Legend of Zelda What's with the Zelda series' treatment lately?

[Heroine of Winds]

It seems like out of all the franchises Nintendo seems to neglect, it's Zelda despite along with Mario & Pokemon, it's their biggest franchise. Is it because the series has become irrelevant over the years due to how they've been making every installment gimmicky anymore along with releasing remakes? There's also the fact that in Smash 4, there's no new Zelda characters playable while something like Fire Emblem has five of them despite not being as big as Zelda. And don't make me mention Nintendo not discussing anything concerning Zelda U at all while other games like Splatoon & Mario get news up the wazoo (delaying a game's okay, but at least give out some new information concerning it).

This has been bugging me lately, so is there a very big reason why Nintendo seems to not give any attention to Zelda while other franchises do?

 

[camarosquid]

I feel you. Huge diehard Zelda fan right here. But honestly? I'm not entirely sure myself why Nintendo has been neglecting the series a bit. They have been giving in recognition still just not so much in Smash sadly. Hyrule Warriors came out last year, despite not being a real Zelda game, was still a love letter to fans. I got my wish of Midna coming back in another game with Hyrule Warriors.

When it comes to gimmicks and not focusing on the core ideas of the series, I also dislike that they are going in that direction too. It's not bad, but with Twilight Princess being my favorite game of all time it makes sense to improve upon the formula rather than change it because Twilight Princess did that so well. Zelda U looks really good though, the huge open world seems like a callback to the NES Legend of Zelda. So hopefully the series gets a blend of new and old when it comes to Zelda U, which from what we saw so far, seems to be the case.

Not showing Zelda U at E3 though? Big mistake. Why NOT promote your upcoming game?

 

[SphericalCrusher]

Neglect? Nintendo has not been neglecting this series. They're giving it a much needed break before over-saturating it. They just announced a new 3DS MP Zelda game... Majora's Mask 3D came out a couple months ago. Zelda for WiiU we know is in development although we need some more info soon, Wind Waker HD and Link Between Worlds are still semi-fresh... etc. No neglect. Edit: Not to mention Hyrule Warriors on WiiU and the announcement of it for 3DS. lol

 

[Firus]

Neglect? Nintendo has not been neglecting this series. They're giving it a much needed break before over-saturating it. They just announced a new 3DS MP Zelda game... Majora's Mask 3D came out a couple months ago. Zelda for WiiU we know is in development although we need some more info soon, Wind Waker HD and Link Between Worlds are still semi-fresh... etc. No neglect. Edit: Not to mention Hyrule Warriors on WiiU and the announcement of it for 3DS. lol

I have to agree with this; I'm not sure exactly how you're seeing neglect here. The series has certainly been a little remake-heavy of late, but it's not like there's a dry spell of games. The lack of discussion of Zelda U at E3 is...completely unsurprising to me, to be honest. It always takes them a while to develop these big Zelda titles and I'm pretty sure there are always years during their development where they don't talk about them, and I'd rather have them make progress on the nitty gritty parts of the game and really accomplish things than work on getting something together that they can show that may not even be anywhere near what we see in the final product. I've got a Twilight Princess magnet that says "Coming Holiday 2005!" that speaks to that, not to mention a disc from E3 of some year with Twilight Princess footage drastically different from what we got in the end.

As for Smash representation, it seems like people are talking about underrepresentation in every franchise except Mario and Fire Emblem. Zelda has a pretty decent lineup already; no, they didn't get new characters, but I don't think stopping at 5 is any indication of neglect, and they did flesh out and separate Zelda and Sheik with the newest game. We've reached a point where there are so many characters and there's an attempt to represent so many different series (some not typically within Nintendo's scope) that I don't think it should be read as an insult that every series doesn't receive a new rep.

 

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

If anything it might be better for them to start neglecting a series.

Constantly seeing the same characters in an extremely familiar formula gets boring. The main reason I really like Fire Emblem is despite it being the same themes of fantasy and strategy RPG the way the themes and genre are displayed are always different. Similar to Tales Of series. These series manage to give you the same gameplay formula, but in a completely different story setting each time. Different characters and story. Same gameplay that I know I want to play, but presented in a different way.

For Zelda, I could see them applying what I just said and easily keep with what they have currently. From the timeline of the series I think Zelda very much has an application of some idea of reincarnation (I think there might be a better term). But, what I mean is the fact that the essence of an individual Zelda/Link/Ganon come back across multiple lifetimes across different individuals.

So, why not allow some new Zelda game to pretty much pull a tetra. Tetra looked and acted nothing like the standard Zelda we came to know. It would be cool if they could do that again. Give this individual the role to play a princess Zelda, but look and act differently depending upon the part of the timeline. Same with Ganon -> Demise idea.

 

[finalark]

I wouldn't mind seeing LoZ go in the direction of something like Assassin's Creed or Final Fantasy where each new game has an entirely new setting and themes. As @ E Elyssa Xey Hexen said, there's a "reincarnation" thing going on with the series (although really LoZ lore keeps it kind of ambiguous) so it would be nice if they experimented a bit more with what they could do with that. Wind Waker and Spirit Tracks played with this a bit, but for the most part we've been defaulting back to generic medieval fantasy for years.

 

[CyberHyperPhoenix]

I wouldn't mind seeing LoZ go in the direction of something like Assassin's Creed or Final Fantasy where each new game has an entirely new setting and themes. As @ E Elyssa Xey Hexen said, there's a "reincarnation" thing going on with the series (although really LoZ lore keeps it kind of ambiguous) so it would be nice if they experimented a bit more with what they could do with that. Wind Waker and Spirit Tracks played with this a bit, but for the most part we've been defaulting back to generic medieval fantasy for years.

Modern day Zelda when?

 

[Planet Cool]

Donkey Kong Country didn't get a new game in fourteen years and Kid Icarus didn't get one in twenty-three. I'm a pretty big Zelda fan too, but the series is most certainly not being neglected.

 

[finalark]

Donkey Kong Country didn't get a new game in fourteen years

Five years.

You're forgetting about this underrated beast of a game.
\

 

[Planet Cool]

Jungle Beat isn't a Donkey Kong Country game. It's pretty good, arguably better than the ever-popular Donkey Kong 64, but it's also a huge, intentional middle finger in Rare's face ("Only Donkey Kong and the banana are fresh enough for modern gamers" and all that), which did little to endear the game to fans of their series.

I realize the Microsoft buyout had just happened and that the Stamper brothers were huge jerks to Nintendo in their own right, but as a fan of the Country characters and gameplay, Jungle Beat left me pretty cold.

 

[finalark]

I didn't know that DK fans were so picky.

IMO DK Jungle Beast was a ****ing awesome platformer in it's own right. Yeah, it has little to do with Country but that's alright. I guess I'm the only one who wasn't that big of a fan of the ever expanding DK crew and thought the game play was getting stale.

I actually feel like DKC Returns and Tropical Freeze actually play closer to Sonic games of all things rather than the original SNES trilogy. Then again, I haven't played any of the original DKC games in a long time, so I might be wrong.

 

[Planet Cool]

Ever-expanding DK crew? There hasn't been a new Kong since 1999. (Not that I'm complaining. In my opinion, the only ones the series really "needs" are Donkey, Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky, excluding prominent non-Kong characters, and as of Tropical Freeze they're all back in the spotlight.)

Donkey Kong fans have a history of being bitter because, from 1996-2010, you couldn't get a Donkey Kong game that actually played (and "felt," I guess) like a Donkey Kong game. We had Donkey Kong 64, which is popular among general Nintendo fans but polarizing among DK fans; we had gimmicky, B-tier spin-offs like Mario Vs. Donkey Kong, Donkey Konga, King of Swing, Barrel Blast / Jet Race, and Jungle Climber; and we had Jungle Beat, which has good gameplay but tried to wipe 99% of the series' characters, settings, and continuity (which DK does have).

That's like if Nintendo suddenly decided that Luigi, Peach, and Bowser are old hat, openly badmouthed the popular Mario games, and released SMB2/USA as the next major game in the series, with Mario himself as the only returning character. People would cry foul. You know how Metroid fans are upset because the only thing they've gotten since Metroid Prime 3 is an uninterrupted stream of weird crap they don't want? That's how the DK fandom felt for fourteen solid years. Can you blame us for being a little picky?

Luckily, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze are both fantastic, especially the latter. They really feel like modern continuations of Rare's 2D Donkey Kong games. The partner system and some key mechanics (like rolling) have been radically tweaked, but everything that, in my opinion, is truly important to the series - the familiar characters; the naturalistic setting; the moody, atmospheric music; the emphasis on exploration and attention to detail - is right as it should be. They even introduced some great new characters that feel right at home in the Donkey Kong Country world, unlike anything from Jungle Beat.

...Jesus, that ran a lot longer than I planned. But there you go. That's why we folk over at DK Vine were a little miffed at the Metroid fandom for a while, too. We kept hearing that Retro Studios was too good for Donkey Kong and that Tropical Freeze was a "waste of talent." God knows, our series doesn't deserve a competent developer that actually likes and understands it.