 Everyone, I am Nathan DeRoflejansi, editor in chief of ZeldaInformer.com. Suppose you guys all know that. This week on Zelda Inqueries, I am joined by Commonwealth Rome. Unfortunately, we don't have a third person on this week. We had a couple of people that had some last minute stuff come up in their lives, so, you know, lives happen. But we're here anyways, and we're gonna get this kicked off and going right. Now, from here on out with Zelda Inqueries, we will be releasing them in 20 minute segments instead of releasing the full hour to two hour cast in one segment. We find it's a lot easier to digest and frankly, it's just a lot easier for you in general. However, I am looking into releasing the full audio recording on its own in a podcast format. So stay tuned for that. I haven't made any final decisions on how we're gonna be delivering that. That being said, we're gonna get right into questions. With only two of us, it should be a pretty quick week, but we'll see what questions you got. As always, we do not look at your questions before we record, so it's all a surprise. Let's start out with, here's a fresh question this week from Christopher Trest from our Facebook page. They ask, how can the Master Sword be upgraded by regular blacksmiths? I'm assuming they're talking about, like I don't wanna link between worlds, the blacksmith. Does the upgrades. Well, I guess most swords in general can be crafted and upgraded by upgrading the edges or adding specific sections. But I think it's more about magic and fusing them or adding some specific properties to them compared to what you would usually see. So, well, it's difficult to explain. I think it's more about the gameplay as a part of the gameplay in each of the game to upgrade your sword. Because in real life, you wouldn't be able to upgrade too much apart from maybe just exchanging the blade or enhancing the edges. That's probably what you'll be able to do with a real sword. Yeah, it's interesting. Usually if there's any blacksmith upgrading such as in a link between worlds, it tends to be the only blacksmith there is. And blacksmiths, they're usually ones like craft swords and work on weapons and stuff like that. So it's natural that they would be the one that could do the upgrading. Obviously, there's a lot of magical elements involved. I know in Skyward Sword, I will leave the sword as upgrades automatically when you get the right stuff for it. At least I think so. Or did you have to take that to the Smith? I couldn't remember. It was the flames of the neighboring furor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just flew into the sword. So blacksmiths aren't even a common thing necessarily the series uses to upgrade your master sword. And the master sword sometimes doesn't get upgraded. Sometimes it's just the master sword and it just is what it is and all you're doing is just collecting pieces of the triforce for yourself. So it's really interesting. In real life, blacksmiths, if you guys ever have watched the Reforged series on YouTube, they've done things like they've made the master sword blade and they've made the Hylian Shield and all that stuff and a whole bunch of awesome video game weapons. And you see there's a lot that goes into blacksmithing. And when you have a product that's already made, there's still a lot they can do with it because they can deconstruct it and remake certain parts of it. Obviously the most common thing that people would take a sword to a blacksmith for, usually a quick cleanup where they resharpen the edges. Sometimes they reinforce it with new alloy but that's really expensive. So people don't do that too often but that was popular back with nobles back in the Midoo villages. They'd reforged their blades a lot and reinforced them. But it's one of those things that, it's just gameplay related, kind of as Commonwealth Rome said. It's got really nothing to do with logic. We're dealing with a video game. So to think that like a normal blacksmith in the real world will be able to take like magical items and infuse them in. That's magical items don't exist in the real world as far as we're aware. So I mean, you might believe in them, that's fine. But I haven't seen any actual evidence that they exist in the world we live in. So basically it's a video game and video games do what video games do. Sometimes there's no logical explanation for it. So thanks for your question Christopher Dress. Sorry if you, I don't know, if there's a different angle you want us to take on the next time, feel free to ask. You know, we're always willing to re-answer questions if there's more clarification. Let me see here. This next question also comes from our Facebook page. This is from Howard Harler. He asks, how old is Lincoln Ocarina of Time when he's an adult? And who is older, Link or Zelda? Well, I could take and answer that question because there are two different answers. According to me a motor he's 10 years old according to the official player's guide published by the Nintendo Power, he's nine. So if you take seven years, he would be either 16 or 17 as adult, Link. Yeah, and for Zelda, we don't know exactly, but it's presumed that they're around the same age, if not exactly the same. It's one of those that there's no official references or hints to how old she is, but they're both kids and they're both adults at the same time. And their heights are pretty close together, which height isn't necessarily even an indicator of age. So I would say that there is no answer on who's older. I'm sure definitively there's someone who's older because their birthdays probably aren't the same day. They probably weren't born at the same time. But yeah, I really can't even speculate on it so the game kind of acts like they're around the same age. In my opinion, anyways. Thanks, thanks for your question, Howard. You know, but I always like some of these shorter and sweeter questions at times that have more definitive answers outside of the fact that we have no idea who's older. And this one comes with our Facebook page. This is from Austin Connorsik. Again, as always, I apologize if I totally butcher your names. What would be the best direction for Zelda to head after Zelda U finally comes out? Furthermore, in your opinions, should more experimental Zelda games like Triforce Heroes and Hyrule Warriors be made? All right, so let's break this down. Let's first let's tackle the first question. The big one was Zelda U. Commonwealth realm, what do you think the best direction for this series is the head after? Well, it depends what Zelda U will be. According to what we have seen so far, it will most likely be a fully open Zelda adventure, something we have never seen to this point. Wherever you want to go, when you want to go, you'll be able to go. So that is a completely new approach for the series, not seen since the original Legend of Zelda. But what I think Zelda needs to do after Zelda U is just seeing what is the best for a franchise and we'll see what timeline, if it's fitting for the future of Zelda or not, since we don't want Zelda to be constrained by anything. We want it to evolve, we want it to improve. And I think that you could try out some new components, such as an online experience, a shared experience in Zelda, but only in a limited manner, just like you had in a Link Between Worlds with the Shadow Link battles. But in terms of Zelda, I think we should be looking at bigger, better open worlds with probably deeper stories. Yeah, the big thing is what is Zelda U going to be? The only thing we know based on Nintendo's own words is that it's open world. A.G. Aonomo actually had something interesting to say. I believe it was a week or two ago. He was doing some Twilight Princess HD interviews. I think it was the Shaq News. I apologize if it wasn't the Shaq News interview. I don't know, they did one and one other side did one. And in there, he mentioned something about how, up to this point, Ocarina of Time has sort of been the template for how they built Zelda games. Everything just kinda, it started with Ocarina of Time and then what could they do? In addition to whatever formula Ocarina of Time set up. And A.G. Aonomo mentioned specifically that he thinks Zelda U is going to be like Ocarina of Time in that sense, that it's going to be the new template moving forward. And obviously he is the current lead man of the Zelda series, so he can say something like that. Because he does control the future of the Zelda series right now until he gets replaced someday, which we have no idea if we're even close to that time yet. We might be, we might not be. So, you know, what I can say for the best direction is really, really based so much on not just what Zelda U does, but how successfully Zelda U does it. If Zelda U comes out and it's a genre defining game like Ocarina of Time was, or the Legend of Zelda on the NES. If it comes out and it just redefines what a Zelda game is. It takes everything that it's been and it does so much different. It sets new boundaries and new, you know, new peaks to reach for in development. And that's popular enough that people actually buy the game. Because remember, people have to show up and buy Zelda U. And the Wii U install base, you know, it probably about 13 or 14 million by the time Zelda U comes out. And you know, maybe it's coming to the NX that might increase its sales. I don't know, but all we know is that Zelda U has to sell well. It's one of their highest budgeted games that the teams that were made. If not the highest, Skyward Sword was the previous high. And it's one of those things where Ocarina of Time, I think became the template because of how popular it was. And I hate saying that popularity kind of controls the future of a series, but it really does. You know, a link to the past came out and was a decently popular experience. So it set the new standard for what Zelda was gonna be moving forward that Ocarina of Time came on, built on top of it and created the 3D game template of what a link to the past was trying to do. So really a link to the past is the template we're still building off of today. But you know, for 3D games, you know, we got the things like the lock on targeting, you know, the easy to see hook shot, you know, spots on walls and all that stuff. That all started with Ocarina of Time. And I think that it really just comes down to how successful Zelda U is. Cause if Zelda U is a, let's say Zelda U moves like four million units, okay, overall. And I'd have to say that's a pretty big success if it's a Wii U only game. Because the best selling games period on the Wii U sell four million. So if it can get to that plateau, then you're talking about the best direction for the series is to build off of what Zelda U establishes. It's all the U tanks and it does under two million in sales overall. The best direction is probably not to continue what Zelda U did. It's to go back and beat the dead horse, go after and create another Twilight Princess slash Ocarina of Time type of game. You know, change the visual style back to, you know, the more realistic, as they say, style. And it's hard because the best direction to me at least is about combining what the game actually is with what your personal desires for the game to be are. I really, really like linear Zelda games, which is why Skyward Sword is one of my favorite games. And I understand that that's not a popular notion among some fans. They would rather have an open world game. And to be fair, we haven't really had an open world Zelda game in my opinion, like truly open world since the Legend of Zelda NES. So it's hard for me to be like, man, I really prefer open worlds other games. We've only had one. You know, so I would love to say that's what I want the future of the series to be, but I need to see that they can even do open worlds other games well. The only major time we've seen Zelda U's world, no, granted, this is a year and a half ago now, was at the Game Awards, back, the very first showing of it back in 2014, when we got to see, you know, Anumo running through the fields on, you know, what Miyamoto called Epona. And there was like nothing going on. There was very few enemies, very few things looking like you could discover. There was a couple enemies at one point. It was, it wasn't, it wasn't really what I think people expected from the game. The idea of big empty open fields, that was true in Ocarina of Time. It was true in Twilight Princess. If that's true again in an open world Zelda, then it almost defeats the purpose of the open world. You're just traversing empty space to get to the next objective. And that's not fun in my opinion. So I have to see what Zelda U is before I can really tell you what the best direction is going to be, because the best direction is going to be based on how successful or not successful Zelda U is at what it does. And if people, even if it is really successful, like say the people that play it, think it's like the greatest Zelda game ever, are people going to buy it? Are they going to be interested in the game enough to even give it that chance? I'd like to say that yes they will. But as we've seen with like Triforce Heroes, even Hyrule Warriors Legends to an extent, even a Link Between Worlds, Link Between Worlds had a lot of positive reception, but it didn't really sell a whole lot. And that was on a more popular platform. So it'll be interesting to see what Zelda U can do for the future of the series. Because certainly, Aegean Noma believes it will be the new trendsetter. So yeah, that's kind of where I stand. I'm kind of an, I don't know until we see a heck of a lot more about this game. Because I plan, we really don't know much right now. We're grasping at straws. Yeah, I will mostly agree with you in terms of this evolution, which Zelda is going through, the experience of Zelda Wii U will be crucial in this context. And I think Zelda really needs to step up their overworlds especially since they have been barren, empty and been really bound compared to the unbound experience, which we probably will be getting with Zelda Wii U. And I hope this is a way to catch up to the other Western RPGs since Anuma was talking about a transition from Japanese food to Western-style food. And this might be an example of it, going from a more bound, story-driven experience to an open and freedom-based experience for us players. So it'll be interesting how Zelda could work this way in the 21st century. And I think that the next Zelda should probably build on this, but of course add some more elements because you will be able to improve on each upcoming installment. So I think that Zelda Wii U should be the trendsetter, just as Anuma is mentioning it. But the successors to Zelda Wii U should build on the legacy of the trendsetter, but at the same time, not be afraid to be individual installments. So we avoid another Twyra Princess situation where a game is a little bit too similar to the game is looking up to. It's, as I said, I agree a lot with what you're saying. To me, it still just really matters how well Zelda U does it. Cause if Zelda U, it feels like it has this grand planned idea for what they want Zelda to be now. And if they don't execute it, then it's gonna be irrelevant in my book. It could just be another game they throw out as we tried, it didn't work out, going back to what we know. And I hope that's not the case cause I think Zelda could definitely use a fresh perspective on what it does. So I hope everything you say is spot on, that they nail this and they build off it moving forward. And not build off it necessarily by making the same experience again. Although I will say I am totally fine if they do like a quick turnaround direct sequel to it. I'm cool with that. But that's just me hoping I don't have to wait five years for the next game.