That's just so wrong.

"This is a brief tribute to what is one of the best adventure/exploration games ever."

I beg your pardon? TP wasn't ever about exploring. The game had you on the same track all the way through. More so than in any other Zelda, the player had no influence on the game.

"Twilight Princess plays like a movie -- at a very deliberate pace we're introduced to the characters, the gameplay mechanics, and plot."

You got that one right. TP was like a movie. In a movie, you don't decide what happens; the script holds all the events. That's a very good point. Furthermore, TP was too big and too long without any good reasoning. That 'deliberate' pace was just too... slow.

"By the time our hero leaves home for the first dungeon, we're well-immersed."

By what? The pathetic attempt at making a realistic forest? I was disappointed. Faron Woods felt like a jail of small cliffs with trees on them.

RE4 was so much better than TP. Sure, it was linear too, but RE4 isn't about exploring, it's about blasting zombie-like monsters. Zelda should be about exploring, but TP pretty much failed at delivering anything interesting in that department. It felt more like a bad 3 hours OoT action movie.

Yeah... Sorry Nate, but as much as I love Zelda, TP doesn't hold a candle (or lantern...) to Resi4.

Surely MM or tWW should represent Zelda more as Game of the Decade?

Well, who said Zelda has to be about exploring and non linearism? We haven't had a Zelda like that since 1986. If you look at any Zelda game that isn't the original - the actual quest is pretty linear. You have to do this before this. You can't go hear without doing this first, etc. OOT was just as linear at TP, with less cutscenes. MM was very, very linear. You didn't have a single choice in terms of completeing the quest.\

The difference in MM was mostly the sidequests, but if you are just talking about the main quest to beat the game? It's even more linear, with less exploring, then TP. TWW did have a more "true" sense of exploring like back in the original LOZ days, but still, when it came to the main quest, it was completely a set path. You had to do this before this to go do this then this.

The type of game people seem to be asking Zelda to be is something Zelda has truly never been. It's always been linear, you've rarely had "choices" on how to complete the quest. All your chocies were sidequest related, not quest related, and their has always been very little true exploration outside of LOZ and TWW.

Would I love Zelda to be more like Dragon Age Origins? Sure. Yes, there is a main quest, yes there are sidquests. But your decisions in the game effect how the game ends, and you don't have to do anything, any specific questline in any order. You want to go to the dwarfe's right away, settle the King dispute, and get their support to flight the blight before getting a true healer in your party? Be my guest. There isn't necessarily an open world, but you can go anywhere in that world after the first hour or so of story and introduction to playing.

Unfortunately, that isn't Zelda, and hasn't really ever been Zelda more then a couple times. TP . Everytime I hear people starting talking about a truly open world and non-linearism, I get a chuckle, because that isn't what Zelda is.

A valid opinion, but I disagree. Yes, 3D-Zelda has always been linear. That's why I wrote "more so than in any other Zelda", but saying that TP is the best Zelda because the others are linear too - is not a very good argument.

In all other games I can imagine, the world was much more welcoming than in TP. I'm not saying they aren't linear. I never said that. But shouldn't TP make up for something like that? If that's what the fans want then what's the point in making the same thing over and over again?

It's also more a matter of making an entertaining world. I felt TP like a big prison. I don't know if I'm the only one who's getting tired of having to cross barren wastelands or seas of emptiness. The point is that the other games gave you the option of breaking out from the main quest. Yes, of course every Zelda has a main quest. But if you get stuck, or just want to do something else, it's very important for me that there are some interesting side quests or minigames. While TP had these, at many points you couldn't take a break from the main quest. Take this for an example: During the 'gather the tears of light' thing in Faron Woods, you couldn't dwelve any deeper into the land, because you had to gather those damn tears first. Midna stopped you. What is that about? If I wanna go to Hyrule Field, what's stopping me? Nothing should be stopping me.

In OoT, you could explore the world as you liked. Well, I have to go see Zelda now. Alright. But that didn't stop me from going around in the Market, checking out the stores, maybe visiting the Temple of Time or going all the way to Kakariko or Gerudo Valley. There are very, very little times in TP where you are given that kind of freedom. First off, there's the stupid 3-day-cycle in Ordon, then you go into the closed and totally linear Faron Woods, and then you get into Hyrule Field, hoping that you from there on and out can move freely around, and then BAM! Big weird shadow wall. More 'tears of light gathering'. Those segments were just horrifying and boring.

Wow, I'm getting over myself here. I guess I really hate the game, but that's beside the point. Hyrule Field was filled with narrow paths that deliberately kept the player from entering the other parts of the world, because the storyline wasn't ready for it yet. The story is what killed TP. Zelda shouldn't be about cutscenes. It should be about freedom, letting the player create their own adventure.

I'm not saying that all the other games don't have a main quest, but they at least tried to create interesting worlds. In TP, I feel like the developers wanted to make it bigger, bigger, bigger, because they thought it would be realistic and amaze the player. Well, it didn't amaze me. What's the point in having a world three times the size of OoT, when the content is halved?

Well, no matter what, I can't see TP as a better game than MM and TWW. The graphics aren't even that amazing. TP took everything the old games had, and actually made it worse. The game should only have had 7 dungeons, Palace of Twilight and Hyrule Castle was a joke.

Again, too big, too long, too much story, not enough freedom. Just to make sure, I'm not against storylines, but I don't want too many cutscenes. MM had a far more interesting story with less of those, but I think everyone in here knows about that. :P

omg tp is way better i think and its just zelda what makes it amazing some people said that it wasnt very good because it was to much like oot but i think that that just makes it good what do u think?

Oni Nick, I think you've hit the nail on the head.

That's pretty much my problem with TP (as well as the fact it's essentially OoT2, which is not a good thing no matter which way anyone slices it). On it's own, it IS a good game. As a Zelda game it's pretty average.

Faron Woods being a "prison" was exactly what I thought. In the trailers and early screenshots, we were shown vast open forests that were seemingly limitless. In the end, all we got was an area of cliffs with trees, and a big gate stopping us from going anywhere else. The time it takes to get from the beginning to Hyrule Field is ridiculously long, and just when you want to relish the opportunity to explore you're forced into a small area of the field until you clear more enclosed sections (that force further restrictions upon you). Even Castle Town is small and Claustrophobic, which makes no logical sense considering it's right next to a phenomenally massive castle and is meant to be the capital of the land. It's only in the latter-middle part of the game that you get any real freedom.

There's also the fact that the space is so vast, yet so empty. This didn't bother me in The Wind Waker, because the game does not hide the fact that what you see is what you get. The sea itself is opaque. You can't see any visible life or environments under the sea, so not once does the desire to explore occur. In fact, the sea was more interesting because they actually did include all sorts of little outposts and boats and details like these. In Twilight Princess, there is a massive overworld, with lots of detail. But it's empty. It invites you explore it, but for what purpose? There's nothing to find. Majora's Mask, for example, has the smallest world of the 3D Zeldas, and yet it is the most rich because it is filled with so many things to see and do. This makes the world feel much bigger and more alive. The vast wastelands of Twilight Princess serve only to enhance the sense of claustrophobia.

Everything feels purposeful. The big horseback arena of Hyrule Field; the bridge, the weird cliff corridors between sections; the small number of enterable buildings in Castle Town (not one random person's house. Not one). There are people in Castle Town, but they barely react to you. The way to get into Lake Hylia and the Gerudo Desert, among other places, is ridiculously convoluted until you can warp (the desert is explained, but why on earth is there no entrance to the lakeside?). Even towns like Kakariko are hard to get around. It always feels like the game is trying to confine you, and make it as difficult as possible to wander freely. When you finally get the chance to do so, there is nothing to be seen and you realise why the game was trying to stop you in the first place.

Yeah, I always found Lake Hylia in TP extremely hilarious. It's probably the stupidest thing in the entire series, even more dumb than that Milk Bar in MM where you had to wear a cow hat to get in (yeah, saw it on the comic). Face it, Lake Hylia is probably one of the biggest attractions of Hyrule since the woods are 'dangerous' and Death Mountain, woah... That's just a no-go for normal people. But how do you get down to the lake? By paying an insane clown to get permission to fly down there using a chicken.

What where they thinking?

"How should the player exit the lake then?"
"Hmm... Yeah, how about another gay clown, who shoots you out of a cannon?"
"... Alright, I'm out of ideas anyway..."

Absolutely brilliant. In fact, that's the greatest thing about Twilight Princess. There. I said it. And hey, you don't even have to pay the clown to rent a chicken; you can just jump off the bridge!

Wow there is a great coment about the game...
When i first Saw the trailer of TP i was like "THE BEST GAME EVER" but when i get it was more the xciting than the Joy i get of play it.

Well the game was full fo ideas but i felt like they waste it more on creating the new graphics than working on a new great adventure for link, i mean ... they have an idea for an adventure but they didn't adapted on what it really seems have.

Well for those who don't understand me ... what i really meant is: I saw the trailer and it was like a big adventure, a new world, and offcourse a new playmode; but it really din't get that xpectations i had.