Vielleicht braucht sie soviel Platz für ihre ...
Ein paar Kleinigkeiten aus dem dicken
Iwata-Interview:
Nishimori [...] One thing I remember was the advice we received on the wolf's design. In this game, Link is transformed into a wolf-like beast. In other words, the character the player controls at times moves around on four legs. When we were discussing the wolf's design, Miyamoto-san said: "It's no fun to just look at the back of a four-legged animal all the time." It's true that with a four-legged animal, if you look sideways on or from an angle, you can clearly see the motion of the legs and the overall way the character moves. But if you look directly from behind, it looks really boring compared to a human character's movements. So Miyamoto-san told us to have someone riding the wolf. At the early stages, we went for a very unassuming character on the wolf's back, but by the end this character occupied a central place in the game.
Iwata Ah, I see! The really interesting thing about what you've just told us is that Miyamoto-san was "speaking from a functional point of view". It wasn't that he wanted a character riding the wolf for narrative reasons. Rather, the reason was to do with its function in the game, as "viewing an animal directly from behind all the time is boring." It's really interesting to hear that the idea of having someone riding the wolf was because of this. I really feel that this is the thinking of someone who worked in industrial design. Sidetracking just a little, when Miyamoto-san got Mario to ride Yoshi in Super Mario World, the thinking behind that idea was "functional". What I mean is that the SNES was a console which didn't allow a lot of sprites (the technical mechanism that allows graphics to be displayed on the screen) to be lined up on-screen at the same time. To explain why Yoshi ended up looking like that, it's because that shape allows you to limit the number of sprites lined up on screen when Mario and Yoshi are overlapping. You'll understand if you take a look at the original blueprint that Yoshi was designed purely from a functional point of view. So the reason Yoshi ended up being a dinosaur is not because we wanted Mario to ride a dinosaur. Rather, it was because something like a dinosaur was the shape which was allowed by the technical limitations. Sorry, I digressed slightly there! (laughs) Kitagawa-san, did you have any "tables upended"?
Nishimori [...]Something which I gave a lot of attention, and which I think is one of the game's outstanding features, are the horse-riding scenes. In particular, the parts where you are fighting enemies while on horseback is something I've been dying to do ever since Ocarina of Time. When we let people have a go at a horseback battle scene at E3, there was an incredibly positive response, but within the team there were those who felt that this part of the game needed a little more work. After Miyamoto-san suggested it, I even went horse-riding!
Iwata You actually went horse-riding?
Nishimori I really did. Miyamoto-san just said: "Go and ride a horse!" (laughs) I got the designer responsible for the horse and the person responsible for the animations of Link and the horse, and the three of us went to do some field work. As we were beginners, we weren't able to fully master horse-riding, but we got to appreciate that feeling of the size of the horses you get by standing beside them as well as the sensation of riding a large animal, that kind of enjoyable sense of not being fully in control. We experienced a whole range of things, including the way riding a horse affects your line of vision, and I think there were elements of the game that we couldn't have made unless we had actually ridden a horse. So that's what I really want players to notice.
Kitagawa Well, as the person in charge of the dungeons, I want players to enjoy the rich variety and the attention to detail that has gone into all the dungeons. To give a more specific recommendation, there are some unexpected old-school elements making a 3D appearance, and I am sure they will bring smiles to the faces of long-time fans. I hope players enjoy the hard work that has gone into them.
Miyagi If I'm asked to give a recommendation or an aspect that I am particularly proud of, I think I have to speak on behalf of all of the staff who worked on the field design, so it's very difficult to narrow it down. Firstly, of course, is the fun of galloping on your horse across the vast plains of Hyrule. I think the sense of speed is something the players will really enjoy. Another thing I secretly like is that once you have progressed to a certain point in the game, there is a place that has been designed so that the player can look out from Hyrule Plains and see exactly where the mountains, lakes, deserts and rivers you have journeyed through are located. Of course, it isn't perfect, but it has been made with the greatest effort to make it all consistent. You can enjoy that view in-between your adventures!
Oh man, ich hab' das Ding komplett gelesen. Jetzt tun mir die Augen weh.
e: Matt ist wieder da ... mit einem dicken Screenshot von Zelda.
http://wii.ign.com/articles/744/744044p1.html
Für die, die sich nicht trauen zu klicken, hier mal das so weit spoilerfreie:
Bitter and Sweet
As a videogame reviewer and a journalist with a looming deadline, playing the near-final build of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a bittersweet experience. Sweet for all the obvious reasons. I could simply write that "it's Zelda" and veteran gamers would fully understand. But let me go into a little more detail for those still unfamiliar with this franchise - there might be one or two of you left, after all. Nintendo's action-adventure series has, since its conception decades ago, set the standard for the genre with incredibly deep gameplay mechanics and clever puzzles, not to mention beautiful graphics. In fact, Nintendo 64's Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is even to this day heralded as the greatest videogame ever made by too many gamers and critics to count.
Now, bearing that in mind, Twilight Princess is bigger, deeper, and prettier. Which is, of course, precisely the problem when time itself is a hot commodity for me, and this is where the bitter comes into the equation.
If Wii Sports is for the non-gamers, Twilight Princess is for the hardcore. After I spent 10 hours with the game, I barely managed to squeak by two temples, with the third so far off that I could scarcely imagine getting there, let alone approach the objective. (For the record, out of 30 or so journalists, nobody came close to the third temple.) I asked how long it took Nintendo's testers to complete the entire game the first time through. The answer is a whopping 70-plus hours. Adding insult to injury, diabolical Nintendo translator and localization manager Bill Trinen told me that he was working on his second play-through of the game. Knowing what to do and where to go, and skipping cut-scenes, Trinen said that he had logged about 27 hours to make it about two thirds of the way through the temples themselves - and that doesn't account for any of the side quests or time sucks like fishing, a single operation that could easily add hours upon hours to Zelda's depth. .
When publishers claim that their games are 50 hours long, seasoned players usually half that number for the truth. But with Twilight Princess, I think we can really look forward to a 50-plus-hour adventure, bare minimum. This quest will keep you busy through the holidays and beyond. So, I'm pondering this revelation a lot as I try to imagine how in the hell I'm going to find the time to beat Zelda and still review 30 other games for the Wii launch. Of course, that's more than a little terrifying, but at the same time I am absolutely thrilled by the prospect of spending some quality time with Link, Epona, and Zelda again. Oh yeah, and Midna, too.
There's no way to know for sure how it'll all turn out yet, as even with 10 hours under my belt I've only scratched the surface. However, if the game keeps up or gets better - as Nintendo's people promise that it does - there is simply no way that the adventure will remembered as anything but a masterful classic and quite possibly the best launch title in the history of the business.
Two Systems - One Game
Twilight Princess may have started as a GameCube title, but it finished a Wii one. There remains this faction of gamers that refuses to accept the possibility. You know who you are. You continue to argue that because the controls were originally designed for the GameCube pad there is no hope for the Wii build. You say that your arms will get tired using the Wii remote. You speak of mirrored worlds and right-handed Link. And you know what? It's all crap. If you buy Twilight Princess for GameCube and not Wii, you are a fool. And I state that without meaning to suggest that the GCN iteration is flawed - it isn't. It's an amazing swan song for Nintendo's older system. But neither is it as good as the Wii incarnation. In fact, were it up to me and not Nintendo (and in my dreams, it is), I'd have scrapped the GCN build altogether, forcing everyone to exclusively buy the Wii version. Honestly, Nintendo gave you five good years with GameCube; it doesn't owe you a damned thing.
At some point in time (admittedly, late in the long development cycle), the team making Twilight Princess decided to focus on the Wii version of the title over the GameCube one. The evidence of this truth is undeniable. Take, for example, the fact that Zelda arrives on Wii first, which is partly true because internal resources were moved from the GameCube build to the Wii one a good while ago. There are several important content-related exclusives that have come as a result of concentrating on the Wii game. The remote-enhanced control comes to mind. Using the pointer with Zelda felt unintuitive when Nintendo unveiled the mechanic last May, but it has come a long way since then. Now, slashing Link's sword with the remote feels very good and using the device to aim and target with weapons like the Hero's Bow and Gale Boomerang absolutely demolishes the traditional configuration. There really is no comparison - and there's no going back. Also, Zelda on Wii makes full use of the remote's internal speaker and this is, believe it or not, a very welcomed feature. I've always been skeptical of this speaker, mind you, because I simply don't think it outputs the best audio quality. But I have to admit that receiving audio cues and select sound effects through the controller is somehow more powerful. It actually does add another layer of immersion to the experience. And, of course, the Wii version of Twilight Princess runs in 16:9 widescreen mode while the GameCube incarnation doesn't. For many videophiles like myself, that in of itself is a very compelling reason to pick Zelda up on Nintendo's new generation console.
There is every reason to get Zelda on Wii, but if you're still not convinced that the controls work just fine, consider that I was just as skeptical as you are now before I put some serious play time into the game. So were the other 30 or so journalists who played alongside me. And when the gameplay session came to its too-early end, everybody in attendance agreed that the Wii remote and nunchuk combo performed beautifully. Nobody's arms were tired. Nobody felt that the continuity of the game universe had been sacrificed because the landscapes and items had been mirrored. And nobody complained that Link was a right-hander. In fact, we had a couple lefties who said playing with the game on Wii felt very natural.