A Link to the Future

I don't envy the pressure that Nintendo must face each time a new Zelda game hits the shelves. The series has proven consistently excellent since its inception in 1987. Its low points (Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, and Wind Waker) are still better than most other games, and it's high points (Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask) outclass the competition by vast margins.

Twilight Princess comes with no shortage of hype. In development for four years as a GameCube title (and still available for the old box), Twilight Princess is now the flagship launch title for the Wii. Does a last-generation game stand a chance in a next-generation playing field? Does it validate Nintendo's gamble to focus on gameplay over graphical punch? Does it benefit from the funky new motion-sensitive controls? Does it impress despite ready comparisons to the universally acclaimed Okami?

Does it ever...

Concept and Story:

The story of Hyrule's savior is a familiar one to anybody reared on the Zelda series. You start as Link -- an unimpressive boy in an unimpressive town. As evil spreads across the land, fate thrusts you into the center of the storm, and it is your job to save the world from darkness.

Nintendo wisely decided to ramp up the story this outing. It's still a bit threadbare, but much more engaging and cinematic than any other Zelda game. Early on, Link is sucked into the Twilight Realm... a shadowy mirror of his own world. (Despite the superficial similarity, Twilight Princess does not fall back on the light world/dark world concept pioneered in Link to the Past)

In the Twilight Realm, Link finds himself transformed into a wolf, and develops a tenuous friendship with a brooding little imp named Midna. She is Link's only hope at piecing together the fragments of his world, even if she seems to hide darker motives behind her sly grin.

Link's adventure will carry him across a remarkably expansive world. In Ocarina of Time, Hyrule was essentially a hub which connected to destinations of interest. In Twilight Princess, Hyrule is a complex network of fields, lakes, rivers, paths, and bridges. The game is cleverly designed (as expected) to offer complete freedom of exploration while guiding you in the proper directions to advance the story. As Link travels from dungeon to dungeon, he will gain new items and powers, and face increasingly difficult puzzles and enemies to test his newfound skills.

It doesn't stray far from the template set by Ocarina. Instead, it endeavors to perfect a winning formula.

Graphics:

After the cel-shaded antics of Wind Waker, there has been much clamor for a "realistic" Zelda. This is Nintendo's answer, and it does not disappoint. But let's get something straight here... it's not realistic.

The Zelda universe has always been a fantastic one, with dozens of bizarre characters and strange humor which simply won't work in a realistic setting. To bring Zelda completely down-to-earth would destroy its spirit. There absolutely needs to be room for the absurd in Hyrule.

Understanding this, Nintendo gave Twilight Princess a surreal quality. The characters and situations are clearly cartoon-natured. Midna could easily be redrawn in Wind Waker style (in fact, she looks as if she may have started that way). The Mailman is so absurd in both appearance and behavior that he could not possibly exist in a real world. Even Link is routinely fired out of giant cannons that could have been ordered from Acme, and can float gently down to earth as long as he hangs on to a wildly flapping chicken. But these are cartoons that have been lovingly remodeled to echo reality. They exist in their own special world, and the balance between serious and silly is so perfectly struck that you won't think about it for a moment.

All this aside... Twilight Princess sports some beautiful visuals. It's a late-generation GameCube game, and it doesn't have the technical polish of Gears of War. But the artists have a keen eye for beauty, and know how to wring amazing things from a shallower pool of polygons. Animations are charming, with Link finally showing a fantastic range of subtle facial expression. The lighting is top-notch, with bright sunlit surfaces during daytime, and softer white moonlight reflecting at night. The transitions between day and night are likewise staggering, as the entire world moves gently through the pink and orange hues of dawn and dusk.

Up close, some of the beauty fades. Textures are sometimes applied too broadly, and blur into a pixelly mess up close. It would have been nice if they had leveraged the Wii to improve some of the textures, even if they left the underlying polygon structures untouched. I started the game with the regular composite cables shipped with the Wii, and later switched to progressive-scan, and the difference was marked. The colors took a shot of adrenaline and everything became crisper, although the Wii's low-resolution graphics became more apparent without the artificial blur of a lousy composite connection.

All in all -- understanding the limits of the Wii -- Twilight Princess is a sight to see.

Sound:

Sound effects are universally excellent, although many are ported from previous Zelda outings. This is fine by me... part of Zelda is the nostalgic feel, and it's amazing how the occasional sound effect can make you feel eight again.

Music is superbly composed, but you've heard most of the tunes before. Some degree of nostalgia is cool, but maybe it's time to toss a few new tunes in the mix?

More disappointing is the lack of recorded music. The Zelda overworld theme is one of the most wonderfully triumphant and exhilarating melodies I know, and it deserves better than a never-ending string of MIDI iterations. As a GameCube port, I'm sure there are several boatloads of space left on that disc, and a few orchestral arrangements would have been wonderful. Maybe next time...

I'll mention the lack of voice acting, just because I'm supposed to. Personally, I don't care. My inclination is to leave it as-is... I like the ability to push through conversations as fast as I can read them, and having to wait through spoken dialogue would probably just annoy me. Having it written out also makes it easier to remember hints and clues. But that's just one man's opinion.

Controls:

I went into this with some hesitation... do I really want to be flailing my Wii-mote around like a sword?

Turns out that I do!

For the most part, combat remains button-based, and is nearly identical to Ocarina and its brethren. But the basic sword moves are handled by swinging the remote, and spin-attacks (and later, shield attacks) are handled by movement of the nunchuck controller. Ranged attacks are performed by using the remote as a pointer, which allows rapid acquisition of targets. With a minimum of practice, it will be second-nature in no time.

But the real genius of the controls is the amazing degree of immersion. This is the first Zelda game that I played through standing up. It's a 60-hour game! I remember walking into a boss chamber, and as the giant beast appeared in front of me, I felt my fingers curling tighter around the hilt of my virtual sword, and my left hand raising my imaginary shield in anticipation. It wasn't a conscious decision. I was just so wrapped up in the moment that I had literally arranged myself into a battle stance in the middle of my living room. And anybody who can't appreciate that level of immersion should seriously consider abandoning video games altogether, because you're just missing the point.

I'm sure the game plays fine with a regular controller (if you pick up the GameCube version instead), but you're missing out. And I'm never going back.

Gameplay:

Describing the gameplay of a Zelda game is a daunting task. It's as if someone asked you to describe Australia in one paragraph. There is simply so much to see and do that I couldn't begin to do it justice. If you've played Ocarina, you have a very good idea what to expect in the general sense. The difference is in the details.

For the first half of the game, you stumble across items which appear relatively familiar, and it's tough to get all that excited about another magical boomerang or another hookshot. The dungeons remain brilliant, and require fairly clever use of these items, but you'll find yourself wondering if the series has hit a wall.

But then the new items show up, and you feel bad for doubting. One is a substantial upgrade of a familiar item which will leave you wondering "why didn't they do this before?" Another is so unusual that you'll be surprised to see it in a Zelda game at all... it seems like it would be more at home in Metroid. What's more important is how these items eventually play together. Puzzles need to be approached holistically, as your brain scrambles to align five or six pieces of disparate information into a cohesive plan. That "ah-ha!" feeling is the heart of a good Zelda game, and you will experience it frequently here. There were more than a few instances where I felt a smirk creep across my face as I solved a more devious problem.

Link's newfound ability to transform into a wolf is also put to good use, granting him the ability to sense things that a human can't see. He can see spirits. He can track scents. And he can detect surprises buried beneath the surface. His fighting abilities change a bit in this mode as well, and he can call on Midna to lend a hand in dispatching multiple enemies simultaneously.

The bosses are spectacular as ever, although none of them were particularly challenging once you solve the "trick." More intimidating battles might have been nice, but since Ocarina of Time, Nintendo seems happy to think of bosses as living puzzles rather than serious enemies. Love it or leave it.

As always, you are invited to travel off the beaten path, and generally rewarded for taking the road less traveled. While the game offers a generous warping system that allows you to beam from place to place almost at will (clearly a response to the tedium of travel in Wind Waker), you'll often find that traveling on foot (or horseback!) is far more enjoyable. There's always another alcove that needs exploring, or a suspicious boulder that must be in the way of something wonderful.

There are a few giant side-quests which will occupy nearly the entire play-time. One Hyrule resident is looking to expand her bug collection, and another is trying to piece together his fragmented soul. The bug hunt had the potential to be a frustrating bore (Skulltulas, anybody?), but the quest is arranged so that clues are built-in, and I found myself completing it without any outside help.

And there are a decent number of "mini-dungeons" dotting the land, including one grueling gauntlet of battles which will test the endurance of any player (but the reward is worth it!).

Fans of Majora's Mask may be a little disappointed with the relative lack of side-quests and mini-games, but Majora suffered the opposite problem -- a relative lack of dungeons -- so the offense is forgivable.

Faults?

Maybe a few... In some cases, the game seems unsure of how to reward the player. There are a large number of environmental puzzles which offer money as a reward, but my wallet was almost always too full to carry any more, so the reward seemed hollow.

The much-hyped fishing game is also a bit of a problem in that it has no real bearing on the quest. It's fun in spurts, but not deep enough or rewarding enough to really spend that much time with. You can only go lure fishing at a designated spot, which really limits the scope of it. I had been hoping I could take my rod and reel to other locations in the world. The game does let you go bobber-fishing with a simpler pole, but it's much less interesting.

There are a few moments when the game seems too intent on overexplaining things. Every time you buy bombs, for instance, you have to bypass the screen that explains how to use them. Again. This is in stark contrast to the occasions where a better explanation would be useful. The first time you go bobber-fishing is a prime example -- I knew I had to catch a fish, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how.

And there continues to be an unusual bug which I seem to remember from Wind Waker (my understanding is that they share a surprising amount of code) in which, every time you start a new play session, the game decides to treat each denomination of rupees as brand-new items, forcing you to see the little "look what I found!" screen when you stumble into some money. It's a minor nuisance, but strange nonetheless.

You'll notice that every single one of these faults is a nitpick. I can't think of anything substantial to gripe about.

Okami?

This is optional reading for those interested... but much has been made of the similarities between Twilight Princess and Okami. It's funny... Okami clearly drew inspiration from the Zelda series, and now Zelda is under the gun for copying Okami.

Both are epic adventures which allow you to (at least in part) control a wolf. There is also a sequence at the start of Twilight Princess where you need to restore light to various parts of Hyrule, not terribly unlike Amaterasu's need to restore life to her world. The similarities are interesting, and seem more than coincidental, but I'm not really inclined to care.

Whatever happened, both games are absolutely spectacular. I devoured each one, start-to-finish, and the two have collectively consumed more than one hundred hours of my life.

Ultimately, without question, the crown goes to Zelda. But this is pretty much like choosing ten million dollars instead of nine million dollars. You want them both, but one is simply that much better.

Summary:

There comes a point where doling out praise begins to ring false, and I think I'm getting dangerously close. Perhaps the most ringing endorsement I can give is this:

As the game came to an end, I found myself angry that it was so short. Why wasn't there more to do? And then I realized that I had clocked sixty hours, and not a lick of it was filler. The game isn't short at all, and there is no lack of things to do. It's just all so sublime that you don't want to leave.