Well finally shipped from Amazon and shipped with the Switch. I imagine I'll get it around 4 pm or so tomorrow, unless it gets delivered straight from Buffalo (45 minutes away, but the service in my town is
way slower).
I've got the eye doctor in the morning. Might actually get a new pair of glasses this time, been sitting on an upgrade for a couple years as my vision has been getting worse but not
that much worse. Fits a bit with the open your eyes stuff, and with the fact that I'm going to have to come at this game with new eyes as a diehard fan of the aLttP formula, as an SNES kid rather than an NES kid...
As to the OP, late last night Griss's post about the death of aLttP, makes me think something like a Break with the Past would have been a better title. I get that Link is waking up, presumably from a past time, and that this game is hearkening back to old Zelda, but it sounds for all the world like a Zelda throwback rather than a aLttP throwback, with its core conceit being to break the pattern set by aLttP and OoT, and give people that exploration-heavy, combat-heavy, more RPG-like Zelda that so many have wanted as interest in traditional 3D Zelda has waned.
This is the first time I will be at a console launch day, by all appearances at least. It also seems like one of the most seminal launches to experience. New Zelda, in the strongest sense of new, and a new way forward for Nintendo hardware launching together on the same day. Two of the things I cherish most in gaming together starting a new way forward, a way forward, for which I have high hopes.
I also have my doubts. For the Switch, as to whether it will sell, as I think it can; as to whether it can salvage console gaming in Japan, as I hope it can; as to whether it can garner the sort of support, particularly from Japan, which I hope it will garner. I think the Switch's core concept gives it potential as to all these things and that its execution is, for the most part, on point. But will it be able to do all it needs to do? Will the market want it? Will other parties share Nintendo's vision? These are questions the next 18 months or so should answer for us.
For Zelda...I am that diehard aLttP fan as I said. I play Zelda because I like that structure and the gameplay associated with it. BotW has me immensely excited. I have trouble sleeping at night. I post too much on GAF and my posts are below even their usual poor quality. Moreover, it is getting unprecedented accolades in this day and age. If anything can convince me that it is okay to break with the past, it seems it should be this game. But I have yet to play it, and this is going to have to be something I experience for myself.
I hope we all fall in love with this game, including myself. It at least should be great, but that really isn't enough for there to be peace in the Zelda fanbase
.
