Friday, June 18, 2010

Lefties Unsupported

From the IGN interview with Aonuma:

IGN: In past Zelda games, people noticed that Link was obviously left-handed. And I know that all the Zelda games are stand-alones -- but in this particular game, will there be a lefty option for left-handed people?

Aonuma: It's interesting because people say "all you have to do is switch it." But in reality, it's really hard. You have to change all the models -- you have to make two of everything. So really you're making two complete games, one left-handed version and one right-handed version. We just can't do that. For Twilight Princess, what we did was just create a mirror -- we flipped everything. And if that worked I guess we could do it that way, but again having to create two games is not something we want to do. We just hope that people will play it right-handed.


Not supporting a left-handed playstyle is a very bad choice. Not only because of all the lefties, who want to play the game, but because there are many Zelda fans, who just don't want to see a right-handed Link. They're obsessed with it and they even would play the game in the left-handed style (even though they are right-handed) because of that. Well, I'm not one of these fans, but it's still a topic, that shouldn't be ignored.



And Aonuma is massively exaggerating here. Making two games? Seriously? They would have to do mirrored models of Link and all his enemies, adapt the controls, but that's it. I seriously can't see where the problem is. There's no need to change the environments, unless there are some stupid puzzles, where the exact position of the player is important. But "making two games" is definitely not what they would have to do. Well, they were totally lazy with that in Twilight Princess, where they just mirrored the entire graphics of the game, but you would think, that after four years of development they would come up with some better solution than "we don't want to do it".

I really start to dislike Aonuma, I see him as a problem. First he doesn't want to use MotionPlus and now he doesn't want to support left-handed players. And he wanted Link to ride on a train in Spirit Tracks, because his stupid son likes trains or whatever. But it should never be about, what the developers want. If a developer talks about, what he wants or doesn't want to do, than it's a fail already. It should always be about the player. Their approach, that they want the players to have fun with the swordsplay and everything, is great, that's the right direction. But then saying "we won't support lefties, because we're lazy" is simply a letdown. But I hope Miyamoto slaps them in the face for this, so they'll have to implement a solid left-handed playstyle in the next sixth months. :D

Interestingly enough some people at E3 played the game left-handed and it worked fine (this guy for example). The same goes for Wii Sports Resort. Nonetheless Nintendo should fully support lefties.

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