Source. That's all the info from the Game Informer cover story. I will just copy paste the whole thing in here. Prepare for spoilers and prepare to get overloaded with tons of new infos. The facts are interrupted by Aonuma quotes. The whole thing is just FYI for now, I will comment on some stuff later.
Update: you can now view full scans of the cover story here or here.
Update: you can now view full scans of the cover story here or here.
Any new thoughts or predictions about the over world now that we have seen all this new stuff?
ReplyDeleteIt's great to see a variety of over world areas with views out to the horizon. It suggests that, at the very least, Hyrule will not strictly be a collection of very enclosed areas, like the forest. But, they could still function that way even if they provide views to far away.
I really like the talk of making the over world feel like a dungeon. It shows that they want it to be full of content and interesting things to do, which is how the over world used to be in the 2D games. Twilight Princess made a big mistake, thinking it would be enough once again to just provide lots of open space. If there is nothing much to do, the grandeur is lost.
One of my favorite things from the recently released media is the shot of Link falling through the clouds with the landscape rushing up towards him. For an instant you can see hundreds of trees. The top-down view reminds me of the 2D games, and suggests a densely-structured landscape to explore. But, again, it's possible this is just a cool transition, and we shouldn't read in too much about the structure of the over world.
I hope the over world will eventually open up and the area above the clouds will remain as a way to get around quickly.
Do you think this was the original intention for Wind Waker? Was Hyrule meant to be a place you could eventually explore, at least a little? Or was it always the plan to just provide a single vista but confine players to the path to Ganon's Tower? I know some content was cut from Wind Waker because of schedule issues, but if they cut a large part of the land-based over world that would have been a MASSIVE cut. Cutting a couple dungeons, etc, I can see, but omitting half the over world would have reflected a drastically miscalculated development schedule, so much so that it's hard to believe.
@Spurious George:
ReplyDeleteIt definitely seems like the individual areas will be massive and full of content. According to the infos you will only return to the sky to get to the village or to swap between areas. You will spend hours in one area. So, it won't be like the Wind Waker, where you sail from one tiny island to the next.
I completely agree, that this game might the first 3D Zelda with an overworld getting close to certain 2D games.
About the Wind Waker... no, according to Aonuma they did everything they wanted to do. There is the rumor, that two dungeons got because of time constraints, but that's a rumor. But they had to face many complaints about how empty the world was and that is something they might want to do differently this time.
In case of TWW I was talking about what could have been. And if the Wind Waker had a fully developed sunken Hyrule in the style of what we're getting here in Skyward Sword, the game would be ten times more awesome.