Howdy all! Just a quick post to let you all know that we’ve got the next part of our article mini-series up! Please read and enjoy.
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Death in The Legend of Zelda — Part 2
Welcome to the second part in our “Death in The Legend of Zelda” mini-series! Let me quickly pick up where I left off last time…
As I pointed out earlier, death has never had a good deal of meaning when it comes to video games, especially in Zelda. In order to make the series (and the industry as a whole) more effective, emotional and powerful, the topic of death needs to be addressed. More so, it needs to be done properly. Again, reiterating what I already covered, developers seem to think that if they increase the amount of blood, gore and violence they add into games, they will have effectively tackled this issue.
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I’ll be the first one in line to cry out my opinions, and immediately dart for the pitchfork. (An interesting thought, actually, is that taking a pitchfork to one of the said “developers” would develop less bloody violence than what they often put in the games. How’s that for realism?) Personally, I go quite the other way; I think that the more restraint they show when attempting to appease the
Halo/Mortal Combat crowd, the better the games will turn out.
Often times, I think that game developers hear the message board crowds shouting “We want more realism in our games!”, and end up gathering the idea that “realism” equals a violent M-rated game. This is a sad misunderstanding. What is meant by the majority of gamers is that they want to have logical concepts in games. Yes, blood is a part of said realism, but a very small one, and even then, only when applied to the normal and appropriate circumstances. It’s like saying that eyes are created for reading. Although that’s true, it’s only a small part of their intended functions, and thus it should be treated as that.
What I’m getting at is that death is one of those realistic realisms that gamers want. They don’t want a simple gore-fest. They don’t want a “You failed. Would you like to continue?” message on their screens. They want to feel the adrenaline rushing through them as they see their health is low, and know that they don’t want to ever see what the effects of their “death” will be.
In the next article, we’ll take a look at what those effects could be, as well as some examples. If you have any ideas as to how death could be made more realistic and emotional (in a serious way), please leave a comment, or write to us at zeldainmypocket@hotmail.com. Why would you want to do this? Because it just so happens that part four will be connected with a Q&A session, and the questions will be non-existent if nothing comes in, right?
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