E3 has come and gone, and what a show this year! Normally I would get my E3 info from game sites in the way of text and screens, and Xplay’s coverage, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have broadband this year to see plenty of media, and TechTV’s merging with G4 gave me access to G4′s coverage. Still going to catch Xplay’s coverage starting tomorrow.
Zelda. Awesome. Being a huge fan and anticipating its unveiling, the first thing I checked for was the coverage on Zelda: The Wind Waker 2. What a big surprise it was to find Nintendo had changed direction and instead of delivering another cel-shaded Zelda, as I had expected from riding on Eiji Aonuma’s comments on TWW2 from last year’s E3, they unveiled a “realistic” or “mature” style Zelda in the vein of Ocarina of Time along with the return of “adult” Link. I honestly didn’t think they would be able to put out a different looking Zelda in the same generation, but they did by reusing The Wind Waker’s engine and modifying its graphical style. At first I had wondered if this game I was seeing was real or not for that matter!
Interview with Miyamoto and Aonuma on the new Zelda.
Miyamoto:”
Just very quickly though, as for the reason why Link has changed, there were very, very, very, very many people out there who wanted Link to change [laughs]”
In a way, the new Zelda is kinda like they’ve admitted The Wind Waker’s style was a mistake, not
that I’m opposed to it, but this more realistic style is just more appealing to me for Zelda. Its good that Nintendo is giving what people want with this Zelda, and in doing so they’re pulling out the stops to ensure their success.
Seeing the crowd’s reaction to the trailer and Miyamoto appear afterwards with Master Sword and Hylian Shield in hand was hilarious and awesome. 
“Even after 18 years, the legend of Zelda never stops changing. We are now taking you to a world where Link has grown up, a world where he will act different and look different. In order to grow, Link must not stand still, and neither can I.”
- Shigeru Miyamoto
Of somethings I noticed in the trailer and screens, while Link’s character design sorta harkens back to the older versions, he looks like an updated Hero of Time Link from OoT with his general clothing appearence and piercings. Unlike OoT’s character design, Link’s hair is now parted on the side instead of in the middle as TWW’s Link was and the Hero of Time was depicted in that game. From the way the game has armies of pigs marching on the horizon, the setting apparently being Hyrule, and seemingly the Hero of Time returning, could this be a prequel to The Wind Waker and expand upon the game’s backstory? Also, there seems to be a serious amount of pig content in the game with the pigs riding on pigs, and the giant fire boss with the chains appearing to have a pig face, could it mean…? From the looks of it, there might be more action than previous Zelda games had with all the fighting and horseback riding, although I kinda didn’t like the pausing present in the video when Link strikes an enemy that The Wind Waker had.
If Ocarina of Time is one of the best games ever as well as one of the best Zelda games, given the hardware of the Gamecube and the looks of the new game in the trailer, and the use of TWW’s engine, could this be everything OoT had and more, making it the best Zelda game of the recent games?!
edit: Wham! Gaming has an interview with Miyamoto.
Miyamoto: “Link as a character will be taller with longer limbs, so we’re going to have a lot more sword fighting and action elements like we saw in a game like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. And then of course we’ll have to have a lot of cool items that we can have Link using in different poses.”
Sweet! More action like Zelda II!
Nintendo apparently went through a lot of trouble to keep the new Zelda a secret, as the embargo on interviews with Eiji Aonuma at the 2004 GDC have lifted.
Planet Gamecube has a transcript and audio of an interview with Aonuma with several gaming publications.
Eiji Aonuma: …the Four Swords team does include members of the original LttP team, so obviously that may have had some affect of it. Also, the director of Four Swords is a huge fan of LttP and the old 2-D style games.
I had thought I heard about Four Swords + being worked on by the staff of A Link to the Past, which explains some of its nostaligia. Looking forward to FSA and the return of classic Zelda gameplay.
Game Informer got an exclusive interview with Aonuma.
Eiji Aonuma:
To me storyline is important, and as producer, I am going to be going through, and trying to bring all of these stories together, and kind of make them a little bit more clear. Unfortunately, we just haven’t done that yet.
The GBA Four Swords Zelda is what we’re thinking as the oldest tale in the Zelda timeline. With this one on the GameCube being a sequel to that, and taking place sometime after that.
Good to see them wanting to tie all the Zelda games together better, but Four Swords is the oldest story in the game’s history, as in first? I’ve had my suspicions about Hyrule Adventure’s plot, and in general I wonder how that works, how can any Zelda game take place before Ocarina of Time without destroying the importance of its events? Just have to wait an play the game in a few weeks. What’s up with calling the U.S. version “Hyrulean Adventure” anyway? Hyrule Adventure is so much better.
Watched Nintendo’s entire press conference thanks to Gamespot. Overall it appeared they had a much better showing this year to make up for last year’s showing of Pac-Man vs. and connectivity, and what was then 2 spinoff Zelda games, Tetra’s Trackers and a rough looking GC Four Swords. Nintendo’s DS has me interested with its N64 or above level of power and touch screen. I thought The Pac-Man demo where you draw Pac-Man and walls for him to bounce off walls was neat. Its good that Nintendo is taking a creative approach to a new platform to create new types of games. I’ve always been more interested in the home consoles than Nintendo’s portables though, don’t use my GBA enough. But when they make a Mario, Zelda, or Metroid for it, I’ll probably have to have it. DS movies at IGN.
Starfox and Starfox 64 remain among my favorites, and its good to see the series return to its shooting roots after Starfox Adventures, of which I need to play sometime. The ground combat that Nintendo’s trailer mainly shows kinda seems to draw from SF64′s multiplayer mode, at any rate, I hope Namco works on making this new Starfox a very good shooter to live up to SF64. I also hope NOA gets some good voice actors for the characters, something SF64 did well.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Having recently finished the original Metroid Prime, hearing the ending theme in the trailer was a great way to present the first footage of the sequel. I’ve heard that Samus is going to be traveling between a light and dark side of a planet, the enviromental visuals of the game in general look dark and grey, so I wonder if we are only seeing one area of the game? From the video it appears that a dark entity is assimilating other enemies.
For those who have fully completed Metroid Prime, it looks like its back with a vengence along with the goo. Is it the cause of the darkness engulfing enemies? I notice there are Space Pirates in the game… but from the intial screens before E3, I thought Samus was fighting a Chozo. The design of this enemy looks very similar to the Chozo ghosts from Metroid Prime with its suit and head. Although they have the mantis claw arms of the space pirates from the 2-D games that was absent from Metroid Prime except for a piece of art in the manual (the Space pirates in the game had hands with guns attached and didn’t look that similar to the ones from Super Metroid). These pirates in fact remind me of the pirates from Fusion, where they had the body of a space pirate, but the head of a bird, perhaps an X merging of pirate and Chozo. The whole Dark Samus entity kinda reuses Fusion’s SA-X idea at first glance. One video shows a really cool intro scene of Dark Samus, who sports a fiercer and more meancing helmet design than Samus to go along with the evil dark Samus thing.
While Samus’ model looked good in Metroid Prime, it looks like they’ve refined her for Metroid Prime 2. The one thing I didn’t like about MP’s character design was that Samus’ visor didn’t look fierce enough, it was more straight and square than it was in the previous Metroid games. It looks like they’ve worked on that this time, but what’s with the change in her visor shape at the top, and change in helmet? It’s almost hinting at the Fusion design.
More Metroid movies, including a long demonstration and information, at Gamespot, and an interview with producer Kensuke Tanabe at PGC and a roundtable discussion with Retro and Tanabe at IGN .
So many games coming out in the future to play, and so many games out now I haven’t played yet, and only so much time to play them 
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