3 Ways the Legend of Zelda Has Ruined Gaming

The Legend of Zelda game series may very well be the single most venerated series in all of gaming. The original NES classic was recently seen in the number one spot of GameInformer Magazine's 200 Greatest Games of All Time. Every time a new entry is announced the gaming community seems to lose it's mind. The games appeal to all gamers of all skill level and all ages. Many say that there never truly been a bad game in the series. And yet not all the impact from these games has been positive. Unfortunately there are a few areas in which The Legend of Zelda pioneered some very regrettable trends that gamers are still forced to deal with.

Obvious Boss Weaknesses
There was a time when half the challenge of battling a boss was figuring out how to even hurt him. Bosses would brush off normal attacks and appear invisible at first. This would be initially frustrating but ultimately makes it all the more satisfying to finally defeat them. Not anymore, now Bosses have glowing areas of weakness like big neon arrows screaming "Hit me here!" Techniques needed to defeat bosses are obvious and telegraphed by either the boss themselves or the environment in which they are encountered. And Zelda started the problem.

The standard set up of any given dungeon in a Zelda game has always been that the player will find a new item in the dungeon. This item might be a weapon, a new shield, or a more general item with multiple applications. Whatever it may be the player can bank on the fact that it will be used in the battle with the boss of that dungeon. So frankly it was always a bit on the easy side... then Ocarina of Time made it so much worse. During the battle with the final boss, again the FINAL BOSS, it's the worst case scenario. How is anybody to know where to hit this building sized super powered baddy? Perhaps in his brightly glowing tail! It does not have to be this easy, but it's spread. Great games such as Lost Planet slap glowing vulnerable points all over their massive monsters, making them instantly less impressive for having such obvious soft spot. If a boss fight is simply a game of "hit the brightly glowing target" then where is the sense of accomplishment?

Sidekicks Who Won't Shut Up
By now the Zelda games have had quite a long history of this, but it all started with a little fairy named Navi. In the classic Zelda game Ocarina of Time She would buzz around Link's head and shout "HEY!" whenever there was something that she felt the need to point out. Aside from the very beginning of the game for players who've never played that particular game before these interruptions were almost never helpful. Ever since that game if a game studio creates a silent protagonist who doesn't speak for himself then he will inevitably be paired with an excessively vocal sidekick who serves almost no purpose whatsoever.

The silent protagonist is a long standing and admittedly dwindling tradition. It stems from the early days of gaming when developers felt that the player would want to put themselves in the main characters shoes. Therefore main characters were usually a blank slate with no dialog of their own, the gamer was expected to imagine what they were like. Starting with the N64/PS1 generation of games there started to be at least limited amounts of spoke dialog. By now almost all games are fully voiced and the silent protagonist has all but vanished. However on the rare occasions when he does turn up he's guaranteed to be paired with a Navi style sidekick who seems determined to talk for two people. Such classic games as Okami and the Dragon Quest series become almost unbearable at points thanks to overly talkative sidekicks. The issue isn't limited to adventure and RPG games either. Think of how many of the chattering voices in the Metal Gear Solid series seem to serve no point besides making gamers grind their teeth in annoyance.

Treating Gamers Like Morons
Games are supposed to be a challenge, if there is no challenge then there is usually not much point. The severity of that challenge can and should vary by a pretty big margin, but there has to be a sense of the player getting to figure things out for themselves. Starting with Ocarina of Time it was decided that it was a much better idea to explain in stupefying detail nearly everything that had to be done in order to win. It's not entirely clear when video game makers started listening to the minority of gamers who whined that games were too hard. However once they started listening they seem to have been operating on the assumption that gamers not only want very little challenge but are in fact mentally impaired. There can be no other logical explanation for how blatantly many games lay out precisely what a gamer must do to win. It's gone beyond guiding players by the hand and has ventured into beating them over the head with obvious information.

As a general rule the path that a player needs to take in any given game can't be too subtle, otherwise they may never find it. In adventure or RPG games this is best exemplified by the common practice of talking to town folks until one of them drops a piece of vital info that points the player in the right direction. While these sections were never the most fun there was a sense of accomplishment when the player would realize they just found out what they needed to know. However when Ocarina of Time came about it wasn't enough for towns people to say what you needed to know. It was decided that the really important bits of info had to be highlighted with different color text. This is the equivalent of a big neon blinking sign that said "Hey moron! This is important!" With Zelda games setting the standard for adventure games this practice was immediately taken up by developers the world over. This seems to come up most often in games that are meant for a variety of age groups (like the Zelda series itself which has fans of all ages.) If developers are going to insist on doing this to help young (or dense) gamers can't they at least make it an optional feature? Something that can be turned off in the options or settings screen? That way those of us older than six years old aren't made to feel like the makers of our favorite games think we're too stupid to know how to play them.