I don't get why people are so turned off by the Twilight Princess art style (recent Bombcast). I didn't finish it, because I got bored after 10 hours, but the art syle was not that bad.

It's not the art style so much as it is the fact that this was a Wii/GameCube game released after the Xbox 360 and around the time of the PS3 that did not have any sort of Wind Waker or Skyward Sword style art style.

Let's be clear, Twilight Princess is one of the best looking GameCube games, and a pretty good looking Wii game. But it's still an SD game with GameCube quality character models, environments, and textures. After a bunch of 360 games came out that year, I'm not particularly surprised that people would complain about the look of the game.

And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves this game, and can't understand how people got bored with it. Or I at least can't understand how people who like Zelda games would get bored with it.

I liked the art direction of Twilight Princess, it was dark in look which I felt matched the tone of the game. The only thing that held the art back was the limited power of the Wii.

Thanks for reminding me that this game exists. I played two hours of it on a friends Wii at one point and got bored. I really should see it through to the end. So I... just bought a copy. A gamecube copy. I'm gonna play it on my SDTV with a GameCube controller and hopefully LOVE IT.

It's not bad, but it doesn't hold up in the same way that Wind Waker does.

I think the art direction is a bit conflicted -- it's Wind Waker-esque character design, but with textures and 'realism' applied. It feel caught between.

Great game, though. Really slow start (it makes time-to-sword in Skyward seem brisk), but some of the best dungeons in the series. The mounted combat was cool.

I should stop checking back in with this thread. It's only making me want to replay Twilight Princess, but I don't have the time!

@MooseyMcMan said:

I should stop checking back in with this thread. It's only making me want to replay Twilight Princess, but I don't have the time!

Nostalgia attack?

I love this game. It has to be in my top three Zelda games.

The only ill will I have towards Twilight Princess' art style is that it was born from idiots denouncing what was absolutely perfect about Wind Waker, and has meant that Nintendo has stayed away from the style since (even if the DS Zelda games made a feeble attempt to emulate it in some way).

Your opinion of Twilight Princess is colored by what system you played it on. I played it on the Gamecube and beat it twice as a matter of fact. It's a fantastic game to me but if you played it on Wii which, at the time, people still called a next gen system I can see how you'd be put off.

I love Twilight Princess. It's the second best Zelda game to date.

There I said it, come at me internet!

@Abendlaender said:

I love Twilight Princess. It's the second best Zelda game to date.

There I said it, come at me internet!

I agree. Second after A Link to the Past, or at least the best 3D IMO.

I liked the art style in TP, and I could not disagree more with Patrick on steampunk Zelda. That would be awesome, and I mean proper steampunk, not TP (that was not steampunk). I mean, what? It just sounds like he wants yet another cartoony Zelda game, and that has been pretty much all zelda games!! Don't get me wrong, I like them and I loved Wind Waker, but can we have something more drastically different? Steampunk or Sci-fi Zelda. Anything but more cartoony for a change.

I admit I'm one of those guys who didn't like it. Which is weird since I went into super excited that I would. Windwaker I absolutely loved, but I wnet into TP hoping it would bring back more of the Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time artsyle

you know what got to me? the limited color palette was very muted and dark compared to other Zelda games. It just felt drab. So much Brown. My God.

couple that with me discovering I didn't like motion controls in my Zelda, and like a dumb@$$ I overwrote save halfway through i you have why this is teh first Zelda I got bored with.

It's been enough time I should probably make another attempt at this, gamecube version this time.

I think the games looks great. Visuals are not the issue with that game although Skyward Sword does look a nice bit better.

you know what I think I am going to do that after Dark Souls.

Does anyone know if the GC version has all the same content as the Wii version?

I'd really rather play my unopened GC version, than mess with that Wiimote again. But if the Wii version has xtra dungeons or whatever its probably worth doing.

It's ok I didn't found it exceptionally good looking neither that good either. Probably my 6th or 7th top Zelda game

8.8!!!!!!

Seriously though, I enjoyed the game. Once it gets going, I had a blast with it. Might revisit it soon.

i dont remember the crew expressing any real dislike just Patrick using a bit of hyperbole like he tends to

I like the art style and TP is probably my third favorite of the series.

15 year old me said FUCK the art style of Wind Waker, I like the way it looks now though. If I ever get a Wii U I'd totally check it out.

I always forget what Twilight Princess looks like.

I think there is always something timeless about some of the Zelda art style, they don't go full on realism which helps.

Though I do think this brings to mind that I prefer when a game tries some sort of art-style . Games like Wind Waker and Journey will look good till the end of time. You played Viewtiful Joe or Okami back in the day and thought they didn't look as good as Halo 2 or Final Fantasy X, but you look at them now and there is no comparison, the games with the more interesting art style look better. Part of it is why some SNES games look WAY better now than N64 and PS1 games.

Brown. So much brown.

90% of that game is a brown mess covered with grainy and gross textures, bland/forgettable set-pieces, and some serious consistency issues. Aside from the incredibly 'designed' puzzle design and the awful wolf bits, the art style is what easily mantels this game as my least favourite 3D Zelda experience.

It's drab. The art style isn't bad, and some individual characters, items, architecture and environments are fine, but there's a real lack of energy, newness, and nothing about the world that says "come explore this interesting place"!

@Slag said:

you know what I think I am going to do that after Dark Souls.

Does anyone know if the GC version has all the same content as the Wii version?

I'd really rather play my unopened GC version, than mess with that Wiimote again. But if the Wii version has xtra dungeons or whatever its probably worth doing.

The Gamecube version is the best version of that game without a doubt. The Wii version is nothing more than a port, and not a very good one. The motion controls amount to waggle and aiming, and the entire game was a mirror image so they could make Link right handed without actually altering the in game model. That game was always going to be a Gamecube game, they were just forced to port it to the Wii due to it's constant delays. So, what I'm getting at is the only real differences in the Wii version are negatives. The only aspect of the Wii version that is better is the fact that it is widescreen and the GC version is not.

it's a style that will get dated alot faster than the toon looking style of wind waker and skyward sword but i wouldn't say it's terrible.

@project343 said:

90% of that game is a brown mess covered with grainy and gross textures, bland/forgettable set-pieces, and some serious consistency issues. Aside from the incredibly 'designed' puzzle design and the awful wolf bits, the art style is what easily mantels this game as my least favourite 3D Zelda experience.

Brown, green, and blue are the colors of every Zelda game - Wind Waker just had an abundance of blue, for obvious reasons.

@ll_Exile_ll:

cool thank you very much. That clears up some of the misinformation I've read elsewhere

I like the art style. Its fine.

@ThePaleKing: The colors are all washed out though and it does use brown, orange, black and white more than any other Zelda game. It just looks kinda rusty and dark.

Twilight Princess is a fantastic game especially on Wii. In the top 3 of my favourite Zelda games for sure.

Thought this art style was great...Patrick says some wild shit sometimes...

It's my favorite Zelda game and slow start my ass Ocarina had a slow start.

Crap. I bought a copy on eBay that's going to take a week to get here, then I went over to the used game shop and found a copy there for $35 that I could have gotten immediately.

@ThePaleKing said:

@project343 said:

90% of that game is a brown mess covered with grainy and gross textures, bland/forgettable set-pieces, and some serious consistency issues. Aside from the incredibly 'designed' puzzle design and the awful wolf bits, the art style is what easily mantels this game as my least favourite 3D Zelda experience.

Brown, green, and blue are the colors of every Zelda game - Wind Waker just had an abundance of blue, for obvious reasons.

Yeah but this was the "brown" Zelda game that came out during the height of 'all video games are brown because that makes them dirtier and grittier' period of the industry. You went from Nintendo basically flipping off the fans and the industry with Wind Waker saying they know better and they were right. To Twilight Princess which just smacks of "We at Nintendo want to give the gamers what they truly want. We conducted market research and it shows that gamers want more brown in their games."

But like project said everything outside of character models had absolutely garbage textures. Which combined with muted everything kind of brown colors and ridiculous amount of jaggies when in motion made that game look like a hot mess when you played. When I first played it I played it on a broken tv that was constantly fuzzy and I thought it looked good. But when I got a new tv and everything looked fantastic after spending a year staring though the snow, Twilight Princess still look bad and muddled which made me realize it just looked bad.

To me the game looked inconsistent. Some more "realistic textures" mixed in with more artistic and cartoony flair. Compare the two pictures posted at the top of this thread.

Then you have the character models, which also don't mesh well together. In Wind Waker you have a great look that made the whole thing look like it was one cohesive world. But then you see in TP how Link has good proportion, but then some enemies just look wacky. Is this game more dark and serious or is it still a wacky cartoon? Enemies having stumpy legs doesn't make them look threatening.

I wanted the Zelda game we saw at Spaceworld. Though we got WW and I loved it. But I was more curious to see a realistic, if you will, take on Zelda, the world. Seems like that didn't happen.

This might have something to do with it.

Or this fucking thing.

What was with that game and nipples?

When I think of Zelda, I think of Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Twilight Princess. They had consistent and great art styles, while managing to be pretty unique from one another.

Wind Waker was the issue, which Nintendo recognized, and rightly so. The art in that game was overly simplistic, yet completely oversaturated in terms of color. It just wasn't a good looking game, not to mention its other issues.

There are plenty of people with their own opinions of it all. They're welcome to have such views, but the way I see it, Wind Waker was just gross to look at.

@TooWalrus said:

Thanks for reminding me that this game exists. I played two hours of it on a friends Wii at one point and got bored. I really should see it through to the end. So I... just bought a copy. A gamecube copy. I'm gonna play it on my SDTV with a GameCube controller and hopefully LOVE IT.

I think the only reason why I finished that game was because I was still in high school (loads of free time) and it was summer. There is a part in that game where you're like OK I should be just about done but then all of a sudden shit happens that makes you realize that you're probably at or a little bit past the halfway point. Such a boring ass game.

Not everyone likes the things others like. That's fine. We'll all make it.

@ll_Exile_ll said:

@Slag said:

you know what I think I am going to do that after Dark Souls.

Does anyone know if the GC version has all the same content as the Wii version?

I'd really rather play my unopened GC version, than mess with that Wiimote again. But if the Wii version has xtra dungeons or whatever its probably worth doing.

The Gamecube version is the best version of that game without a doubt. The Wii version is nothing more than a port, and not a very good one. The motion controls amount to waggle and aiming, and the entire game was a mirror image so they could make Link right handed without actually altering the in game model. That game was always going to be a Gamecube game, they were just forced to port it to the Wii due to it's constant delays. So, what I'm getting at is the only real differences in the Wii version are negatives. The only aspect of the Wii version that is better is the fact that it is widescreen and the GC version is not.

Yeah, I think this game really deserves more credit than it gets. It seems that everyone I've talked to that didn't like/got bored of this game had only played the Wii version. I played the Gamecube version and tried the Wii version and found the GC version superior in nearly every way (except for no widescreen support); Link's left-handed like he aught to be and there were proper video game controls instead of dumb waggle and thus felt incredibly less gimmicky. Whenever my friends ask if they should play this game I always say yes, but I have to throw in the "don't play the Wii version" disclaimer.

I absolutely loved the direction and tone of this game, and really wished they would continue with the 'mature' Zelda games. 
I still think it's one of my favorite in the entirety of Zelda. 

All of the best Zelda games have a hefty helping of whimsy to them. A child-like sense of awe and wonder at the world you're in and this feeling that you're on a grand adventure. The worst Zelda games lack that. I can't speak to whether or not TP has that sense of whimsy or not, but I do know that A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker had that. From everything that I've heard and seen about Twilight Princess, it chose to forego that critical piece of the puzzle and went "darker" or more accurately "realistic-ish" which could indeed be a major reason why it rubbed many people the wrong way.

But hey, I checked out after Wind Waker and haven't had an urge to go back to Zelda since, so what the hell do I know?