Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Why not Toon Hyrule Warriors?

So, Toon Link will be playable in Hyrule Warriors Legends according to the latest news, next to Tetra and the Red King of Lions. He won't be playable in Legend Mode, but you can use him in the other game modes. With him we now got three different versions of Link in the game. And I can't help but wonder, why they didn't make a Toon Hyrule Warriors instead?



The engine doesn't run all that nicely on the 3DS. There are fewer enemies and everything is shown in a cel shaded and outlined style, which looks like a massive downgrade from the original on the Wii U. And of course it is. In general I also don't like, how they mix the more realistic Zelda games with the Toon Zelda games, because these styles heavily clash, even if they use cel shading on the original characters. The proportions are just off. The game becomes a visual mess.

And now that there's Toon Link, there could be a Toon Zelda, a Toon Ganondorf and a Toon Tingle as well... And I feel like it would have been the better solution to keep all of this separate in a completely different Hyrule Warriors game. With an entire toon roster:

  • Toon Link
  • Toon Zelda
  • Toon Ganondorf
  • Toon Lana
  • Toon Cia
  • Toon Tingle
  • Tetra
  • Red King of Lions
  • Medli
  • Makar
  • Oshus
  • Cole
  • Byrne

That's 13 characters already, like the original roster of Hyrule Warriors. Why not make a new story with Lana and/or Cia (toon versions), which involves the eras of The Wind Waker / Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks? The Four Swords games would also fit visually, so you could have Vaati or Ezlo. And later of course characters from TriForce Heroes.

This way there would be two different Hyrule Warriors series. One on the home console with the "cool and realistic" Zelda stuff. And one on the handhelds with the Toon Zelda universe. I would find that a lot better than recycling Hyrule Warriors on the handheld and mashing Toon Zelda stuff in there. But maybe this is even the direction they want to go in the future and they are just breaking first new ground here. After all the whole The Wind Waker part in Legend Mode will be separate, its own story at the end. Maybe in the future they will expand this to its own game.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would prefer Linebeck to Oshus.

TourianTourist said...

I thought about Linebeck, but it would be completely out of character for him to suddenly start fighting instead of hiding in a barrel. And how would he fight, let alone blow away entire armies...?