Episode 140 - Broke New Wind - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I was able to do this using only a fraction of my ancestors’
podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! For our annual Zelda title,
we’re going to be talking about Twilight Princess, the game that
released on both the GameCube and as a launch title for the Wii.
We, however, played the HD remake for the Wii U, released ten years
later, so do keep that in mind going through. Twilight Princess is
a Zelda game in its usual form for the most part, seeing Link swap
between exploring an overworld and going through dungeons, with a
host of items and equipment to collect and use. The main thing
separating it, then, from other titles in the franchise is
aesthetic and story and boy does it separate. There is a clear new
direction for the look of this game, with characters being rendered
in a higher detail than was ever done before (or was really
possible before), and between the age of the game right now and the
other elements incorporated into its aesthetic, this gives much of
the world an eerie uncanny feeling. This could be a positive
feature that was gained over time, as the visuals fell from being
“top of the line,” but from the design this feels intentional. The
game is intentionally much creepier than previous entries, with
disproportioned or emaciated humanoid characters and the strange
digital creatures that occupy the Twilight realm, and it helps this
game form its oddly shaped footprint on the Zelda franchise. As far
as the game holds up today, it mostly does, with the dungeon design
being on par with previous titles while containing some real
standout examples, but it stumbles in a few places, the beginning
of the game and wolf Link’s utilization being a few notable ones.
We’re going to be talking about gameplay and the expanded combat
system, how the game’s aesthetic design actually meshes with the
overall series, and we expose the secret inspiration for
Dreamwork’s Boss Baby. Thank you for joining us again this week!
We’re love to come back to the Zelda franchise pretty regularly
because it’s a series that commands a lot of influence on the
industry and inspires a huge amount of argumentation. Is Twilight
Princess one of your favorites, or do you hate it with a burning
passion? Or more likely, do you think it falls somewhere in the
middle for not doing any one thing to an extreme? Let us know over
in our Discord or in the comments. Next time, we’re going to be
talking about a possibly underappreciated (TBD) childhood game in
Space Station Silicon Valley, a puzzle platformer about robot
animals. So if that sounds up your alley, we hope you’ll check back
for that!