Wednesday, June 19, 2013

A fractured cap for the Triforce quest

If the lack of a sense of accomplishment plagues you at the end of the Triforce quest in The Wind Waker, I think I know why.

The Triforce is an item of such grand legend in the Zelda series that its alleged existence in former games stirred the internet to a fever pitch. Whenever Ocarina of Time's remade, and when the Master Quest was released, there were all sorts of rumours that the Triforce would be obtainable. It's the same thing in Ocarina's Beta Quest, and undeniably one of the coolest things about any Zelda 64 reconstruction project is the possibility that you would be able to get the Triforce.

The one game in which you do get the Triforce, A Link to the Past, has a supremely satisfying ending - and actually getting the Triforce is a major reason for that.

In The Wind Waker, quite obviously, you also get a piece of the Triforce. It's a quest that takes about two to three hours to complete, but the pay-off doesn't match the effort. Yes, you need to get the Triforce of Courage to progress in the game, but the immediate reward is just a cheap little animation. The game jumps to the inventory screen and shows the Triforce of Courage glow while all of its cracks and fissures disappear. This is, plainly and simply, just not enough.

The game's designers went to the trouble to make each piece unique, and yet the joining of them together gets a level of attention dwarfed by even the cinematic of the Triforce of Wisdom reforming:



Suffice to say, a more satisfying joining sequence can be added to the list of improvements I hope to see in The Wind Waker HD.

No comments:

Post a Comment