• Nice post. Thanks for sharing this information.

• I disagree, Twilight Princess to me is the worst in the series and a terrible game. I think it's the ugliest game by far with the weakest story and little to no interaction with characters outside of the story. After struggling through it a second time (struggling due to boredom) i truly hate it, and have sold it. It always just felt like a more detailed Ocarina of Time but without the originallity. It looks bland and wish washy and everything just blurs into one image after a while. Wind Waker on the other hand has an exceptionally dynamic and varied visual design which i thought was great. All the areas seem different to one another and there's a real contrast between day, night, sunshine and rain.  It was a much better game design wise too. Just my opinion though! Aside from the visuals the writer does also mention that he is unimpressed with the motion controls which i think is a valid point as they do look kinda gimmicky and unresponsive.

• I can tell you now the writer didn't posted the link with the intention of nintendo looking at it. Quite a silly thing to suggest really. I'm quite sure what the writer is trying to say here is that Skyward Sword looks uninspired and he does that quite well. When he talks about the Wind Waker's art style he doesn't say he wants it re-created or continued he simply mentions that the art style was good and that instead of letting fans get the better of them, Nintendo should continue to develop the art style of the series in the diriection that they choose and not feel the need to make the series more 'realistic'. The argument is quite clear here and there are no contradictions whatsoever. You're quite wrong with your last statement there too as it was a balsy decision. When almost your entire fan base is up in arms as to the new artistic direction you take, that's a bold decision pretty much by definition. Im also pretty sure there isn't just one single generation of people that 'still' (not sure what you mean by still as not many people have stopped playing these games) play Zelda games. All in all you're tearing apart this article for the wrong reasons, the writing is fine and the points are valid. Most of what you're saying is just insulting the writer and suggesting that fans of the series are 'overgrown children' that love to have cartoons jammed down their throats. If you don't like Zelda games, why did you choose to weigh in on this article?

• Ocarina of Time was nice-looking Majora's Mask was pretty Twilight Princess was beautiful Wind Waker was completely lacking in aesthetics, but not ugly Skyward Sword is downright ugly. I'm sorry man, but fuck wind waker. If there was ONE thing that it was totally void of, it was an interesting visual style. Twilight Princess was as stylized as Zelda is going to get. You act like your the fucking minority. No you are not. Do you hear what people are saying? They love cel-shaded graphics! Skyward sword is one of those odd examples where a positive (TP) multiplied by a neutral (WW) equals a negative. But there's no use being a bitch about it. There are countless articles where Miyamoto explains why Skyward Sword looks like it is, and they are not your reasons at all. I didn't like wind waker, but i dealt with it and had a good time. You're one of those pessimistic fuckers who lets an art style ruin it for them. Admit it, Twilight Princess was an excellent game.

• I wholeheartedly agree, Gus. I was having this very thought a few weeks ago. Nintendo has been so reactionary to the Nintendo base with the mainline Zeldas lately that it's degraded into turned into a mangled mess. It's the same thing with democracy really.

• The visual style of Skyward Sword is my least favorite of any zelda so far, but I hardly think that graphics alone are what "ruin" games like this. Wind Waker looked great, but played terribly. Shallow combat, weak puzzles, extremely uninteresting items, and possibly the highest proportion of meaningless fetch-quests ("doing errands for retards") out of any Zelda game. Twilight Princess was an improvement in almost every way, and although it introduced its own problems (waaay too many tutorials, weak story, boring overworld, and very linear for the 1st third), it stands well above Wind Waker and is easily in the same league as the N64 games. It's a bit early to tell what's going to happen with Skyward Sword, but the increased emphasis on mechanics and varied item use is certainly encouraging. If they keep the innovative, multi-item puzzle solutions from Twilight Princess, and can make the overworld into an interesting place to explore, then I guess I'm willing to put up with whatever absurd art direction they choose to go with. Honestly, I haven't been in love with the art style for *any* of the Zelda games, but at least WW and TP were cohesive. Where you get off comparing WW to Chuck Jones, though, is beyond me: Chuck Jones' work is much richer, textured, more expressive, and stylized than the relatively bland and sterile world of Wind Waker, which more closely resembles a rough draft for "Noddy Goes to Toyland" (http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=332&title=Hurrah+For+Little+Noddy#illustrations).

• No, Gus, Mike Thomsen wins. Nemo's comments shed no light whatsoever on your article, though they were enjoyable to read. Beside, what, exactly, did "nemo" 'win'? I wasn't aware that the comment section was a competition. Regardless, I thought that Wind Waker was lovely, but I didn't enjoy playing it. I can't say why, exactly. I also enjoyed how Twilight Princess looked, and actually enjoyed playing that game. Again, I don't really know why. In the end, I will simply ask that you, and all gamers, stop approaching series' installments as a zero sum scenario, where one game has to be assigned merit that either values it more or less than other than another. Can't you appreciate the variety?

• twilight princess was the first 3d zelda i liked enough to actually finish. so to each their own...

• Nemo wins.

• I am concerned that I have not transitioned into an adult lifestyle in the way that other members of my family have. I feel deeply insecure about this. To compensate, I will demand that the products I have enjoyed since childhood from the entertainment industry, be they video games, superhero comics, or fantasy films, shed their childish appearances and adopt an appearance of maturity ("maturity" as I have been able to understand it during my extended adolescence.) I want stories that deal with adult emotions, which I define as negative emotions: guilt, shame, anger, depression. Nihilistic, bloody violence is exciting to watch, though its real-world consequences aren't. I want nudity and titillation without actual sex or human intimacy. The highest accomplishment is to produce formulaic and/or nonsensical melodrama, which I will recognize as neither formulaic or nonsensical. Above all else, I reject joy, color, and imagination as the vestiges of childhood from which I must abstain for the sake of both the image I cultivate for others and my own self-esteem.

• So why is Chuck Jones such a good art reference? What does he mean to you? Why is Cezanne a less invigorating reference? And how again is this visual aesthetic related to what was in Twilight Princess? If the only evocations you got from TP's visuals were that of a Final Fantasy clone, I guess it makes sense that you didn't like the game. On the other hand TP was richly drawn in the colors of its namesake, oranges, golds, browns, blacks, and purples. It was a match to the game's theme, someone unable to reconcile their own death while Link goes, once again, on the boy's journey into adulthood, the most distinguishing characteristic of which is a recognition that he'll eventually die. All of the pagan icons of the shadow world, the pubescent fear of transformation, the antagonitsic relationship with a woman from another world, heself caught in a disfiguring transformation--you can dismiss all of that for the sake of saying TP sucked, but you should at least be aware of how much genuine and thoughtfully considered content your sarcasm tramples over for the sake of simply saying you didn't get things just exactly your own way this time around and that sure does suck.

• I can't for the life of me understand why everyone hates on Twilight Princess' style so much. I loved the Wind Waker looked, but I also loved the way Twilight Princess looked. Twilight Princess was not starkly realistic or even gritty in any way. The closest it came to that was while in the actual twilight sections, which were admittedly dreary. But to me, the graphics on that game will never look dated. This game, Skyward Sword, however, looks awful (graphically). It already looks dated. The enemies all look out of place, and the oversaturated color and weird shading makes it seem like it's taking its artistic cues less from Monet and more from FreeRealms - and I shudder to think what that will mean for the game.

• I am completely disappointed and surprised at the comments. Nintendo lost what Zelda was really about. In it's 20 tear or so history. But when you make a big jump hardcore fans usually get upset and find another band to listen to. I guess I will to. Good luck with ruining Zelda.

• Yeah never listen to those nerdy Nintendo gamers. WW looked awesome and still does. All Nintendo really had to do to please the loud and few nintendo nerds was "darken" it up a bit the next time around. And/Or they could used the styles where they made sense. I mean Twilight has its moments of beauty mixed in with alot of muddiness. Where was the muddiness? OUtdoors. Indoors Twilight looked better. So use cel-shaded outdoors and then use the Twilight aesthetic indoors. Anyway not willing to judge new Zelda yet. ACtually trying to forget what I saw and will stop reading about and looking at the game because early information only leads to disappointment for any game. Wake me up when it's out. PS. One thing I do like is variety. IT's nice to see them use different art styles in the games for a change of pace if anything. I hope they revisit WW cell-shading again someday though.

• You do know the style of Skyward Sword is also Nintendo's own idea, being based on impressionism? Or that the cel shaded style still exists in the numerous handheld games and Four Swords? Or that a fair amount of the new style's reasoning is because cel shaded doesn't sell as well here, and 'realism' doesn't sell as well in Japan, and that Nintendo is a business? All in all, this seems an extremely childish rant which kinda misses the point. Oh, and Zelda's problems come far before Twilight Princess, they came after Ocarina of Time with the increased focus towards 'puzzle solving', talking to random people for an hour before the game started and waste of time tutorials. Meh.

• I'm gonna say, yeah, the cel-shaded style has been applied to the other games, but on the handheld platforms it was never pulled of with quite the commitment or success.

• The Cel-shaded style has been applied to more Zelda games than any other style. You have the Wind Waker, Four Swords, Four Swords Adventure, Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. While I have yet to see either in person, Skyward Sword looks like a return to what Ocarina of Time would look like if it were created today. Perhaps my judgement is clouded by 3DS version of OoT, which looks a lot like SS.

• I didn't forget the 2 DS Zelda games, I just don't consider them in the same aesthetic argument. Besides, they too feel like a mish-mash of styles because the the DS is so hard pressed to render 3D without uglifying everything.

• >They cowed a wildly imaginative group of gamemakers into a conservatism that they haven't been able to shake in nearly ten years. Uh, how could you forget the 2 DS Zelda games? Both are in the Wind Waker style, and quite good games in their own right with inventive use of the touch screen.

• I think we learn everything we need to know about this site by the fact that he compares only the graphics of the two games.

• The greatest irony is that Wind Waker is probably the most mature and developed Zelda game in term of themes and writing (alongside Majora's Mask imo). It's the only game of the series where Ganondorf's motivations are explained. As opposed to Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, he is not only searching to conquer Hyrule for the sake of being evil, he is a man stuck in time by his immortality searching for the kingdom where wind brought life instead of death. That's interesting and a fertile ground for discussion. For most gamers, maturity in Zelda would equal to blood, fully voiced characters and more brown.

• www.hp.com/rnd/library/pdf/WiFi_Bluetooth_coexistance.pdf The tech difficulties are not due to programming, rather the fact that the room was full of wifi, which more than likely was causing blutooth in the wiimote to channel hop or go out for short periods of time altogether. Jst saying it might be a tad unfair to bash the press conference demo for that as part of a basis for disillusionment.

• Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game...aw, heck, it's probably my favorite video game period. Insanely under-appreciated, wildly innovative aesthetically, it's a terrific game and a beautiful re-imagining of the Zelda universe. Thanks for shining your light on it, Gus. I was thrilled (and a wee bit proud) when Nintendo stuck to their vision, even after all the overwrought angst hurled at them from the zealots who saw the preview. It's such a completely realized vision, from swirling curly-cue explosions to Link's expressive eyes, to the marvelous sea and water motifs woven through the game. Twilight Princess, in comparison, looked and played like a giant concession.

• Dangerous is good. I'm not saying Zelda should look like that, I'm saying if you're going to go with an aesthetic commit to it, the way Love and Kirby do. They just half-assed it here, to cowed by their fan base to do anything bold with the series.

• If you're expecting Zelda (or more importantly, Nintendo) to actually acknowledge and implement the visual stylization of the MMO you linked, you may be even more dangerous than the Nintendophiles you appear to be criticizing here. I'm actually with you in the sense that this game may not look the way we need it to (or even the way it wants itself to), but you basically sidestep why that's even important to begin with. Instead, you've just picked up the torch from 2003 and have hauled ass it (in essence becoming what you seem to be so against here). Also, Wind Waker wasn't as ballsy as you seem to assert as well. Yes, they did make a very cunning decision in going with it, but the aesthetic translation was something that too easily fit the series. Given that the generation which still plays Zelda is nothing more than a legion of overgrown children, they'll accept that aesthetic (which they did), even if it has to be forced down their throat.

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