Note: This email exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo originally ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up and MTV's Multiplayer blog, in four separate installments, from October 29th-November 2nd 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

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In which N'Gai reflects on the experience of playing his first Zelda game, and Stephen wonders whether this may be his last.

Heading into the sixth Vs. Mode exchange, it occurs to us that we've never focused an entire Vs. Mode on a Japan-developed game. So what better way to rectify this oversight than by tackling the newest entry in Nintendo's longstanding Zelda franchise, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS? In Round 1 of our exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo, we try to articulate why, despite the game's breakthrough control scheme, we aren't having an unreservedly good time playing it. For his part, Totilo scrutinizes Zelda's rich past and diagnoses the series as suffering from a crippling case of sequelitis. Read on. 

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To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: October 16, 2007
Re: My First Zelda

Stephen,

I've never read "The Catcher In the Rye." I've never seen "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial." And until the Phantom Hourglass, I'd never played a Zelda game--not for more than 20 minutes or so, at any rate. This shouldn't come as a surprise to careful readers of Vs. Mode, as I freely volunteered this in our very first exchange. You've tried to make me feel guilty about this in the past, but I've stayed pretty impervious to such criticism. After all, my modern gaming career only dates back to 1999, and with only a finite number of hours in the day, you'll have to forgive me for having devoted so little of my time to the classics. Having said all that, I must admit that ever since we put The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on our docket, I've been looking forward to it. Not out of any sense of duty, obligation or misguided desire for gamercred, but more for the personal satisfaction of having crossed another item off my personal list of Things To Do: been there, done that, got the "I Heart Hyrule" T-shirt to prove it.

The last time I fleetingly sampled a Zelda game was during the Wii's coming out party at E3 2006. Nintendo had arranged for a handful of journalists to get some playtime with an assortment of Wii titles on the Sunday before E3. I don't remember much from my limited hands-on other than that I didn't feel as though the Wiimote-nunchuk combo added much to the experience of playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It didn't seem native to the Wii--the bow and arrow felt particularly twitchy, possibly owing to the way that the aiming reticule would jitter at the slightest movement of the Wiimote--and I quickly concluded that if I were to play this game at all, it would have to be on my dust-covered Gamecube. That didn't happen, and 2006 entered the history books much as each of the years preceding it: without me having spent an appreciable amount of time with a Zelda game.

By contrast, I'm very much enjoying the controls for Phantom Hourglass. I wasn't worried that I'd feel differently--unlike those for Twilight Princess, they've been universally praised--but is it possible that they're even better than advertised? I think so. If the overwhelming sensation upon firing up Phantom Hourglass were charm, I'd say that its charm extends to its controls as well, because moving Link about using the stylus is at once precise and delightful. Because I kept dragging the stylus across the screen to direct Link's movements, it actually took me a while to consciously realize that Link moves to the point where I'm holding down the stylus as if drawn towards it by a magnet, but subconsciously, I'd figured that out from the start; proof of the Zelda team's intuitive setup.

I love the boomerang, especially the way that its sound effect makes me feel as though I'm slightly out of control whenever I trace out a trajectory for it to follow once I throw it. Ditto for swirling the stylus for Link's circle strike; tapping for his basic attack, firing his ship's cannon or making his ship jump over obstacles. The game has just enough twitch to engage and challenge my hands, but so far, not so much that it ever degenerates into stylus mashing. And as compelling as it is here, I hope that third party DS creators are taking copious notes, because the mechanics in Phantom Hourglass are both a revelation and a lodestar as to how action-adventure games for the platform should henceforth be developed. Eiji Aonuma and his team have cleverly figured out how to combine the stylus-driven controls and an isometric view in a way that replicates the feel of a 3-D game without the attendant camera issues. It reminds me of what Guerilla achieved on a much lesser scale with Killzone PSP, similarly opting for an isometric viewpoint rather than the first-person POV of its console predecessor. (Would that more developers followed suit rather than insisting on shoehorning FPS games onto the single-analog nub PSP.)

All that aside...would it be terrible of me to say that I admire Phantom Hourglass a lot more than I like playing it?

I've been struggling to figure out why I'm not digging this game more. Allow me to offer up a half-formed theory. There are two types of action-adventure gamers: those who like to move in a straight line, and those who like to move in circles. By that, I mean that when I'm playing an action-adventure game, I like to move from point A to point B. I don't mind exploring--in fact, I rather enjoy it--but generally speaking, I only like exploration if it propels me forward. I don't like to backtrack, as you well know. I don't like fetch quests, but I can tolerate them in small doses. And I don't like venturing out from a central location to which I always return. Hence, the action-adventure games I tend to enjoy the most are games like Devil May Cry, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Halo and, with a few dispensations, BioShock. Clear, hold, move on, and above all, never look back: that's my motto.

Circle gamers, on the other hand, love those things that I detest in adventure games. They like being thrown into a world that gradually opens up various zones or areas that aren't meant to be moved through once and then forgotten, but rather revisited, often more than once, gradually revealing their secrets as the player's abilities improve. For these gamers, Metroid Prime, Grand Theft Auto, and Zelda--very likely the ur-circle game, but I will defer to your encyclopedic knowledge of the gaming canon on that point--are thrilling experiences. I wish I could say the same, but I'd be lying if I did; if the controls weren't as ass-shakingly satisfying as they are now--and the visual style so charming--I'd have probably already given up on Phantom Hourglass. I suspect that playing this game on a handheld has helped make the experience more palatable because of the way it lets me break up my gameplay sessions into small chunks, and after all, what is a circle if not a collection of small linear vectors?

What am I missing here, Stephen? Is there a previous installment that would have been more to my tastes? Or are Zelda and I simply not meant to be?

Cheers,

N'Gai

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To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: October 18, 2007
Re: Your First, My Last?

N'Gai,

I would first like to thank you for not using any overly big words like "remuneration" in your letter. I could follow everything.

Now, it may not have shocked life-long Vs Mode subscribers that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was your first Zelda. But it could just about hospitalize a few to find out that I think Phantom Hourglass could well be my last.

I started playing Zelda games with the NES original. I played the second on NES, then the SNES one. I skipped the Game Boy edition, played two on the Game Boy Color, one on the GBA, two on the N64 (including my favorite game ever, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask), two on the Gamecube (don't forget Four Swords) and one on the Wii. Phantom Hourglass is my 12th Zelda. Would it be hubris to say it was the 12th that betrayed me? Of course, but it's kind of funny.

What has gone wrong? First, for a second, let's consider the problem is me. Ridiculous, I know, but let's just consider it. I've been playing games for more than 20 years. I thought Transformers were neat 20 years ago, but I have stopped playing with them. I also stopped watching The Smurfs sometime post-1986. So maybe I've outgrown Zelda? Maybe I'm too old?

I've been thinking about the issue of gaming people getting old. Earlier this year we heard Miyamoto talk about making games that might please his wife. And in an interview he told Geoff Keighley that he'd like for there to be a game that tells young kids to give up their seats on the subway to their elders. Makes him sound kinda old, no? We keep hearing about game designers wanting to make casual games, wanting to make stuff they can play with their kids, and so forth. There's certainly been a graying of game development priorities. That may indicate industry maturation, a progression beyond an age of gaming adolescence that has seen violent, macho games command the most attention. And maybe I'm part of an aging player base that has changing tastes of their own. So maybe, as one gets old, playing Zelda loses its meaning. Maybe.

On the other hand, perhaps the problem is age, but only as a factor of how many games in this series that my years on this planet have enabled me to play. Unlike you who--sacrilege--ignored Majora's Mask even though it came out once you were an active gamer (the year 2000, man!), I've played almost every Zelda that was released while I considered myself a gamer.  So perhaps I've simply grown weary of the formula because I've experienced it so often. That wouldn't be Zelda's fault, right? The games in the series might be as good as ever. But I might be suffering the effects of having gone through the motions too many times to get excited anymore--sort of the way some people feel about celebrating birthdays, watching "Bambi," or voting in Presidential elections.

I guess that would make my relative dissatisfaction with the new Zelda no one's fault, although I'd like to assign some blame if this is indeed the problem: if I may, I would like to blame Nintendo. I would like to blame them for not finding a way to get their wing of the gaming industry in step with the book, music and movie industry. George Lucas doesn't keep making new "Star Wars" movies for me year after year. I haven't seen 12 of them. He made three back in the day and made them well enough. Then he made a few more and even that might have been stretching the concept. After that he just drilled down on selling me new copies of those same movies again and again. I can't begrudge him that. The movies were good enough that they deserve not to be swamped by six more sequels. Nintendo got Zelda just right a few times already. More than a few times. Can't they just keep re-releasing the really good ones, polishing them up for new platforms, and make some newer non-Zelda stuff? I've heard all the arguments about limited development resources, but I'm unconvinced that remaking Ocarina wouldn't net Nintendo more money and do a better job of solidifying what is great about the series than routinely iterating sequels. The era of Zelda-as-rough-draft is past.

Anyway, I think I've figured it out why this Zelda, my 12th Zelda. It's due a little to what I was just explaining. I do have franchise-fatigue. But I also feel that Phantom Hourglass isn't quite the Zelda of its predecessors. It's a bit of Zelda and a bit of something new, and as a result it feels less like a confident sequel and more like a game trying to please too many different audiences.

For the franchise fans, this Zelda has items, bosses, (very small) dungeons and a compelling overworld. That is all stuff I like, though I wish you could experience the finest of Zelda items, bosses, dungeons and overworlds.

For an entirely new crowd, this Zelda has counting puzzles and logic challenges, aka the Brain Age influence.

This Zelda brings new things that refine old traditions. Instead of maps being generated automatically, the game invites the player to write part of the maps themselves (the island that requires the player to do all of the mapping is among the game's most charming areas). This game uses touch control to finally ensure that bombs land where you were trying to throw them. This is all good.

But the game also back-steps on some fundamentals. The older games' telltale audio clank of a sword knocked against secretly breakable wall is replaced with telltale patterns on floors that might as well include a signs that read: "place bomb here." The signature Zelda move of forward-rolling to bash, to dodge or just to fill time has been mapped to the one touch-control misfire, an exercise in futile edge-of-screen stylus-scribbling.

This is all quite a cocktail. I'm left wishing some of the tried-and-true got tweaked, left wishing that the tweaks went further and that the altogether new stuff was given a proper adventure game of its own. I wanted a classic old game or a brand-new game. I didn't want a game trying to be both.

You talk about circle gamers and straight-line gamers, and I think you're spot on. I also think you're missing out on the glory of circle-gaming, but I'll get to that at the very end of this letter. I want to twist your terms a little, though and repurpose them. May I? I propose is that the problem with Phantom Hourglass is that it is a circle-developed sequel, a game designed with far too much consideration and re-exploration of what has gone before and ginger steps forward into new not-fully-explored areas. I wanted a straight-line to something old or something new.

As I play recent Zelda games, I can't help but feel that their first halves are for newcomers like you and that only the tail end is made for me. Some of what's, to me, tired-and-true is probably new to you. You've never gotten a bow and arrow, some bombs and a boomerang in your first three dungeons of a Zelda game. I have. Quite a few times. Only as I play through the second half of Phantom Hourglass am I discovering stuff that feels novel. I experienced the same pacing problem in Twilight Princess. That game offered some new wolf gameplay early on but only began to consistently surprise me once I reached mid-game and found the sort-of-a-skateboard item. This begs the question of whether Nintendo could design things another way. I think they could, by really tweaking the Zelda formula and skipping the boomerang, bombs and bow-and-arrow altogether or--gasp--starting players off with those items. Surely Nintendo's designers could find a painless way to acclimate players to those three items in a quick opening tutorial area.

As sour as I'm being in this letter, I want you to know that I certainly don't hate this game. It's a perfectly decent game for you or any other Zelda neophyte to play. It's polished. Its graphics are splendid. Its controls are sublime--the main impetus for me nominating it as the best game of E3. It shows that Aonuma and team can make fantastic, enjoyable action-adventure. I mainly bristle at this game being a Zelda, because I am now ready to so thoroughly question the world's need for a new Zelda game. Someone like you comes along and says, if this is Zelda then what am I missing? You're missing Zelda at its finest. Technically it hits all the notes, but it doesn't sound them as well as previous Zelda games.

Here's what I would want you to get from playing a Zelda. The series is about exploration and challenge. It is about you solving puzzles that were clearly designed by the human hand, challenges that vex you for the perfect amount of time. It is about circle-gaming that involves not just the game-wide grand circle that compels you to go back to that corner of the map because you found this item; but also the small circle in each dungeon that brings you from momentary confusion, through item discovery to the thorough solution and out the exit warp back to the overworld. The best Zelda both makes you think that the game is clever and that you're clever.

I propose an experiment. How about you swing by my place in Brooklyn this Saturday afternoon for an ultimate Zelda experiment? I'll fire up the Deku Tree dungeon in Ocarina of Time and have you experience what I believe is the best dungeon in the series. And I'll try to find my Majora's cartridge and show you some good stuff in that game. Then you'll be able to say you've played what I consider to be Zelda's best. Better yet, you'll be able to tell me if I'm just getting crotchety in my old Zelda age. Maybe the old stuff is no better than the new stuff. Maybe it's not Nintendo, but me that just needs to move on. Or maybe I'm dead right.

But if you want to write me back about something else before that, can you tell me what you think of getting around a game in a boat? That was a divisive element of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. And since you're a straight-line gamer, I'd like to get your thoughts on the ways you like and don't like moving through a game world. Oh, man, I just realized you never experienced the Epona arc in Ocarina. So sad. So sad.

-Stephen

Next: The Zelda formula may have calcified, but we're temporarily tweaking the Vs. Mode blueprint. How? Tune in tomorrow.

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In which N'Gai and Stephen resume their epic battle--not in their customary epistolary form of email, but rather in a face-to-face conversation--and compare The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the DS to its Nintendo 64 predecessors Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.

Over the past couple of months, there has been a small but influential handful of voices who have called for a Vs. Mode podcast: a smattering of developers, publishers, fellow journalists, forum posters and readers alike. But as the staff of Level Up and our sparring partner--MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo--explore our multimedia options, we've seized upon the opportunity afforded by our own ignorance of Zelda gameplay to bring you the next best thing: A Very Special Vs. Mode.

Last Saturday, the Level Up team made the trek to Totilo's Brooklyn apartment--not far from where the Notorious B.I.G. grew up--where Totilo guided us through some key moments in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, then handed us the controller to play the first section of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Immediately following the playthrough, we recorded our discussion of the the Zelda series, which we present to you today and tomorrow as Round 2 and Round 3 of our Vs. Mode exchange. Read on.

N'Gai Croal: You just got through showing me a sampling of N64 era Zelda games. Why did you think it was important?

Stephen Totilo: Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on the DS is the first Zelda game that you’ve played, and as I said in Round 1 of our exchange, possibly my last Zelda. I’ve played 11 others before this. I feel like I may be at as much of a crossroads as you. I’ve been badgering you for how many years?--seven years--to try a Zelda game or really give it an honest try. Once I started playing Phantom Hourglass I got a little concerned that, okay, now you were finally giving a Zelda an honest try, but you may not have been giving the ideal Zelda an honest try. So I invited you to my apartment where we’re recording this so that you could get a look at Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which many people think is the best game ever made let alone the best Zelda game, and then my personal favorite game Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Croal: Did Ocarina of Time get a 10 from Edge?

Totilo: I don’t know, but I think their Top 100 Games of All Time poll just put it at the number one game.

Croal: So as you know--and some of the readers who have been regular readers of my blog know--I’m a relative newcomer to games both as a journalist and as a player. I did play some in my childhood and then pretty much from ’94 through ’99 I may have played like 10 games, tops. And then in ’99 I started seriously covering [games] for Newsweek and that brings us to where we are today. So from your vantage point--one of the things that’s always impressed me about you is that you have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of console games. I sort of joke about it, but I call you my gaming sensei because of that. We’re both game journalists, what do you think of the fact that here I am supposedly seriously covering games, but up until now for this Vs. Mode I haven’t played a Zelda game before. Is that a serious deficit in my gaming literacy?

Totilo: Yeah. I mean, it’s infuriating. But if "infuriation" is a word--and you are the expert on big words, so you can tell me--let’s just call it rage. If my rage over you not having played a Zelda game before was...intense, I guess it's abated now that you’ve finally gotten a chance to play some. Because I really would love to know what you thought of the last four hours where I had you watch the Majora's Mask stuff that I showed you and then the Ocarina stuff that you played. I think that if you are somebody who wants to be able to think seriously about games, you certainly need to play some of the most formative games ever made, and certainly ones that if there is "Citizen Kane" of games would be considered that "Citizen Kane." I think in Ocarina of Time most people would say, "Hey. that’s the closest to the medium has gotten," at least in terms of a game that has some semblance of narrative, some semblance of adventure and a sense of linear progression that is all driven by gameplay and that is executed in a way that many people just found so enjoyable from beginning to end or as far as they got. So again this is round two of our exchange. We've already gone back and forth a little bit on Phantom Hourglass.

Croal: It’ll be Round 2 or 3, it depends on what we decide in the final--it’ll be a game time decision.

Totilo: Yes, yes, a surprise round at some point. We can’t call it a bonus round because Geoff Keighley has that trademarked so we’re working around that. So enough with the preamble. I had you look at Majora's Mask first, so let’s just talk about that. I gave it to you out of order; what I wanted you to see in Majora's s Mask was just sort of what I thought was kind of pure Zelda. I didn’t take you into any of the dungeons in that game, but I showed you the overworld, I showed you how the time system works, which for people who don’t know basically Majora's Mask was like the movie "Groundhog Day," where you could play the same 72 hour experience of this town--72 hours leading up to the apocalypse--and then warp yourself back to the beginning of that stretch [of time] and keep running through the 72 hours with more items. It’ll have you take different shortcuts so that you weren’t really repeating that much like what you’d done previously. So I showed you the 72-hour cycle. I showed you the masks that you can wear in the game that allow you to transform into the different creatures. Of course I was also showing you the N64-level graphics that you probably hadn’t seen in a long time. The N64 framerate and you were playing on an N64 controller which was something I hadn’t even done for a while.

Croal: Authentic, vintage N64. We did not play this on the Wii, we did not get this from the Virtual Console. This was the real deal.

Totilo: Right, this was like on a black and white television--

Croal: --and we walked uphill both ways in order to play it.

Totilo: Exactly. So what did you think of Majora's?

Croal: I thought from what you showed me--I thought it was genius game design. The idea of, as you said--which I think I said before we started recording, and it's obvious when you see the game--the "Groundhog Day" design concept. The way that the missions or the quests are tied to the time schedule over those three days and that there would be certain things that you missed because you missed them on the schedule and you'd have to get them on your next go around. The fact that you get various [items] that will let you sort of skip through time and things like that. I thought it was genius game design. I don’t think I'd ever play that game all the way through and--

Totilo: Because it’s old?

Croal: Not because it’s old at all. I mean, I thought--other than the fact that there was, you have a very sunlit apartment and so there was a bit of glare when I was trying to play the game at some points--so the graphics--

Totilo: That was the brilliance of the game shining at you.

Croal: [Laughs.] Blinding me with its brilliance?

Totilo: Yeah.

Croal: No, the graphics didn’t bother me at all. In some ways it’s similar to watching an old movie; you have to give yourself over to the pace and the rhythm. But the game is ultimately modern enough, certainly, in terms of the gameplay elements and the controls. The graphics, obviously it’s a little tough on the eyes and the level of detail sometimes it was--there’s a point in Ocarina where I was swimming through the water; there was a switch on the bottom of the floor and I couldn’t see it. It took me a long time to see it, but no, I mean, I don’t think the graphics, the controls, none of that stuff [was a problem].

It goes back to something I said in our first exchange: the idea of the difference between being a linear gamer and a circular gamer. To recap, the way I like to play games and the kinds of games that I tend to respond to are the ones where you, as I put it, "clear, hold and move on." You move into an area and maybe there’s some things that you do there, but it’s pretty contained and then once it’s done you move forward and you don’t go backwards. So games like this one--I mean this is like, as you said, the definition of a circular game.

Totilo: Because it’s circular in four dimensions, right? So it’s not just circular in the amount of terrain that you’re exploring where you’re remembering, "Oh, this thing in this cave that I got can now get me through the swamp over there," but now it’s also "This thing I got in the cave at the end of the third day can actually get me through the swamp on day one." So, [you're] also thinking about the dimension of time when moving through the game.

Croal: Which, like I said, is genius. But I think that I would get antsy and frustrated playing that as a game, like...patience. I don’t think I would have the patience to play something like that all the way through.

Totilo: Right. So there's one bit in there that I queued up for you and sort of gave you the linear game experience of it. It's a side quest. Because to me it represents one of the best circular game quests in the game. If a circular quest would be epitomized by the idea of getting something and then actually not only just knowing, "Okay, now I can go back and apply this thing I got, this weapon I got,"--the cave to the swamp thing I just described--but it would also be [the process of] being able to recognize when the game is telegraphing to you that "this thing you got is one of four more things you're going to get that are eventually going to complete this circle for you." That to me is the excitement of these types of games, when a game properly telegraphs you. It really gives me or any player the drive to say, "Okay I want to go and I want to get the rest of those things."

So I showed you this bit that’s in the Milk Bar in the clock town of Majora's Mask and as Link, you have the Ocarina and you basically go into the bar--

Croal: Should we say "Spoiler Warning" for those people who haven't played it already?

Totilo: The game came out in 2000, so the statute of limitations on spoiler warnings is over, but you just gave people a warning anyway.

So you go in with the ocarina, you talk to the manager there who's upset that there's nobody on stage to perform a set at this bar. And so he says, "Will you play for me?" You say, "Sure;" you get on the stage; he asks you to take a certain spot; he queues you up to play a certain tune on your ocarina. When you first get access to this bar--which requires its own mini-quest to get to--you realize that he really was looking for a full band and so just having Link there is not enough. And part of "Majora's Mask" is about getting other masks that allow you to transform into other types of creatures. If you are clever enough to transform into the Deku form or the Zora form, or Goron forms and talk to the guy again, he'll say, "Oh, can you play me something?" And if you're the Zora, for example, you don't have an ocarina. You have a guitar, and he'll ask you to stand in a different spot on the stage. He'll ask you to play a song for him or a tune, and you press different buttons. Then, after your character plays the jingle back for him, you then see that [the game] remembered Link playing as well and you now see Link and the Zora form of yourself on stage together. You realize that you are now literally a two-man band playing two different pieces of music that combine into one piece of music and that's when you realize, "Oh my goodness, I know what I need to do."

In fact, I got the sense that the light bulb went on over your head right as you were doing it, I looked over and you were smiling. I was like: "I may be converting N'Gai into circle gaming-dom right then and there." Was I on the verge there? Did I almost push you over the limit?

Croal: Well, yes and no. One of the things I’ve said about the Zelda games--well the Zelda game from playing Phantom Hourglass--is that charm is one of the defining characteristics, at least of that game in particular. And I felt that that was an ultimate charming moment. It was kind of like I was seeing a "Rock Band" being brought to life years before Harmonix has even shipped their game. It’s this moment where you see Link as this one-man band, a bit like Prince, or when Billy Corgan went back into the studio on "Siamese Dream" and re-recorded all the parts.

Totilo: But you also saw--let’s talk about that micro moment where you had done the quest halfway and I kept my mouth shut. So you saw there what it was going to take to complete the band right?

Croal: Absolutely.

Totilo: And did you find that compelling? Did you think, "Oh, if I was in the middle of a game and I didn't have the other [mask] forms, this would be the thing that would help drive me or give me added incentives to collect the other forms? And I would want to do that and come back here and then assemble the whole band?"

Croal: Actually...I think it would make me want to experience that in fiction that I personally found more compelling than Zelda. It's ultimately a Men in Tights kind of game, and so I think I love the gameplay, I love that game moment, but thinking of circle games--I mean certainly one of the most celebrated circle games or circle genres of the moment is the Grand Theft Auto series. And that in Grand Theft Auto would probably have that effect on me. But in this, in my mind, I would be doing the calculus, "Okay, the amount of patience it would take me to get to that point in the game--I probably wouldn't get to that point in the game." And honestly, in San Andreas I didn't make it out of Los Santos.

Totilo: Well there you just defeated your own argument, because you implied that a different fiction would compel you to play more of a circle game--and I’m guessing that maybe Boyz in the Hood isn’t your favorite milieu, but you clearly prefer it over Men in Tights or Elves in Tights--and yet you didn’t get out of Los Santos either. So clearly it’s the circle game thing that’s causing you problems more than the fiction.

Let’s kind of jump off that for a sec--or for a while, actually--and talk about your experience of Ocarina of Time. You watched me play Majora's Mask, but then you went and I had you play Ocarina of Time. You spent one hour going from the opening of the game to the beginning of the first dungeon--which basically required you to get the sword and the shield-and then you spent I think two hours in the first dungeon, Deku Tree Dungeon, which I said at the end of the first round of our exchange was what I felt epitomized all that’s great about Zelda and Dungeons and in fact I think is the best Zelda Dungeon. So I gave it a lot of build up, did I oversell it? What did you think?

Croal: No, I think it’s an excellently designed dungeon. They build the teaching experience into the game in an excellent way. There’s that part where you step on the spider webs and the fairy Navi tells you that you can look down.

Totilo: Right, as soon as you walk into the dungeon.

Croal: Exactly. You see stuff that’s down there and so you realize at some point you’re going to be able to get down there and then in fact you are able to get down there. There’s an exchange that we had in a previous Vs. Mode about architecture in games and I quoted Clive Thompson talking about level design and all the dark arts that get blended together to make level design what it is. The dungeon you showed me at the opening of Ocarina of Time is exemplary as far as level design because there’s a logic and flow to it. It’s not exactly like designing a street or designing a building because the purpose to which it’s being put is in some ways more complex than that. And so even when I--there were some points where I got stumped and got frustrated; again, because I’m a linear guy I assume that what I need is not here, because it’s a fairly small enclosed room that I’m in, so I’m kind of like, "Well, if I’m having this much trouble when I’m in this room I must’ve missed something."

Totilo: Right. And they don’t operate that way. When they lock you in a room, they only lock you in a room if you have everything that you need in order to get out. It was interesting for me because I knew how to get out of all those rooms, I’ve played through that dungeon a million times and it was interesting to watch you kind of puzzle your way through it and you'd have a few missteps. Just when I thought you weren’t going to get it, because you were hitting a switch in order to open a door, when in fact finally you take out the stick and then you learn that, "Oh, I can light the tip of the stick on fire and I can use that to light the other drowned-out torch and then there I go, I’ve got two torches going," and you were out the door.

Croal: Well, Luke Smith from Bungie reviewed our playthrough of Halo 3; how would you review my play through of the first dungeon in Ocarina of Time?

Totilo: Well, the difference between me and Luke is that Luke helped make Halo, I didn’t help make Zelda. But you figured out everything that you needed to do. What was interesting was that you did seem to get stymied by some of the things that at the time were really progressive, but because you were only playing them now they’re somewhat backwards or at least archaic. You were having a lot of trouble with the Z targeting. At the time in 1998 that was a great advance from the 3-D design of Super Mario 64 where it was really hard to focus on a character when you only had a single analog stick and you wanted to stay looking at that character and still walk around them and focus.

The Z targeting of pulling down the trigger and having a lock on [an enemy] was really a great step forward, but for you it was really challenging because you were looking for that second analog stick or just some other smarter camera system that would've enabled you to stay sort of focused on that. So you seemed to actually have more trouble with the enemies than you did with some of the level design. But it was a pleasure to watch you play through it, because it’s always so hard to recommend games to people--especially older games--because I’m always concerned that people can’t get over the technological hurdles or at least the appreciation of something. You and I were just looking at Ratchet and Clank Future that I had running on my TV right before we popped in the N64 Zelda.

Croal: Your SDTV, we should clarify.

Totilo: My SDTV, and still the game still looks brilliant. And then we plug in the N64 Zeldas in it, I mean, it took me a bit of time to adjust to it before you came by because I was just queuing up some stuff, and I think it took you some time as well. So I’m playing Majora's for you and I’m like, "Wow, this game is only seven years old and yet I cannot fathom anybody coming near this game for the first time ever really wanting to sit through the graphics as they are." I think most people just wouldn't be interested and it was therefore a rare pleasure to watch you actually become engaged by the dungeon and to watch the genius and the level design triumph over the age of the technology. And it seemed like you were pretty into it, I mean you seemed pretty giddy by the time you got down through that spider web that you mentioned and when you were right about to fight the boss you seemed to really be having a good time. That was pretty cool to see. My cat's behind me meowing, so she's got some opinions about this as well.

The thing that I was wondering about, though, was that I brought this game up--both of the games up--as a contrast from Phantom Hourglass, because I felt that Phantom Hourglass was kind of this weird crossroads game where they looked like they were still trying to recapture the pure essence of Zelda, but also try these new things. As I articulated in the first letter, I felt like that was a poor direction for them to have gone in, and that I would’ve preferred that if they wanted pure Zelda that they would’ve just remade an old Zelda because I think there’s genius in those old game designs--just polish those games up and put them back out on the market.  If they really wanted to try some brand new stuff make it a brand new game or make it a radically different Zelda than--and again I think that would just mean making a new game. Did you find--

Croal: Did Majora's Mask feel like a radically different Zelda when it came out?

Totilo: From...?

Croal: The previous one.

Totilo: It felt like they had put enough aside and done enough that was new that at the time I thought, "Well, this is a worthwhile and different enough experience. We’re going from a game where it’s primarily about explore the territory at age 7 and then age 14, I can sort of see the distinctions." So taking that idea and warping it so that it’s this 72-hour repeated cycle, and then adding the whole mask system in--which was a whole new way to interact with the world--seemed like a significant addition to the formula. At the time there had only been a handful of Zeldas before it. Since that Majora's Mask game there have been two Gamecube Zeldas; a Game Boy Advance Zelda; two Game Boy color Zeldas; and a Wii Zelda so there have been six Zeldas since then and that’s part of where--at the time the world could’ve still used more high quality Zeldas--but they’ve knocked it out of the park enough times that that’s where I’m feeling like, "Maybe they don’t need to make any more."

Croal: Well, it’s an interesting design choice, looking at the mask system and the 72-hour system repeated. Because I wonder if any game developers making games now--you look at this whole thing of shorter games; some people were complaining that Heavenly Hours is just six hours and--

Totilo: Heavenly Sword. Certainly not Heavenly Hours.

Croal: [Laughs.] Heavenly Sword is only six hours and Gears of War is only nine or ten hours. What you get out of designing a game [like Majora's Mask] in that way--and it would be interesting to sort of go back and talk to the people who worked on the game to see if that was something they thought about--is you get density of game play as opposed to scope of gameplay. The world itself doesn’t need to be as massive to give you that rich gameplay experience. You can use a more limited amount of architecture, levels and dungeons, but make it denser because the mask system brings those areas of the world to life in new ways once you've accessed a new mask.

Totilo: Right, you can certainly make game worlds denser. Phantom Hourglass presents a denser ocean with more islands in it than Wind Waker, so I agree with you that it’s one direction that people can look at it. In some ways, what is Majora's Mask other than a game that's sort of emphasizing the replayability of a game. You know, giving you new ways to constantly re-experience the same territory, which other games have tried. If you go back to it even the very first Zelda on the NES, had a whole second quest, which is just saying, "Hey, replay this game, but experience it differently."

But what I wanted to know is--I didn't want to really review your playing of the game; this was really kind of a self-serving exercise here because I'm the one at the more dire crossroads than you. You simply get a chance to decide whether or not Zelda is a blind spot in your gaming career to be embarrassed about or to feel vindicated that you could afford to skip it, but for me I'm at this crossroads where I'm like, "Am I correct in feeling that Zelda, that the world has had enough Zelda and am I correct in having the hubris to say that I know that Nintendo should move on?" Or am I a victim of my old age and, is it the case that when I say, "Oh, this Phantom Hourglass doesn't have as good dungeons as the Zelda in my day," am I onto something or not? You've now played Phantom Hourglass dungeons, therefore you've played 21st century Zelda dungeons and you played 1998 Zelda dungeons and the Deku Tree. Were they the same?

Next: Is it time for Zelda designer Eiji Aonuma to say, "No mas"? And what do The Sims, Madden, "The Wire" and "Blade Runner" have to do with the series?

***

In which N'Gai and Stephen continue their Very Special face-to-face edition of Vs. Mode: N'Gai with his restrained praise of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and Stephen with his crisis of faith over the series' failure to regain its innovative heights.

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode discussion with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer), we offered up a theory--Linear Gamers Vs. Circular Gamers--to explain why even brilliantly-controlling games like The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass don't float our boat. Totilo, meanwhile, said that he was being to feel a bit run down by Zelda Fatigue, 12 games into the series. In Round 2, we collectively did what Totilo wished Nintendo would do and switched up our own formula. We met face-to-face in order to a) correct Level Up's own ignorance of the Zelda series with a crash course on Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask; and b) talk about how much the series has progressed, if at all, since those twin high water marks. In today's Round 3, we serve up a wide-ranging discussion about the pros and cons of long-running franchises--for both developers and gamers. Read on. 

Stephen Totilo: I didn't want to really review your playing of the game. This was really kind of a self-serving exercise here, because I'm the one sort of, well, I feel I'm at a more dire crossroads than you. You simply get a chance to decide whether or not Zelda is a blind spot in your gaming career to be embarrassed about or to feel vindicated that you could afford to skip it. But, for me, I'm at this crossroads where I'm like: "Am I correct in feeling that the world has had enough Zelda, and am I correct in having the hubris to say that I know that Nintendo should move on?" Or am I a victim of my old age? And is it the case that, when I say, "Oh, this Phantom Hourglass doesn't have as good dungeons as the Zelda in my day, am I onto something or not?

You've now played Phantom Hourglass dungeons. Therefore you've played 21st century Zelda Dungeons and you played 1998 Zelda dungeons. Are you saying, were they the same?

N'Gai Croal: Were they the same? That's tough.

Totilo: Am I just being crotchety in my old age here?

Croal: Well, I don't know that I would use the dungeons themselves necessarily as an example of that. What I would say in their defense--and you can speak to this better because you played many more of them--is clearly they felt for a variety of reasons they needed to re-conceive Zelda for the DS. And I think the bulk of their inventiveness was based on--as much I've played the game, which isn't as far as you: I just opened, I think, the northwest section of the map and am on a quest to sort of get through that area. I think they focused on the controls, which, as I've said in previous exchanges, I think are incredible. And if you believe in the inventive work that they've done in the past, I think you might want to look at this as the foundation.

Don't necessarily judge them too harshly on this one, but reserve judgment until the next Zelda on the DS. Because I think these controls--now that they've got that in place--I think they might be in a position to be now more inventive with the game play as opposed to the controls.

Totilo: Well, I felt that the dungeons in Wind Waker were lacking. I actually enjoyed the overworld. I liked the kind of desolate sea that you sail through and I felt that that was sort of a really interesting way of emphasizing the thrill of exploration and the thrill of discovering the unknown that a lot of Zeldas can have. And in that case giving you that broad expanse of ocean is a really exciting and thrilling offering. I thought the dungeon design was not so hot for...in Wind Waker. I felt like the dungeon was improved in Twilight Princess, but I felt the over world was uninteresting. It was far less interesting than the Ocarina of Time's [and] far, far less interesting than the very dense world of Termina in Majora's Mask and less magical than the ocean in Wind Waker.

I'm at a point now playing Phantom Hourglass where I feel, "Okay, I've been playing a bunch of these and if I'm being disappointed by the significant portions of each of the last few--if I'm feeling that each of these significant portions is falling short of a mark that earlier Zelda's completely bulls-eyed--then that's where my unease with the franchise is coming from. And so I hear what you're saying: "Be patient, they are working on controls." And they certainly did an impeccable job with those controls, but I can't help but shake the feeling that any sort of work of fiction--even video games--eventually reaches a peak. Then that formula is set. That formula can become exhausted. And with a series like Zelda that has reached such heights in the past... It feels like it's not original to declare that it is on the downside. I mean, I have...

I wasn't with you when you were playing with dungeons in Phantom Hourglass, but to go back to the question I was asking you earlier, did you find the same magic in the Phantom Hourglass dungeons that you found in the Deku Tree [one in Ocarina]?

Croal: I really like the dungeons in--let's just make sure we're speaking of the same thing, as opposed to the caves in Phantom Hourglass. I really liked the dungeons. So the Temple of the Ocean King: I really liked the time element. It has the whole thing like where the Phantom Hourglass in about 10 minutes and you can add more time later on.

Totilo: And you're a fan of backtracking so I know you love going back to the dungeon four or five more times.

Croal: So, yeah, exactly. And it was one of those things that I didn't expect to like, but again--and I said this early on--the controls are what's driving me to play this and the mechanics around the map, the whole thing with the safe zones that stop time and keep you safe from the enemies on their path and then you step out of it and it starts up again. And then the pots you sort of throw down, create new areas, which will stop time and things like that. But there's like an almost like a stealth Metal Gear-ish kind of quality to it and you know that's one of my signpost games.

So as much as I really, I shouldn't like the dungeons because of my aversion to circularity there's something about it that had that--just that right sense of "I can get it the next time." Like, "I didn't get it this time, time ran out on me" or "I got killed and, now, next time I know what I need to do." And I think part of that is being able to draw notes to yourself on the map. And so you've got these mnemonics as you're going through, and you're like, "Okay, next time I'm going to get it, next time I'm going to get it, next time I'm going to get it and I got it." It's tough enough and frustrating enough and it was a challenge, but it didn't take me so long that I got impatient and said enough of this, I'm putting it down.

Totilo: All right, so now that you have a bunch of Zeldas current in your mind--which is unusual for you because you barely have sampled the series,--and now in the last week, in the last couple of days you have played chunks of two Zeldas and you've played a little bit of Majora's Mask, so you've played three, do you feel that there is a universal thing in Zelda that you can only go so far in appreciating, but can't feel compelled to play farther in? Or do you see a possibility that Nintendo could make a Zelda for you that you would want to play from beginning to end, voluntarily even if you weren't forced to by [me]?

Croal: I think the likeliest system that would be on would be on the DS, because of the way the game is designed for it, in terms of the game play sessions they design around. It's broken up enough that my impatience would be spread out over a long enough period of time that there's not enough frustration to sort of say, "Let me stop playing it." It's in there, I pick it up, I break it out, I play it, I put it away.

I think that would work, but I think, no, it's kind of like...it'd be kind of like me saying "Is there a Sims that I would play extensive amounts of?" I've said this to Will [Wright] himself, I've said, you know, "I love the Sims games conceptually," but, I said this before, "I see games with my hands. We see games with our hands, and if the hands stop--if that space between what I'm doing with the controller and what I'm seeing on screen, that space between them--if that's not gripping me, that's my personal taste." And so I don't play the Sims games all the way through. I'm skeptical about whether I'll play Spore either even though I think it's genius.

It's the same way I feel about this, is that there's something about that whole sort of "There's an area you can't access, go do this quest and that and the other and then come back to it and whatever." I mean I recognize there is a genius about that, it's perfectly valid, very good, it doesn't speak to me ultimately.

Totilo: It's almost like life to you?

Croal: I'd have to think about that for a little bit longer than we have [in this conversation].

Totilo: Yeah, see you'd probably...I think that probably does go to certain people's tastes in other aspects of life. I wonder if it does really relate, because there are those for whom there's nothing finer than, say, going to the gym. You have sort of your experience quantified. You're going for a number. At least when you're younger you can expect linear progression, bar injury, an advancement. I see that as the idea, at least the way you're taught, [of] schools: you advance, like sort of again, linear progression. [Compare that to] circularity. I'm not really sure where the archetype for that comes from. It's probably some sort of play theory that comes out of something else.

It's interesting though, because you talk about not liking the Sims and you identify it as a controls thing. Clearly there's no linearity in that game short of the linearity that you could bring to it by setting the quest for yourself, or a goal for yourself that you get these two people to fall in love. Later versions of the Sims added career goals for the characters, but you say, "I won't play Spore all the way through." Well, I guess the whole idea of Spore is there isn't really an "all the way through," and the very lack of a goal, the lack of a clear linear channel for you might be the thing that bars you from playing it. It's much more [of an obstacle for you] than the actual controls.

Croal: Well, it's actually not, I should be more clear, it's not the controls. It's what I'm being asked to do.

Totilo: Right, the dynamics.

Croal: The dynamics of it.

Totilo: It's that moving a mouse around, pointing at a couple people to cook, go to the bathroom, get in the car or to build furniture out of that or whatever. Because, I mean not to be too unfair to The Sims, but no matter how you describe it, it's going to sound dull. Even the people who like it would probably admit that....Clearly those kind of open-ended activities aren't really your thing.

I mean, just because I like Zelda more than you do, in general I don't find myself a huge lover of The Sims. I also am looking for a little bit more of a channel, a goal for myself to pursue and to go down and those games don't have it,. They have sort of discouraged me from really playing too deeply. I liked Sim City back in the day, though maybe there the unspoken goal is building a city just so you can wreck it.

Croal: Well, if we're digressing slightly--and we'll get back on track in a second--but I mean what's interesting is that so we're both sort of not personally that interested in playing Sims, but we're both really excited about Little Big Planet, you know, and I'm personally wanting to spend some more time messing around with Forge in Halo 3. Why do you think it is?

Totilo: Yeah, I'm not as excited as you on this. I mean I'm excited because I think Little Big Planet is beautiful, and it looks like it'll be joyful to play. But I'm more excited about starting to play other levels that people make for me--mainly the levels the game designers make for me--than I am to make any levels myself. And I don't want to [make my own levels in] Forge in Halo 3 because I don't want to build stuff.

I'd like to have the experience just kind of presented and for me to experience whatever the journey is that the designer put me on. I guess that's what I like about the circularity of Zelda is that it kind of gives you a little bit of liberty--or maybe just the illusion of liberty, which ultimately every game is giving you the illusion of liberty--but it's presenting you an illusion of liberty, allowing you to kind of randomize your priorities just a little bit. But they're generally expertly designed enough that they eventually funnel you into these very specific activities that I found are usually very well paced and very enjoyable.

So the disappointment for me in what I find to be the lesser of the Zeldas is where the things that I'm being funneled into--they're just not as magical. It's sort of like, "Okay designers I've trusted you to let me run astray, but now that I've kind of gathered myself and gone to the new place that I know you ultimately wanted me to get to I don't feel like you've rewarded me." It's kind of a strange relationship to have with the game designer of the game, when you're playing this open ended game. Because, really, I should be appreciating and enjoying the fact that they've let me run astray, but I've got this kind of weird thing where I'm actually saying, "Okay I'm tolerating it, but I'm enjoying it--it's kind of this strange combination of feelings, but that all is kind of against the backdrop of knowing, as I was just saying, that it's kind of an illusion of liberty and freedom that you're given in these games.

Grand Theft Auto [has the] same thing. Ultimately you can't do anything you ever really want to do in a [real] city or that your id would ever want to do in a city, but you certainly can do a wider range than you can in a lot of other games. And you're celebrating the fact that designers allow you to do this. For me when I play GTA I'm also assuming and expecting and hoping that they're eventually going to require me or compel me to do something specific and that that specific thing will be good. So when they have a level that has wonky controls and you're sort of bottlenecked and you can't get beyond that, it's so maddening. It's like "Hey guys, I've played around in your sandbox. I've had fun with all these other things that you've presented. I'm getting the most out of your game. I'm now coming to the next threshold before I can get to the next part of your sandbox. And you've now stymied me by not polishing this aspect as much as you sort of polished the rest." It's sort of like a frustration there.

Croal: So [earlier] you sort of pushed back a bit on my discussion of the fiction. I mean I can't speak for other game players besides myself, but that is a game that, okay, the freedom aspect is relatively unprecedented for a game. So I get that that tapped a lot of people, but the controls--certainly before, I mean there's a reason why San Andreas is the game I played the most of and the others I maybe got through two, three, four, five missions is because the controls are just sort of--I mean I'm fighting this game. If you see games with your hands then that's like looking at a screen that's perpetually out of focus, you know, so I can only get so far.

And the Zelda games, I mean again whether it was--so you're right the Z-targeting I was having trouble with, but that was really more of a function of, as you pointed out, where I entered [the gaming scne] and on what systems I entered and played games on. Like we used to do in analog days, but that's not a problem at all. And in fact as I sort of keep saying, the controls in Phantom Hourglass--for me, even as there's a part of me that I recognize the game is charming, I resist the fiction on a certain level. Like that's not enough of a motivator for me to keep playing. The controls definitely are. Like it's a joy to play this game, and that's why I hope that other developers for the DS are going to study this game. Because I really think that these controls have applications for games well beyond the Zelda fiction. So if there's nothing else that Eiji Aonuma and Nintendo have given us with this game, it's a gift in terms of the controls they designed and I really think that other developers need to study this closer.

Totilo: What would you like to see Aonuma and his team do next? Take the controls that they were able to sort of build atop the Zelda foundation and then to go and make a better Zelda? Or would you like them to take the controls that they built atop the Zelda foundation and now move those controls into some brand new game experiences?

Croal: Me personally?

Totilo: Yeah.

Croal: Well, again resisting the fiction as I do, selfishly I'd say, "Try your hand at another fiction." But I think the question you're asking is a bit deeper than that, which is what should incredibly talented artists and teams, you know, what does it mean when they either are forced to--we don't know that for a fact--or by choice restrict themselves to working on a single series.

I mean it's interesting to contrast that to the team that did Ico and Shadow of the Colossus because Shadow of the Colossus didn't turn into the game that people thought it was. People loved it anyway, but people thought, when they first saw it--with the horse and the bow and arrow--they thought that this was going to be Zelda for the PS2, And it turned out not to be that. It was a very sort of pure, stripped down ,focused game design, but coming off of Ico--for the, say, 500,000 people worldwide who bought that game and loved it--a lot of us would've been happy with Ico 2, but that team, Ueda-san and his team, they didn't make that game.

Totilo: Right, Nico as it was rumored for a while--

Croal: Exactly. He didn't play that game and so what I'm hearing from you is a desire for Nintendo to rethink how they're doing, dealing with the Zelda franchise and maybe walk away from it for a while, let us miss it, maybe remake some of the other ones, which have exemplary game design and spif it up for a new generation. And then have Eiji Aonuma's team to do something different.

Totilo: Yeah, and I guess to wrap this up I just need to go and ask you one more time to help me figure this out: to what extent do you think that the feeling that I'm having is the byproduct of having played so many more, so many of these games already? And is my fatigue of Zelda and my disappointment with the new ones something that people are going to have when Gran Turismo hits its 15th iteration? Is it a feeling that you suspect Final Fantasy fans might be having at some point soon? Or is this something that you think is unique to Zelda?

Do you think it's something that you've identified it as something that's just happening for me personally? Or is this just that this is a sort of a transition game, Phantom Hourglass, because as you're saying maybe they kind of fell back a little bit on dungeons as long as they were focusing on other things? Is it the game? Is it me? Or is this a universal experience that gamers are going to have more and more as we see franchises get sort of deeper into iteration and existence?

Croal: Well, I'd say it's you. I think--no it's definitely you because I think that people respond to the familiar in different ways. I mean we've talked about this ever since our very first Versus Mode where I defended God of War 2, saying they didn't need to do anything beyond the gameplay--the gameplay was great, just give me more of it in a different setting, different context. You said, "I want invention, I want more and more new," and that's your thing. It's like you're constantly looking for the shock of the new. I respond to the new as well, but I also respond to things done well and games are a young enough medium to--

Totilo: Hey, I respond to things done well--

Croal: Okay, you do, but there are a lot of, there are so few games ultimately--even if we're having a great year, a great fall like we are now and we're seeing some very good games--there's still relative to the number of games released, there's still so few games that do things really, really well. For me, it's what I call the Shake-Your-Ass Model of game criticism. That's what I look for first, and I think that for you, after playing 12 Zeldas, the familiarity is getting to be a bit much and that's completely understandable.

It could be like a long running TV series or a movie franchise that's sort of worn out its welcome and the creator has not found enough ways to reinvent it, to keep it fresh for you. The thing is, I think a lot of game players tend to be a bit more Pavlovian in their response to games in franchises that they love. They like that itch being scratched in the way that that team or that franchise scratches that itch and they're perfectly fine with going back to it. So on the business level, for Nintendo or for Square Enix they're going to keep going back to it and tinker around the edges. But I mean, how different is that from Madden? You know a lot of people give EA a hard time and Zelda, the Zelda games don't come out as often as the Madden's, but what's wrong with Nintendo taking a big of an EA Sports approach to the Zelda's when there are fans that love those games?

Totilo: Well some would say Madden is based on the game of football. The game of football kind of got locked in place before they even ever made a Madden, you know, what I'm saying? So, like, they figured out the shape of the ball and they put what you should wear, you know, barring some rule changes here or there. Football got solidified. And football, in some ways, is as much a narrative as Zelda is, because, really, they're both that sort of the narrative of what happens on the field. Of course football is a set of rules and so a different narrative occurs for every game. Zelda is not really defining a set of rules that's being kind of remixed every time [you play it.] A new experience has been set down by the creator for each game.

But with Madden, what I view EA as having done and the other football game developers, is they've essentially been able to work off of an ideal, which is real football and year after year after year try to come close to that. And really once they've reached that ideal and they've got football as realistically rendered or as successfully rendered as it needs to be for a video game that at that point there's no need to make, to remake the engine, remake the graphics or remake anything other than to keep the rosters up to date, keep the uniforms up to date and so on and you can see a lot of people saying that that's all they're seeing from some of the football company game developers anyway.

Zelda--it peaked. It's been great already. It's like the ideal Zeldas exist. They're already out there. And in other forms of entertainment, once the ideal exists and companies have found a way to make money off of just re-releasing that ideal, finding a way to make that ideal relevant even if it means transferring it from VHS to DVD to downloadable or whatnot.

And so, you know, clearly where I'm at is at a spot where I'm just saying, "Look, I've played the ideal Zelda." I was able to play it in 1998 when, at the time, it was running on technology that blew my mind so my memory of that Zelda will always be a bit as an ultimate experience. Your memory of Ocarina will probably always be that, "hey this was a really good game." That was an interesting artifact of history that you played in the year 2007 right after seeing Ratchet and Clank, you know, HD quality graphics on my standard definition set. And so you probably actually haven't experienced the ideal Zelda experience. You're sort of seeing it at the cutting edge of technology [on Wii and DS] and design [on the N64] simultaneously. I don't really know where it sort of leaves me other than I guess I'm looking for new franchises that will feel fresh, and it's not such a terrible thing to feel compelled to look for new stuff.

Croal: But to put a fine point on it because that's what I like to do, you're talking about when it peaked. I mean I would say that what you're actually articulating is that not only has it peaked, but there's been a number of games that you found relatively disappointing since the peak . For instance, if I'm not mistaken, for you and your wife the peak season of "The Wire" was the first season--

Totilo: I think so, yeah, the third season was pretty good too and the fourth season. Everything but the second season--multiple peaks. "The Wire" is a mountain range of quality. But yeah, I think the first season is our favorite.

Croal: And you're excited about season 5?

Totilo: Yes.

Croal: Coming in January.

Totilo: Yes, but I don't know if--I don't know if they can make season 15 and 14, season 12 as good as the first four seasons. Even if, you know, the only thing we'll have to confront is that, if nine years from now we don't watch television and we watch holographic displays and the problem is "Well that great "Wire" season one was only rendered in flat TV panels and we need to find some new way to bring it back." Yeah, I mean I said in our first [round] that some of this may just be a byproduct of me getting older. This is a byproduct of age and it's certainly, you know, as depressing as that thought might be, so be it.

Of course I feel bad for those folks who can't experience the earlier Zeldas in their, sort of in their glory and for whom Phantom Hourglass might be their first. I would just simply recommend get to that Virtual Console, download Ocarina of Time, get through that Deku Tree dungeon the way N'Gai did. If he can do it, you can do it too and--

Croal: Are you saying I'm weaksauce?

Totilo: No, I'm just saying that if you're man enough to kind of deal with the old school framerate and some fairly low res graphics.

Croal: And an old-school controller. Again this was on the original N64.

Totilo: I'm not telling people to go that far. I'm not saying to bust out the rumble pack and, you know, have to blow on the cartridge to make it work. I'm saying Virtual Console. Of course, if you want to play Majora's Mask you do need to go the extra route and get yourself a cartridge and play it on the old system. But yeah I think people should go back and decide for themselves and I would just love to see more people talking about this kind of, this feeling and not be shy about questioning your cherished game series.

It's kind of weird for me to proselytizing about Zelda for so long and then when we finally have a Zelda conversation to be the big Zelda doubter. Maybe it's because I'm always going to be contrary about everything, but I think it really is that I got surprised by this crossroads that I found myself walking into.

Croal: And I think that more people should consider what you said about remaking games and where that can fit in. It's historically been seen as a cash-in and I think that's been understandable because it has been. But because of the difference--because games are built on shifting sands of technology in a way that's different from music and movies--it's a way of preserving the history of great games and sort of bringing them to life for a new generation. Just like there's some people today who don't watch black and white movies, right--and colorizing may have been a bit misguided--but it sort of speaks to that similar thing. So I think that idea that you have, which would be similar to the director's cut re-release of "Blade Runner" or the Criterion Edition of [a movie], I think that's something that game developers should consider, and I think there's money to be made there as well as preserving the history of games for people who may feel like it's too much of a barrier [to] sort of go back to the old controllers and the old visuals.

Totilo: There we go. Well, onto the next round.

Next: We wrap things up with a discussion of the sailing mechanics in Phantom Hourglass--and its bosses. To read Round 1, click here. For Round 2, click here.

***

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

In which N'Gai forsakes the superior Phantom Hourglass on the DS for the troubled Manhunt 2 on PSP, while Stephen berates journalists and developers who fail to complete the games that they begin playing.

In Round 1 of our Vs. Mode discussion with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo (also featured on his blog Multiplayer), we once again admitted to our ignorance of the Legend of Zelda series (and offered up an eminently reasonable explanation as to why games of that type don't appeal to us). Totilo, meanwhile, confessed to a crisis of faith over the fact that the franchise he'd once loved for its innovation was now suffering from advanced genre decline (thanks to commenter ksteshenko for reminding us of that excellent Lost Garden essay.) Round 2 and Round 3 could be considered The Re-Education of Level Up, as our staff underwent a crash course on Zelda classics--Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask--from gaming sensei Totilo, prompting a sprawling face to face discussion about the challenge of keeping franchises of long standing fresh.

In today's Final Round, we bring it home with more analysis (of why the sailing controls in the latest Zelda represent another breakthrough of which developers should avail themselves) and another confession (that we've forsaken Phantom Hourglass for the less-polished Manhunt 2). Totilo responds to this disclosure not with rage, but with sorrow, imploring developers to find a way to DVR-and-YouTube a multitude of games so that completists like himself can school slackers like us on exactly what we're missing. Read on

***

To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: November 1, 2007
Re: Sailing Into The Sunset

Stephen,

At the end of our first entry, you asked me what I thought of the sailing controls for Phantom Hourglass. We didn't get to that in our face-to-face Vs. Mode, so let me circle back and answer your question. I think they're excellent. In fact, they could be more revolutionary than Phantom Hourglass' on-land controls.

One of the shorthand ways of criticizing a modern game is to say that part or all of the game is "on rails," meaning that the player doesn't have control over his or her character's path through the level. By letting us determine the path we want our ship to take, Phantom Hourglass gives us control over the rail: first, we trace a line to set the desired route for our ship, then we switch to the sailing screen where we can look around freely, fire cannons, stop the ship, start it up again, or jump over obstacles. And at any point, we can switch back to the map screen to set a new path. With that simple addition, Eiji Aonuma and his team have effectively taken that relic of videogames past, the rail shooter, and reinvented it for today's players. (These controls seem as though they'd transfer to the Wii pretty effectively; wouldn't you like to see a more open-world version of Rez or Panzer Dragoon that used this mechanic?) I know that you're frustrated by the staleness you believe has set into the franchise, but I hope you're willing to acknowledge the genuine innovation on display here as well.

When you put the sailing controls together with the on-land controls, I think you'll agree that Aonuma and company have given developers a template for third-person action gaming on the DS, particularly the handful who insist on doing first-person shooters on Nintendo's handheld. It's not that developers can't do an FPS on DS, by the way; it's just that I've yet to see a very good one. But as I pointed out in my first email, a 3-D isometric camera can supply a lot of the visceral excitement of an FPS by playing to the strengths of the DS' controls rather than its weaknesses.

Imagine jumping out of a plane in and using your stylus to guide your paratrooper to the desired landing zone in Medal of Honor Airborne: Drop Strategy. Or tracing out the flight path of an airstrike or a helicopter assault Call of Duty 4: Deadly Salvo. Or targeting your enemies with a variety of weapons and Plasmids in BioShock: Damned Splicers. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Phantom Hourglass represents a breakthrough in how to design action-adventure games for the DS. If Western developers follow this template, we could see a flourishing on the DS of brand extensions of the top AAA console franchises, but in a manner that's artistically meaningful rather than a quick-and-dirty cash in. Were I Satoru Iwata, I'd hand out the Phantom Hourglass code to DS licensees for this very purpose.

I know you wanted to hear some of my thoughts about the bosses in Phantom Hourglass, especially since we had some interesting things to say about boss encounters in our BioShock/Metroid Prime 3 exchange. But, true to my word-though not the spirit of Vs. Mode-I haven't gone back to Phantom Hourglass since I swung by your place two weekends ago. Instead, I've been spending my subway commute grimly grinding my way through Manhunt 2 on the PSP, a game that isn't as charming as Phantom Hourglass, doesn't control as well, and isn't nearly as much fun to play-it's not even as good as the first Manhunt. Yet despite all of those drawbacks, I find the squalid fiction, commonplace environments and linear gameplay of Manhunt 2 more personally engaging than Phantom Hourglass. What does that say about me? I'm not sure, but if Rockstar Games ever makes Manhunt 3: Deranged Stalker for the DS, I'm so there.

Still, I'm glad that I played this game and I'm grateful for the crash course you gave me in Zelda. It's clearly an important series whose influence on modern games continues to be far-reaching, and deservedly. Just this week, while I was playing the first hour of Assassin's Creed under the watchful eye of Ubisoft creative director Patrice Desilets, there was a moment when the character gets his sword. I turned to Patrice and said, "Zelda, right?" He nodded. And with that, the gap in my videogame knowledge was closed. Partially.

Thanks, sensei.

Cheers,

N'Gai

***

To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: November 1, 2007
Re: What You Missed

N'Gai,

Wouldn't you know that there is something that makes me sadder than the possibility that the Zelda series and I may be breaking up?

The sadder thing is people who won't finish games. I get it. You were busy. You were preoccupied. Hey, Will Wright, David Jaffe, Cliff Bleszinski and Harvey Smith collectively told me last year at the MTV News Game Developer's Round-Table that they all loved Shadow of the Colossus but didn't even get past the fourth of the game's 16 giants.

I get it. Apparently loving a game--like loving a red velvet cake--is a love that doesn't require consuming the whole thing.
I know that good people don't always finish good games, because there's always some other game that (your tears-inducing words) "isn't nearly as much fun to play" but just happens to have more engaging, squalid subject matter. Or that said good people will always have something new to try instead of playing the old thing to the end.

Still, I think you're all nuts. To which you'll all say, "No, Stephen, we have lives."

It's funny how things work out. You were kinder to Phantom Hourglass during this Vs. Mode than I was. Yet I've been spending my subways rides finishing it, not Manhunt 2. (I finished that one on my Wii on Sunday).

So yesterday, probably around the time you were scaring people in the subway with some virtual bag-suffocation murdering, I saved the seas of Phantom Hourglass from the evil Bellum.

All week I've been e-mailing with some true-blue Phantom Hourglass fans who have predicted that I will eat crow at some point--that I would discover that Phantom Hourglass is most certainly not a mailed-in effort. I don't think I ever said it was, but I do confess that, as I neared the end of the game, I started to think I might have to chomp bird. But not quite.

The thing is that Phantom Hourglass ends strong, with a memorable final hour that reminded me of the late-game surge in quality in Mario And Luigi: Partners in Time. To make a somewhat more timely--and Vs.-Mode-appropriate--comparison it ends similarly to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, with a surprising, radical change to the core gameplay.

WATCH OUT NOW FOR END-GAME SPOILERS.

In Metroid Prime 3 the ending gameplay twist grants Samus a new power. Every time she uses it--and she must use it--it brings her closer to death every time the player uses it. This completely changes how you engage enemies and manage Samus' health. In Phantom Hourglass, the late twist grants you the ability to freeze time and then move Link through time-frozen environments.

END OF END-GAME SPOILERS.

While I question the wisdom of developers burying such interesting mechanics so deep in their games, the existence of such hidden treasures is my motivation to plumb good games to their fullest depths.

There are great things hiding in any game made by top people. See, my faith in the Zelda franchise has been shaken by recent installments, but, oddly, my faith in Eiji Aonuma and his team of Zelda developers have not. I've played their games to their ends and have found innovation beaming through the old frameworks: the implementation of Link's hookshot in Phantom Hourglass in a manner that suggests the potential of a DS platformer comprised of draw-it-yourself tightropes and catapults; the great late-game surprise mechanic I just mentioned; the area of Phantom Hourglass shaped like a video game console; and more.

Surprises and innovation abounded in Phantom Hourglass. There had been complaints about the bosses in Phantom Hourglass and in Nintendo games in general. Phantom Hourglass surprised me by actually offering a couple of fresh takes, including some of the best vertically-aligned boss fights since Kraid in Super Metroid. If you think about it, even though most bosses are taller than the player character, the battle strategies required to defeat them involve horizontal movement. This isn't the case in Hourglass. The game also has a boss that you fight while observing the battle from the perspective of that boss, seeing Link from the boss'-eye-view. And there's a boss that you can only beat by controlling two characters at the same time, something I haven't seen since the Gamecube game Geist.

But enough about what you missed. And enough about why you missed it. Let's talk about a solution. I remain frustrated that it is so hard to share games. I don't mean that I have trouble lending you a copy of something. I just want to share, the way someone might want to share part of this Vs. Mode. I want to be able to clip and send. I wish I could show you this stuff. I wish I could show so many gamers so many of the interesting things I find even in the games I otherwise spend a week criticizing.

And so...I look forward to the day of a gaming DVR-YouTube function that is innate to a console, one that lets me capture anything I just saw or did in any game and send it to my buddies. I don't want to have to wonder if they own a copy of the game as well or if I don't have their 16-digit code. I just want to send them cool stuff. The Saved Films in Halo 3, the capture systems in Skate and Tony Hawk and the screenshot tool in Metroid Prime 3 are all baby steps toward the goal I've set.
Games have dozens of hours to them, filled with interesting moments and notable details. Let's make a way that someone other than me and the Game Intestine guy can publicly get people worked up about them.

I know I got off track here. I was supposed to talk about sailing too. I love it. I loved it even more in Wind Waker because it offered the feeling of exploration in a genuinely beautiful expanse. Am I the only person who didn't mind the game-ending Tri-Force quest? Who actually liked the opportunity to sail for minutes with the music soaring, the sky turning from blue to a sunset orange and pink and the camera, under my control, taking it all in? It's the best use of negative space that I've encountered in a game, this side of Shadow of the Colossus.

I hear that we'll be doing another Vs. Mode soon, and that it will be on a game that has an altogether different but excellent use of negative space. I'm looking forward to that one. Just remember, don't eat the red velvet cake. Not the whole thing, at least.

-Stephen

To read Round 1 of our exchange, click here. For Round 2, click here. And for Round 3, click here.