vezouta asked:

Another bit of trivia, the bulldog moblins of Spirit tracks showed up in Hyrule Warriors definitive, a Koei developed crossover between Zelda and Dynasty Warriors released 2018.

(In regards to this post.)

Ironically, that is one of the spinoff Zelda games that I have played - and written a few things about too! But I admit I wasn’t looking closely at the moblins’ faces.

vezouta asked:

Well its dumb because the Ocarina of Time remake for 3DS kept the Bulldog moblins. Spirit tracks for DS featured Bulldog moblins as well. Also outside of color, the only difference between moblins and Pig warriors in the switch version now is their ears, lame! Also it comes off as a retcon.

(In regards to this post.)

Ah, I didn’t realize there was more recent precedent for bulldog moblins. That’s what I get for basing my answer off a quick scan of the wiki, I guess :) I have to admit I haven’t played a mainline Zelda game since the original Link’s Awakening, so I’m very fuzzy on the details.

Given that, I agree this is a bizarre and frustrating decision on Nintendo’s part, inconsistent with their own precedent and with the attention to detail the remake otherwise seems to be receiving. Now it bugs me too. :)

vezouta asked:

What also bugs me about the Link’s Awakening switch graphics is the original game had Bulldog Moblins AND Pig Moblins, the remake removed the bulldog moblins so now we just have Pig Moblins, lame Nintendo.

(In regards to this post.)

I didn’t know about that - that is disappointing!

I was ready to get all huffy about how rising costs of graphical fidelity often mean we lose artistic variety along the way, but after looking into this it seems like a much more interesting problem. Maybe you knew all this, but it was news to me - apparently moblins were originally bulldog-like but after a few games became more pig-like. The original Link’s Awakening is one of the few games on the cusp of the transition and so features both the bulldog moblins and pig moblins.

I’d assumed the remake dropped the bulldog moblins to save costs, but it looks like they still get their own model, it just also looks pig-like. You can see on the Zelda wiki - the formerly-bulldog moblins are the current default page image for the Moblin article, while the pig ones are the page image for Pig Warrior.

So this isn’t about costs or laziness - it’s about artistic direction. When Link’s Awakening was first made, moblins could look like either bulldogs or pigs - but for a long time now, they’ve only looked like pigs. I can understand why Nintendo would decide to update the design to bring it in line with what most people today know moblins to be, but I get why it bugs you and I do find myself wishing they’d taken a different approach.

I don’t understand the appeal of the toy/diorama/tilt-shift aesthetic for the Link’s Awakening remake. To me it’s an incorrect nesting of metaphor, similar to adding lens flares and related effects to video games.

Like, when you’re playing a game and it’s raining and some water droplets get rendered on the screen like it’s being filmed with a camera with a wet lens - unless you’re playing a game where the conceit actually is that you’re looking through a camera, this is immersion-breaking, not immersion-reinforcing. Like, I was driving around the city rocking out to the radio and looking for trouble, now I’m apparently… watching a video feed of that happening instead? I’m trying to pretend I’m actually in the world of the game - why shove this additional camera metaphor in the middle and distance me from that world?

With the toys - it’s been a couple of decades since I played with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, but the way I remember it, the fantasy wasn’t “Oh man, what if this molded plastic could move by itself?" It was “Oh man, what if the turtles had these crazy adventures I am making up?” The toys were a gateway, a jumping-off point for the imagination. They stood in for the turtles the way they looked and sounded in the cartoon.

When I played the original Link’s Awakening, it was the same thing. In my head, I was on an adventure on Koholint Island. I was getting to know its inhabitants, bravely exploring dangerous dungeons, and prevailing against monsters in combat. The low resolution monochrome graphics, the tinny chiptune music, it was all a gateway.

Updating the graphics to look like plastic toys makes no sense to me. (I didn’t much care for this approach in Disney Infinity either, though there they at least had the excuse of trying to make it look like your actual figures had come to life in a stylistically-consistent world.) Now the fantasy isn’t being on an adventure, it’s… playing with toys and imagining an adventure? It’s pretending to pretend? Again, why shove this additional metaphor in the middle and distance the player from the world?