The Legend of Zelda series has always been popular. There is no doubt about that, however is it turning into a money cow to save Nintendo? In the past, Zelda games included a lot of puzzles and you had to figure things out without hints.
In order to reach a wider audience, Nintendo started to change that with Fi. Fi has become somewhat of a controversial figure on several Zelda forums. Personally I think she is great for complete beginners, but more of an annoyance for the “Pro” Zelda players. OoT 3DS has introduced a better hint system so that players have an easier time, this was clearly intentional.
With Zelda games getting good hype, a lot of people are starting to look into them. This is a good thing for Nintendo and the franchise. My only concern is that Nintendo will start using Zelda games as their way to make up for bad sales, or to make more money in general.
When you look at other RPG’s such as Final Fantasy, you can see what happens when you try appealing to too wide of an audience. The content in the storyline starts to suffer, the actual challenge in the gameplay becomes too easy. These are things to be concerned about with the future of Zelda games.
Some may argue that Zelda games have always been easy, if that were true then a lot more people would be playing Zelda games right now. Mario games have always been geared towards a wider audience, because they’re fun and easy. I don’t think Zelda fans want to see their franchise ruined.
Nintendo has done a great job at trying to keep a happy medium, but with the latest sales figures for this holiday season my concerns have begun. Nintendo had a great black Friday this year. They sold a lot of Wii’s and copies of our latest Zelda story.
I hope that the fans in the Zelda community start to put the pressure on Nintendo to avoid ruining the series. I would strongly encourage people to write them emails and we can look forward to new innovations without ruining what made the series great.
[googleplusauthor]So what do you think? Agree or disagree with this article? Let us know in the comments.