Why hasn't anyone made a Zelda killer?

Why hasn't anyone made a Zelda killer?

I mean, how hard could it be?

well start by assembling a team of 300 people backed by one of the richest game companies in the world.

Zelda has brand power, for starters.

Zelda has a brand, money and lots of talented people working on it.

Back in the days of the first Playstation, there was a legit Zelda killer. Unfortunately, it didn't caught.

And I say "unfortunately" because if Alundra had become a rival to Zelda, then Nintendo would have been compelled to be more risky with their franchise.

I've never played a Zelda game.
What makes them so great?
Try to convince someone like me to play one.

go fuck yourself

They have great level design and are extremely polished. Music is pretty fantastic, too. Also, there is a lot of stuff to discover, and loads of little touches and details.

Literally any game released since the 1996

Because Zelda games change all the time themselves, and since there is usually a lot of time between Zelda games anyway, no one thinks you can kill it in the same way you kill a yearly franchise.

They made one 53 years ago.

>extremely polished

The best story, the best gameplay, the best level design, the best music

You're missing out, just about every Zelda game redefines gaming and is an event not to be missed because not only that it innovates but improves upon what is possible today for all games.

Okami is probably the closest thing.

>then Nintendo would have been compelled to be more risky with their franchise.

In what way? Alundra is very safe in its design. Hell, virtually all attempts at 'killing' Zelda have been fairly straightforward in their own right. The actual Zelda series has done far crazier and more ambitious shit than any of its clones has and until recently (with Souls and various open world games) not much has egged it on to surpass its rivals.

Zelda is extremely hard to actually develop, as all aspects of it have to coordinated in ways that few other genres need the same attention to detail to accomplish.

Yeah. They always work as they are intented to.

Ignoring Skyward Sword's combat, but even that is better than its reputation (Skyward Sword's problems are not just its controls.)

It's a great game, but it didn't kill Zelda at all, it paid hommage to it.

>Because Zelda games change all the time themselves

...

Fuck off and go play Zelda 1 and Zelda 3 if you're not into older games the best one to try is Minish Cap sadly its not one of the best.

I think Zelda is unique enough to not have any realistic competition, but generic enough to be ripe for homage, ideas, etc.

I propose a genre of video game called "Zeldalike." Action/Adventure games based around a large open world, isolated dungeons that are solved with items, etc. The best example I can think of that works very well is Darksiders.

Compare Skyward Sword to Windwaker, my man. Especially in 3D-Zelda, Twilight Princess is the only Zelda did not drasically differentiate itself from the previous entries.

Sure, the story of Zelda is usually pretty similar, but the story is just a frame in these games. The level design of the dungeons even changes a great deal from game to game.

Not that user, but they do. They change up the gameplay, graphical styles, tone of the story, the way dungeons are explored. The only thing that the games have in common are the characters and some items.

Changing the setting isn't reinventing the wheel, replace the bird with a boat and they're literally the same game.

Who gives a shit? Zelda hasn't sold well since Twilight Princess.

>What makes them so great?

Nostalgia. That's it.

Yeah, Alundra was pretty good.

I was expecting a mediocre Zelda clone but got a genuinely good game.

Good Action-Adventures, nice dungeons and overworlds, puzzles, good music.
Honestly just play one. Though I wouldn't advise MM as a first Zelda since it is very different. SS and the DS games aren't that good.

For the same reason there isn't a mario killer.

Shitposting aside, they are excellently made games with a lot of care put behind them.

>they're literally the same game.
Not really. Skyward Sword is backtracking gallore, you just revisit the same locations over and over. In Windwaker you usually move on to different islands.

If you only think of Zelda in its mode of transportation, you have a really shallow understanding of game design.

>I mean, how hard could it be?

Make your own game. Find out.

Zelda 1,3 and OoT redifined the codes for adventure games at their release.
And most of the games from the franchise are good.

Gameplay got stale
Tone is pretty much the same except for MM, WW. TP was different too but it was very cheesy, so maybe it took itself too serious.
>The way dungeons are explored
You go into dungeon, get item, use item to get to boss and use it on boss

Elder Scrolls is the natural evolution to LoZ. When your tastes mature you can then go to Ultima. Is this a bait thread

Oh ho ho, snibbety snab.

you are retarded

>What makes them so great

They are made by Nintendo and they literally can do nothing wrong, Nintendo is perfect in every way

well there was okami. That game was amazing.

The things Okami excels at aren't the bits it has borrrowed from Zelda though.

ultimate guide for all the faggots that never played a Zelda game:

do you want a 2D one (top down prespective):
>A Link to the Past

3D ones:
if you have a 3DS:
>Ocarina of Time 3D
>Majoras Mask 3D

if you have a Wii U:
>Wind Waker HD
>Twilight Princess HD

id really recommend to start with a remake since all others can be kinda clunky for todays standarts, also the 4 we have on current hardware are considered to be the best anyways so yeah

>didn't caught

Fucking what does this even mean learn proper English you piece of fucking shit I see dumbass mistakes like this all the fucking time on this board kill yourself you stupid worthless faggot

So how do they keep getting new fans?

Do people just buy in to the nostalgia wholesale?

you need a better story/fantasy
and if you look at all the games trying to build fantasy worlds, you'll understand that's impossible

>a Zelda killer?
Why "kill" an irrelevant series? Zelda killed itself after it went all weird after Ocarina.
Zelda is no longer a household name; it's all GTA and Elder Scrolls.

Dark Souls already killed Zelda ;)

I'm glad you asked.

The most unique aspect of Zelda, and what nothing else has really managed to pull off the same, is how deeply and meaningfully interactive the game worlds are as you explore and re-explore them. They're the kind of games where you keep finding entirely new ways of manipulating things to progress, coming back to old areas only to realize there are whole new aspects or even literal dimensions to the world that you previously had no idea of.

At their best they offer freeform exploration, yet in a carefully structured way, and rich atmosphere with unsurpassed depth of immersion, since the worlds feel like their own complete, self-sufficient reality to be uncovered.

>Zelda
>New fans

Only 30-something old neckbeards continue buying Zelda games.

>Elder Scrolls
You mean Skyrim

Ittle Dew?

It's a shitty game praised my people which never experienced it as a kid (like me) but just follow the hivemind and say it's perfect. People who actually played it while growing up may like it but never would call Zelda games "perfect".

It's like people saying that the Backstreet Boys were GOAT during the 90s, fuck off you underage shitters, go follow your favorite tumblr and reddit sub

Well, the latest game took 300 people over 4 years and they had to create tons of new shit to make that game. So it'd be pretty hard.

>Zelda 1,3 and OoT redifined the codes for adventure games at their release.

Isn't really true for Zelda1, ALttP also just made use of better technology. They did use what was there (Hydlide for Zelda 1, Zelda 1 for ALttP) and really improved upon it.

I agree with OoT though. Its influence on the genre and videogames is just huge and it's still a great game (unlike HL2 which was amazing on release but not so much years later when other games started to copy the "new stuff").
OoT and SM64 set standards on 3D gaming.

WW and TP HD didn't really change that much with the HD releases.
OoT 3D is pretty much OoT 64 (boots being an item instead of equipment is nice but not a deal breaker)
MM 3D has a lot of little changes but you won't notice them unless you played the 64 version.

Zelda 1 and 2 are good (though 2 is different from the other 2D games)
ALttP is probably the best 2D Zelda.
The GameBoy Color/Advance games are also very good.

Ocarina of Time set the standard for all open world RPGs and does everything very well for being the first shot at it. I recently played it for the first time and it still holds up in the times of The Witcher 3 and such.

OoT is viewed as one of the most influencal games.
There is a reason why it's so high up

>unlike HL2 which was amazing on release
It was always shit. Everything in HL2 was already in the original Half-Life. The shooting was always bad. the AI didn't feel as good. Instead of this action game that felt like a movie, HL2 felt like much more like future walking simulators with some cinematic moments in between all the mediocre shooting.

>loads of little touches and details.

I've played a lot of Zelda games and I can't think of any examples of this. Like what?

All these guys are being too complicated, its fun. Reminds you why you started liking games in the first place, for me at least.

This, hl2 was overhyped and didn't deserve the praise it got.

Even doom 3 was better shooter

First thing that comes to mind is how the shop keeper in Skyward Sword is enthusiastic when you walk towards him, and dissapointed when you walk away. When you hit a shiekah stone in OoT with your sword it tells the time. When you freeze an enemy in WW with the ice arrow you can smash it with a hammer. In MM the dog in Clocktown either attacks Link, runs away from him, or follows him peacefully depending of Link's form. Link can pick up the stray cats in Castle Town of Twilight Princess and carry them around the way you actually carry a cat.

Stuff like that is common in Zeldas. It is not major, it does not add anything a lot of the time, but it is there and makes the world feel a little more than a world, and not just like a backdrop video game backdrop.

>playing fantasy games in 2017
We'll soon have flying cars, OP, only sci-fi games matter.

Doom 3 is a good game.
It's just not Doom

Minor stuff like throwing pigs around with your pawns in Dragon's Dogma.

Thanks for your views, I can definitely understand them.

The Darksiders games are amongst my favorite vidya, and I've heard a lot of people liken them to Zelda games or call them the western version of Zelda. From your description I could well see a likeness between the two.

Am I wrong to suspect that there simply aren't too many games like that out there, or they fall into obscurity behind the more well-known brand of Zelda?

Dragon's Dogma is great.

There are a few every now and then, but they either don't hold up when compared to zelda or aren't similar enough to make a direct comparison. Off the top of my head the common comparisons are, Okami, Beyond Good and Evil, Alundra, Gunple, Darksiders, that vaguely arabian themed action adventure game on the genesis, ICO and SotC, Sword of Mana, Ys and Terranigma.

Most of these games sold poorly for various reasons or aren't anything like zelda when it comes down to it. The style of game demands a level of polish to the gameplay, interactivity and artstyle that is hard to compete with and isn't the most popular genre anyway.

...

>forgetting Dark Cloud

IT'S NOT FAIR!! I HAD DUNGEON EXPLORING, AND TOWNS FULL OF QUIRKY NPCS, AND WEAPON DURABILITY, AND EATING FOOD TO KEEP YOUR HEALTH UP, AND A KID HERO IN A GREEN HAT WHO DIDN'T TALK WHY DOES EVERYONE LOVE ZELDA MORE REEEEEEEEEEEE

Why haven't you received a Nobel award yet? How hard could it be?

The only big Zelda clone was maybe Darksiders. And honestly I fucking hated that game. Combat was nice but everything looked bad. War was so fucking bad design wise and honestly level design was much more bland than Zelda. Also Zelda has some feeling of freedom (outside of SS) while Darksiders was much more linear.

Guess another is Okami which might be one of the best Zelda clone ever made. It's way more interesting than most Zelda games with a great art style.

Really the issue I feel is that it's hard making a Zelda game. You kind of need to blend both open world (while not being a sandbox) with dungeon exploring. Personally I like the mixture of combat with puzzle solving and hope BotW somehow keeps enough of the elements I want while not going full on Skyrim which I personally didn't enjoy.

isnt the witcher 3 an actually fun zelda game?

They did, years ago. It's not held in as high regard because it doesn't have 'Zelda' written on the box though.

Shitty combat

These wouldve made killer handheld games if it was made into a series, theyre so light and simple to play, shit, make a more in depth town and loot system with some multiplayer so you can show off your custom town and run dungeons together for more weapons/town items and it wouldve been fa hit. DC>DC2. The aesthetic of 2 was severely off-putting, it went from Ghibli to Disney in style.

>wait for the enemy to lower their shield
>strike
>repeat
zelda isnt much better?

People buy nintendo titles because of the brand.

It's like asking why there haven't been any bomberman-likes all these years. There have been. Tones. Nobody care. Now people are willing to pay $60 for a new one with the bomberman title on it.

Brand is everything.

>The Darksiders games are amongst my favorite vidya, and I've heard a lot of people liken them to Zelda games or call them the western version of Zelda.

This is very much the case, Darksiders is blatantly riffing on Zelda more so than any other game I've played and that will be clear if you do play the series, as the dungeons in Darksiders are closer to Zelda's than any other game's. If you love Darksiders you'd love Zelda. The biggest difference is that Darksiders is more focused on fighting (Adventure of Link is the only Zelda with comparably well balanced combat), while Zelda tends to have much more creative overworld structure with more in depth exploration and NPC interaction, among other things. Zelda integrates things like time manipulation, playing music, taking on alternate identities and things of that nature in it's world interaction, which gives it a leg up over most things that try to take after it but are less ambitious.

I'll give an opinion contrary to others in this thread ad say that the gameboy games (Link's Awakening and both Oracles) are the best 2D titles to start out with, as opposed to LttP. OoT and MM are naturally the best 3D games and the real highlight of the series though, and what you should really be playing.

why would you want to kill shit?

Still waiting for E3. The remasters just made me remember how much I liked the games but I feel they could be vastly improved with simple modern capabilities like more in depth loot, more dungeon designs, character creators and bigger villages, or even multiplayer. I mean Dragon Quest Builders did alright, but the minecraft look was not in its favour.

this

Even if that were to happen, nobody will make more Rouge porn

>Alundra is very safe in its design.
>humans are bad
>demons and stuff doing very dark shit
>2D while being on the era of 3D
>goofy design

LA is a great place to start and easily my favorite game alongside zelda II, but only feels right if you're playing it on a handheld of some sort.

An unpopular opinion would be to play minish cap first.

Because, as much as I wanted to love you, there's nothing about your endlessly repetitive, procedurally generated environments that approaches the beauty of Zelda's intricately handcrafted design.

I'm sorry. I full believe that, had Level 5 combined DC's gameplay style with the world of Dragon Quest 8 and the puzzles and storytelling of Layton, they truly would have had something approaching the best RPG of all time and totally worthy of comparison to Zelda. Instead, all of their talent is scattered aimlessly across several different series, each of which are too flawed and limited to rise up to the potential greatness they ought to be capable of.

Because you need a lot of resources and creativity for that. Let´s say a company make a Zelda-like game, people won´t give a shit whereas with Zelda, even if they make a shitty game they know their fans treat the games as a picasso, with fans buying two copies to preserving it in their own personal nintendo musem.

It´s also Sony fault thought to not advertise adventure games properly, like they care more of "adult" games.

Classic Zelda has plenty of clones. Many of them great games and comercial successes themselves. Is just that classic Zelda was better than those clones.
Aonuma Zelda has very few clones, that's because the series is mediocre and only sells on it's name alone. Modern Zelda clones are flops. See Darksiders (killed Vigil), Okami (one of the nails in Clover's coffin) and Beyond Good & Evil (didn't sell enough to merit a sequel, despite being published by Ubisoft, who loves milking sequels until the franchise dies)

But, like any EU citizen, I have one

BG&E came out the same day as Halo. It's also why Psychonauts didn't sell too well.

I do say LA and the Oracle games are a great start. Wish Nintendo allow Capcom to keep making Zelda games.
Minish Cap issue was it felt kind of...bland. Just your typical 2D Zelda game just with a growth/shrink mechanic. There's nothing really bad about Minish Cap just that there's nothing really great about it.

Combat is only one of the problems TW3 has. Of course SS wasn't perfect but hell, I enjoyed it a lot more than TW3.

300 people + Monolith + other smaller companies for hire was for BotW.
Other Zelda games were made by much less people

>Let´s say a company make a Zelda-like game, people won´t give a shit

A not-Zelda that approached the quality of Zelda at its height would be a significant achievement and would rightly attract favor and praise from old fans. Hell, this exactly what's happening with the Souls series right now, it's becoming popular because it captures the spirit of mystery that the industry had largely lost for almost a decade and brought it back to flourish in ways it never quite had before.

>implying an X-killer has ever been successful
At some point a thing becomes so popular that it can coast by on brand-recognition alone. The only way a franchise can be "killed" is if the people in charge fuck up the franchise hard, multiple times and in quick succession.

/thread

Nah.
Mysterious Murasame Castle is an evolution of Zelda.
Startropics is an evolution of Zelda.
Dark Souls is an evolution of Zelda.
Even Aonuma's Zelda games are an evolution of Zelda (as much as I loathe them).
You could even make a good argument about Metroid Prime or the Batman games being evolutions of Zelda.
Elder Scrolls isn't, but it does share some things with it.

>Aonuma Zelda

Don't shoehorn all the 3D games under that man. Darksiders and Beyond Good & Evil were both very much in the spirit of the 64 games, despite both being considerably more straightforward than the Zeldas they took after. 3D Zelda clones are seldom successful, as creating a 3D Zelda proper takes considerable ambition and the discipline to back it up that almost no other studio has. Old Rareware are the only talent that I'd trust to be able to match up to Nintendo in that regard.

Games like Zelda aren't really considered "Zelda Killers" and are rarely compared head to head but just considered games in the same genre.

The Soul Reaver games were Post Apocalyptic Vampire Zelda but they never felt to the need to put them head to head,

More recently Dark Souls was essentially Combat Zelda. Weapon fighting controls were basically identical outside of blackstab, the over world is Zeldaesque with you unlocking past pathways as you push ahead. The difference it's that is focused entirely on combat.

Dark Could was shit.

This is a difficult question because there is no single entry point into Zelda. LttP is probably the best because it sets you up for all the games that come after it and makes the gaiden games even better in comparison. Starting with LA wouldn't be bad, but you'd miss out on some of the references it makes to LttP. I feel like the Oracles are where you go after you've played all the other 2D games but need one last hit of the good stuff before trying to derive pleasure from the DS games.

If you're under 25, you probably wont understand it. That's not a slight at you personally, that just seems to be the mentally of younger people. Those that were younger when ALttP came out, and got to experience OoT when it was ground-breaking tech understand.

You need to understand the mindset of older gamers. 2-D was gaming before the mid-90's. Zelda was one of the most polished game series at the time. It really set a high standard. And then they made the jump to 3D, and much like Mario, Metriod, and Zelda....they did it so well that it cemented them as what they are known for.

Zelda has great level design, fun gameplay, and enough innovation in every installment that it feels familiar yet new. It's not the end-all-be-all, but anyone who outright bashes it wasn't really gaming prior to 2000.

>Dark Souls was like Zelda

Please stop this.

You can't just "kill" something like Zelda like you can an MMO. People generally only play one MMO, which is why you can theoretically kill one