Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Ocarina of Time 3D Boss Challenge, Super Guide, Mirrored Master Quest and even more Screenshots



Man, it's hard to keep up with all those Ocarina of Time 3D news lately. Well, let's start with some interesting screenshots of Hyrule Castle and Castle Town:



Looking good. Well, I'm disappointed that the camera is still fixed - who wouldn't like to freely explore Hyrule Castle Town? If there's one thing they should have changed from the original, it would have been this. But they did a nice job with the remodelling of certain buildings, like the mask shop. Find more screenshots at Zelda Informer.

Those screen shots come from a press release by Nintendo of Europe. It also gave away some more information. There will be a Boss Challenge mode, where you can replay certain bosses or chose to fight them in circles. Fans always wanted something like this, so I guess either GREZZO or Nintendo were listening.

And there's Super Guide. Yes, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D will be the first Zelda game implementing the Super Guide. The game will show videos of how to solve certain puzzles. Lame, but I don't care.

However, there's one strange addition. In Master Quest the game will be mirrored. Like the Wii version of Twilight Princess. Seriously...? Okay, to be honest, actually I saw something like that coming. While complaining about the mirrored Wii version of Twilight Princess in earlier blog articles, I noticed how Nintendo was actually proud of that idea (from an Iwata Ask interview) and I feared that a Mirror Mode will become a normal addition to later 3D Zelda games. A Mirror Mode is a very, very simple addition to a game, that can change your gameplay experience entirely. May it be in Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country Returns or now in Zelda. Just flip the graphics and you'll get a new game mode. It's just interesting that they are fucking Master Quest up with this idea. The original Master Quest wasn't mirrored, it was just crazy. So, what if I want to play Master Quest in the way it was supposed to be? It would have been better, if the Mirror Mode was a separate option. So, you could play either the normal game or Master Quest and then select whether you want to play in Mirror Mode or not. That would be four different play styles. But I understand why they wanted to mirror Master Quest. Mainly because it only changes the dungeons, not the overworld. Half of the game was the same thing. So, now there literally would be a twist to the overworld as well, a new experience all the time. And it fits the idea of Master Quest quite well. The dungeons in Master Quest and their puzzles were designed in a way, that they screw you if you try to solve them in a similar way to the original game. You could say, the better you know Ocarina of Time, the trickier Master Quest can get. And the mirroring just adds to this concept, the better you know Ocarina of Time's Hyrule, the more confusing the mirrorred world might be. I guess, it could be interesting and definitely challenging for me. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. And I call it now, that Skyward Sword will have a Mirror Mode (for the lefties) as well.

Like always no news about any actual new content, like a bonus dungeon. I'm a broken record when it comes to this, this game needs something NEW. Mirrored Master Quest, Boss Challenge, Super Guide, updated graphics - all of them are nice additions, but no real new content. Link's Awakening DX did have new content (bonus dungeon, photo quest), A Link to the Past: Four Swords did have new content (bonus dungeon, riddle quest, an entire freaking multiplayer game) and Ocarina 3D is next in the line of remastered Zelda games. Why not follow the past trends and add for example a bonus dungeon to the game? But by now it really looks unlikely, unless they saved the big surprise for E3 2011.

Source: Zelda Informer again

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