Topic: New Zelda Game Heading to 3DS

[MagicCow64]

I want good voice acting and good writing.  Practically all videogames fail on one or the other.  I can't stand Mario's voice and Other M has embarassingly poor writing.  Zelda would be worse off with voice acting if either one of those were a problem.  But it is pretty silly to not move forward on something like that because it could suck.

What I don't want to see is touchscreen controls like in the DS games.  I don't dislike it because it's different, I dislike it because it SUCKS.  It's an awkward and unintuitive way to control the game and is blantantly forced.  I completely skipped Spirit Tracks because of Phantom Hourglass' terrible **** controls.  Zelda is my favourite videogame series and yet I intentionally avoided playing a game in the series because of the controls!  I didn't want to do that but PH was so frustrating to play that I knew I would get no enjoyment from any future games with the same controls.  I don't want those types of controls even hinted at in Zelda 3DS.  If it doesn't have conventional controls I don't want it.

Crappy voice acting and a crappy story would not be good but nothing outright ruins a game like poor controls.  I don't want the gameplay to suffer (and that was my real beef with Other M).

RE: Your first point: Precisely, all of these "cinematic" games with full voice acting often have insufferably bad writing even if the voice actors are putting their backs into it. I have an extremely hard time thinking of an exception to this in the modern era. Maybe Eternal Darkness, but that was so long ago I might have just been impressed by the ambition of it. In general it's like people who can't hack it in the low-standard world of television slide down the scale into video game writing.

Other M really was a series-souring disaster, both in terms of presentation and gameplay. While I agree that Nintendo should do as much as possible to keep their existing franchises fresh and relevant, I don't think grafting a narrative focus on is the way to go. I would rather they invent some new franchises where a modern-style narrative focus is natural, and develop their chops with that before they try to integrate it into Zelda and Mario games.

[LittleIrves]

MagicCow64, I agree with your first point...  I also read the text and skip forward, leaving the voice acting a half-spoken mess. Have no need for a fully-voiced Zelda game in the future. I recently acquired a 360 and I've gotten so frustrated with how slooow so many of the games are when there's a cutscene every 10 minutes. Bah. Just let me play, give me the good stuff.
I disagree, however, that Other M was such a "souring" experience. Sure, some of the writing was laughable, but the core gameplay was compelling and interesting enough for me not to be too bothered by the story. Maybe it was the sheer novelty of a full-bore Nintendo cinematic game, but I thought the cutscenes/v.o. was neat at best, uninspired at worst, but oh well. Too many people hated on that game for not enough of a good reason, imo.

[Adrock]

Precisely, all of these "cinematic" games with full voice acting often have insufferably bad writing even if the voice actors are putting their backs into it. I have an extremely hard time thinking of an exception to this in the modern era.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

[NWR_insanolord]

Bad writing is bad writing whether you have to read it or listen to it, so that in and of itself isn't a reason not to do voice acting. There's an argument to be made that there are too many cutscenes, but that's a separate issue. I really don't understand how anyone can argue that well-done voice acting isn't better than just text. It may not be necessary, but it would be nice to have. If you for whatever reason hate the sound of people's voices or whatever, you can turn it off.

[MagicCow64]

Bad writing is bad writing whether you have to read it or listen to it, so that in and of itself isn't a reason not to do voice acting. There's an argument to be made that there are too many cutscenes, but that's a separate issue. I really don't understand how anyone can argue that well-done voice acting isn't better than just text. It may not be necessary, but it would be nice to have. If you for whatever reason hate the sound of people's voices or whatever, you can turn it off.

I think this is a matter of aesthetic vision. If suddenly everyone has to talk for real, then I think there's a real inclination to bloat up the story emphasis and toss in hyperbolic characterizations and incessant "comic relief." With text only you can read through any text quickly, and moreover, I would argue that the game designers keep the narrative tighter. They know people don't want to spend a lot of time reading, but cut-scenes and voice acting are supposed to be "entertaining," like Hollywood movies, so the more the merrier.

A half-assed example: SNES RPGs. I don't think many people would have wanted Chrono Trigger or FFIII programmed with the later Square ethos in place. I never touched Chrono Chross or the PS Chrono Trigger remake, but I've heard they're terrible.

[NWR_insanolord]

Skyward Sword has something like 90 minutes of cutscenes with just the text; it's not like they're skimping on the story right now.

[Ceric]

Skyward Sword has something like 90 minutes of cutscenes with just the text; it's not like they're skimping on the story right now.

and they kept it to a single layer disc.  Which is surprising.

[Luigi Dude]

Skyward Sword has something like 90 minutes of cutscenes with just the text; it's not like they're skimping on the story right now.

The main game is said to take around 35 hours to complete.  90 minutes of cutscenes for a 35 hour main game is still very small on story content.  Most games now a days have several hours worth of cutscenes for main games that are not even close to 20 hours.

[NWR_insanolord]

I don't care how long the game is, 90 minutes of cutscenes without voice acting is too much. I trust Nintendo to not skimp on the quality when it comes to a major Zelda release, so I'm not really afraid they'd screw it up because of it. They would do it right because it's Zelda, and voice acting done right would certainly improve the series.

[MagicCow64]

I don't care how long the game is, 90 minutes of cutscenes without voice acting is too much. I trust Nintendo to not skimp on the quality when it comes to a major Zelda release, so I'm not really afraid they'd screw it up because of it. They would do it right because it's Zelda, and voice acting done right would certainly improve the series.

Well, personally I would prefer the 90 minutes without voice to 3 hours of cutscenes with performances, if my formulation were to hold true. (Also, Nintendo has never done in-house full voice acting before, I bet they would totally **** it up.)

That said, I seriously doubt Nintendo will be able to get away with this again in five years when the next main console Zelda rolls around (when Link begins his adventure in the gentle village of Seatrench). If anything I will take Skyward Sword as a coda to the era of verbal silence.

[NWR_insanolord]

That's a false dilemma. There's no reason to necessarily believe that they'd make that huge jump because of the addition of voices. Also, I'm sure there are a lot of people, myself included, who would still rather have 3 hours voiced than 90 minutes of text. And like I said, this is Zelda. They would not **** it up with Zelda; it's too important of a franchise.

[MagicCow64]

That's a false dilemma. There's no reason to necessarily believe that they'd make that huge jump because of the addition of voices. Also, I'm sure there are a lot of people, myself included, who would still rather have 3 hours voiced than 90 minutes of text. And like I said, this is Zelda. They would not **** it up with Zelda; it's too important of a franchise.

It's a hypothesis, granted. But I would compare the 1.5/35 hours on Skyward Sword, which is rooted in "archaic" narrative design, to something on the "cutting-edge" like Gears of War 3, with a 1.5/8 hours cut-scene ratio. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that adding voice acting/modern video game cinematics would inflate the amount of time spent in cut scenes.

And I don't dispute that Nintendo would certainly give a voice presentation its all, I just think it would end up really bland and tiresome like Blue Dragon or something.

[NWR_insanolord]

Nintendo has a proud history of not caring one bit what everyone else does in favor of their own vision. (This isn't really meant as criticism, just a matter of fact statement. It serves them well just as often as it screws them over.) Hell, that's a big chunk of the reason they haven't yet switched to voice acting. My point, though, is that I wouldn't look to what other games do with it, because that is in no way indicative of how Nintendo will do things. And I believe people with more knowledge on the subject than I have have pointed out examples of Nintendo-published games with good voice acting earlier in this thread, so I wouldn't bet against them in this case.