Nintendo Today is peak Nintendo hubris. They want to dictate to us how to take their news and marketing, instead of reaching the consumer where they are. It's not been working - at least judging by the paltry daily downloads - and it's not going to work.
I am not a mindless consumer and I'm not going to leaf through low-effort marketing slop every day on the offchance that there's something actually interesting/relevant. The only time I ever hear about NT news is it being talked about on a platform I actually use.
Also, I'm much more likely to at least pay attention to something I'm not particularly with or interested in in a Direct than I would be in a standalone drop about it - the latter I'll just ignore, the former I watch because it's part of the event.
It's a terrible substitute for Directs. Nobody but the most dedicated superfans will have, let alone check, the app, so it's a ginormous reduction in audience. It's awkward and inconvenient to use with no benefit to me - I don't want notification spam and I don't want Nintendo or to decide what info I do and do not get. Nintendo has been feeling pretty dead to me this year, so far and the moratorium of Directs has been a big reason why. If they keep this up, hosting their news on a rubbish platform nobody outside a small niche uses, they're just going to shrink their audience, reduce their engagement, and reduce their relevance in the cultural zeitgeist. Small, individual drops simply aren't interesting enough to capture the internet's attention unless they're for big titles; Directs are.
The big, exciting Directs are these moments that draw all fans together and plenty of people with a casual interest. They're a gaming highlight of the year and it's always fun to be part of the community when they happen. They basically pioneered this style of marketing in gaming, with everyone else following years later. It's crazy to me that they seem to be pivoting away from all of that for a substitute that's worse in pretty much every way. As an indirect result I'll probably just become a much less engaged Nintendo fan than I used to be - not an active choice, just because the marketing is significantly less effective.
There's nothing wrong with smaller announcements in conjunction with the bigger Directs. But NT is just not a good platform, and having no General Direct in 8 months this early into the Switch 2's lifecycle has really hurt Nintendo's momentum in my opinion.
ToTK doesn't deserve to win at all. It shouldn't have even made it this far. It is far too derivative of Breath of the Wild to justify the extremely long wait, and what new it adds is mostly bad.
Having Link voiceless is getting more and more awkward with ToTK and BoTW having voice acting. All your characters speaking except the main protagonist just doesn't work for me. There's so many cutscenes that feel stilted by him not talking, and the stories the game can tell are also restricted by not having Link speak.
Zelda games always feel more engaging to me when Link actually has a personality; his almost complete lack of personality in BoTW and ToTK is a huge shame. As part of that, I'm all for giving Link a voice. He doesn't need to speak much, but his silence is just weird at this point.
Forbidding Link from speaking doesn't make him an everyman who anyone can relate to. When everyone around him talks, him not talking just makes him a weirdo you can't relate to at all.
But there's a huge caveat: Nintendo should outsource the casting process to people who are actually good at casting voice actors. Nintendo does a mostly terrible job of casting voice actors.
Ah silly me, the last three are just A Monstrous Collection III to V. I didn't notice because you have to explicitely ask Kilton what he wants as a dialogue option otherwise the quests don't trigger
This would genuinely be my nightmare scenario. Well, as much as you can get a 'nightmare scenario' from gaming anyway.
It's a 6-7 year wait between Zelda entries now, and Nitendo don't seem to make new 2D Zelas any more, so it's looking likely there will be nothing to plug the gap for the next 3D game other than ports of ports. Waiting for so long again only for them to use the same world again... Just no.
They definitely need to do something new next time.They already pushed their luck re-using the overworld once, and I personally am still not a fan of the decision to do so at all, although they pulled it off much better than I feared. Doing it again would be genuinely awful.
I honestly don't even want them to make DLC for this game, because that just means an extra 6 to 12 months until the next Zelda. Obviously they almost certainly will though; they'd be bonkers not to with how many copies they've sold.
I enjoyed Tears of the Kingdom for what it was. I've done pretty much everything I care to now after sinking 120 hours into it (thanks, temporary unemployment!). So I've definitely got my money's worth. But the Breath of the Wild style of Zelda has now run its course in my opinion, and a lot of it felt stale throughout my playtime despite me mostly enjoying the experience.
The next game should not only be in a new world, but it should rethink the rethink of the conventions of Zelda. Open world gameplay is almost certainly here to say, and that's a good thing, but I hope the next game reintroduces classic Zelda stables, with the return of traditional dungeons and dungeon items, an epic story that is contemporaneous rather than told through memories, new areas becoming accessible for the first time all the way through the game, a SS/TP-style soundtrack, actually good rewards for exploration, a more compact and focused world, and with collectable bloat (all the different foods, monster parts, etc) removed and replaced with a much smaller pool of more deliberate, more unique, and rarer collectables. Take many of the BoTW mechanics like climbing, cooking on the go, an interactive physics/chemistry system, towers to reveal the map, unlockable warp points throughout the world, and most importantly a freely explorable world, but add back in Zelda features on top of all that.
Thanks for the list! I'm trying to find a list with all the Side Adventures - there are three that I don't have and this list doesn't have. But for the sake of others in my position, some of the ones you guys haven't included yet are:
Comments 6
Re: Talking Point: Do You Prefer Big Directs Or A Steady Flow Of News From Nintendo Today?
Nintendo Today is peak Nintendo hubris. They want to dictate to us how to take their news and marketing, instead of reaching the consumer where they are. It's not been working - at least judging by the paltry daily downloads - and it's not going to work.
I am not a mindless consumer and I'm not going to leaf through low-effort marketing slop every day on the offchance that there's something actually interesting/relevant. The only time I ever hear about NT news is it being talked about on a platform I actually use.
Also, I'm much more likely to at least pay attention to something I'm not particularly with or interested in in a Direct than I would be in a standalone drop about it - the latter I'll just ignore, the former I watch because it's part of the event.
It's a terrible substitute for Directs. Nobody but the most dedicated superfans will have, let alone check, the app, so it's a ginormous reduction in audience. It's awkward and inconvenient to use with no benefit to me - I don't want notification spam and I don't want Nintendo or to decide what info I do and do not get. Nintendo has been feeling pretty dead to me this year, so far and the moratorium of Directs has been a big reason why. If they keep this up, hosting their news on a rubbish platform nobody outside a small niche uses, they're just going to shrink their audience, reduce their engagement, and reduce their relevance in the cultural zeitgeist. Small, individual drops simply aren't interesting enough to capture the internet's attention unless they're for big titles; Directs are.
The big, exciting Directs are these moments that draw all fans together and plenty of people with a casual interest. They're a gaming highlight of the year and it's always fun to be part of the community when they happen. They basically pioneered this style of marketing in gaming, with everyone else following years later. It's crazy to me that they seem to be pivoting away from all of that for a substitute that's worse in pretty much every way. As an indirect result I'll probably just become a much less engaged Nintendo fan than I used to be - not an active choice, just because the marketing is significantly less effective.
There's nothing wrong with smaller announcements in conjunction with the bigger Directs. But NT is just not a good platform, and having no General Direct in 8 months this early into the Switch 2's lifecycle has really hurt Nintendo's momentum in my opinion.
Re: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Makes The Final 5 Of "Players' Voice" At The Game Awards
ToTK doesn't deserve to win at all. It shouldn't have even made it this far. It is far too derivative of Breath of the Wild to justify the extremely long wait, and what new it adds is mostly bad.
Re: Talking Point: Should Link Have Voice Acting In The Next Zelda Game?
Having Link voiceless is getting more and more awkward with ToTK and BoTW having voice acting. All your characters speaking except the main protagonist just doesn't work for me. There's so many cutscenes that feel stilted by him not talking, and the stories the game can tell are also restricted by not having Link speak.
Zelda games always feel more engaging to me when Link actually has a personality; his almost complete lack of personality in BoTW and ToTK is a huge shame. As part of that, I'm all for giving Link a voice. He doesn't need to speak much, but his silence is just weird at this point.
Forbidding Link from speaking doesn't make him an everyman who anyone can relate to. When everyone around him talks, him not talking just makes him a weirdo you can't relate to at all.
But there's a huge caveat: Nintendo should outsource the casting process to people who are actually good at casting voice actors. Nintendo does a mostly terrible job of casting voice actors.
Re: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom: All Side Adventures
@LinkfaceMcgee
Ah silly me, the last three are just A Monstrous Collection III to V. I didn't notice because you have to explicitely ask Kilton what he wants as a dialogue option otherwise the quests don't trigger
Re: Talking Point: Could Nintendo Squeeze Another Zelda Game Out Of TOTK's Open World?
This would genuinely be my nightmare scenario. Well, as much as you can get a 'nightmare scenario' from gaming anyway.
It's a 6-7 year wait between Zelda entries now, and Nitendo don't seem to make new 2D Zelas any more, so it's looking likely there will be nothing to plug the gap for the next 3D game other than ports of ports. Waiting for so long again only for them to use the same world again... Just no.
They definitely need to do something new next time.They already pushed their luck re-using the overworld once, and I personally am still not a fan of the decision to do so at all, although they pulled it off much better than I feared. Doing it again would be genuinely awful.
I honestly don't even want them to make DLC for this game, because that just means an extra 6 to 12 months until the next Zelda. Obviously they almost certainly will though; they'd be bonkers not to with how many copies they've sold.
I enjoyed Tears of the Kingdom for what it was. I've done pretty much everything I care to now after sinking 120 hours into it (thanks, temporary unemployment!). So I've definitely got my money's worth. But the Breath of the Wild style of Zelda has now run its course in my opinion, and a lot of it felt stale throughout my playtime despite me mostly enjoying the experience.
The next game should not only be in a new world, but it should rethink the rethink of the conventions of Zelda. Open world gameplay is almost certainly here to say, and that's a good thing, but I hope the next game reintroduces classic Zelda stables, with the return of traditional dungeons and dungeon items, an epic story that is contemporaneous rather than told through memories, new areas becoming accessible for the first time all the way through the game, a SS/TP-style soundtrack, actually good rewards for exploration, a more compact and focused world, and with collectable bloat (all the different foods, monster parts, etc) removed and replaced with a much smaller pool of more deliberate, more unique, and rarer collectables. Take many of the BoTW mechanics like climbing, cooking on the go, an interactive physics/chemistry system, towers to reveal the map, unlockable warp points throughout the world, and most importantly a freely explorable world, but add back in Zelda features on top of all that.
Re: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom: All Side Adventures
Thanks for the list! I'm trying to find a list with all the Side Adventures - there are three that I don't have and this list doesn't have. But for the sake of others in my position, some of the ones you guys haven't included yet are:
And the following Lucky Clover Gazette missions: