Zelda Games Should Look Realistic

I think using the Lego Horizon style, stylized and colorful, would be amazing for a Zelda game.
Video Games Lego GIF by PlayStation
 
In my head that dude Zelda is the most gritty badass dude in the universe. He rocks up to the biker bar on his Harley and you just know there is going to be a fight the moment he walks in if he doesn't get total respect from everyone there. There Zelda stands seven fucking foot talk with his long flowing blond locks and six pack abs wearing his leather jacket, master sword swung over his back because that is the best way to carry a sword, and you have to say that he is the boss.
 
GymWolf said:
It was not their only way out, it was a choice, continue with the gimmicky way or make a classic console and rival m and sony like they did in the past gen.

Wii u was already a gimmicky console, not a classic one.

Not sure how coming from a failing gimmicky console, the "only way out" was making another risky gimmicky console, they were lucky and it worked out but it was hardly the only way out...

Sw2 is more powerfull than a ps4, nobody force them to still make game with 5000 yen budget that look like crap in 2025, so even when they have some power on their hands, they still make cheap looking games.
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If you consider the fact that Nintendo tried to compete directly against their competition with their first 2 3D consoles and were blown out of the water, then it puts their decision into perspective. You make it seem like the choice to move away from a traditional console was arbitrary, it was anything but. They had to change if they wanted to continue to operate in the console space. The alternative wasn't feasible from a business stand point.

Describing their games as "cheap looking" is a little weird to me. Many Wii U games hold up better today and are more attractive than their contemporaries. Hell, if you pair a Wii with an appropriate display (CRT), their first party games are gorgeous. This does not hold true for third party releases on the systems.

Edit: I do want to retract one statement I made. In my minds eye, I think of the 360 and PS3 as contemporaries of the Wii U, which isn't true. I will revise my statement to say, Wii U games hold up better today than many games made for similarly powered hardware, being the 360 and PS3. In saying that, I still believe many of their first party games to still be very attractive in comparison to the XB1 and PS4, just attractive in a different way.
 
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It's a bit of an anachronism to look back at old Zelda games relative to their era (even Twilight Princess) and say: "since those were relatively realistic compared to the tech at the time, Zelda used to prioritize realism"

I don't agree; what constituted a "realistic" look even up to Twilight Princess is still a very fantasy animation look. When the tech of gaming started to go towards actual photorealism etc, Zelda rightly departed from it, and that's consistent with the look they always wanted, which was always fantasy animation.

Also, focusing on fluidly integrated systems is a better choice -- I'm elated that BOTW / TOTK arrived and gave the series a new foundation, much needed.
 
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ReasonBeing said:
If you consider the fact that Nintendo tried to compete directly against their competition with their first 2 3D consoles and were blown out of the water, then it puts their decision into perspective. You make it seem like the choice to move away from a traditional console was arbitrary, it was anything but. They had to change if they wanted to continue to operate in the console space. The alternative wasn't feasible from a business stand point.

Describing their games as "cheap looking" is a little weird to me. Many Wii U games hold up better today and are more attractive than their contemporaries. Hell, if you pair a Wii with an appropriate display (CRT), their first party games are gorgeous. This does not hold true for third party releases on the systems.
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We must have different meaning of the word "gorgeous" i guess.

Like i said, they chose their path, it doesn't mean that i can't criticize that path, nobody knows how a classic console would have faired, people were convinced that wiiu was a sure fire strike after wii, and we know how it went...

Maybe they could have done something to compete with the other 2, getting more third parties, more third party exclusives etc, if fucking microsoft under phil and mattrick can do decently, nintendo can probably do better if they actually try, even in 2025 their internet gaming service is dogshit compared to the other 2 so they are clearly not even trying with some aspects of modern gaming.
 
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GrayDock said:
I think using the Lego Horizon style, stylized and colorful, would be amazing for a Zelda game.
Video Games Lego GIF by PlayStation
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I would be down for that.
GymWolf said:
We must have different meaning of the word "gorgeous" i guess.

Like i said, they chose their path, it doesn't mean that i can't criticize that path, nobody knows how a classic console would have faired, people were convinced that wiiu was a sure fire strike after wii, and we know how it went...

Maybe they could have done something to compete with the other 2, getting more third parties, more third party exclusives etc, if fucking microsoft under phil and mattrick can do decently, nintendo can probably do better if they actually try.
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Well gorgeous doesn't infer "life-like" or "realistic". 8 year old me had a hard on for Jessica Rabbit and no one describe her design as realistic. I did revise my post as you were posting your reply.

P.S. After finding this gif, maybe I still have a hard on for her.

iNqHUrq.gif
 
ReasonBeing said:
I would be down for that.

Well gorgeous doesn't infer "life-like" or "realistic". 8 year old me had a hard on for Jessica Rabbit and no one describe her design as realistic. I did revise my post as you were posting your reply.

P.S. After finding this gif, maybe I still have a hard on for her.

iNqHUrq.gif
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Jessica is sexy for all the ages, i mean a point of the movie was the protagonist falling a bit for her during the seduction scene :lollipop_grinning_sweat:

So don't feel bad :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
 
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I'm probably in the extreme minority here, but I think the Wii U Zelda tech demo looks pretty lame and I hope they don't go that direction with future titles. It was fine as a hypothetical showcase of the hardware, but has zero aesthetic style and evokes no emotional response from me.

That said, I do think it's time to move away from the Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom look and offer something new that takes full advantage of the Switch 2 hardware. As others have said, I personally hope the lean even harder in the Studio Ghibli direction, but I would also welcome something more "realistic" as long as it managed to still feel mythic and mystical and wasn't just realism for realism's sake.
 
GymWolf said:
WHo knows, maybe they had a vision when they revealed the game but then they nìrealized that switch is an underpowered, shitty tablet and they had to downgrade the shit out of it:


This is never not gonna be funny

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If you have never came across this, gameXplain found the areas shown in the 2014 gameplay reveal and have a comparison. The source for the 2014 gameplay is pretty shitty, but you can see how much the world had changed. Some for the worse, but a lot for the better as well. Hard to make out detail, but you can get a glimpse of what it would have been like with less of a cell shaded look. It runs much better on the release version, but this is to be expected.

 
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Nintendo will always choose what's best for their bottom line, so expect another cell shaded game, I just hope they go back to dungeons first design philosophy,
 
Worst take of the month the same month Men_In_Boxes came back from the ban. This should be a GAF achievement.
 
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Lokaum D+ said:
oh, i like Nintendo games too, but for the price they are charging i want play games with at least some of the latest technologies, i m tired of gimmick games everywhere.
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Has nothing to do with the discussion, take your misplaces aggression someplace else.
 
_Ex_ said:
I remember a quarter century ago when Nintendo lied and told us we'd get Zelda graphics like this:



But instead we got
e-Xkg-H9-Bw6-BRMSihu2-WPg-QV.jpg
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games turned out great, but this shit was sooo disappointing back in the day.

Angry_Megalodon said:
Not realistic, but a high quality fantasy style like Infinity Nikki, Astrobot or Dokev.

vzsrK1d.jpeg


Graphics should be so much better, regardless of its style. Compare Zelda to Wuthering Waves and there's a generational leap between the two. Even with Genshin there's a generational leap.
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zelda/pokemon/whatever with this IQ/these production values would be amazing.

$1000 switch3, lets go.
 
ReasonBeing said:
I would be down for that.

Well gorgeous doesn't infer "life-like" or "realistic". 8 year old me had a hard on for Jessica Rabbit and no one describe her design as realistic. I did revise my post as you were posting your reply.

P.S. After finding this gif, maybe I still have a hard on for her.

iNqHUrq.gif
Click to expand...

Holli from Cool World was still better
Cool%20World.gif
0b179a41dd7dbdefb14e92b4f439426b.gif


... and I'll call this relevant because no one would complain about a cell-shaded Zelda game, if we finally get this quality of animation for the princess herself
 
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I think Wind Waker is still the most gorgeous Zelda game, but if done right a realistic Zelda could be very delicious to play on the NS2. I'm incredibly eager to see what they have cooked up with the next mainline one.
 
Sooner said:
Switch 2 is easily more powerful than SteamDeck and that handles plenty of realistic looking games just fine.
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I see but Who will be impressed by a Zelda with Assassins Creed Valhalla like graphics? The current graphics level is Assassin's Creed Shadows far above the switch 2 level.

But Nintendo will never give up on cel shading graphics because it is cheaper to make and when selling for $80 it will be more profitable per unit and can make up to $61 per game.
 
Geometric-Crusher said:
I see but Who will be impressed by a Zelda with Assassins Creed Valhalla like graphics? The current graphics level is Assassin's Creed Shadows far above the switch 2 level.

But Nintendo will never give up on cel shading graphics because it is cheaper to make and when selling for $80 it will be more profitable per unit and can make up to $61 per game.
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I was confused about your claim of profit margin.... then I saw the tag
 
"The hardware is there to make Zelda games that look like this..."

Switch 2 isnt even out yet, bro

Do you think the Switch could handle a realistic looking Tears of the Kingdom?
 
BlackTron said:
I think this was true of Wind Waker. They made a conscious choice to pursue that direction. Wind Waker was their artistic vision to realize. They had more hardware power than ever and wanted to do that.

After that things changed. Twilight Princess was "mature" because, as Miyamoto said, people really, really REALLY wanted a realistic Zelda. So they answered what people "wanted", and that "poisoning of the well" in their mission resulted in a poor looking game. I'm not saying it was bad because it wasn't cel shaded or toony, I'm saying it was bad because when they sat down to make it their priorities were clouded by complaints. OOT was made just by chasing the best looking Zelda on the system that they could. They didn't do that on GC, they chased OOT 2 and we got a lame looking game for it IMO.

I don't think Skyward Sword was pure artistic vision either. In SS the style was chosen as the best one possible to hide the deficiencies of the Wii hardware, without putting out a game that looks completely old and last gen by the time it comes out. Business and hardware realities affected the "art". So we get their best artistic efforts inside this box they are placed in.

You better believe the same thing happened with BOTW. I first played most of it on Wii U where the hardware was tasked even further. Once they made the decision to make an open-world game, they had two choices. Cover it up with as much toon shade trickery as they possibly can, or allow the game to look like complete dogshit. The result was a very skillful pairing of hardware and software that I would call art of game making. But if you want pure artistic vision, just give a designer hardware power and let them do what they want without being boxed in by 1GB of RAM. BOTW and TOTK are still "the same game" designed for Wii U with 1GB of RAM and PowerPC architecture. No TOTK would not run on Wii U but you know what I am getting at here.

What I'm trying to say is that Nintendo deserves accolades for making incredible Zelda games on limited hardware that kept the IP on the map. But don't BS me that this is just some artists pure creative vision unsullied by the constraints given. It would be a huge, huge coincidence that the artistic vision of the designers of the past many years of Zelda games just so happened to be the only one really viable for making them look acceptable on the hardware given. A+ job doing it though.
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The biggest problem with Twilight Princess graphics was the extremely flat lighting. It all seems so flat And static. It only went "dynamic" when using a torch.

Really weird, because games like Starfox Adventures had much better lighting on inferior hardware.

Then Twilight Princess HD came and they didn't even adjust it. There was a interview on Kiwi Talkz with someone from Tantulas (who did the remaster) and they said that they wanted to do more but Nintendo wanted a "quick" port without a huge budget. Much more was possible.

----

A Twilight Princess remake with the WiiU tech demo graphics would be absolutely amazing.
 
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The BOTW/TOTK art style is perfect. Just make it a bit more high res and detailed (mainly the environments) and we're golden.
 
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