Leon's Microblog – March 2017

Credit due to Lorule Castle's peppy theme, too… maybe the only time in a decade I've heard Ganon's theme and not felt only sheer exhaustion.

In seriousness though, not aging is such a lowkey wild trope… so many things just throw it out there like it's nothing.

While I'm imagining things, Link should be a ghost, too. The "resurrection" wasn't as complete as we thought. That's why he sees Koroks, etc

I was sure she'd be a ghost. She shoulda been a ghost, for symmetry with the dungeons. Would make a good ending instead of a nothing ending.

Feel like Zelda's arc in this one is basically the same as in OoT: fail long enough to get the plot started, then make up for it at the end.

And during lategame, mentally juggling the few remaining item locations to find a missing key item can be critical to winning.

So, deciding which item locations to check first in a race involves risking that a critical unlockable is in a more distant location,

Much more than LoZ NES, many items are non-linearly locked behind other items: medals open two dungeons, several are needed for bosses, etc.

Fittingly, the reported negatives regarding difficulty and pacing sound very "first TIGSource Metroidvania project"… a bygone relic.

I'm gonna assume this meme suggests a contest about one cutting grass faster than the other can grow it.

(Even then, not many urgency pleas appear in the game itself… few beg for Link's help, because Link is a nobody in its world.)

This is common in the Zelda series… but I observe one of my favourites, Majora's Mask, makes an entire name for itself by subverting it.

They made sure the stories were really about the people left behind on the titular island, and their strange melancholic miniature world.

Me watching Grand Finals, now and forever: "What if they just port it to a system with actual controllers and a screen taller than 5 inches"

(TBH even retreading OoT's sages in Twilight Princess, Minish Cap or w/e would've instantly improved them by simply requiring notable NPCs.)

Anyway, let's pray that some Zelda maker someday realises this is a great narrative device and actually writes the game around it.

This gives a feeling of powerlessness to her rescue that OoT's sages lacked – a narrative tension that seems so natural, yet so rare.

Interestingly, unlike OoT, you do NOT know where she's imprisoned, so you don't get the certainty of knowing how to find her, until you do.

Irene is the best example: you see her often, her sudden absence is troubling, and you feel this absence until you eventually rescue her.

ALBW doesn't have a 7-year time gap between Hyrule and Lorule, so you instead notice some of your friends vanish gradually, insidiously.

I think of it as "the only good thing in OoT" because of how it augments the tone of the dark future, of saving what little you still can.

The gist of it is that friendly NPCs you met in the early game are now kidnapped or in peril, and saving them takes up the rest of the game.

*think's about how the sequel is "Super Mario 3D World" despite the Wii U not having a top screen with a 3D effect* Why you

embracing the original's very idiosyncratic concept of "curved food transformation curse" wholeheartedly 🍆🍤.

A good example here is that Uprising doesn't just bring back Eggplant Wizards without irony, but also adds Tempura Wizards alongside them,

brought back and given a moment in the light, imagined anew in the spirit and sincerity of their original intention.

I've gone on about this before, but I'm quite fascinated by game worlds and characters that had been consigned to the dustbin of history,

I'm also glad its commentary on the NES game is fairly respectful… it makes a few fourth-wall jokes about it, but not in any mocking sense.

I like this game's particular tone of irreverence a lot… it feels different enough from Mario, Kirby, Paper Mario and other Nintendo series.

The irony here is that she's ostensibly the Touhou main character, but now she's being "Green Mario"ed by her own Luigi.

It harkens back to a time when NES games placed minor horror monsters in the cosmologies of their tiny worlds – small fish writ large.

but also I adored the original charmingly promoting Medusa to the role of Satan, akin to Castlevania venerating Dracula as lord of all evil.

I'm not really sold on Hades as the main villain, mainly because his body design (attached) is this Street Fighter esque stripey muscle man,

The high point of this game's narrative is definitely when all the factions put the war on hold to team up and fight aliens for three levels

and to suggest the more accurate image of the warm chitchat of friends, which mainly provides a background mood to the action it plays over)

(I've been using the word "bants" to refer to this game's dialogue to distinguish it from more structured or focused comedic writing,

They'd honestly be unbearable if they didn't have at least five lines of bants in every single room, no matter how vacant or meaningless.

A lot of this is the absence of camera assistance – for a game big on spectacle, these areas constantly ask you to figure out where to look.

Hey, Pit… talk to the hand

*listens to Palutena bants* I love this game *feels this awful control scheme eroding my entire hand* I hope I can live to see the ending

I'm glad… that they did a whole Star Fox Andross base reference without saying it aloud… and then committed to it for the entire level.

The fact that they use this generic, Meteos-esque stick-figure of the player in menus, despite it always being Pit, kind of cracks me up.

In this story-driven game, where any particular level can take up to 30 minutes… a board full of "beat X with weapon Y" seems ill-fitting.

Also, I think the familiar Sakurai achievement board made more sense in Air Ride and Smash, where messing around with few goals is the norm.

Really, the fun of this game is in the top bants and the high speed spectacle - increasing the difficulty honestly just distracts from both.

I actually find this a cute paradox in the game's difficulty system – you unlock stronger weapons to make it easier… or… you make it easier.

*finger-on-temple meme pose* You don't need bonus hearts to buy better weapons if you never increase the difficulty.

I'm not talking about long-term arcs, like Ice King's, but single episodes like Puhoy, Food Chain, Dungeon Train, Beyond The Grotto etc.

I like that it keeps a fairly detached tone throughout – letting the viewer follow into the amnesia, to judge the situation for themselves.

*thinks about THIS* It's… just so beautiful…… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZrNWqS--lk&t=3828

This is reflected in how the items are designed, too: the Rods strike vertically, Bow at long range, each given offensive differentiation.

Only in the dungeons does the notion of item-as-puzzle-key come into play – a reversal of the traditional Zeldas after the NES original.

When you rent items, you first learn to use them, to compare them, as attacks against overworld enemies – freeform, like Kirby abilities.

I've been thinking of ALBW as "the Kirby-est Zelda", and here's why: the rental system thoroughly changes how you learn about each item.

That feeling of Metroidvania-esque constraint always made dungeons feel oppressive – with every puzzle "open", it's like night and day.

The first half where you stumble around without the main item! Here, you simply whip it out at the very start, and keep trucking throughout.

(The save points, to my great satisfaction, continue the Majora's Mask trend of being bird statues that provide both warping and saving.)

Problem is, they were committed to shrinking being "another world" accessed by "portals", even though in-game it's just a different form.

Painting form is mostly invulnerable and, in many situations, invisible – both aspects that shrinking form could've exploited but didn't.

Driven by their desire to defeat Lavos and save the future, Crono et al. eventually become "Magus" in 1000AD, taking his place in the story.

I love Majora's fairy-tale aesthetic… the moon has a face on it. The wind is just a huge man blowing ceaselessly. That island is a turtle.

There's zero times in Ocarina where you play a Lullaby to enslumber a giant who's been mind-controlled SO HARD, he's also turned invisible.

It occurs to me… that Ravio's rabbit mask, in the context of his true identity, forms a very, very subtle joke intended for LttP veterans…!

I like how this one line teeters on the metafictional… Lorule cast as the Luigi, which always loses and never gets its own stories, games.

I'm glad… the princess is named for the other of Sabrina The Teenage Witch's cool aunts… thus recontextualising the name of the whole series

Hilda's arc in particular reminds me a lot of Kirby antagonists… not sure why, but it's got me keen to work my way up to Robobot.

In that context, I'm glad it ends the only way it could – by showing them mercy, letting them learn the virtues they lack, at the last.

I sense the main "joke" of this story, which it deftly leaves unstated, is Lorule's princess is an unwise fool, and its hero is cowardly.

LttP's Dark World was always more alien and wild than outright evil – it felt too grounded to just vanish without a word once Ganon dies.

I like Lorule as a retcon of LttP's Dark World – a sickly sister world where everyone tries to get by, instead of just "nightmare Hyrule".

Minish Cap's transformation's at-rest humour was regrettably limited to just competing views on homes from their human and minish occupants.

Easy example: the Portal portals had great expressiveness "at rest", letting you see yourself, detach cameras etc., outside of puzzle scope.

Much like a person, how a game mechanic behaves "at rest", what situations it produces, provides the greatest insight into its personality.

These little moments of discoverable humour greatly determine the overall character of a game's mechanics.

Zeldas are "about" items, and dangling one unremarkable item out of reach for so long feels very dramatic, in the Metroidvania sense.

Bearing firsthand witness to the convoluted adventure this item goes through, the Lost Ravio Item, has been one of the joys of this game.

Deeper environmental interaction is what the series has always craved, and this wallmaster-switch dealie feels pretty viscerally satisfying.

The best part is each of these overworld vehicles is separated by over 20 minutes of gameplay, so it's a spell you cast over the whole game.

and this feels like the ultimate realisation of those games' intentions, with seamless vertical motion, and depth conveyed with 3D.

I love the ambitious vertical levels this has – people forget the 90s Zeldas worked hard to include vertical components in their levels,

Painting mode is a great multi-purpose mobility power… feels like "the new hookshot", such that I wonder why the hookshot is in this too.

Here's more of what I love: LttP's garish grinning stumps and bumpers – its dated early-SNES design sense embraced and doubled-down on.

and it's encouraged me to use the invincibility of painting mode more liberally for evasion… the game's two big draws, amplified.

This actually does have some interesting effects. The threat of death makes Ravio's expiring rentals feel much more meaningful, more biting,

I should mention I'm playing on Hero difficulty, which is the same as normal except all enemies and hazards do 4x damage.

I really like the Palace escape… not just as a tutorial, but also suddenly traversing the dungeon's exterior, a literal "out-of-bounds".

I also like that the junk being specifically from Ravio cleanly explains why it also uses the same Ravio Energy that your rental items use.

I'm glad Link is saved by a piece of smelly junk from his masked freeloading tenant, rather than the Triforce or any innate heroic power.

La Mulana had many of these in its bestiary, and I find its remake really enchanting as a response to the original.

One of my personal joys is illegible pixel creatures ratified in higher def… aberrations of 8-bit abstraction, shown respect and dignity.

I'm really glad these crappy tentacle blobs from LttP are back… these nameless motionless nothings, not even recognisably a living creature.

Me: "This frog girl everyone loves doesn't have facial expressions or body language–" *Tsu says "kero" in a sad voice* Me: "Bless this frog"

Of course, in occurrence with the ultimate fate of all good things, the game's been banned from Twitch since two years ago… :p

In all honesty, that a disastrous release forced people to create and standardise a new competitive-first Smash game is a miracle of history

(I had to screen-record that because the actual page uses a transparent animated GIF over a scrolling GIF background.)

Its sharp departure in mood from the rest of the game also speaks to me… the reason why I love the comparably creepy True Lab in Undertale.

It really hits the spot of instilling a creepy mood through distorted repetition, without caring to be overtly scary.

The game would be way better if each mystery you solve wasn't just "how the main character brutally killed you for incredibly petty reasons"

in a way that both satisfactorally rounds it out and ties it into the overall theme of the series. Simple, but deft.

However, defying the trope's expectations – that you "solve" the town's mystery and confront the town's evil – your visit abruptly ends,

I didn't touch on this previously, but Ib did its world a huge favour by never selling Weiss Guertena as anything more than… just some guy.

The incongruity of the airship and space station with the nominally medieval world is just part of the greater silence of the game's world.

FF1 has a slight charm in that, being so light on narrative, a lot of iconic FF tropes, like the airship, are left to speak for themselves.

Anyway, I find it a little amusing that Undertale doesn't explain its world's lighting, but does explain why all food heals you in 1 turn.

I recall Avernum explained its titular netherworld's lighting as luminous ceiling fungi boosted by permanent light spells.

It's a good game… I'd rank it two out of twenty billion… No, two out of FIFTEEN billion!

Just one example… simulated glitch (left) vs actual glitch (right).