After nearly 40 years, The Legend of Zelda has become one of the most trusted and continuously reliable video game series of all time. However! This industry doesn’t stand still, and with newer years comes newer video game releases — so let’s discuss how this green little franchise can learn from Uncharted. Yeah, you read that right.
What’s the Story, Morning Zelda?
For starters, a new Indiana Jones game is coming out fairly soon—at least at the time of writing—so given all the similarities between these three mega franchises, it should be obvious why this article is being written. Anyway, one of the biggest things Zelda can learn from our treasure-hunting and wisecracking protagonist is a heavier emphasis on the story. Now, say this to any lifelong Zelda player, and they’ll say, “Oh, the story is cool, but I’d rather focus on the gameplay.” Not you? Well, there’s definitely some of you out there that say stuff like that.
Regardless, in Tears of the Kingdom, it seemed like Nintendo’s developers were really trying to deliver a gripping and deep plot with lots of twists and turns but it just ended up being the same exact thing we’ve seen nearly every time. While not a bad thing, for sure, the over-reliance on Sages following the player around made it seem like the team wanted to allow them to speak, but instead, the Sages are just lifeless, boring, computer-controlled characters.
But if you contrast that with Uncharted, specifically A Thief’s End, you can see how a friendly companion can help the player and make the experience less lonely. Whatever the case, it would be nice to have a Nintendo game that fully delivers on its plot instead of the usual “Make it out yourself!” shtick that’s been going on for decades. Is that too hard to ask? Ugh.
A heavier focus on gameplay is definitely needed these days, but titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War Ragnarok show that many developers can have their cake and eat it, too.
Make It Smaller, Please
Another thing Uncharted does very well is the size of its world.
There’s a reason many games that use a smaller map are more replayable: your mind isn’t wandering or getting distracted. In the recent Zelda titles, it seems like the developers are putting too much emphasis on wanderlust instead of just making a fun and digestible experience. So, it would be nice to return to how it was in Ocarina of Time or The Wind Waker when it felt like nearly everything got the same love, attention, and breadth of content. Open-world stuff is great; we love it, but there’s just been too much of it. Does it have to go away completely? No. But a mix of the two might be even better. Again, have your cake and eat it, too, ya know?
This History is a Shadowy Reflection of You…
So, one of the coolest things about video games is that they can transport you to a fictional or made-believe world—sometimes at the same time. In PlayStation’s series, Naughty Dog creates a fictional plot that’s focused on searching for treasure while you’re a rag-tag team of buddies comes along for the ride. It’s that treasure hunting that makes everything even sweeter because Uncharted often teaches the player about ancient pirates and the like. Not that Nintendo needs to turn Zelda into a full-on Assasin’s Creed game because, of course not, that’d be dumb as heck, but it would still be kinda neat if we could see more of something like Kakirako Village with its Japanese architecture, but in more of the world as a whole.
Let’s Learn!
The last thing we’ll talk about today is how incredibly cool it would be if the devs at the Big N could continue with the Indiana Jones influences and maybe even turn Zelda into a treasure-hunting series for a change. You’re already collecting weapons and various armour pieces, so focusing on collecting artefacts could allow for many interesting gameplay ideas. Now, this may introduce some problems for the folks at Sony, but there’s no way they couldn’t work it out. The series already has a story problem, so they could even steal the idea introduced above to flesh out the lore.
Either way, there wasn’t really a point to any of this pointless rambling. But video games are already such complicated pieces of art that talking about them is just pure fun. So, thank you for reading! Let’s hope that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is at least pretty good when it comes out.
