Revisiting The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Autor: Diogo César | Publicado: 2017-03-25T11:24:00-03:00



The first time I played Twilight Princess was in Wii, almost one year after the launch.

I remember the excitement with the possibilities that the Wii could bring with the movement controller and I remember I liked the the game, despite failing to enjoy it as whole because me, as a person, back then, had my head a little messier than I wish it was. So, for being not so calm and tranquil, I remember I used to play many hours straight, like go away world, like through the night and day. So, because I devoured the game like this, some of the things the game had ended up being lost along the way o simply not noticed or felt as they should.

Yet, some moments remained with me, some dungeons areas, some parts of the story and, more than all, the soundtrack.

Year later, I revisited the game, now on Wii U, on the HD remake and the first impression I had was that I just didn't remembered how good this game is. I could remember it being good, but not that good.



Today, inside my grown-up-man routine that only fits 1 hour of videogame a day, more than having the opportunity to savor every moment of the game piece by piece in the 64 hours it took me to finish the game this time, I was impressed for not remembering how big and detailed the world was to its time. This without mention the dungeons that are easily one of the best set of the series.



There is a wise saying that states that to create something that will really remain registered on peoples mind is necessary to combine what people want with what they don't know they want. If is being delivered just what people are expecting, you may have some positive response, but that product tends to have a much smaller impact. People need to be surprised.

There is also that other saying that there is a right time anything. A good book, a good game, even a good advice, can be much less appreciated simply because it is not the right time.

I mention these things not because I'm old, fat and boring, but because Twilight Princess is one of the zeldas that gets less love and recognition and I believe it is much more related to the moment the game was released than to the game itself. I think many people still remember it as being the game that came after Wind Waker, as the game the went back from the cartoon style and to something closer to Nintendo 64's zeldas, following the clame and passion of most gamers at the time.



Twilight Princess was released at the end of GameCube's cycle, a console that placed Nintendo in a much smaller position on the game world and in some sense they created a game that responded to what the fans demanded so much, leading to positive and negative results. The game sold well. The game helped to pavement the way for the Wii, being one of the launch titles of the console and so on, but since it was delivered as much as ordered, I believe made people love and respect this game much less.

If we wanna be fair the game do have its own things and charm. There is a elegance in the way somethings are treated and done, on the dialogues, on the memorable characters, or things like the fortune teller used to help do find heart pieces. This zelda is the only one where you need 5 heart pieces to form a new heart, so there is more reasons for you to go explore caves, help strangers and wonder around the world.



Before playing Twilight Princess, the last two zeldas I played were Minish Cap on GBA and Skyward Sword, both I want to talk in a separated text later. I must say that these two games failed to cause in me what the games of the zelda series used to cause. Both games are good, Minish Cap is better, but these two games were point bellow the average of zelda games to me. Play Twilight Princess again made me remember why I love zelda games so much.

It is curious how some of the moments I remember of being so cool, playing now on the Wii U, without the wiimote the experience was not so fun. At the same time, moments that I had registred in my memory as "Wow!" moments happened again and were registred again, now in HD ( :P ). The first time you can run (like a crazy person) thru the world with your horse is still quite exciting.

About the soundtrack, as I said, the other time I played it was my favorite thing of the game. Today, I can say, after replaying other zelda games to compare, this game probably has the best soundtrack of all the zelda games. However, I have to say, I still haven't played Breath of the Wild (Ah!!! not yet!!!! ahhh!).



Before I go, I think it is important to say how sometimes we find in games a sense of scale, of open world, of everything that has to be done and can be done, a search for realism that makes all so big, so huge, that a experience that supposed to be fun end up being the opposite. To me, &nbsp;it is a important issue, to balance how much of the real world you wanna create, in terms of scale, number of cities and possibilities for the player on that world. Most games are not a lifetime experience, most games represente a defined amount of hours that are used to tell a tale, to bring a experience. That is why the old games, without all these huge things we see today were fun, survived and survive very well still these days. Twilight princess, if compared to modern games, has many simplifications, even more if we consider this world after GTA, after Skyrim and all else, however, in its choice of simplicity the experience the game is willing to tell works perfectly.

To sum it up, it was a very positive experience. Recommended game, indeed.