko, and Tarrey Town. They look good, yes, but their significance doesn't feel as good as Kakariko in Ocarina. Hearing about pirates invading Lurelin sounded cool, but instead we got basic enemies and basic stationary ships. There wasn't any real significance in rebuilding Lurelin either. Just Kakariko Village in Ocarina's remake had more significant lore, history, and importance than all the villages and towns in the Wild Era combined. Comparing Ocarina of Time and the original Zelda games to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is the definition of quality versus quantity. I'd rather look for 100 Gold Skulltulas and receive very useful in-game items than look for 900 to 1000 Koroks just to add to my playtime. I prefer eight unique, beautifully designed dungeons integrated with their own deep story and lore, with new equipment and unique bosses in them, and linear storytelling, rather than an open world with hundreds of copy and pasted shrines and dungeons with some being optional. All the bosses in Tears of the Kingdom came from bosses that were created in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, a game released two years after Tears came out. They were just "there" because they were "created" in the past. The bosses in Breath of the Wild were even worse. They were just one big Ganon boss battle broken up into four separate phases; you get told the Champions were killed by the one you're fighting, and you destroy it. Compare that to the stories we heard in-game about the Dodongo, Volvagia, Bongo Bongo, and more. They had their lore, were tied to the main story, and served a better purpose and reason for being in their respective dungeons, instead of just being mostly gloom and malice. I've said this many times. The Legend of Zelda is my favorite series of all time. I really enjoyed Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but what they lacked was magic. The mystique of something feeling ancient in Ocarina of Time feels real compared to seeing and hearing about it in the Wild games. What's ironic is that those games talk about a distant past of over 10,000 years, but you just don't feel it. Ancient Sheikah and Zonai magic and technology were fun and interesting, but they couldn't replace Zelda's traditional magic and mysteries. The magic of the older Zelda games is more powerful and mixes better with Zelda's overall story than the technology and magic in the Wild games. I would rather have one cohesive playthrough that blows my mind and takes me into a fantasy world of in-depth mystery and satisfying lore I feel a part of, even at the cost of the length of the game, rather than play a really long, drawn out, soulless adventure through memories while feeling like a tourist. In the end, I hope the new director, HokWai Ng, and the Zelda team see how powerful an impact this new Ocarina of Time remake has on people and their love for this traditional style of storytelling and gameplay. In future titles I hope they focus on building a believable world that focuses on the present, but also lets us learn about its past if it is relevant to the story. #Zelda #OcarinaOfTime