 Hi and welcome to the Zelda Informer podcast for what is it? March? Good times, good times. And I am Nathaniel Rumpeljantz, the local co-owner and webmaster of Zelda Informer. And we have two staff members with us today. We have Casey Hodges, one of our Bombers Riders. What's up everybody? What is up? And then we have, he goes as the predator or child predator on the site. But his real name is like Damir. I'm not even trying to the last name. How's it going? Hey, greetings from the sunny Bosnia. It's 2 a.m. here and I'm hardly keeping my eyes open. So fun times. Fun times indeed. Yes, he is from Bosnia. Good times. And that's why you guys might notice a little accent. So it's good to get a little variety in our shows. They're both Zelda Informer staff. So we're going to get right into it then and talk about Zelda music. It's a really broad topic, so we're going to kind of narrow it down to just a couple things. Namely, we'll be talking about basically the old music, the new music, the remixes, the should there be remixes, should there be new stuff. I'm sure orchestrated stuff's going to be talked about a little bit. And that's kind of what we're going to stick to for our first topic. So let's just start right out with our local, what appears to be our local musical expert on the site with his music reviews and tutorials. Damir, what do you think? Well, some of the ongoing debate that I've been seeing on the internet about Zelda music is whether Nintendo should keep doing the new tracks for the Zelda games or whether they should get back some of the old songs. I mean, we did see some of the most famous ones in basically every Zelda game after Creen of Time. But actually, it's a more general topic, you know, classical things versus innovation versus new things. It's hard to talk about it. It's hard to draw a balanced line. And Nintendo did actually do a good job with it. You have the title team of the Wind Waker, you have the Dragon Rouge Thailand team, you have the title team of Twilight Princess. But still, you have the classical tunes which you heard from Link to the Past, the Creen of Time. To be frankly, honest, one tune I'm quite missing is the Dark World Death Mountain team from Link to the Past. They really should bring that one back. That's kind of cool. I know that when it comes to the whole debate on the older music coming back or the remixes or should it be all new, or finding a nice balance, I've always been a person that thinks outside of the official theme, everybody knows the Zelda theme song, outside of having that appear, I personally don't want any of the music in the game to be reminiscent of any of the previous music. Because one thing I find that doing that does is you hear that music and you instantly start thinking about a different game than the one you're playing. And if they really want to make it a unique experience, like make it feel like it's own game, it's own Zelda game that doesn't rely on previous titles, then getting away from music that reminds you of the previous titles would be to me at least a nice start. Even things like, even things so much as the selection screen, where they tend to use remixes of the same song since what, Ocarina of Time, that keeps making you think of Ocarina of Time. And one thing they need to avoid is people comparing the game to Ocarina of Time. And to avoid that, stop making us think of Ocarina of Time before we even start playing the game. Case, Min, what do you think? I'd probably lean more towards a balance between the two. It's kind of nice to hear old classics redone with modern music, modern technology like orchestrated and various things like that. It helps us reminisce and it's just fun to hear the old stuff. But I also really like to encourage hearing new things because sometimes you can really get attached to newer songs that you relate to that game, whereas, like you said, rehashes of old songs remind you of other games. But I think the most important thing is, does the song belong to the game? Like, I feel that The Wind Waker had a spectacular soundtrack where all of it kind of fit together and really matched the style of the game. And if an old song really matches the style they are going for in a new title, then I see no reason why it shouldn't be included. But if it doesn't and they're just putting it in there to remind everyone, hey, this is the Zelda theme, then no, I don't really think it's as necessary. But I think a balance as long as it belongs in the game is more than fine. Well, actually, I tend to disagree with such a view. It's not a question of whether or not it belongs to the game, but whether or not it belongs to the location. Generally, people tend to overlook music in games and its effect that it can have on the atmosphere of a game. It's actually, in my opinion, the most crucial part of every game atmosphere. So if you have, for example, Zelda 22 in 15 years, what do I know? And you have some location, you visit a Dragon Roost Island from Wind Waker, just make his stuff up, and you get there and you hear the old Dragon Roost Island theme. You're gonna know that you've been here at this location in a game that you played 10 years ago and it marks that spot. So it's more relevant to location than to game. I kind of get what you're getting at. I think music does have a big thing to do with the atmosphere of a game. I know when one of the trailers news Don't Want You Know More, which was a custom song orchestrated piece for that trailer, and it really set a kind of sad tone for Twilight Princess before we got to play it. And I thought it kind of fit well overall once I played the game of what the game was. The problem is music like that wasn't really in the game itself. Not that much. That is to me, I don't know. Yeah, that's actually my favorite song in the whole Zelda franchise. I know it's funny, but it's safe to say that Twilight Princess didn't live up to the expectations of that song when I've heard it. Yeah, and the problem was it was orchestrated, which made everybody think we're gonna get orchestrated music. So to me, it was like if you weren't going to do orchestrated music, don't put orchestrated music in your trailers. Prime example, the Spirit Tracks music. You put Spirit Tracks music in it and that exact same music was in the game. Okay, that's great. So don't make that mistake again. And there's really no excuse this time around. Now that they put orchestrated music in Mario Galaxy, they don't have an excuse to not do it in the next game. So it's just keeping the music atmospheric is fine. I guess I'm not opposed to old songs coming back. Like you used that Dragon Roost Island example. There's another Dragon Roost Island. Why not use a remix of the old Dragon Roost Island theme in it? I guess that makes sense. I guess maybe to me, I don't want to see the old stuff come back. Like the old, you know, like if there's a car, like a Carcarico Village, okay, cool. It'll be nice to have that music come back in a remix form. But I guess I don't want it to come back, which is a whole another point entirely. But I mean, for a game to feel new, sometimes you need new locations. It could still be Hyrule, I guess, like Spirit Tracks wasn't, you know, any of the Hyruels that we've been to before, or at least that we could think of, unless you're in the theorizing realm trying to connect things around. It was a new Hyrule, which meant there wasn't things like Carcarico Village and stuff. So I guess it's a totally different topic. But I just don't want those returning places coming back unless it's absolutely necessary that it comes back, or if it's done in a nice way. But the music aspect, I don't know, I don't think it's necessarily overlooked. I think Nintendo overlooks it, you know, they'll just kind of, especially when it came to, I mean Twilight Princess was probably the most recent release we can really go off of in terms of console things. And they really, I think, dropped the ball with the music. There was only a few times that, to me, it felt right, such as like Midna's Desperate Hour. I thought that was a well-placed and well-themed song. But for the most part, a lot of the custom music that had in the game didn't seem to fit too well. For the most part, a lot of the custom music that had in the game didn't seem to fit too well with me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the title theme of Twilight Princess Orchestra? The title, the trailer song of Don't Want You No More was played in the introduction of Twilight Princess. So it was the orchestrated version. So it was technically in the game, but it wasn't in the game. It wasn't used like within the game. It was in the game, but it wasn't actually in the game. We kind of went out of the boundaries we set for this topic. It is a bit broad. One thing I'd just like to say, you mentioned the spirit tracks. It actually has one specific song which stands out in the whole game. And that's the final boss, the melody theme. It's a great example how Nintendo can make a new Zelda song and make it feel like a Zelda song. Yeah, that melodious song, the entire thing, like the music during the fight when you combine with all the spirits. I'm sorry, spoiler and play music with them. The whole game's room. It actually fit really well. So we're going to try to move on then from that topic, because I think we're starting to run in circles. We'll talk then about the difficulty in Zelda. And specifically about the spirit tracks difficulty and predictions of what we think about the difficulty for Zelda Wii. We'll start with Caseman. Well, I think spirit tracks kind of up the difficulty a little bit just because people had Phantom Hourglass, which is a very similar game, to teach them a lot of the basic mechanics so they could just move ahead and go a little more advanced with players. So that's why you experienced a little bit more of a difficulty. But in regards to Zelda Wii, I think we're going to be seeing a lot more new gameplay just in regards to the Wii Motion Plus. And so that'll be setting a lot of players in a new world that they aren't used to. So I'm sort of thinking that the next Zelda Wii will probably be a little bit easier just so that the new players to the new gameplay style won't be overwhelmed with too many enemies or difficulty with health or anything like that. Well, if Nintendo really used Phantom Hourglass as an easy game and then made spirit tracks the hard game with the same mechanics, it's really a stupid excuse to do so. Spirit tracks was harder than many other previous Zelda games. I mean, I've rushed the game three days to get the world through then and it did feel a lot harder. But the thing is the Zelda Wii, again, if they make it easier just for the sake of the controls, just because of the new controls, it's not really going to be a smart move because puzzles aren't really relevant to to the gameplay. And if I get a hookshot, if I walk into a temple and I see a circular mark on the wall with a red dot in the middle, I already know what kind of boss I'm gonna have and what kind of item I'm gonna find the temple. And it makes it a cakewalk. Basically, it's not difficult at all as soon as you know what you have to do. I kind of agree with both of you. I think that the overall control scheme is going to make Nintendo want to make the game easier in terms of combat, only because it's new. And if it's hard, at least if it's hard in the first couple hours of the game, it could turn people off. One thing I've always wanted Nintendo to do is progressively make the game harder. And they don't seem to do that as easy as it is at the beginning as as easy as it is at the end. Like the final fight with Ganondorf, especially the final two phases on horseback and sword fight, were easier to me than the monkey spanking baboon in the beginning of the game. So it's like the difficulty just didn't really increase as the game went on. It just stayed constant. And I don't like that. Like one thing I want to see change is you get an item in a dungeon, but you don't necessarily kill the boss of that item because as soon as it's the way it's kind of always been. So say you get the boomerang and you get to the boss and you see you know something you see strings okay I've never had to cut strings with a boomerang before or you see his eye oh I need to lock onto his eye and hit it with the boomerang and then he falls down and I strike it with my sword like 90% of the boss fights in Zelda. You know it'd be nice if they kind of threw you for a loop they're like well here's your dungeon item but you don't even use it to fight the boss or gave you options where you didn't have to use it like multiple ways to kill things I think is something I would like to see and I think that would add its own challenge to the game like yeah there's always going to be the easy way like you know you can throw a bomb at something and kill it with a bomb but if you try to kill it any other way it's actually hard to do. You know they kind of did that in part of Majora's Mask I think on some of the some of the optional fights really hard to kill some of those staphos but then if you use a bomb it's a cakewalk or they could go the other way they could make a boss that requires several items to kill. The last time I saw that one I think was Ganon in Link to the Past the first time I was disappointed with the Legend of Zelda difficulty was when I was a kid and I finished Queen of Time and the final Ganon fight and I was like that's it you know he just runs around swings his sword acts badass and then he gets a sword through his skull well in Link to the Past you had the first phase with him crashing down those borders then you had the phase when he was invisible then you had to use Silver Arrows then you had to avoid fiery bats and shit like that it was a complex fight that's what it lacks. Actually I know what you're talking about but then they kind of did that in the Wind Waker in the final fight I was actually recently just watching the Chugga Conroy the Wind Waker walk through the final fight because I haven't done the final fight in a while so I was just trying to remember why I thought it was so awesome and like there's three different ways you can do like some of the phases outside of the last phase like and part of it involves where you can actually use your bait and throw it in the water and then shoot the tail with light arrows and stuff it was like something that I never even thought about using as a strategy when killing him I could actually use it you know and it's an item that you'd never use to kill anything with before now you're killing the final boss in the game by putting bait in the water yeah but that's still not Ganondorf you're fighting the puppet Ganondorf but yeah yeah no no but it's it's part of it's part of the last phase of the fight like last phase of the game I mean just because it's not Ganondorf does it make it any less unique like Ganondorf is totally overused well one part of the reason why he seems overused is because he's been made into a complete pussy I mean if they made him a fire spitting dragon Titan transformer I'm sure he wouldn't be overused well then he wouldn't be Ganondorf anymore and that's the that's the whole counter argument is if he's gonna have any form it has to be a pig or if he's gonna possess anybody's body it has to be Zelda like here's a suggestion make a game where Ganondorf takes Majoras mask and puts it puts it on and he gets a green face and yellow suit and dude Ganondorf can come by with Majoras mask I think would be impossible to kill in my mind unless Lake has the Fierce Deity Mask yeah let's hit the Fierce Deity Mask then you just hit one button and he dies but I think you brought up an interesting point about throwing the bait in the water to kill puppet Ganon because I think a lot of us once we play through a game and we know oh we have to use this item to kill this boss or use this strategy to kill this boss every time we play through the game we're going to use that same strategy because we know what worked and we would be too ignorant to discover or know that there's two three other ways of killing this boss mm-hmm well it's kind of like I know there was two different ways to kill like Goma in Ocarina of Time and you know because you could stun them in like different ways and I didn't really know that because I always use the same strategy so I mean I think part of it is because we don't experiment or we're not encouraged to experiment I guess and I guess that I mean I mean that is partially the fault of the Nintendo making things too easy because they do kind of tell you how to kill a boss before you even fight them and that that upsets me things like to basically if you think back that is partially the fault of the Nintendo making things too easy because they do kind of tell you how to kill a boss before you even fight them and that that upsets Me things like to basically if you think back I in one of our previous podcasts we had Mike Mike D. Amini with us and he said something like in the past decade Shadow of Colossus was the best Zelda game and It wasn't a Zelda game because it was everything that Zelda was but better and specifically the boss fights the boss fights didn't tell you how to beat the boss just by looking at the boss and All the boss fights in Zelda tell you how to beat the boss before you even fight him Like oh you like the like the big fire guy in Twilight Princess Okay, he looked badass in the trailer, but then you fight him and oh look he has chain on the ground Grab his chain put on the iron boots pull he falls down whack him in the eye. I Mean, that's that's what all the fights seem like so I honestly think Twilight Princess is probably still gonna be easy because I think it's still going to be Zelda Because that's what Zelda has been now forever. It's never really been a hard game I mean Majora's Mask had some difficulty to it But most of that difficulty was involved in the side stuff the actual main quest to me Wasn't that hard and especially if you decided like my first ever time I killed Majora's Mask was a hundred percent playthrough and so I had the Fierce Deity Mask And I'm like really why do they have an item in the game that makes this just spam one button and you win So he's not even fun doing it that way and then I don't know like the adventure of Link is hard But that's because of controller limitations you know Having a game actually be semi-difficult and and extremely fun is not something that Zelda has necessarily done in a while I mean I get that Spirit Tracks was more difficult than Phantom Hourglass Probably more difficult than Twilight Princess and like the Minish Cap and stuff Which is a lot of the recent releases, but at the same time it really wasn't that hard There was only a couple puzzles maybe late in the game like one of the final puzzles with Zelda and the switches And the final part of the Spirit Tower. Oh, I meant that was one tricky SOB And I am extremely pissed that I looked at our walkthrough to figure it out Thanks, thanks by the way to mirror for that walkthrough No problem. The thing is a Zelda it's true. Zelda never was really difficult, but the thing is It's Twilight Princess in specific I have a real qualm with that game about its difficulty the reason why it's It's insultingly easy because you you have the boomerang boss. You have the bomb boss You have the arrow boss, you know, it's a stereotype after stereotype. There's nothing unique Nothing new to it. I mean you you can argue that the spinner was it was really the only unique part of the game and stalwart Was the best boss in the game and we actually did vote him recently for the best boss for the franchise because he was awesome and He was the actually only multi-tiered fight in the game. You had you had to fight him with his body. You had to Then crush his skull even the final Ganondorf fight was actually four fights one after another and each of those were Repeating the same thing over and over again, you know, they have several phases What this game needs is a final fight which Requires you to use all the items in your inventory and Basically apply everything you did before in the game and they need new ways to kill bosses it. I mean it's It's kind it's stupid for us to talk about it because most of us have played Most if not all Zelda games if a new guy comes in and takes up Twilight Princess He will find it hard. There's no doubt about it, but it's still It needs more originality. Nintendo has stick To the old formula, but they have stopped evolving it had legend of Zelda Which then evolved into link to the past which then evolved into Karina of time and that's it It stops. There's absolutely nothing new and everyone who tries to tell me that the stylist controls and the DS Made for new Zelda games I'm gonna just happen step him in the face until it stops being funny Because the stylist is the worst thing that happened to gaming I don't think it was the worst thing that happened to gaming I mean the problem with the stylus and The problem with the stylus is that there's a d-pad and they don't even give you the option to use the d-pad to move Like they require you to use the stylus and I mean you can use some of your items with like the L and R You know bumper buttons. So like why you requiring the stylus, which we do use a majority of the items with For our movement. I I kind of get I don't think it's the worst thing that happened I think they did a pretty decent job. I just don't think they should have required that to be the only method But I don't think it adds the question is did it add anything to the game? And I don't think styles controls actually added anything that you couldn't do with button presses just as easily some of you some people might have seen my video of the Kragma boss fight in spare tracks and Most of you who watched it will have noticed that I managed to jump into the lava Next to the platform for like four times in a row It's I can't even begin to describe how How how much how much rage I had at that moment because it was all a matter of touching the screen at the Wrong spot and it was two millimeter difference. It's it's horrible. I mean it's It's the styles is just not for gaming. I I don't know how to it does make the game hard But not the right way of hard because it made a simple task like jumping from Well, that's a jumpings of whole different things all the anyways I think they I think the biggest innovation they could add is all the we is giving us a jump button. I Did I mean just a mat like I've been playing and I say that because I've been playing things like Assassin's Creed 2 a lot lately and It really made me realize that I miss not being able to jump in Zelda Having all these automatic jumps Limits my exploration because you know, I'm like here. There's only gonna jump if I can make the jump well, I want to try to make the jump anyways and If I don't make it then I don't make it But like I guess to me it gives more freedom of movement and more freedom of exploration But I kind of get out the topic with like the difficulty Like I said, I just wanted to Progressively get harder. I think it could start off easy. I just wanted to Like, you know it with new controls, especially with these new one-to-one controls that they're claiming that the sword fighting At least is going to have you know, I want it to Be easy to start especially for me cuz I'm not it's gonna be completely new control scheme to me So I don't want it to be hard right away, but I think it could benefit from being progressively harder Like I know people have been asking for a lot of change and they said they're already going to change up Just the order of things like the because it's usually dungeon feel dungeon and they're not gonna do that in this game I don't know if that's enough of a change because by not doing that What does that mean that we do three dungeons in a row and then a feel that could still be the exact same experience Well one more thing I'd like to add and Casey. I'm sorry. I know you can't you can't speak because of me But just this one more thing What I want to them to add to Zelda V is non-linearity Zelda games in the past What ten years have been extremely linear? But then when you look back and you see legend of Zelda the first one You you were never told which dungeon was the first one you could go into a dungeon Get to some point and then you realize you miss a key or an item You're going to another dungeon get the key get the item then go back and complete that dungeon They did try something like that and it was cool And it was a horror show called the temple of the ocean king and that's not the way to do it so they should look back at legend of Zelda and Make zelda V based on that or the next Zelda because all that is probably done already I could note with that idea 3d dot game heroes because I was able to watch a Live demonstration of the game. I actually put like a mini preview on the site because the game is basically Classic Zelda with elements that you wish Zelda had or used to had have and one of them is the Non-linearity of the game You go into a done you can go to any dungeon you want at any time But you can only go so far in a dungeon and you realize oh geez I need the red key Okay, well in Zelda if you need, you know a certain key You find it in the dungeon in another room in this game You might not even find it in a dungeon it might be in a hidden chest behind a bush on the opposite side of the world And you don't know that because it doesn't tell you you just have to figure it out on your own And that's the thing that Nintendo kind of does with their games It's not like I would have been fine with the difficulty in Twilight Princess if they just didn't tell you how to do everything Because the actual doing of this stuff. I guess I'm okay if it's easier I think they just need to make us think about it make us figure it out on our own I think they just need to make us think about it make us figure it out on our own Even sometimes when they pan the rooms when you enter a new room like by panning the room They're showing you how to beat the room like don't show me how to beat it Let let me figure it out like that. I think that's what they've done with Zelda And why it's becoming less appealing to us more veteran people in regards to linearity I mean, I've never really had a problem with an order that you have to go in just because it usually Keeps a little bit more of a narrative, but the way I can see them pulling it off is there are certain times when you need to Like in Twilight Princess you have to get the four different Twilight mirror shards and collect them so you can get into the Twilight realm But like I can see how like at that point like maybe giving you the option of going to any of the four Temples necessary not really a specific order or like an orc ring of time letting you pick which sage you want to save And you can do that in any order. I can see how that could maybe work Yeah One thing I would like to say and I think I have said this in a previous podcast once or twice I just never really applied it to the difficulty. I think one thing that the difficulty of the game could or should use is Something completely unexpected such as an open-world boss that you just encounter and have no idea that it was about that So basically change different stuff. They need to yeah, yeah, it's different like I don't know I mean like like when I mentioned earlier what Mike D amini said that the shadow of the classes bosses were great That's what I want all the bosses to be I think that's what a lot of people want I mean, it's an epic experience isn't like I guess like let me tie this more to a monster hunter actually because I just got the monster hunter demo two days ago and The first off monster hunter demo by the way is phenomenal. If you guys haven't given it a try yet This is one of the few non-Nintendo Wii games and looking forward to but Nintendo Zelda team has been looking at that game for inspiration for different aspects. I guess so EG is said and Their fights like at least the two fights that I'm able to do are extremely unique I have so many different ways to kill with it now. They're very difficult It's definitely not a dirt the difficulty level is probably not the direction Nintendo wants to go because You really need to Master your class. It's more. I mean it's definitely more of a core experience Where you need to master all the different all your tools available and I think that's kind of like what you say a boss That you know makes you like a final flight that makes you use all of your items to beat it Nintendo will probably fire back at you if you mentioned that to him say well, we did that look at zant and We'll just laugh at them Because that's not what we mean but to Nintendo. That's what they'll throw it You could Nintendo is the master of saying well, we did give you that way. That's not what we meant You're interpreting what we're saying and not Not interpreting it correctly like when we said we wanted, you know Everybody says Twilight Princess is the game all the fans wanted. We said yeah, it was but it wasn't They basically gave us all the old fights again and basically just to Just to round up my thoughts on this subject and to be done with it The best thing that can happen to Zelda right now is that it gets an overhaul like Metroid Odra M Make a completely different genre game of it make it a side-scrolling action I mean or at least give us those bad-ass combos combo finishers Something something completely radical not tingles rub rupee land or whatever it was called that that's not what we mean Hey, man, don't knock tingle Well, I mean if we're just going back to where the topic started of like what the next Zelda we difficult he's gonna be like I think it's going to be easier because of the new style that they're going to have I Don't exactly want that to happen But you know if they change it up enough to where we're not familiar with it And that'll probably create a certain level of difficulty for us So hopefully that's something we can look forward to so you guys mentioned the style and stuff I know if you guys remember back before Twilight Princess came out Shigeru Miyamoto said that Twilight Princess would be the last Zelda of its type and Nobody knew what that meant And I think that's what Zelda we is going to show us that everything that we like Not everything that we know and love but everything we know about how to play Zelda is about to completely change and I think that change is going to make the game seem fresh and That freshness is going to add a layer of difficulty that we're not used to not like the stylus Okay, the stylus was a gimmick if you ask me Just like the Wii Wii mode controls for Twilight Princess. It's just a gimmick. It's replacing a button press I think what they're gonna do with the Wii mode and the controls is do stuff that you can't do with a button press Which is what's gonna make it feel so new. I just hope it's not gonna be a bigger gimmick and the rest of it will stay the same See, I don't think they can afford to make it a bigger gimmick the game's been in development for at least four years. There's There's no real excuse I mean some of you might remember the last time Nintendo tried to do a radical move It's called Majoras Mask and it's regarded as the best Zelda game next to cream of time Some people regard even higher to see they've always been afraid with Zelda to experiment I Don't I don't necessarily blame them, but yeah, they've always been afraid to experiment anyways That I think that's gonna wrap up the podcast that topic ran a little bit long, but I think we had some good discussion I'd like to thank Casey Hodges and Demir for their time. Thanks guys. Thanks for happening. Yeah, no problem Yeah, all right, and we'll see you guys next month later