Wind Waker was a great game, but it wasn’t perfect. It’s been nearly 10 years now since its release on the GameCube, and most everyone who was shocked and appalled by its cel-shaded graphics style back then has come to love and appreciate the toon look through the past decade. But there are other issues within the adventure that have earned fans’ criticism too – issues that Nintendo now has a unique opportunity to correct, since it’s just recently been announced that a new Wii U remake of the game is in the works.
We already know the graphics are getting overhauled, but we’re hoping the Big N goes the distance with this new edition of Toon Link’s debut and addresses a few other areas in need of extra attention as well. Here’s how we’d make The Wind Waker better.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is set on an expansive ocean dotted here and there with occasional islands. Sailing between those few spots of land is a huge part of the adventure, and few moments in Zelda history have felt as epic as cruising across the waves while the game’s epic theme plays along in the background. The problem, though, is that over the course of the lengthy quest, the early thrill of sailing degrades into tedium – getting from place to place just gets tiresome.
An easy change to fix this issue would be streamlining how the actual Wind Waker works. It’s the game’s titular item, a magical baton with the power to change the wind’s direction – but its use is tied to an odd, cumbersome rhythm mini-game that you end up playing hundreds of times, over and over again. Eliminating the need to play that same baton-swinging sequence again and again could help the sailing sequences flow more smoothly, preserving more of that thrill of sailing over the long haul.
Sail away, sail away, sail away . . .
Closely tied to complaints about the tedium of sailing is one of The Wind Waker’s final sequences, a needlessly lengthy fetchquest that forces Link to collect eight different shards of the Triforce hidden in eight random locations around the ocean – but he can only get to them after first collecting the eight different sea charts that point out those locations. So it’s a sixteen-step run-around for the series’ great MacGuffin, it takes hours to complete, and it happens right at the end of the game – draining players’ excitement for seeing things through to the story’s conclusion.
This issue could be easily addressed – just shorten this sequence. There’s no reason the Triforce has to be fragmented into eight different sections. Why not just three? Or the ocean-sailing aspect of this hunt could be eliminated altogether, as the Triforce could instead be obtained by questing through a dungeon. That would be much, much more fun.
"I have to do this how many times?"
This is the big one, as Zelda series director Eiji Aonuma has freely admitted in interviews that two full dungeons were cut out of The Wind Waker because of time constraints. Their omission is obvious to anyone who’s played other Zeldas and then takes on Wind Waker, because its total dungeon count is clearly fewer when compared to most other installments in the series. The places in the narrative in which they were removed are glaring, too.
Most notable is the game’s dialogue sequence with the great fish Jabun, Wind Waker’s version of Lord Jabu-Jabu from Ocarina of Time. In OoT, Link ventured inside the belly of the whale as that game’s third dungeon. In Wind Waker, all signs point to the same thing happening again – but then it doesn’t. Link, Jabun and the King of Red Lions just have themselves a merry conversation, and Jabun simply gives Link the magical Nayru’s Pearl. No dungeon. Put those missing dungeons back in, Mr. Aonuma.
This should've been the entrance to a dungeon, but wasn't.
Several comparisons have been made between the asymmetric gameplay offered by the Wii U’s GamePad and the dynamics that Nintendo explored through GameCube/Game Boy Advance connectivity 10 years ago. Well, the new Wind Waker remake offers the company a direct opportunity to reinvent one of that era’s most interesting uses of tethered GBAs – the Tingle Tuner.
After obtaining the Tingle Tuner as an in-game item in The Wind Waker, players could invite a friend to pick up a Link Cable-connected GBA and use its separate screen to direct the movements of everyone’s favorite “fairy,” Tingle. He’d float around up in the sky and drop bombs on foes below, making things easier for Player 1.
For Wind Waker HD, the GamePad could easily recreate the same dynamic. You could pass it off to a pal to use while you kept Link under control with a Wii U Pro Controller, or Tingle Tuning could become just another part of the single-player experience by using the touchscreen to drop those bombs yourself. Either way fans would win, as the often-annoying Tingle would recapture some much-needed usefulness.
Kooloo-Limpah!
The Wii U’s GamePad shouldn’t be limited to just modernizing that old GBA connectivity feature. It should be fully integrated into every aspect of the adventure. Link’s weapons and items menu should be displayed on the touchscreen, allowing quick screen-tapping swaps to whichever piece of equipment the current situation requires, without the need to bring up a pause screen each time. Off-TV Play should be supported, giving us nearly the functional equivalent of our first portable GameCube game.
And the Pad’s built-in motion control could be matched to the game’s photography mechanics. The Picto Box probably isn’t remembered by a lot of Wind Waker players, but those who did get into its sidequest extended their time enjoying the game by several hours – snapping photos of each and every character in the game to be redeemed for 3D statues of each subject. Holding up the Pad and physically moving it around to properly frame pictures in the Wii U version would add some fun extra physicality to the Picto Box experience (and, of course, get Nintendo one step closer to realizing the need for a Pokémon Snap sequel).
GamePad = Picto Box. Make it happen, Nintendo.
The handful of screenshots we’ve seen of Wind Waker HD so far make it clear that serious effort is being made to make this remake stand out. Let’s hope that the game gets more than just a cosmetic upgrade, though, and some of the changes we’ve suggested end up making the cut too. Jump in the comments box below and suggest your own revisions too – how would you make The Wind Waker better?
Lucas M. Thomas has been in the Nintendo journalism game so long that he actually wrote a review of The Wind Waker when it first came out 10 years ago. Also, he's getting old. You can follow him on Twitter, @lucasmthomas.
Source : ign[dot]com
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