Quick Look: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

Midna is the best fairy companion.

Like Dan I was also in high school when The Wind Waker was announced. I remember watching the original trailer, which I'm pretty sure was an E3 trailer, in drafting class and a bunch of people were hanging over my shoulder. They friggin hated the art style, I loved it because I thought it looked like WB animation, or what I associated with WB TV animation at the time. I think most of those people did actually enjoy the final game though.

Twilight Princess was very much a reaction to The Wind Waker. The game reviewed quite well but it sold less than half what Ocarina of Time did. I could argue that this was due to it being a Gamecube game but Smash Bros Melee proved that you could do crazy sales numbers on Gamecube. One of the bigger criticisms of Wind Waker was that it only had 4 dungeons, because they had to cut half the content, so they made sure that Twilight Princess had as many dungeons as Ocarina plus as much overworld stuff as Wind Waker.

The recent retrospective videos that Nintendo has put out on their Youtube channel talk around the negative reaction to Wind Waker but they make a really big deal about the reaction to the Twilight Princess reveal trailer and how they think it really validated their direction. I also remember around this game's launch there were interviews with Aonuma where he was a bit annoyed with the general opinion that the Zelda team could never make a better game than Ocarina and he explicitly set out to make a bigger / better Zelda. You could argue that trying to make a new game in the mold of Ocarina isn't the way to make a better game but it is what they set out to do.

Personally I think it was a good game back in the day hampered a bit by some bad implementation of Wii controls for certain activities. Also as Dan mentions it starts pretty slow but I think the later item, dungeon and boss design is really strong.

I liked this game a whole lot when I played it back then. Wish they had done more to update the graphical side of it for this version, especially for the price they're asking. Oh well!

Will say though: Jeff's got a good Link voice.

This is the 2nd Zelda game I'd ever attempted to play, the first being Ocarina of Time. I only played about an hour or 2 of this. The super slow beginning pretty much turned me off from Zelda for good, or at least for the forseeable future.

The Gamecube has Metroid Prime. That alone puts it above Wii and Wii U, Mario Maker or not.It also has the best controller. Not to mention Melee and Eternal Darkness

Twilight Princess is totally a 8.8 though

If I hadn't replayed this game just before they announced this HD release, I'd be super pumped to play it. I still really like this game even if it isn't one of my favourites.

I was the right age to be surrounded by people who didn't like the look of Wind Waker - and I was one of them. I think it was the opposite of how Jeff explained it in my experience as a younger kid, we wanted a more mature looking Link (for whatever reason) and immediately turned on Wind Waker on visuals alone.

I realized the error of my ways a few years later when I finally played Wind Waker and absolutely loved it, including the art style. It was probably just that time period where I felt like I was more mature than I actually was, so I purposefully turned away from "kiddie" stuff. It was like the perfect storm of timing I guess.

Regardless, I liked the gamecube version of Twilight Princess, and I now really appreciate Wind Waker. I try not to compare many of the Zeldas. TP had its faults but it also did some strange shit that I appreciated.

I don't hate Wind Waker because of it's art style, I hate it because it's almost an exact clone of Ocarina but instead of back tracking across a field, it had boring sailing. Granted Ocarina copied the same basic structure from LttP, but I think Ocarina being in 3D helped make it seem different enough. Plus the Ocarina and being able to manipulate the world with it helped a lot. WW also has the most disappointing final fight. I gave up about 3/4 of the way through the game on Gamecube and actually finished it on WIi U. The super fast fight seemed really anti-climactic.


I don't really agree with Jeff about Nintendo being Disney like though. The thing I liked about Nintendo back in the day is that they had the kids games but they also had "darker" stuff like LttP and Super Metroid. I always thought Zelda could take on a slightly darker edge but still be high fantasy. Like dark as in parts of Lord of the Rings were dark. I just want them to do a major shake up of the series. I always though that fake concept art stuff where Epona was a motorcycle could have been awesome.

everyone always forgets

Unsurprisingly, when Dan is actually being real-person Dan and not hamming it up, he's capable of participating in an engaging debate with the boss. Good QL.

It gave Jeff paws.

For an HD remake, it sure would be nice to see more than one area to actually show off what it looks like, or at least one that doesn't consist entirely of the color brown.

@kuzune: Brown is all I remember of Twilight Princess.

@drew327: By "long time fan", do you mean us who had read Gerstmann's reviews since his days with gamespot.com or long time fan of Zelda?

The really nice thing about the Zelda franchise is that they're are ALWAYS willing to take risks with it, even if it does not work out. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but sometimes it works GREAT! And they rarely go back to the well without first flipping something about the script. I don't want another Wind Waker. To date, in my opinion, Wind Waker is the best 3D Zelda game, but I've already played it. I want the next Zelda game to top it. And you can't do that by re-treading.

The commentary of this Quick Look deserves to be a stand alone podcast. Honestly, I didn't even watch the video, I just had the audio playing in the background while I tried to land some ill fated Kerbals on the Mun.

Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game I played start to finish. It's the game that made me fall in love with the franchise (it's now my favorite). I'm really excited to play my favorite Zelda game again after almost ten years. Curious to see if how I feel about it will change at all.

Also, I liked the motion controls of the Wii version, limited as they were.

Edit: I just learned Dan and I share the same holy trinity of video game series. Though I always suspected...

I will never understand complaints about the GC controller. It's essentially a ps2 controller but with a smaller dpad no select button and 3 instead of 4 shoulder buttons.

This got serious. Good stuff.

You know what was a good Zelda game? Darksiders

Holy crap are people wrong about the Gamecube. It had fantastic games. And you only don't like the controller if you're a bad person. Plus it had a handle so yeah enough said.

Some Wii games where motion controls shined:

Trauma Center / Trauma Team

Zach & Wiki

RE4

Metroid Prime 3 (well, I thought so!)

@sodapop7: Yeah listening to that part was incredibly weird especially coming from Dan. Since the Gamecube is easily one of the best Nintendo Consoles and it has the best Controller ever. Way better than the N64 one that for sure

EIGHTPOINTEIGHT

I think the sentiment from everyone here is that there needs to be a Zelda retrospective podcast at some point, since no one really cared to watch the gameplay of this video. XP

Trauma Center I dunno about.. the worst part of any trauma center game is when the wiimote suddenly gets fiddly and fucks you over.

Gamecube had my favourite software library out of the all consoles that generation.
I played a lot of Smash, Metroid Prime, and the Zelda Collector's disc with the 2 NES and 2 N64 games on it.

Also, the best way to play the Pikmin games is with a Wii controller.

Man, I don't remember some of the animations in this game looking so stiff. Wind Waker's style definitely gave it the upper hand in the HD department. This looks rather bland all spruced up.

Oh well. Twilight Princess is a great game. The back half/endgame is one of the best in the series.

Majora's Mask is also great.

Long time fans of Giant Bomb; they cover review scores, Dan never having a PC, Jeff not liking but respecting Majora's Mask, all the favorites are in there :)

Huh? Guess "Celda" never sounds like an insult to me until heard Rycekt said it in the asshole nerd voice.

I'd like to see Dan go back and play Mario Sunshine because the camera in that game is garbage.

To be honest, I didn't visit giantbomb.com until 2013 but guess all those got covered in the past 3 years.

gr8 m8 i r8 8.8

I love listening to Jeff being dragged along for the ride here, especially with Dan making a coherent case for his passion. 3000 years ago, I was there at Gamespot. Seared into my soul was the consuming fury and wretched screams of the Betrayed.

It was kind of fun.

fwiw @jeff and @danryckert, my memory of people at my school I knew back then mirrored Dan's experience almost exactly.

Wind Waker was virulently derided as being "kiddie", while the thirst for Twilight Princess "more mature Zelda" look like "Ocarina" was real.

personally I liked Wind Waker better, I didn't think I would as I admit that I was bummed at first it looked so different stylistically. But it really really grew on me.

Really enjoyed this Quick Look. It won't work for every game, but this was a good format for a discussion focused on 10% Twilight Princess / 90% everything else.

Regarding A Link to the Past and nostalgia: I'm 34, but never had a SNES. I played A Link to the Past for the first time last year and really enjoyed it. I also tried playing a bunch of other SNES games and while I could appreciate them from a historical perspective, none of them were something I really wanted to play - even Super Mario World. However, ALttP still absolutely holds up by modern sensibilities (or at least mine). The only thing I felt it could use/would have if it were made today is a simple quest log or slightly better hint system for what you should currently be doing. I had to take a break from it for several days due to work and kind of lost my place as far as where I should be heading.

As far as ALttP vs Ocarina of Time is concerned - I similarly played Ocarina years after it was released, but not quite as out of date as when I played ALttP. Between the two I'd give the nod to Ocarina as being the game I like more. Whether that's just down to the time and age when I played the games, I can't say for sure; but I will say that Ocarina felt more like an immersive adventure due to having more characters and dialog and the variety of settings coming across better in polygonal graphics, whereas ALttP felt more straight up "video gamey".

Now all that said, Okami is better than any of them!

@august: it's still the best camera of any 3D Mario game by a country mile, because it actually gives you full control over it, unlike every other in the series which allows you to "tilt" it a couple times. Let's not talk about Mario 64's camera, arguably the worst camera of any major video game ever made. But hey they were basically the first game ever to do that so I can't be that harsh.

Jeff and Dan shooting the shit, talking about video games. My dudes.

This is a fantastic Quick Look. The conversation is wonderful, and it reminded me of where I was when this game came out. Keep up the great work!

@sweetz: I think the better argument isn't Ocarina V LTAP but Ocarina V Wind Waker since ALTAP is the best 2D zelda so it should be compared to games of similar nature and the same with Ocarina and it's successors.

Skyward Sword was probably my favorite Zelda game since Wind Waker. The art would probably translate a billion times better to HD then TP since it was a mix of WW and TP.

How can you not like the art style in this game?? The world seems so foreign and strange it makes exploring so much more of an adventure. Sure the graphics didn't scale to HD very well but at the time it was amazing

Oh, God, this is just one hour of Dan and Jeff having their "Nintendo through the ages" and "review scores used to be fucked" conversations again.

That conversation happened once in maybe the first week of Dan on the job and I thought it was interesting but it made me kind of pissed how both of them generalize their different opinions when I actually disagree with both on different parts.

Now I've heard it like a dozen times, pretty much every single time Nintendo remakes something.

I think I'm good now, thanks.

But for the record, the Gamecube controller was on par with the DualShock 2 at the time, way better than either Xbox controller. The Wavebird would have been the best controller available if it'd had rumble. Twilight Princess is just fine, but looks a bit grimy. Wind Waker is way better. Sunshine was great at the time, doesn't quite hold up. Metroid Prime is cool, but its save system is fucked. No, Jeff, that review system did NOT make sense at the time, and not everybody was doing it. Goldeneye was never good, and localized damage wasn't that big of a deal.

Can we all agree to disagree and not say these same things for longer than ten minutes ever again? I'm on Groundhog Day territory here.

Jeff should start a podcast where he sits in a room and tells stories. Jarcast.

Glad the conversation was great in this.

I remember the first time I ever saw WindWaker was through some really terrible, muddy, off-screen camera shot of Link. I was definitely in the parade of people who hated the new artstyle because of it.. up until I actually saw the game in motion. Holy crap what a difference that made.

Anyone who still thinks it was a bad change is a crazy person.

This was really solid. I like Jeff when he's talking about what he likes instead of bitching about what he doesn't like.