Why Twilight Princess is my favourite
Zelda game
With the 10th anniversary
of Zelda: Twilight Princess on Saturday, I wanted to take a look at exactly
what this game meant to me and why I considered it to be the best in the Zelda
series thus far.
I actually didn’t really get into
playing the Zelda games until my teens, although I was still a fan of the
franchise. I dealt with a lot of attention deficit problems as a kid, giving me
very little patience for the lengthy dungeons or more complicated puzzles in
Zelda games. Heck, I watched my dad play through Wind Waker when it came out
instead of play it myself because I couldn’t get past the first trip to the
Forsaken Fortress.
So one summer, I decided I was going
to play through all the major 3D Zeldas to catch up on what I missed. I finally
beat Ocarina of Time for the first time ever at 16 years old, and I do consider
it to be a masterpiece of video gaming, even all these years later. I went
through Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker, and then came to playing Twilight
Princess.
I’d owned the game for years, but I’m
pretty sure I never even got past the tutorial segment because of, again, my
attention and distraction issues. But playing it with a mature mindset and far
more gaming experience, I found a game with a great story, wonderful
characters, excellent gameplay, and to this day some of the best worldbuilding
I’ve seen out of Nintendo.
The game as a whole really feels like
a fantasy epic, almost like a Tolkien story brought to life as a video game.
Dashing across sprawling plains as a wolf or riding across them on a horse
really makes you feel like a hero, especially in the HD version on Wii U where
the graphics are far crisper. The story as well is the most engaging in all of
Zelda if I do say so myself, taking the typical “save Hyrule from Ganon” to the
next level with a large and memorable cast of characters. The most significant
of these characters is Midna, a diminutive, sarcastic imp who acts as Link’s
guide and companion throughout the adventure. Ever since playing the game I’ve
used Midna as my avatar for nearly everything I do online; I enjoyed her
character that much. She doesn’t feel like she’s just there as a tutorial like
Navi, nor is she incessant in her handholding like Fi. She has a major role in
the story and the world around Link, and helps the player enough without being
a burden.
The dungeon design in this game is,
again, the best in the series in my opinion. As much as I love Ocarina of Time,
the dungeons always felt a little generic to me. There’s a giant tree, a cave,
a belly of a whale, and so on. In Twilight Princess, the dungeons fit fluidly
into the world Nintendo built, like a mineshaft used by the Gorons, a mansion
out in the snowy wilderness, and even what appears to be the ruins of the
infamous Water Temple. They connect with the world, adding a cohesiveness that
allows Twilight Princess to stop being a simple Zelda game and become something
much stronger than the sum of its parts. Twilight Princess is also home to what
is arguably the greatest Zelda dungeon ever, that being Arbiter’s Grounds. A
ruined desert prison with nods to adventure movies like Indiana Jones and The
Mummy, you fight past monstrous beetles and the walking dead to find the best
Zelda item ever: the Spinner. A Beyblade-like contraption that allows you to
ride on walls, it is later used against the dungeon’s boss, the massive fossil
Stallord, as you jump from wall to wall in a battle both laughably ridiculous
and undeniably fun.
Being a Wii launch title, the game
used the Wii’s motion controls to its advantage, but never getting in the way
of the core game. To swing your sword, you swung the Wiimote like you were
playing Wii Sports Tennis, and you aimed your bow using the motion controls as
well. Granted that the game was a GameCube title at heart (and was easily
remastered for the Wii U with motion controls gone) they weren’t really a major
part of the game, but they were significant enough that when I got around to
playing Skyward Sword, I found myself wishing for Twilight Princess’s more
simplistic controls as opposed to Skyward Sword’s overly sensitive nightmare.
The game isn’t without its flaws, and
I’ll be the first to admit that. While the story is fantastic while stuff is
happening, there are long stretches of time when nothing progresses whatsoever.
And while Link’s wolf form is really cool, it can become cumbersome when used
for too long, especially in the early stages when you’re forced into wolf form
for a lengthy amount of time. Twilight Princess HD rectified this problem by
shortening those segments, but the damage on the original game was done. The
original is also showing its age in more ways than one, and it’s not
unthinkable to believe the Wii U version will do the same in the coming years.
But despite this, I still adore
Twilight Princess. Everything about it, from the story, to the gameplay, to the
characters, to even the sometimes muddy graphics of the original and the
occasionally MIDI-like soundtrack are fantastic to me. I love how it feels like
the most epic Zelda quest to date, but I love how at the same time it doesn’t
take itself too seriously. I love the fantastic dungeon design. I love the
enormous Hyrule Field. I even love the lengthy tutorial segment at the
beginning of the game in all its goat-herding glory. Twilight Princess is my
favourite Zelda game for all these reasons and then some, and if you haven’t
played it yet, I urge to do so.
Song of the Weekend
Considering we already had a Song of
the Week with the Ubisoft editorial on Monday, here’s our first ever Song of
the Weekend. I’ve chosen my favourite composition from Twilight Princess:
Midna’s Theme. This song defines Midna’s character perfectly, with her bouncy
and mysterious nature, with a slight bit of tragedy mixed in. It plays both
when you first meet her and when she explains her past in-game, but you can
find its motif hidden away a lot in the game. Next time you play, listen
closely in cutscenes that have a lot of Midna in them, and you’ll be surprised
how often it pops up.
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