Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

Heya folks, been away from the forums for the past while and wanted to see how Direct speculation is goin-

it would appear as though I have come in at a bad time XD

All jokes aside, I think the last time this thread ended up getting this stir-crazy for a Direct was June of last year (aka the first appearance of THE BIRD XD). I've been pretty much out of the loop in terms of Direct speculation for the last couple weeks given my forum sabbatical so I've kind of just been living under the mentality of 'it happens when it happens'. Obviously I'd like it to be sooner rather than later but all will be revealed in due time I suppose.

@rallydefault
Software sales are king but you need to sell hardware to sell software. And consumers are fickle, perception is everything. It doesn't matter if people buy all the Switch 2 launch games or even if those games are Switch 2 exclusive. What matters is whether or not they perceive it as a worthwhile platform to buy into so it can rapidly gain an install base. Because ultimately it's that install base that will dictate software sales and therefore support which snowballs into more sales

And sure, we can argue that the Metroid Prime target demographic was buying Switch 2 anyway. Possibly. But consider the logic of that argument. If those users are buying Switch 2 anyway then, logically, the larger Switch install base means nothing. Those people are buying Switch 2 anyways

I'm not convinced that's the case. But my gut feeling is that Prime 4 ultimately sells better if it is Switch 2 enhanced and launches after or alongside Switch 2. Because I suspect it's target market will skew towards enthusiast, so the install base loss won't be a huge detriment. Especially if it's Switch compatible. But more importantly by being early the software competition will be significantly smaller

I mean think about it. If it's a late Switch title do you buy it? I'm not entirely sure I would. It's not like there's a shortage of options on Switch and while I like Metroid I've never really been a huge fan of the Prime games. But if the Switch launches and it's like Mario Kart 9, Prime 4 and maybe GTA5 yet again or something? I'm buying Prime so I can see what the new hardware can do

But again, the important thing isn't one game. They're launching a new platform. The only game in town is gaining sales momentum for that platform because hardware sales translate into software sales. And the way to sell hardware? Good software. I don't see how dangling a shiny release like Metroid Prime 4 on the wrong side of launch helps them in the medium term

I don't know why we need remake of Ocarina of Time, because we already have remake for the 3DS and it looks amazing. I truly need remakes of Oracles and Phantom Hourglass&Spirit Tracks. Especially Oracles, the original looks awful and I can't play it. (I've never played it tho) Just remake all of 2D zelda. This is all what I want.

https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Oracles...

I dunno where they got this source but it sounds soooo good. Two remakes and one additional new game as trilogy. Nintendo, please make this happen.

I'd be down for DS Zelda remakes. Or a HD remaster of a Link Between Worlds. Or Minish Cap. Or the Oracle games..... or just any 2D Zelda of any description

Wind Waker HD is probably the safer bet for this year but

@zlobnicazelda OoT 3D looks all right, but it plays like a gimped empty open zone adventure, which it kind of is because of the limitation of the N64. I want to play a version of OoT that feels like it was designed from the ground up on a modern console, not one that's just the original OoT with an HD coat of paint slapped on. I'm sick of those kinds of remakes, they feel exactly the same as remasters to me no matter what cool things they might've actually done to recreate the graphics from the ground up (part of the reason I never felt the hype for Prime Remastered, like it looks slightly better but I mean, it's just Prime 1 again, no content was actually added or improved). More remakes that actually add/improve content (examples: HGSS, ORAS, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, Mario 64 DS) and less that are all or almost all graphical improvements please.

@Bolt_Strike
At risk of starting another argument because I know this general topic is one where we furiously disagree... I don't really agree. Ocarina of Time 3D was, IMO, pretty much spot on for a remaster. If you're going to remake a game then it needs to be at least somewhat constrained by the limitations of the original game. If you want an Ocarina of Time that wasn't constrained by the limitations of the N64 that game is called Twilight Princess

I mean sure, Ocarina of Time 3D still played like Ocarina of Time. But it was, you know, Ocarina of Time. But what it did do is add a bunch of QoL improvements, most notable the second screen and gyro additions. And sure, most of the improvements outside of that were graphical but those graphical changes also involved changing pre-rendered backdrops into fully 3D environments. And that last bit, while mostly a graphical improvement, was a HUGE step up because the pre-rendered backdrops date the game terribly

But as a remaster goes..... what more do you want out of it? It's fine. I wouldn't mind them putting a HD polish over the whole thing and doing it again. Maybe as a double pack with Majora's Mask or something. But if they were to do that the main reason for me wanting that is that as it stands the only version of those games technically available now are the N64 versions on NSO. Which aren't as good

And, frankly, that's my view for a lot of these sort of titles. It's not really about adding something to these games that wasn't there before. It's more about modernising them while still maintaining the core of what made the game good. And the ones where that is most important are the ones that have aged the worst, N64 in particular has aged horribly, or for systems where the games are otherwise unavailable to play

So to repeat my post from above..... I feel like the DS Zeldas and A Link Between Worlds should be at the top of the list if we were to dig into that well. The N64 Zeldas? eh, maybe. The 3DS remakes were good enough and I still have my copies so I'm in no huge rush but given they're technically not available anymore I don't think it'd be a bad move. But Wind Waker.... just drop it on the Switch already, as is, no change required (although maybe turn off the bloom effect this time around?)

Ya'll have some really good ideas for an OoT remake, but please God don't turn it into breath of the wild with an Oot theme. After that developer interview, remakes are all traditional 3D zelda fans have in the future. Why does everything have to be an open world game?

@skywake
For me, I'm going to buy Prime 4 no matter when it comes out and which system it's on even though I'm not a Metroid fan - I enjoyed the Prime remake enough (not my favorite, but it was a nice jaunt that got a little long in the tooth toward the end), so I'd like to play some more of the Prime games. That said, I'd be MORE likely to get it right at launch if it launches this holiday for my current Switch because, well, there's not much else going on with Switch at the moment after Thousand Year Door comes out. If it's anything like the Prime remastered game I played, it will certainly offer a lot of play time, so it would be a fantastic, polished 1st-party game to play in the time before the new hardware in early 2025.

Now, if Prime 4 comes out right at or within a month or two of launch of the Switch 2, I'm probably not getting it right away because there will likely be a meaty Mario launch title if the rumors are to be believed (as well as common sense and lessons learned from past console launches). I would even opt to play a Zelda remake or something like that for the new hardware before I'd turn to Prime 4, but again, I'm not a Metroid fan (but to be cheeky, sales-wise, most people also aren't huge Metroid fans lol).

That's my honest answer, but I'm just one guy.

@zlobnicazelda I think Ocarina of Time remake gets brought up because of how well the FFVII remake trilogy (so far) and RE4 remake turned out. Square Enix and Capcom can pull off revisiting these extremely iconic classics with significant changes and the end result being very positively received so people start to imagine what Nintendo could do with stuff like OoT and Super Metroid.

@rallydefault
I think you're overthinking it. We're talking about a new platform, we all know how we behave when a new console comes out. There's a dance we do on either side of picking up the new hardware. Before we inevitably buy it we look at the promise of the new platform and decide whether or not we're picking it up. So for Switch it was like, BotW on day 1, portable HD console, new 3D Mario on the horizon, Mario Kart 8 being ported. The more stuff there is the easier it is for us to justify picking it up

Metroid Prime 4, regardless of how much we want to downplay it, is a thing. We can say it's not Mario or Zelda and it'll only move maybe 4mill units? I mean cool. But that's still a fairly substantial release. That's still Fire Emblem, Kirby, Mario Sports title, Warriors game tier. The first year of the Switch was Kart, Zelda, 3D Mario, Splatoon, 1-2 Switch, Arms, Xenoblade, Mario + Rabbids, Pokken Tournament. Most of those titles are still less than Metroid tier. Surely an equivalent lineup for Switch 2 would have space for 3D Mario, Mario Kart AND Metroid

The second side of that dance? When you pick up the hardware and have it in your hands you buy stuffs you otherwise wouldn't. You want to try out the new hardware. If there are only a handful of games at launch that truly take advantage of the Switch 2 hardware? If I'm buying the hardware on day 1 I'm probably picking up a couple of those games

If Metroid Prime 4 is one of the key titles that takes advantage of the Switch 2 hardware early on? I probably pick it up to see what the Switch 2 can do. Not unlike how I grabbed the 3DS port of Rayman 2 when I picked up a 3DS a couple of weeks before Ocarina of Time 3D released. But if it's a late Switch title? I mean maybe I pick it up. But it's not like I have a shortage of options on Switch. Maybe Metroid Prime 4 launches and I decide that Switch 2 is coming out soon so maybe I just clear out my backlog? Maybe there's a good sale and I grab some titles I skipped?

So yeah.... I just don't see the logic for putting a title like Metroid Prime 4 on this side of the Switch 2 launch. It just doesn't make sense to me. B-tier Nintendo title is still B-tier Nintendo title. It's far more valuable as a marketing vehicle for Switch 2. I mean maybe I'm wrong but, yeah, I just don't see it. Leave holiday 2024 to a port of a GC/Wii title and yet another Pokemon or Kirby game. Or something truly C-Tier Nintendo like Punchout or Wario Land

@skywake How dare you, sir. PunchOut was one of my fave games! C-tier pssh.

Hopefully a direct soon where Nintendo Announces the Switch Successor, it’s been way too quiet lately for me…not much big news or anything

There is no successor. Its why there is silence. Ninty knows what they are doing. Dont fall for it.

The switch is a trojan horse that has infiltrated everywhere. Its real purpose is evil.

The powers that be plan to lock us all down in our homes and keep us distracted with the switch. At which point is revealed to be the ultimate device for streaming games and films. At that point youll also get all the missing features the switch lacks. Notice how all the adverts for it since 2020 show people alone in their rooms playing switch???? Connedt the dots.

Wow triple post...

I guess it's time to throw my Switch's away, I'm convinced

Well too bad, another argument you have because I feel strongly about the opposite view so buckle in (although I consider it more like a debate than an argument because an argument sounds violent and confrontational which is not what I aim to achieve, I'm trying to logically and objectively justify my viewpoint. It's unfortunate that it's turned into these long back and forths though).

I mean you could argue that even the 3D version still feels somewhat constrained. The areas feel too cramped and empty, especially by modern standards. And even as you mention below that some of the areas replace static 2D background with proper 3D environments, in some cases that still isn't enough. Best example there would be Castle Town. Yes, they made Castle Town look more like a 3D area in the 3DS version, but it still doesn't play like one. You still have a top down, sweeping camera that you can't control. The area still feels too small, even smaller than Kakariko Village for crying out loud. It's supposed to be the capital city where the royal family is, shouldn't it be the largest and a dynamic, bustling city with things to do? Sure doesn't feel that way, and the N64 likely couldn't make the area big and complex enough to realize that. And again with Hyrule Field, it's just a big empty field with a handful of enemies, a handful of hidden underground areas and Gold Skulltulas peppered around, and a Poe hunting quest. For its time it was a wonderful showcase of the N64's ability to display open 3D environments. But now? That's not really enough to play around with. It needs far more there. More enemies, more puzzles, more collectibles, more sidequests, more hidden areas/mini-dungeons. And it should probably be scaled up to accommodate that. So that's another constraint that's not just graphical. Graphics are not the end all be all of a game's capabilities.

I mentioned this in the OoT thread I linked (although it wasn't in that post I quoted, it was later in the thread) that TP is NOT an adequate substitute for OoT, it's its own thing in a lot of ways. I mean it has some vague similarities, sure, but so does every Zelda game, Zelda as a series is kind of built to repeat the same vague story beats over and over again and retell a similar story in a different way. I mean think about it, a lot of locations are continually remade over and over again such as Kakariko Village, Lake Hylia, and Death Mountain. But reusing that stuff doesn't really make it an OoT game. Then just about every Zelda game would be an OoT game. TP might be most similar to OoT because other 3D Zelda games did wacky and very different things, but that doesn't make it an OoT game.

When people say they want an OoT remake, they mean something a little more specific. They want to see things that are specific to OoT, locations like Kokiri Forest, Goron City, and Gerudo Valley, dungeons like Inside the Great Deku Tree, Lord Jabu-Jabu's Belly, or the elemental temples, characters like Saria, Darunia, and Ruto, plotlines such as the spiritual stone and sage quests, gameplay elements such as the time travel, etc. None of that existed in TP, it had completely different locations, plotlines, settings, and characters themed around the Twilight Realm. You really need an actual remake of OoT to accomplish that kind of stuff. Or at the very least a spiritual successor like ALBW, ALBW was technically a sequel and different game from ALttP but so much was recycled from the original that it screams Totally Not an ALttP Remake. I would be satisfied if OoT received the ALBW treatment instead of a more ambitious remake, but either way what I think the specific elements of this game need to be redone in a modern game built from the ground up on modern hardware that doesn't suffer from the size, scale, and complexity restraints to its design that the N64 games did.

Frankly half of this issue would be solved if they just had a second screen so that 3DS games could be put on NSO. If we could play an NSO port of OoT 3D? Then there'd be less need for further graphical enhancements. Gameplay wise though, just throwing old games on the NSO would be better than remakes. It'd be more convenient and arguably less costly (yes you'd have a yearly fee but you'd be paying for ALL of the games you'd play not just one, although it'd be even more ideal if you could just pay to download them individually like with Xbox Live) if they were just there instead of having to waste resources remaking and re-remaking and re-re-remaking old games just to make the game 10% better looking than the last version.

Sometimes adding something to the game IS modernizing them. More modern games generally have more open areas with more content, so following suit does make them more in line with present day experiences. My complaints about Hyrule Field are a good example of that, in BotW and TotK the open field areas have encampments, puzzles, NPCs, sidequests, materials to collect, etc. In OoT the open field areas have... mainly just pretty scenery. I've seen some complaints about BotW feeling empty, but I'm pretty sure you could take any given slice of BotW's open world about the size of OoT Hyrule Field and find more in it to do than OoT Hyrule Field itself. That's another form of modernization that more modern hardware affords.

Likewise, there's also some pacing issues that might affect the game's flow and make it feel too short/rushed. I mentioned the middle of the game as a good example of that, you pretty much go from obtaining the Zora's Sapphire to the Forest Temple and all of the plot elements in between in the span of what... about 15 minutes if you speedrun? That's a LOT of plot that's thrown at you in such a short period of time and the writing and game design would be greatly improved if they space some of that out a bit more and let you take in each individual plot point and the sense of urgency and/or tension for them all.

I don't think you're quite understanding my reasoning for these suggestions. More content is always good, but I'm suggesting these things for a reason. It's because I think they WOULD improve the core of the game because there's something about them that feels lacking or outdated.

I mean, if they can get the DS Zeldas to work with a normal control scheme I'd be open to at least trying them, the touch only controls are what put me off to them.

ALBW is another one where I'd just rather have it on NSO instead of a remake. I can't think of a single thing that needs improving and the graphics would probably not be improved significantly since it was on recent hardware, so I don't see a Switch 2 remaster feeling remotely different from the original 3DS game.

I'm not quite as familiar with WW, I never played it because I saw from the videos that the open explorable stuff was just the boring empty sea and the islands and dungeons were all painfully linear (maybe if they gave THAT game the ALBW treatment and made the islands less linear and gave you more to do in the open seas, that might be more fun). But I have heard from other fans that there were some cut dungeons in that game that were never added back and it sounds like there's pacing issues in that game as a result as well. So again, I don't think just copy/pasting the Wii U version and tweaking some graphics stuff is the way to go there.

@skywake
I'm getting a Switch 2 pretty much no matter what. I can't really think of a reason why I wouldn't get it.

If you're just talking about people in general, sure... but I think this "tech demo" approach weighing heavily on beautiful graphics in Prime 4 is just a weird one for you to be using for Nintendo. How many people (not us on the forum, but like, normal people) picked up a Switch because the graphics looked amazing?

@Bolt_Strike
I'd argue that once you start changing things to the extent that you're saying they should be changed? They stop becoming remasters. At some point along that scale it's a new game entirely. And I feel like the scale of changes you're saying you'd want out of a OoT HD flirt with that boundary. And sure, I wouldn't be opposed to that but.... if you're going that far why not just make it an entirely new game?

The entire point of a good remaster, like the recent one for Super Mario RPG, is to drag dated elements kicking and screaming into more modern hardware. Make the game look and feel as if it was made today. Improve the controls, modernise the UI, improve the visuals. Replace pre-rendered elements and 2D work with fully 3D elements and so on. But do all of that while retaining the spirit of the original game. For people revisiting the game should be as they remember it being, for new players it should feel like a new game. Ocarina of Time 3D was a master-class in how to do that

And I think the reason why they should do these things is obvious. They should do these kinds of remasters when the older content becomes less accessible. Whether due to the dated nature of some of these games or because this content isn't available outside of tracking down old hardware and games or sailing the high seas

Like Wind Waker HD. You say it should be more than just the Wii U version again right? But how is someone who doesn't have the game already supposed to access Wind Waker? Track down a Wii U with a disk? Maybe a Gamecube and a copy on there? More likely they go to sites that I cannot link here to achieve this goal. And what about the DS games? For those you're basically forced to track down an old DS now

With Ocarina of Time? I mean, as it stands the only way to play it on current hardware is via NSO. Which is fine, I still think the N64 versions are serviceable. However it is a shame that there was a version that was objectively better which is now completely inaccessible to new players. Short of the used market or, again, sailing the high seas. So I'm not entirely opposed to a "boring" remake that "does nothing" but improve the visuals. Just to make it accessible again......

......... I just think Ocarina of Time isn't as inaccessible as some other titles they could tackle. Even some other Zelda titles they could tackle. I'd take a remaster of Phantom Hourglass for Switch with two control scheme options over Ocarina of Time again. Just straight up give me full touch controls as an option in portable mode and then map the non-combat touch screen stuff to a pointer when docked. No new content necessarily just a modernised presentation and a legitimate way to play it again on modern hardware

And if you're opposed to that kind of release? Don't buy it. I don't need more effort than this for remasters. If they're going to go much further than the OoT style remake they should just make a new game

@rallydefault
When the Switch launched the portable alternatives were the 3DS, the dead Vita and smartphones. People most definitely picked up the Switch because the visuals were impressive. They don't do it now, now they buy it because the library is deep. But at launch the jump in fidelity for portable hardware was a big deal

And with Switch 2 it'll be a big deal also. It'll be one of the key reasons to pick it up early on. Metroid Prime 4 is almost surely one of the 2 or 3 most expensive titles Nintendo has lined up for the next couple of years. There's a very high chance it's the most visually impressive outright. It has the opportuinity to be a key title in selling one of the key messages for the Switch 2's launch. And while it's no Mario or Zelda if there are ~10 titles from Nintendo in 2025, as there was in 2017, Metroid Prime 4 probably lands right in the middle in terms of sales

It's a high budget, high fidelity, entirely new title scheduled to land in the next couple of years. There can't be that many more of those Nintendo has up their sleeve. When there's new hardware coming out you save those for boosting the new hardware. The Switch swansong can be a less headline grabbing title. Save Metroid for stacking ontop of Mario Kart 9 and new 3D Mario in the ad they'll inevitably blast out everywhere when promoting Switch 2. Use a Wind Waker HD, which lacks the impressiveness but has more sales potential, to keep Switch ticking along over the holidays