Most of that time was spend building the engine, and coming up with ideas. Heck, by E3 2009, if you remember, they didn't even have an art style yet. My bad. At the same time though, TP's artwork is kind of gray and dreary. It's the reason why some people seem to think the entire game is all gray. Faron Woods wasn't perfect. But I think it was solid from a level design perspective. Just not as good as the idea of a real, open forest.
This is a little off topic, but as far as the control scheme goes for Zelda Wii U, I think something akin to the Infinity Blade games would work great. While locked onto objects or enemies, they show up on the gamepad, letting you take directional slices or stabs at them. You can retain strategy and immersivness in combat while keeping it from feeling like a total gimmick. I'm new, by the way. Great to be here.
Who says? There is still no real evidence to suggest that they built a new engine. They certainly didn't need to. Using the middleware from AiLive for motion controls (which they did use), and sticking it with a modified Wind Waker engine, or perhaps something newer from SMG. It would have been adequate. And even if they did build a whole new engine, they were working with hardware that they had nearly had a decade of experience with (being that it is just a tweaked gamecube). They would have had plenty of code to recycle. It should have only taken a few months to have something up and running that they could work with. So as for most of the time being spent building the ending and coming up with ideas... there must have only been at most 10 people involved at that stage, because the engine wouldn't have taken that much work... and ideas? What ideas? Actually, they did, hence the concept art they had at that time. The problem was that they felt they needed to do something different/surprising/unique.
If I wasn' If I didn't suck as much at life and had more experience with video games I'd be able to confirm this. From what little experience I've had I would say ArynCrinn seems pretty much on the ball. It probably shouldnt take that long to create an engine. I was a concept artist and I can tell you exactly why sometimes when you look at some ideas they had that seem a lot cooler than the final product, especially like the more epic looking Skyloft. When I was doing concept art they pretty much gave me free range to do whatever came to my mind. Just that I had to make it look original. So I took it to heart and made really cool, highly detailed alien spaceship and building designs. At first they were like , "Dude that's awesome sauce!" But when they actually tried top model my designs they were "Yeah, we're not doing that. Draw something simpler and more geometric."
Lanaryu>Faron>Eldin. Lanaryu had much more content than Faron. If you think Lanayru was rushed, you don't know what you're talking about. Eldin also may have had more than Faron too, but I still found Faron better overall.
Oh shit guys, back on topic. :Get the guy who directed all of Spirit Track's cutscenes back on board to direct Zelda Wii U's cutscenes.
UPDATE: Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass and Skyward Sword. He didn't have a big role in the scenes until the DS games, and only in the DS games. He's just support for the rest.
I don't like cutscenes waring out their welcome. They do just that in ST. Truthfully, PH was better in this category. Those were short and sweet. EDIT: Looks like he did PH. But if both ST and SS were his most recent works, keep him away.
They began experimenting with the direction for Zelda Wii in 2007. They did not even confirm that they would use motion controls until around E3 2009. They almost certainly did not come anywhere close to finalizing the game's core systems until 2010 at the earliest. It isn't necessarily a "new engine," but the modifications certainly took many years to implement, if only because they couldn't get motion controls to work properly at first.
Which left them very little time to actually make SS. Explaining the fetchquests, unpolished graphics, lack of enemy variety, the still, mute title screen, and maybe a few other things. They did manage to produce a great game in that length of time, even though more time could've let them iron these out.
I dont get it why it takes them so long to make a zelda game. They should be more like ubisoft and how they do Assassin's Creed. Not every year though like 2 to 3 years. I just wish that nintendo was more like them. As far as zelda goes, I want to see more depth in story and gameplay. I really like games with such rich stories and that is why I am so damn fascinated with the Zelda series. They deliver every single time for me. And I would love to see a great twist or plot. To where like Link starts off as the hero and becomes the villain in the end. Something happens to him that makes him snap and becomes the villain. That would be awesome.
