I got Gannon-Banned

I assume that most of you know GANNON-BANNED, a funny joke site by Mike "TSA" Damiani, a Zelda fan who is known for various Zelda speedruns and fansites as TheHylia and who currently works at GameTrailers. The site contains a series of rules, what a Zelda fan should never say or claim. It starts with the rule, that Ganon isn't spelled "Gannon", which is where the term "GANNON-BANNED" came from. You shouldn't take the site too seriously (like I do here and now), but it's worth a look.

Well, I agree with most of the rules, but not all of them. For example I really like Zelda II - The Adventure of Link for what it is and I enjoyed it a lot back in the old days, but it's certainly not my favorite game in the series. And I have no problems with people dissing the CD-i games, because I think it doesn't matter anyway. Nintendo doesn't acknowledge these games as official Zelda games and neither should you. It doesn't really matter if these games are garbage or not, they don't count more than any fan game.

But I broke one rule, the newest rule to be exact, which was probably added with the latest update at January 1st 2010. This is what it says:

26. Claiming that Zelda is always first and foremost developed around gameplay, not story.

I can't tell you guys enough how many times I've been trolled or laughed at for even suggesting the notion that a Zelda game was developed around a story before the gameplay. It seems that Zelda games are always developed around a gameplay idea first, and story always takes a backseat, right? Head on over to the 5:21 mark of the video below. Listen and weep. Twilight Princess was developed first and foremost around a STORY, and without it, the gameplay couldn't have existed.

Yeah, I wonder what the initial "story" was like, other than "Link will transfrom into a wolf. The end." Of course Twilight Princess was a very story-heavy game. This even made it probably the most linear game in the series, because the developers wanted you to progress through the story exactly like they planned.

But the most important aspect of the story was Midna. She was the center of the story and even the game was named after her. And if you've read the Iwata Asks interviews, you know that Midna was created simply because they wanted to have something that rides on the wolf. Miyamoto suggested that a wolf alone looks boring, so something should ride on it. The wolf itself was a gameplay idea and most of the story was written around it. The Twilight Realm idea was there, because they needed something to force you into the wolf form. It basically came from the Dark Realm idea in A Link to the Past, where Link was turned into a bunny. Of course the final story then influenced a lot of parts in the game and was responsible for the game course, which is probably what Aonuma meant here.

But I don't know, why the guy is so obsessed with Zelda games being developed around story anyway. It's not like the stories are really good, most video game developers are really bad story tellers. Nintendo does the right thing by always focusing on the gameplay, because video games should be foremost about the gameplay. If I want a story, I read a book or watch a TV show. I never played a Zelda game for the story – the stories are nice but not the real deal. It's not the primary focus of these games. Last year TSA stated, that Zelda Wii is going to be developed around story, when they will most likely focus on Wii controls and MotionPlus... and whatever story the game has, it will only further the motion controlled gameplay elements.

And I can't think of any Zelda game, which wasn't developed around big gameplay aspects and where the story didn't really come first. The majority of Zelda games was not developed around a story, but around big new ideas like the three day cycle in Majora's Mask, the ocean in The Wind Waker or the wolf in Twilight Princess. It always has been that way and I see no reason to think otherwise. So, I get Gannon-Banned...