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Comment by RubenSandwich | Hacker News Reader

One thing that is really interesting to me is that they are going back to the roots of the original Zelda: with exploration and discovery being a key part of the game. So much so that they made prototypes in the original Zelda style: http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda.... This to me seems like a great strategy of helping communicate the 'soul' of something to team members by imitating the original before building the spiritual successor.

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Yep. I remember back in the day you could go into the dungeons out of order, even with a wooden sword (which made the game magnitudes of order more difficult). Looking forward to tomorrow.

>I remember back in the day you could go into the dungeons out of order

Link Between Worlds brought this back to some degree. You're on rails at the very beginning but after that you're free to tackle most of the dungeons in whatever order you like because most of your 'tools' are available very early on.

   you could go into the dungeons out of order, even with a wooden sword

Or without one if you want. You can play almost the whole game without a sword (You just need it to beat Gannon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2_gJjrKio

For the life of me I can't remember the name, but the Zelda for the DS with the painting/switching to 2d mode also captured that first couple Zelda games aesthetic. You could go to almost any dungeon whenever, and find all sorts of fun secrets scattered throughout the open world.

You're thinking of 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds'

The "spiritual successor" to 'The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past' (my first, and still favorite, Zelda title).

I was quite pleased with A Link Between Worlds after my disappointments with Skyward Sword (I love love love the art style, but disliked the game due to motion controls) and Twilight Princess (I felt they dropped the ball on Wolf Link, the game felt too linear and Wolf Form was mostly used for bug hunting...)

It's interesting how both Zelda and Mario (and perhaps their other franchises) seem to have gone through some similar evolution.

Starting with the 3D Zelda, Ocarina of Time, the franchise changed and became less open and, in my opinion, lost some of it's simplicity and brilliance. It was good in other ways, but I felt it lost something, even if just the more complicated controls, fixed camera, and decrease in art direction/quality. I can understand that considering the switch to 3D it was the best they could do, but still. I missed LTTP. Wind Waker brought some of that old charm/freedom/simplicity back, and Breath of the Wild seems to have gone all in on these things.

Similarly, I loved the 2D Mario games, and even though I also loved the switch to 3D, I had the same issues I had with Ocarina. For the most part these issues became bigger with Super Mario Sunshine (more complexity, less simple beauty in art and gameplay), except for one thing: the (very difficult) abstract acapella levels. Those gave me the same kind of enjoyment that I'd felt with the SNES mario games. I get the impression that this was a very common sentiment and that as a result, Mario Galaxy felt much more like these acapella levels and the old Mario games.

Unfortunately my favorite franchise, Metroid, managed fine even in the (spectacular) transition to 3D, and went downhill from there. I'm hoping that on the Switch they will do something similar to that franchise and somehow get the magic back of Super Metroid (and the first Metroid Prime).

That's really cool. I was amazed that the new Dragon Quest is going to have a parallel "retro" representation of itself in game.

https://www.kotaku.com/our-first-good-look-at-dragon-quest-x...

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