In a recent interview, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto stated that he believed something was “missing” in the latest installments of his two most popular series: Zelda and Mario.
That’s right; Miyamoto said that both Super Mario Galaxy and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess were lacking. In what he did not say, but he feels that other leading games have something his do not. He made it clear that Twilight Princess was not a bad game, just missing something he couldn’t put his finger on.
About Super Mario Galaxy, he mentioned, “And while, personally, I feel like Super Mario Galaxy was able to do some things that were very new and were very unique, at the same time, from another perspective, certain elements of it do feel somewhat conservative in terms of how far we branched out with design. And so this is something I've been talking to both of those teams about."
I agree that it does feel like there is a certain lack of a specific kind of depth in those games that we do see in other franchises. On the part of Mario Galaxy, it’s true that design is in many ways responsible, but there’s something else, too. And I have a pretty good idea of what it is. It’s the aspect of each series that has failed to evolve with almost every other major franchise: characters and story structure.
In terms of the depth-of-character, it’s understandable that they haven’t acted until now. Nintendo’s characters are well-known almost world-wide. What if they give Link from Legend of Zelda a personality, and large groups of people say, “That is not how I imagined him!” Besides, it is true, as Nintendo once said, that Link acts as the “Link” between the player and the character onscreen, and if Link had a specific personality people could not project themselves onto him as well.
However, if Link was truly the “Link”, shouldn’t we be able to customize his looks, or at least clothing? Choose in what manner he talks with people, and the kinds of weapons and abilities he uses? No, the games do not attempt to do this at all. Instead, (in the case of Twilight Princess) they give us a world full of characters, bursting with back-story and, in some cases, inner struggles. But when the main character has no voice or personality, the character dynamics needed to effectively portray these events and character aspects are inconveniently absent. The decision Nintendo has made is not like choosing “this” instead of “that”, it’s a complete absence of both.
The “characters” aspect may not apply so much to Super Mario Galaxy, but the “story structure” aspect does. Searching for star after star and unlocking new worlds is a heck of a lot of fun, but it does start to drag. People just aren’t as driven to beat the game as the case with other franchises any more.
Again, they are both great games, but they are missing the kind of depth that other games have. Shigeru Miyamoto is apparently putting a lot of thought into this, so let’s hope he’ll be able to make the right choice, and lead both series in the right direction.
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