The Legend of Zelda: Can you do better?

[Robin Firedrake]

Considering the Spirit tracks thread made such an uproar I have made this thread for those of you that think you can make a better storyline and game design. I'll start with mine:

You play a character who believes himself to be Hyrule's hero but obviously isn't. He doesn't have a tri-force, he isn't hylian (perhaps even something from Ganon's own ranks such as a bulblin or lizalfos) and each thing he does is more and more twisted even though he doesn't realize it. Suddenly somewhere along the line he looks out at his new kingdom (Hyrule) and then snaps back to sanity. He has a quick moment of "What have I done?" and then you go back through what you've done before, see how warped it's become and fix it.

Gameplay would be like any other of course with the exception of "The glasses of [insert something cool sounding here]" which, when worn, turn the whole game first person. I know they did that with the hawkeye but with only the arrows and without movement. The glasses would make everything first person and you would be able to see many things you wouldn't normally. Also gadgets that could be used just for fun and minigames and sidequests would be plentiful.

[Whitefang]

Robin, I like your idea, but I am not sure it would be appropriate for a "main" Zelda title. Perhaps a portable title or, hope upon hope, a sequel or prequel to a main title. That would be pretty cool.

I won't claim that I can make a better Zelda game, but here is what I expect out of any Zelda title.

*Story wise
I expect a world in chaos, where Link must perform some task and go on some quest to restore order. I prefer Zelda to have an active and smart role in the game where she exists. The closest performance would be in The Wind Waker (Firefox, that is a word!), though there has never been a truly satisfying performance from Zelda in my opinion (Have not played Link's awakening, so I can't comment on her counterpart's performance; I hear she's a popular character). I also expect a villain, whether known or unknown, to be revealed at some point and make tell his or her story. However, the focus of the game is not the story. Zelda, to me, is an experiment in intelligent game design. The story is told by performing heroic deeds. This makes it quite unlike a traditional role playing game where the story is plot-driven. I have never felt that 'Link' is a representation of the player. I believe that his intention is to be a connection between our world and the worlds of Hyrule and beyond.
I prefer the worlds where the Triforce is whole instead of imbued to each character.

*Character Design
Link needs to lose his long hat and get a shorter one that doesn't look quite so goofy. Ganondorf needs to buff up. I am quite pleased with Zelda's appearance in Twilight Princess, but she should keep her rapier or weapon-of-choice on her person in a scabbard.
I don't care if I have to use my left hand to swing the sword, unless a sprite is being reversed Link should be left-handed, or at least an option should be available to choose handedness.

*Gameplay

RPG elements: I feel that Adventure of Link style RPG elements is a bit too heavy, and although I understand that the only difference between that game and the others is in how overtly they are displayed, I prefer keeping that information hidden. I remember reading in the Donkey Kong Country manual a description on the interface display: it asked rhetorically where the health bar was, the status bar, the life counter, etc. It answered and said, "off the screen, where they should be". Essentially, the current representation of the RPG elements is good. Hopefully the magic meter makes a return, though.

Items: Yeah, Deku Nuts are cool, but Magic Capes are cooler. Seriously, though, any optional items should be powerful but limited in use. They should turn the tide in a boss battle instead of being completely useless. As for required items, I agree with Nate in the other thread. Very rarely should the dungeon item be a requirement to defeat the boss. Use items to limit world exploration instead of using the storyline for that purpose. The story should be constructed in an exploratory manner, as though Link is solving a mystery. This would allow pieces of information to be revealed at different times, allowing the player to choose which area to explore next and essentially free the player from many of the more recently constricting aspects of the Zelda series. The only Zelda titles where I appreciated the linearity was in the Oracles games, but that is because I felt that there was a purpose to the linearity, which is absent in OoT, WW, and TP.

Boss Battles: They are so boring and easy these days. There is almost always a container that you can break open to restore hearts or whatever necessary items you should be using. The bosses generally get stunned and then hacked apart. I thought the Temple of Time battle was really cool and ingenious, but to make up for that it was designed very simply. For comparison, let's look at the Jedi Knight series. Every boss battle is either a Jedi/Sith or a Rancore, and yet they are still challenging and fun. How can this be? Simple, the bosses get new abilities, smarter AI (less repetitive patterns at any rate), and you have to figure out a strategy to beat them. There is no single best strategy, but some things work better than others.

Dungeon Design: There used to be optional rooms and you could sometimes collect a ton of keys before proceeding through the dungeon. I hope to see a return to this style of dungeon design instead of the Twilight Princess paradigm of, "Which room can I get to? Do I need a key? Repeat".

Finally, any Zelda game needs to be designed with children in mind. A difficulty adjuster would be nice for us old hats (and please make it available without having to beat the game once). I believe that one of the coolest things about Zelda is how open and up for interpretation the story and motives of the characters are. It is important that the game be stimulating to the imagination, instead of being a means of escape.

TL;DR version: "I like the classic formula"

[Peanut]

Story Wise:
The Story would be serious but rather cliche, making full use of the stereotypical Zelda tale except done in such an over the top manner that it is clearly poking fun at the series (perhaps even to the point of satire). You would have Link, Zelda and Ganondorf along with some sort of annoying fairy thing giving you instructions while not really helping you at all. Let's not forget collecting three stones for yet another Master Sword AND collection of pieces to the triforce of courage. The triforce itself would be nothing more then a plot device which characters abuse to screw the rules for various reasons. The entire game would finish with a massive plot twist. Ganondorf isn't the real villain, Uwe Boll is, who has magically managed to obtain the rights to make a Zelda movie before this game happened and has been posing as Link's fairy the entire time. Ganondorf was merely trying to destroy all of Hyrule so Uwe Boll would be unable to ruin the series and by killing him you have removed the last obstacle between Uwe Boll and filming. The entire final boss battle would be a giant boxing match, in which Link summons the four giants from Majora's Mask to beat the living daylights out of Uwe Boll...and there would be no real end to this battle showing the world that the torment of Uwe Boll for his crappy movies truly will be eternal.

Character design:

Link: The only difference between this Link and the normal Link's would be a change in hair color from yellow to green. This way Link could screw the rules and get away with it.

Zelda: Zelda can screw the rules because she has money so no character change would be necessary.

Ganondorf: Ganondorf would wear a funny hat, just because he can. Not only would he be wearing a funny hat, no one will think this is odd, or question where Ganondorf got such a hat at all. It will merely just be an excepted fact for all the characters within the world.

Fairy: Would actually be the camera man, making seeing it impossible untill the very end.

Gameplay: The one thing that would be changed is Gameplay. The Bosses will not be defeatable by just using the item you aquired in the temple. There will be multiple ways to beat each boss allowing players to think and use different strategies. No body would be penalized for using one strategy and then randomly switching to another.

[Dante]

I've already noted what I'd do... but I'm likely too lazy to try it in XNA.... of course it would be pretty nice first project if I wanted to learn XNA better. Games Factory would make the process of making this game a since because it does games like this before breakfast.

(At least the traditional top down aspect)

[Scarecrow]

The Legend of Zelda: The Deku Rocket.... a legend of Zelda game... in space Gotta search the galaxy for the lost princess zelda...

[animaniac]

how bout sort of a mirror version. by mirror i mean you play the antagonist gannon. do the usual dungeons and boss fight thing but as gannon and with a story fit for him like actualy succeding for once.

[Kkun]

Okay, here goes.

Plot:
Link, now middle-aged and with a predilection for White Russians, bowling, and going by the name "The Dude," gets enmeshed in a money embezzling scam by an older gentleman also named Link. In order to get The Big Link's wife back, Link finds out that he has to go on a quest for the Holy Grail. He fights and dismembers the Black Knight, meets the beautiful ladies of Castle Anthrax, and gets arrested and sent to a British jail where he meets the reanimated corpse of Queen Victoria. She tells him that she wants to see this island where there used to be a bunch of dinosaurs and, for some reason, he knows about this island. They go hang out for a while, take a plane over the island, but then it turns out that they land because she lied to him and her son actually went missing after a hang gliding incident over Isla Sorna. So, they get chased by velociraptors who, for some reason, can talk to each other and there's a lot of really cool disaster sequences (maybe some Active Time Events) and you end up having to fight a tyrannosaurus rex. Suddenly, completely out of nowhere, Abraham Lincoln pops up through a time portal and puts the T-Rex in a headlock (Abe is shirtless and muscular, by the way). He basically kicks the crap out of the T-Rex and everyone is like "Whoa, holy crap, it's Abraham Lincoln!" and Queen Victoria is all like "Whoa, I remember that dude." So Shirtless Abe, after defeating the T-Rex, tells Link that he still has much to learn and leads him to the Temple of Time where Link pulls the Master Sword out. I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit since the part immediately following doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So, anyway, they wind up flying to the Death Star and Link fights Darth Vader with the Master Sword only to find out that Darth Vader is actually former SNL cast member Ellen Cleghorne (they finally found a suitable vehicle for her). Link and Ellen Cleghorne fall in love immediately, but it can't work out because she's evil and all, so she flies the Death Star back to earth drops Link back on earth and he's all like "Dude, I'm from Hyrule" and she's like "LOL HYPERSPEED, BYE." He's kinda bummed out for a bit, turns out she dropped him in 1970s Texas. He runs into this dude who is running around killing people with a cattle gun probably looking for drug money. They skirmish for a while, and then Link is jarred out of the fight suddenly and wakes up in a room full of people he's never seen and they all have these electronic ports on the back of their necks. Turns out that he's in some kind of crazy Matrix thing. He gets to fight some robots for a while, then after he's done he sits down to dinner with his wife (not Ellen Cleghorne). She asks him if he's had any dreams lately and he responds with "Okay. Two of 'em. Both had my father. It's peculiar. I'm older now'n he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one I don't remember so well but it was about money and I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night....Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and snowin, hard ridin. Hard country. He rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin goin by. He just rode on past and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up."
So she kinda looks him like "lol wut?" and he says "Okay, I'm going bowling," so he gets back to the bowling alley where he meets an old cowboy and the old cowboy tells him that he should take it easy. Link responds with "The Dude abides." and then My Chemical Romance starts to play, probably covering a Neil Young song.

Gameplay: I suspect that a game of this nature should play like a dating sim with 1st Person Shooter elements.

[Monkey J. Luffy]

I think a 3-D survival/horror game would work. Imagine going through a dungeon in the beginning of the game, then when you come out somethings different and everyone has turned into those zombie things because Gannon grabbed some sort of rod in the dark world. Now you have to run to find some sanctuary or the zombies will find you and kill you, and the game plays like that, but the dungeons will be flipping scary and sparse with supplies, and the sword will be all but useless against realistically detailed armor/soul guys.

[LadyRushia]

I'm not sure if I can top any of these ideas, but here I go anyway.

Plot: One morning, Link wakes up and finds that he is very late for school. Scrambling out of bed, he throws his clothes on and runs out the door. On his way, he sees a group of children attacking a small black cat. Turns out, the children are really zombie ghosts, so Link turns to them and says, "ZOMBIE GHOSTS LEAVE THIS PLACE!" The children are startled and reply, "BUT THIS IS OUR HOUSE!" But Link doesn't listen to them and shoots them in the head with deku nuts. The zombie children run away and the cat is lying on the ground. Link gently approaches it and picks it up. He notices that the cat has band-aids covering its forehead. He removes the band-aids and sees a crescent moon spot. The cat scratches his face and runs away.
Link has a horrible day at school. He fails a test and gets yelled at by his teacher. On his way home, he stops at an arcade to relax and then he leaves. As he's walking, he crumples up his test and throws it behind him. It ends up hitting a girl on the head and she makes fun of him for being an idiot. By the time Link gets home, he's very tired and takes a nap. Then, the cat from earlier that day comes into his room and tells him that he is Sailor Link and that he must fight an evil monster that's attacking a train going directly from Chicago to New York called "The Flying Pussyfoot." So, as told by the cat, who introduces herself as Luna, Link shouts, "Hylan Crystal Power, Make-up!" and he becomes Sailor Link.
Sailor Link and Luna run as fast as the can to get to the train. Suddenly, a man named Dwight Schrute stops them. "Let me join your team. I know about 30 different ways to kill a man." So they let Dwight Schrute join them. After a long journey, they finally reach the train and the monster.
"Sailor Link! Use Master Sword Tiara Action!" Luna shouts. So Link does that, but his attack misses! The monster comes in closer and just when Sailor Link thinks he's doomed, a pokeball lands in the space between them. Both Sailor Link and the monster look up and see a mysteriously masked figure way up high in the shadows.
"Going after young boys is neither fair nor legal. I am Tuxedo Zelda! Chris Hanson, I choose you!" At her command, Chris Hanson comes out of the pokeball. "Chris Hanson, use Pedoshock!" The attack is super effective and the monster is defeated in one hit.

That's all I've got so far. It's a work in progress.

[chibiphonebooth]

i really like this thread so far.

[Sparx00]

Why don't they make a game that fills in the huge spot where Link leaves Hyrule and goes to that one place called Termina in Majora's Mask? They could answer the questions of why link left in the first place, and where he went after that. (Unless I'm missing a link in the games that have been made already.)