Zelda Games Should Look Realistic

Lmao that would cost too much to make, nintendo is not about making high budget games with great production values anymore.

You get mid cel shading charas and low res galore for locations.
 
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I'm glad Nintendo doesn't listen to the OP. As one of the few gaming companies that make money, survive, thrive and seem to avoid massive layoffs. One of the big reasons is because they control their development costs and find cheap solutions, cut out needless voice acting and stick to their own non-realistic style.

Windwalker style is a thing of beauty.
 
I'm sick of the cartoony crap also, give me realistic. I'd like to play a darker Zelda game too, think Zelda Universe but designed like the Gears of War universe. Totally reboot Zelda, it's time.
Nah, I think you should just never think about Zelda again, leave it for people without shit taste.
 
Nintendo wants to sell us "rereleases" of those games for the next 50+ years, without the effort to remaster anything. So cartoony style is the only way forward.
 
They had this E3 tech demo once. I think it was prior to GC release. That was pretty rad looking. But I'll take whatever I can get zeldawise. Nintendo know what they're doing on that front.
 
The graphics were the best choice for the game. BOTW/TOTK basically needed a style like that to achieve the open-world design on the hardware (without looking absolutely atrocious). But at this point they have been in the business of using toon graphics to hide hardware deficiency for a while, see Skyward Sword.

I think it's nigh time to lean back in the other direction. At the same time, I don't want a gritty dark brown fest like Twilight Princess. In other words, give me Ocarina of Time 2.
 
It's a staple of the series at this point that each new entry has a different art style. Every time I see a new Zelda game getting announced while looking like a previous entry it's so disappointing.

And twilight princess is not realistic at all, if you played. The things that pass for human in that game, oof. Even skyward sword designs are more realistic than those.
 
Practically FROM software took that very unfulfilled promise and made an empire with it. People want that style of adventure game very much.

And yes, Wind Waker was an insult to the fanbase, I'm still furious over it and what it did to Zelda.
 
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OoT looks realistic? 🤔

The graphics are so atrocious you couldn't tell what kind of art style they were going for.
They were highly limited by the hardware. But it's definitely not cell shaded. It's as realistic (and mature) as they could back then.

Wind waker was definitely the easy way compared to OOT. Beyond the cell shaded look this is the less polished Zelda we ever got, worse than Zelda 2. The music saved the game IMO but everything was super forgetfull and boring in that game. Story, characters, fights, ennemies, the end, the world.
 
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I wouldn't be opposed to them changing things up again. It's gotten a little stale with how long they've used the Breath of the Wild art style. 3 games with another one on the way with age of imprisonment, spanning across 3 generations, and 8 years, basically look like the same game visually. I'm ready for something new.
 
They were highly limited by the hardware. But it's definitely not cell shaded. It's as realistic (and mature) as they could back then.
Honestly it's not, it's very cartoony, look at the character designs. Look at the Stalchilds for instance. Zelda games are Anime and Cartoony.
 
An argument can easily be made for both. Personally I don't want the Zelda franchise to become Lord of the Rings. I prefer the cartoony, more artistic look.


Same creator made a snippit of the game Ghibli style and to be honest it really fits.



This is more what I have in mind when I think of those games, a general fairy tale look and feel.
 
Practically FROM software took that very unfulfilled promise and made an empire with it. People want that style of adventure game very much.

And yes, Wind Waker was an insult to the fanbase, I'm still furious over it and what it did to Zelda.

There's Nintendo fandom before Wind Waker and after Wind Waker.
 
Nope. BOTW was the perfect color palette and style for Zelda going forward.

Realistic games look ugly, noisy, and flawed since they are trying to look real.
 
Realistic? On Nintendo hardware?

Captain America Lol GIF by mtv
 
Nope. BOTW was the perfect color palette and style for Zelda going forward.

Realistic games look ugly, noisy, and flawed since they are trying to look real.

There's something between total cartoon cel shade and total real as possible ugly noisy boring.

The way Link looks in the Wii U demo is almost perfect. It appears high-quality while being high-fantasy. Pretty much the OOT 2 that we DIDN'T get from Twilight Princess. OOT didn't "go for realism", it was just grounded in reality which made everything better. Sort of like muppets on camera; they are complete fantasy characters of unrealistic proportions that could never happen, but since the puppets actually are real it adds an intriguing hook to the fantasy of them talking and moving around.
 
ToTK is one of the most visually appealing games out there.
Your opinion. Every screenshot of it looks boring and bland to me. Some artwork though, those are often great, if they could make the painted look, with brush strokes, for their game graphics, a bit like 11-11 memories retold, that might look cool. I don't even like Okami overall but it looks still much better or the minimalistic Wind Waker looks also better because its simple style works well. The recent Zeldas just dialed Wind Waker to the max with much more objects and detail but the same flat rendering then just looks cheap, dated and kinda even stylefree.
 
Same creator made a snippit of the game Ghibli style and to be honest it really fits.


I NEED this NOW!

Imagine the buzz Nintendo would have gotten by letting Netflix make the Zelda animated tv show? I'm sure they threw their toys out of the pram because it leaked then the Netflix animation company made Castlevania instead? Which was amazing!
 
Twilight Princess was peak Zelda, mature and good graphics, good times

It had good dungeon design but I disagree with everything else. In fact this game me doing things like leaving saves at the start of dungeons so I could replay them without ever having to deal with the rest of the game ever again. The graphics were actively ugly and the tryhard maturity (LOOK HOW DARK I AM NOT WINDWAKER) was eye rolling. Said as someone who resented Wind Waker. I'm glad some people can enjoy it though, I just can't. And I really really tried, and bought it twice on both GC and Wii back then.
 
What is it with gamers and their obsession with realism? Fuck creativity or artistic vision right?

It's fucking Zelda.
 
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Not realistic, but a high quality fantasy style like Infinity Nikki, Astrobot or Dokev.

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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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100%. At least one mature, realistic-looking, 18+ Zelda game would bring a new group of adult gamers to this franchise and help it grow. It would be a cool experiment as well.

But I think it runs into hardware limitations, which is why Zelda (and other Nintendo) games are still cartoonish-looking as those graphics age better and are easier to scale as well.

It's a shame that a legendary franchise like Zelda still does not look as good as AA games by first-time studios like Kena.
Exactly, Zelda games should be a showcase in visual and game design.

It's weird how people think the current look, is acceptable.

A game of this caliber could be so much more, well, if Nintendo actually is willing to make it happen.
 
You have plenty of games trying to look realistic, Zelda is going for more of a fairy tale thing and that's fine, it's unique.

Although I agree that at least one Nintendo franchise should try and go for realism in art style.
Pikmin? Xenoblade? Bayonetta if you count that?
 
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Why the the fuck would I want that? Fuck no!

I like Nintendo game because they are not going for realism.
Nintendo has gone for realism in the past, they just chose to stop pursuing it once games got more costly to make.

In other words, they took the path of least resistance (cel-shaded).
 
You have plenty of games trying to look realistic, Zelda is going for more of a fairy tale thing and that's fine, it's unique.

I'm frustrated by this seeming core belief that the two are mutually exclusive, but it is what it is. Nearly everyone seems to think this, so I should just bow out. It's maddening.
 
I remember a quarter century ago when Nintendo lied and told us we'd get Zelda graphics like this:



But instead we got
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I will say, Wind Waker's look has kind of aged gracefully.

At the time, people were wanting an OoT 2 and were shocked with the cartoony direction.

It's time for a return to realistic looking Zelda games, TP is 20 years old.

20 years since a realistic art style Zelda is insane.

Nintendo owes the HD era of gaming, a realistic looking graphical powerhouse Zelda AAA banger.
 
I'm sick of the cartoony crap also, give me realistic. I'd like to play a darker Zelda game too, think Zelda Universe but designed like the Gears of War universe. Totally reboot Zelda, it's time.
The Zelda universe could be so much more, if people held Nintendo accountable.

Nintendo puts the least amount of effort in, and reaps the biggest rewards.
 
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It had good dungeon design but I disagree with everything else. In fact this game me doing things like leaving saves at the start of dungeons so I could replay them without ever having to deal with the rest of the game ever again. The graphics were actively ugly and the tryhard maturity (LOOK HOW DARK I AM NOT WINDWAKER) was eye rolling. Said as someone who resented Wind Waker. I'm glad some people can enjoy it though, I just can't. And I really really tried, and bought it twice on both GC and Wii back then.
The darker direction was the right direction to take.

A few years later Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and the souls genre took off.

Zelda games should be like Elden Ring, in terms of aesthetics.

This doesn't some how imply Zelda games would lose the elements people claim it has, being cartoony.

They can still throw in the occasional low effort/budget cartoony spin offs, but the main entries should be graphical showcases.
 
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I agree, although I would say darker instead of realistic. The atmosphere has never been better than Twilight and Ocarina.
 
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Why don't you understand that games can have realistic art styles, and STILL retain creativity and artistic vision?

You guys let Nintendo get away with the bare minimum.

Nintendo apologists.
The art style is part of the creativity and artistic vision. Realism is not some ideal to be targeted.
 
BOTH work well - point is we need a new realistic version to balance it out a bit.

How sick would it be for a new Zelda change the graphics style to realistic? Tears was a real let down for me and I loved BOTW. Time for a change…..
 
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