Okay so I've got a p solid capture setup for old consoles now so IT IS TIME

FOR A GAME THREAD

felt like revisiting one of my favoritest games ever

Not gonna try to argue it's the *best* zelda but it's definitely my favorite zelda

- One of the most plot- and character-centric games in the series

- One of the late-gen masterpieces of texture painting before per-pixel lighting changed everything (see also FFXII)

- Midna is the truest friend

ah crap save slots
gotta delete one

2007 was my original near-100% save (okay I didn't get all the poes bc screw that)

2009 was when I played through the whole thing with my mom

2013 I don't actually remember? I've played this game a lot lol

also shoutouts to the default photoshop Craquelure filter for that background texture

oh lmao this screen is actually super helpful now that I have, like, actual technology

my TV in 2006 was like... well the squares are kinda twisty and three of the four gray blocks are solid black but all the knobs under the screen just turn everything magenta and teal

GOAT IN!

Whoop 🅰️

that minigame actually *extremely* sucks until you learn how it works and is kind of a terrible way to start the game lol

thankfully (?) I can do it super fast bc I've played this game like five times

Dunno if this'll be visible after twitter ruins the image, but alpha textures all have this very faint scanline pattern running through them

It's present in F-Zero too; wonder if it's some weird quirk of GC/Wii hardware running in progressive mode?

also link's house is so cool and pretty omg

Pictures in Link's home:

- The Kids
- Epona and Himself
- Three Goats
- The Same Three Goats, but a Book
- One Goat
- Epona Selfie Again
- Goat Guy

dude rly likes goats

LOW
POLY
BIRDS

me irl

games as a medium peaked in 2006

One of my favorite things about this game is the sheer variety of character designs. Every NPC is unique and they're all REALLY unique

GOATGIN!AT IN!
GOAT IN!

GOAT IN!

remember when this was one of the early promo shots nintendo released and ppl started theorizing this meant link died and set off the wind waker flooded-world timeline

also look how good that water looks it's insane

YAAAAYYYY

generally speaking the gamecube version is infinitely superior to the wii port but I will admit that not having midna yell at you through the controller is a bit disappointing

SHE'S REALLY COOL

*yanks ears*

*pat*

for the brief period in the game where you're a wolf in the light world but midna has to hide, you can actually see her in your shadow

midna taunts you by HUMMING HER OWN THEME i love her so much

honestly love how zelda games' tutorials are always some in-universe NPC calmly describing the UI to you

like it's not breaking the fourth wall so much as just refusing to acknowledge it ever existed in the first place

Please... with ©️... Please sell me something... Please... with ©️...

Okay so shadows in Twilight Princess are SUPER INTERESTING

They're the now-standard shadow-map technique (as far as I can tell), applied only to Link and some/most other characters

However they also... do some weird stuff:

To the extent of my understanding there are two things happening here:

One is that there's only one shadow map so shadows are only cast by the closest light source (like previous zelds)

Two is that the camera for the shadow map doesn't *actually* correspond to the light source

The shadow camera is ALIGNED between Link and the nearest light source, but it's orthographic so distance doesn't matter, it's always pointed straight at Link, and its elevation is limited such that it's always pointing mostly DOWNWARDS regardless of the light's elevation

I have attempted to illustrate:

Essentially there's a CONE of valid camera positions above Link. If the light source is outside the cone (which it nearly always is) the shadow camera will stay inside the cone, ensuring that shadows never become large or distorted

This may have been done purely for aesthetic reasons (it means shadows are always nicely proportioned), but it also has the (probably intentional) side effect of keeping a VERY consistent relationship between shadow-map resolution and the in-game scale of shadow texels

This technique has an odd gotcha however: It only makes sense for a single character. Multiple characters would each require their own shadow map and shadow-camera positioning logic, and thus two characters affected by the same light would have inconsistent shadows

...and this appears to be exactly the case:

Note how Link's shadow always stays the same length despite changing direction, because the light is already outside the cone

The monkey's shadow does get SHORTER when the light passes above her head, because overhead positions are within the cone and thus allowed

worrisome

gotta be honest I adore this game but the monkey dungeon absolutely sucks

monkey dungeon's lame, fire and water are unremarkable, and then it's like suddenly the designers got all the OoT out of their system and just went NUTS on the rest of the game

LOOK HARD

I love this line so much; it's such a perfect bit of characterization for midna

there's a bridge that's missing and she's just like LOOK HARD and that's the entire puzzle. Like literally there's an *actual entire bridge* just leaning against a wall in the forest. Go find it lol

it's bizarrely vague for a zelda puzzle, which is the whole point. The map's set up such that it's not actually very hard to find but instead of the usual carefully-signposted self-contained puzzle box midna just goes "whatever dude go find me a bridge"

also SPOILERS BELOW but all of her dialogue is like 300% funnier when you imagine her talking like this in her non-cursed normal form lol

like does she just act like that all the time or is she actually enjoying the fact that nobody takes her seriously as a weird imp

super pretty clouds

so here they just drop on you that all the Shadow Beasts are transformed humans and then never mention it again

you definitely kill them too; only the people trapped as spirits come back when you banish the twilight

One of my fav standby VFX tricks: put a big dark blob behind anything additive so your glows have something to glow against without looking washed out

Another artifact of every NPC having its own shadow map: Overlapping shadows get twice as dark

reminder that twilight princess link is canonically ripped as hell

hhhnngggggg

This honestly one of my all-time favorite setpieces

Chase a monster into this massive dark cloud bank; the light constantly shifts as you ride in and out from under the clouds, until the storm clears and leaves blue skies and low haze

totally nails that weird eerie moment before a storm hits where the sky's super dark but the ground is still sunlit

shoutouts to the Official Videogame Footstep on Metal Noise

It's interesting that Twilight Princess was considered a return to the "classic zelda" style bc if you think about the preceding console games

NES Zelda
Zelda 2
Link to the Past
Ocarina of Time
Majora's Mask
Wind Waker

really only LttP and OoT fit the post-hoc "classic" style

like it's essentially a direct sequel to OoT in terms of its design, but treating that as a long-awaited return for form feels... weirdly myopic

(gamers? weirdly myopic?? who could imagine)

Replaying this is really driving home the wisdom of BotW's designers dropping dungeon items and progression gates altogether

using dungeon items to slowly unlock the map is a great design that exists for very good reasons but tbh.... TP is convincing me I really don't want to play any more forest/fire/water dungeons lol

the best part of zelda games has always been after you've gotten access to most of the map and it becomes more focused on exploration and discovery, rather than unlocking gates

BotW choosing to build the whole game around that was a very good decision

(BotW's structure is also like an order of magnitude harder to design for, but I don't need to turn this into yet another thread about how brilliant that game is lol)

it's creepy cutscene time!

I know Zelda Lore isn't actually supposed to make sense or adhere to any sort of consistency but I remain convinced that the Twili are the same tribe of ancient creepy magic-users that created Majora's Mask

like MM says the mask was created by an ancient tribe of magicians who suddenly vanished

Twili were ALSO an ancient tribe of magicians, who disappeared bc the goddesses kicked them into the twilight realm after they created the fused shadows

fused shadows are a transformation mask, like majora's mask. They both have the same eye design and a grid of small holes instead of a mouth

I am totally right about this

I know it's literally the oldest writing trope but midna's slow shift towards actually caring about other people still makes me super happy

also is anyone reading this thread concerned about spoilers?

bc like... this game's whole thing is just kind a FULL SPOILERS after the third dungeon

all of it is really cool and I can't really talk about any of it without ruining things if you've never played it

okay for real though my twitter feed is now TWILIGHT PRINCESS SPOILERS TIME from now on

bc aaaaaaaaa

aaaAAAAAAAA

none of this makes any sense until like 8 more hours into the game it's so rad

this whole section that starts off the second act of the game is so well done

like obviously it's pretty standard story structure for the heroes to suffer some sort of setback that changes the stakes (see also: OoT's time skip) but the way it's executed here is fantastic

like you've barely even seen Zant before now, but you've spent the whole game saving the light spirits and collecting fused shadows, and then he just shows up goes "lol none of that even does anything" and your only objective turns into "try to keep midna from dying"

it's really perfectly timed around the player's presumed emotional state too; bc you've had enough gameplay time and plot/character-development time to JUST be starting to, like, actually care about midna, and then it hits you with that music and the run back to the castle

It's the same trick that Ico pulls (I should prob do an Ico thread at some point): Endangering the player rarely has much emotional impact, but endangering OTHER characters that the player cares about can hit SUPER HARD bc the consequences of failure remain in-fiction

(while on this subject, I think this is why JRPG melodrama usually works so well? They rarely burden themselves with a player-insert silent protagonist and just write long stories about interesting characters, with the understanding that game mechanics boost emotional attachment)

The texture for these leaf shadows has a bunch of green/blue/purple noise in it, which adds a ton of really pretty color variation across the whole area

In 2007 I intentionally failed this minigame in order to get to this screen, took a photograph of the TV with a digital camera, and uploaded it to xanga dot com to mock one of my friends

teens these days will never know what it was like to WORK for a good reaction image

An interesting flaw in twilight princess is that it wants to use chests to reward exploration, but can't put anything in them besides rupees, so you end up with a constantly-full wallet and nothing to spend it on and most chests are thus just a waste of time

IIRC skyward sword tried to address this by having a lot of actually really expensive items, so money at least meant something

worked okay but then BotW just completely solved it via the weapon system. Constantly cycling weapons means good ones are virtually always useful

twilight princess's version of the great fairy being a sorta-creepy girl sitting in a puddle at the bottom of a lightless pit full of monsters is certainly some sort of Mood

also the Cave of Ordeals is awesome but you can't complete it until you've beaten every dungeon in the game and your reward for finishing it is... a reusable healing item

MORTAL DRAAAAWWWW

this is actually a lie darknuts block it

for real though this is an *incredibly fun* addition to combat and I really wish they'd included it in later games

Arbiter's Grounds is one of the best zelda dungeons ever bc the first half is some pretty solid traditional dungeon design, and there's a bunch of quicksand traps, but then instead of hover boots you get A BEYBLADE and discover the entire dungeon is actually a giant skatepark

yeah forget my gf imma think about sniffing this ghost now

is this dark souls

it's a good dungeon

These fences look all nicely detailed and 3D

if you look real close they're actually just two adjacent textured quads with one tinted slightly darker than the other

I love the design of the sages in this game

This Cutscene Appreciation Post

For real look how good this lighting is

This is before frag shaders; it's all just vertex lighting and basic post-processing and ridiculously good texture work

can definitely understand why the 360 generation of games went so absurdly hard on brown/green color grading over the next few years

like everyone saw this and MGS3 and SotC and realized how INCREDIBLY strong a really restricted color palette can look

There's a fairly elaborate series of side quests to unlock the last few connecting roads between sections of hyrule field, but you can't start them until after you've obtained unlimited fast travel lol

uh

Bring Back Snowboarding Minigames 2019

SCARY BILBO

Just noticed: I don't think Link's fingers are rigged; there's just one bone for the whole hand

thus, he hangs from ledges by planting his palms flat and suspending himself by his bent wrists lmao

The Sacred Grove is one of my all-time favorite game environments

legit love just sitting here doing nothing, just watching and listening

Posting a video bc you the audio really makes it

Leaf shadows on stone, shadows lit green from the sun filtering through trees, listening to the wind and the birds

one of the few areas of the game with no music but really distinctive ambient sound

it's so pretty and chill

The morning and evening lighting are wonderful too

these lil urn dudes are great

Darknuts are the ONE enemy that actually exercises the depth of the combat system and there are, like, six of them in the entire game

anyway welcome to sen's fortress

so I should probably talk about the Wii vs GameCube versions

I've played both and tbh I actually think the Wii port is largely responsible for the game's lukewarm reputation?

like, the lowest-level core loop in a Zelda game is Pushing B

there's barely any windup animation; sword goes off like a gunshot and just blasts everything in front of you

it's the fastest, punchiest, most responsive interaction in the whole design; everything else rests on it

the wii port takes that and just... smears goop all over it. "Waggle control" was a meme but it's the perfect description for how Wii games played in practice: Replace a binary button press to a still binary, but now a horribly mushy and vague and imprecise heuristic

so you take the literal foundation of the game and just... make it bad.

replace all the impact and responsiveness with a clumsy awkward wrist jerk with inputs averaged over like 200ms

it's like those nightmares where you have to fight off an attacker but your arms don't work

and sure, the rest of the game remains as good as ever. Some of it's even better, like aiming with the IR pointer and fast spin-attacks on horseback (well, that one's arguable)

the game's still solid but it has to do SO much work just to overcome the damage to its foundation

Flail Arm to Request Pushing B

Anyway not to just dunk on the wii version forever; it's still a good game. It's just entirely understandable that a ton of people disliked it even if they couldn't quite articulate WHY they did

anyway ignore everything I just wrote the REAL reason to avoid the wii port is you can only backflip off epona on the gamecube

man weird inaccessible low-res backdrop geometry is always so evocative

more really unique character designs

also I have no how this Akihiko Yoshida-ass character design ended up here but I love her

sweater + Ivalice motorcyle armor + *embroidered jeans*

incredibly powerful

The artists are far less interested in making attractive characters than in making really distinctive and varied characters and I'm extremely into it tbh

DUDE I COMPLETELY FORGOT YOU COULD GET UP HERE

It's good dungeon time

Shad Appreciation Post

dude's got a dagger for a bookmark

also, magnificent socks/shoes combo

<3

I missed getting a screenshot of the dialogue but if you look at this canoe she's like "I don't rent that one out bc it's a two-seater so I only use it when I have a boyfriend"

BUT THEN

MEGA SPOILERS TIME

This scene and its implications are a huge part of why I love this game so much

the eventual realization that, not only is Zelda not the titular princess, Link isn't even the main character. They're both present but the STORY isn't actually ABOUT them

The game recognizes that a player-insert silent protagonist can only really function as a cameraman, or at most a foil, and so just actually writes him as such,

and thus Midna, the *actual protagonist*, gets complex motivations and relationships and emotions that meaningfully shift over the course of the story

it's incredibly well done, and all the more unexpected coming from a Zelda game

It's so interesting when a game really recognizes that "player agency" isn't actually a critical part of good storytelling. We're USED to experiencing stories vicariously through characters; it's How Books Work after all. I don't need a dialogue tree to empathize with a character

Not to say we shouldn't bother exploring the interactive component of game stories, obviously; there's tons of interesting work there

but it's really neat when a game's entirely willing to just not make the player the protagonist

the mood in this place is just unbelievably strong

huge part of that being the music aaaaa

incredibly complex sense of like... it's strange and alien, but it's not actually an evil place and people live there comfortably, but it's also been conquered by evil and thus there's this permeating sense of mourning... somehow all conveyed together

art is good, man

Also the realization that Midna doesn't just hide in your shadow to annoy you; she's genuinely HIDING bc she's afraid of people seeing her

VEXING HANDS

yes I am directly referencing two of my own tweets, which are some of my greatest work and all but one of you cowards ignored

For the second hand I had the UTTERLY BRILLIANT idea to just remove my headphones

stress level reduced to near-zero

wish I'd thought of that on any of the previous ~4 times I've played this game

I love everything about the Zant fight

they spend the entire game setting him up as this super creepy overpowered demon, and then you finally meet him and... he's a whiny stooge throwing a temper tantrum who yells a bunch and then gets instantly and unceremoniously wrecked

So the beginning of Hyrule Castle is another of my all-time favorite game environments

posting a video again bc the sound is a huge part of it

you get all hyped up to bust into the castle and go fight ganon and Win the Videogame, and then you get there and it's just... quiet

no music, just rain and fog

it's such a weird, calm moment

I dunno if it hit everyone the same way bc a lot of people think rain is depressing in most contexts and I always find it incredibly relaxing and chill

I don't think it's intended to be depressing though; the light is so soft and the whole tone of the place is just... calm

Nier: Automata (2017)

there's also this extremely missable haunted graveyard in the north of the courtyard

it's almost impossible to find unless you see it on the dungeon map and go hunting for an entrance

it's super weird and there's a creepy ghost puzzle and your reward is... a key, which you can use to unlock a room full of treasure right before ganon

"treasure" here meaning "a bunch of chests full of bombs and arrows and orange rupees" because as mentioned earlier this game's structure precludes rewarding exploration with anything useful, so here's a bunch of money 20 minutes from the end credits

(it is a really cool secret though)

also this absolutely incredible scene

you keep fighting this recurring boss throughout the whole game, and then he shows up again and you beat him again and he just... stops, and hands you a key

and then this:

this is LITERALLY THE ONLY TIME a Zelda game has addressed the motivations of "monsters" or even suggested that they might be anything more than mindless opportunistic beasts

and it's just... dropped on you at the very end of the game, in this weird quiet rain-soaked courtyard

it's so strange and unexpected and poignant and it raises so many bizarre questions that are never so much as mentioned ever again

it's incredible

shoutouts to this crew for showing up to rescue link from... six monsters

I appreciate you

hang on lemme just hold this for 26 hours

YEAHHHH

extremely good intro but I gotta admit nothing will ever top OoT dorf playing his own scary pipe-organ music the whole time you were traversing his doom fortress

that face

every time he moves his hand there's this ridiculous leather creaking noise it's amazing

this is a consistent element of every scene in which he appears

COOL FRIENDS

this shot is so rad

this is also
A) super awesome
B) part of the attract-mode video that plays on the title screen, which is incredibly weird given that it occurs in like the last 20 minutes of the game?

like yo maybe don't put the actual end of your game on the title screen

just a thought

ganondorf fighting you with the sword he literally pulled out of his own chest after the sages tried to execute him is some next-level villain badassery

dude's so hardcore he DIES STANDING UP

out of respect for the handful of people who might see the tweet and haven't played the game I'm not gonna screencap the super-ultra-turbo-hyper spoiler

but aaAAAA I LOVE HER SO MUCH AAAAAAAAAA

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Y THO

I dunno whose idea it was to end every 3D zelda with "Link has no more friends and wanders off into nowhere" but man I have BEEF with them

at least Skyward Sword and BotW broke that mold

I mean like it all totally works thematically and makes sense here etc so I can't really *fault* it

it's still pretty much my fav game ever

but also ;____;

the end credits are wonderful btw

Games generally tend to lack any sort of denouement and thus usually end SUPER abruptly as soon as you run out of bads to fight

Zeldas usually have these really elaborate credits sequences that wrap up the side characters' stories and give you a sense of the world continuing on

Twilight Princess has a completely unique twelve-minute musical piece that scores the entire credits and guides the whole emotional arc of the conclusion and it's just incredibly well done

I think.... I've said all the things I wanted to say about Twilight Princess, now

other than just like a whole lot of heart emojis for midna

❤❤💖💖💖❤❤