Legendary

(haha, you thought this post was about Halo because of the title - it's not, my 360 is still broken)

Ohmygod, this is becoming my video game blog and I'm not completely displeased with that. IF ONLY Vox better supported video game assets. I imagine I'm the only one to blame for that little detail though. As a warning, the occasional Zelda plot spoiler pops up to illustrate my point here.

The Legend of Zelda is a curious sequence of games. More curious than most never-ending game franchises because it's not character-continuous (i.e. most Zelda games aren't a direct sequel; they follow different, although highly similar characters) and it's been stylistically reinvented a number of times and most of those survive as non-failures.

Many franchisey (yeah, that's what I said) video games apply the same situations over and over again and we assume that the characters that look the same actually are the same and that they exist somewhere, in some form between their mostly uniform adventures. Zelda often (but not always) reinvents it's similar characters as another generation of hero, princess and lord of evil, completely unaware of their predecessors (initially, at least). To some degree, this leaves the game open to new players who don't necessarily have to pick up all the storyline back to the NES games before feeling like they're included in an adventure. Every Link (rather, every player playing as Link) has to learn his role in the events taking place and figure out how to use each weapon as he finds them, starting from the basic sword and shield. Apparently all these adventures are interlinked (pun completely intended) and Hyrule of The Adventure of Link (as much as I hate to speak of it) is the same Hyrule from Ocarina of Time. This seems unlikely at first glance since Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass are based entirely on small islands where you traverse here and there by boat which contrasts to other Zelda games where making your way from one area to another involves crossing land by foot. You do eventually learn that the Kevin Costner version of Hyrule is one and the same with the Hyrule you're used to but with some extra flooding added in to seal Ganon away. I guess that particular method didn't work very well.

Zelda has also been fairly successful at adapting to each new platform. There was some serious talk about the impact that the transition to 3D had on the player base and I've heard old school Zelda fans turn down new games because they find managing the camera in 3D difficult or nauseating. That seems to be a tradeoff that the franchise was willing to make to not be viewed as ancient when games pushed hard to adapt to three dimensions during the N64 days (Beautiful 2d or 2.5d games are still made! Their comeback is another topic altogether...). Games in the Zelda franchise have also made the stylistic transition to cell-shading in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass. This is accompanied by a shift in mood - the seriousness in Twilight Princess is rarely found in either of these bordering-on-cartoonish titles. I find this style much more attractive than games that make a poor showing of realism. But that's not meant to knock Twilight Princess and the main point here is that most of these games have been fairly successful regardless of their style or platform transition. It's almost surprising that Phantom Hourglass has had such a good response from video game critics since it incorporates many of these shifts from other Zelda games. It's 2.5D, cell shaded and incorporates a completely new drawing-control scheme (including the forward roll which I still have not been able to master).

Strangely enough, I didn't even hear a lot of bellyaching for Phantom Hourglass about "this control scheme is going to ruin Zelda!" or mumblings about how people dislike the kiddie look cell shading tends to lend. Could it be that Zelda fans are used to change? That they have some faith in Nintendo to switch things up and still give them a game they enjoy? If only all franchises were so lucky!