The Wind Waker HD Already Disappoints

No new content for the port. None at all. I should have saw that coming. If Nintendo had added anything besides the faster sail and the Tingle Bottles, they would have shown it. But I always get too excited about the possibilities.

I remember clearly that when Link's Awakening DX came out, I didn't care about the updated visuals. In fact I still prefer the monochrome GameBoy original, because it has more class and style than the colored mess on the GBC. But I really wanted to play the DX version for a simple reason: the new bonus dungeon. I was just too excited about experiencing a new challenge in one of my favorite games.

Adding new content to these ports and remakes is very important. It gives the fans, who already played the game, a good reason to go through it again.

But Ocarina of Time 3D managed to sell 3 million copies without having any new content at all (there was the Boss Battle Mode and the inclusion of Master Quest, but this does hardly count as new content). For Nintendo this was probably the sign that they don't have to try at all with these remakes.

And Aonuma now confirmed that there won't be anything new in an interview with Eurogamer:

"I've received many questions about additional content beyond what was in the GameCube version of the game, but our desire is to stay true of the story that was in the original. If we add dungeons then that will affect other parts of the GameCube version, which we really want to stay true to."

What a lazy excuse! I understand what he's saying and I wouldn't want them to make crazy alterations to the original game either. Like suddenly adding a Jabun's Belly dungeon to get Nayru's Pearl. It's a possibility, but it would feel weird.

But that doesn't mean that they can't add any new side quests to the game. There are many islands with no content at all, some island couldn't even be entered, because they were just some needle rocks in the ocean. If there's one Zelda game, that badly would need more content, then it's the Wind Waker. But according to Aonuma the lack of content is not the problem:

"If it felt like there were maybe too few dungeons then I feel that what was wrong with the GameCube version was the pacing. It was thrown off because it took longer to get to certain dungeons. There was a waiting period, and then when you arrived there the experience maybe didn't feel as big, as you'd waited so long to get there."

Or maybe it felt that way, because there were too few dungeons? But this doesn't occur to Aonuma. Adding new content would be work.

"We're tuning the game to alleviate all that. The pacing should feel appropriate to the overall experience this time... We need to tighten those [gaps] and make the overall experience and story feel tighter."

I hate Aonuma's fuzz talk. He never talks straight about something. How do they change the pacing? How do they improve the Triforce Quest? I bet all they have done is adding the faster sail. But Aonuma can't just say "we added the faster sail and that fixes everything", because that would look lazy. So, he babbles about how they changed the pacing and the game's flow, blah blah...

But there's also some interesting information here:

"Quite honestly, those dungeons we removed we used in other games, so we can't use them in this version!"

That makes sense. A lot of ideas and content that Nintendo scraps in one game, usually gets reused in a later game (and not for that game's advantage). But like in Ocarina of Time 3D I never expected to see the cut dungeons in the Wind Waker HD anyway. They scrapped the content for a reason, for example you probably wouldn't want to play the Unicorn Fountain stuff planned for Ocarina of Time, because it's most likely just garbage.

But I would like to see all new content. Something made with the ambition to really add something to the game. To give the veterans something nice to play with! A reason to buy the port... But nooooo...


On vooks.net it then was confirmed, that they're not adding a Hard Mode. The game's 2nd Quest would have been perfect for that, but Nintendo doesn't care. I could have excused the lack of new islands and dungeons, when they actually tried something with the 2nd Quest. The possibilities to please the Wind Waker veterans here are endless. And that's not really hard to do, they wouldn't have to design new islands or dungeons, they just need to alter the already existing ones. The Wind Waker is way too easy and needed a good 2nd Quest. And it already got a 2nd Quest implemented, it's just that it doesn't do anything besides changing Link's clothes and some other extras. They could have used this for so much more.


But the real bad news comes from Engadget.com:

Progress on the title's also being held up by Nintendo's development resources, or lack thereof. Right now, Aonuma's teams are spread a bit thin across A Link Between Worlds and Wind Waker HD, with priority going to that latter title. So before Nintendo can make any serious headway on Zelda Wii U -- let alone make the title's existence public -- WindWaker HD needs to be completed

This is the worst case scenario. I always defended TWWHD, because it could be easily made as a side project. It could have been done by anyone, while the Zelda team can focus on the real Zelda for Wii U. But how can they actually be busy with this port? They haven't done anything with it! They added some lighting effects, made it playable with the stupid GamePad, added Miiverse and that's it. There are no big graphical enhancements, there's no new content, no Master Quest, nothing. How can this hold up the development of Zelda Wii U? This is a giant joke. Unbelieveable.

And this has the priority over A Link Between Worlds? I bet the latter gets made by GREZZO after all, while Aonuma's team just watches them work.

This also doesn't match with Miyamoto's statement, that the Wii U Zelda was ready to be shown at E3... what to believe?