I would have to say I'd play the Oath to Order.

The Giants' story isn't a happy one: duty led them to depart for the corners of the world, and their childhood friend, feeling abandoned, lashed out. For his crimes, that imp was cast out of the four worlds by the giants. Only the Oath to Order, the promise the giants made to the people--not to the imp--is enough to call them back from their stations.

It's sad that the imp's suffering isn't enough to recall his friends when he believes they have forgotten him. The giants are absent until the day the imp plans to destroys the world, and it's tragic that they return to take a stand against him. But side by side with that bitterness there's a glimmer of hope. No matter for whom the Oath was meant, no matter who the Giants returned to protect, the Oath to Order granted the imp and the giants the chance to make amends.

Sometimes, friendships end for silly reasons: misunderstandings and mistakes, too many obligations and not enough time. We like to think that the strong bonds of friendship cannot be damaged so readily, but sometimes things fall apart. I'd like to be able to play that song, the Oath to Order, to call old friends back, and give people that opportunity to reconnect.

I agree that it'd be a really useless Wii U premiere (but, it's not like all of the Wii games take advantage of the system. Twilight Princess, even, was perfectly playable on the Gamecube (though it was way less cool)). And too, it's true that some of the more ardent anti-Celda people would totally freak. (But I really don't want to bring up that debate here).

But as for being childish, not worthy of the franchise...

I think that most people can agree that the Paper Mario games were never meant to stand beside Super Mario Bros, or SM64, or Sunshine or Galaxy. They were designed to be the fairy tale spin-off, the storybook version where there was room for humour and parody that didn't fit in the original Mario series.

And while I think that Paper Mario should be left untouched by the influence of other franchises, I also believe that Zelda is old enough, and respected enough, that it wouldn't sully anything to have a LoZ game that was fine admitting it was just a game. I don't mean to dismiss the humour present in the Legend of Zelda; the series does a pretty decent job balancing humour with more serious themes of good/evil. But not every game has to have serious themes.

I mean, the franchise is at what? Game 16? 17? (Doesn't feel like recounting....) And people have their favourites and their least favourites, but over all, I think we can agree that the series is still good. Nintendo hasn't lost sight of what the franchise can be, and neither have the fans.

But we do see repetition, we do see tropes which have emerged, workarounds and plot points and look-alike characters which are as much part of the series as Ganon is, but left largely unspoken. I don't have to mention cuccos or Tingle, but smaller things too: robbing shops in the Game Boy games; breaking pots and not being yelled at (most of the time); hunting rabbits for treasure; getting lost in the woods because you were playing with the volume muted (maybe that was just me...); having 3-plus timelines still not be enough to piece the games together... Those are the sorts of details that would shine through in a Paper game.

And at this point, when Nintendo freely plans to cash in on our nostaglia as well as our thirst for new adventures, I think a game like Paper Mario, built on the tropes and the remembrances that won our loyalties in the first place, and that might be better equipped to pass those memories along to younger generations of gamers.... I think it'd be awesome.

(Someday, I'm going to write a short post. I swear).

You flatter me, protorpop.
Maybe some day I'll have enough time to write something legitimate, theory based or speculation (though, like with my ignoring Four Swords in this post, I'm not always an impartial observer and I do have areas where my knowledge is substantially weaker), and I'll look into getting a guest article published here (which sounds frankly awesome; considering how long and extensively I've used this place's wealth of resources), but time is always a rare commodity, and I've other obligations. [And even /considering/ writing up something to try and get put up legitimately would likely first require a greater presence on the forums, and also reading through and considering the whole site's backlog of debates and theories, neither of which I have the time to do properly at present.]
(And now I'm thinking of ignoring my work for the day and reading through that aforementioned backlog. Shoot.)

[Interlude rant, here, my apologies. I'm pretending it's relevant.] If any of you have never thought about it, consider what would become of Link after OOT ends. Raised as a Kokiri but all too aware that he can't be one of them for much longer, not with his Hylian blood, abandoned by his guardian (The Deku Tree, who died in front of Link, after offering the kid a chance to save him and then brushing it off afterwards because it had already been too late), dismissed by Navi (who, despite her annoying qualities, must have been his closest friend) because the job of protecting him was over, trained to be the equivalent of a knight, protecting the kingdom he never really knew existed, and being transported, after he finished the job, to a land where no one knows to thank him because none of it happened yet.
I was so irritated with Majora's Mask for not mentioning it, beyond that one line, (botched, I know, I don't feel like looking it up), 'he embarked on a much more personal journey, in search of a beloved friend...'. If the aftermath of Ocarina, beyond Navi's departure, had been included in the script of Majora's Mask, we would have had a character, a real character---the perfect foil to the Skull Kid, even!

Which brings me to the only truly acceptable way I can think of to give Link a more well-rounded character, which is to give him a backstory that isn't part of the fairy tale. What have we had, in regards to backstory? Nephew to a knight, bullied kid, endearing older brother and slightly lazy grandson, and a village boy, training as a ranchhand?

It's not that Zelda lacks strife or sorrow or morally-ambiguous characters; they're just never close enough to be real. If a medium could be found, I'd like best to see Link made human by giving him a history, rather than a true in-game character--make him a thief, or a brat, or a coward (or something more interesting than a kid who lives in a two-house village). And then use the plot to mould him, to make him into that 'hero' character we can invent our own imagined voices for. I don't want Zelda to be another Fable, but neither do I want to always be bored by Link's innocence.

Or we could bring back a secondary character with purpose. Not just someone needing help, like the princess or Malon/Marin/Romani or Tetra or even Midna. A compatriot--because, come on, who didn't love Ralph? Or the notion of Kafei, however irritating the stupid tasks were? Spirit Tracks operates on that idea, and it's not the first: they did it way back in Ocarina and drove us mad enough that tossing Ruto into bubbles became sport, rather than cruel. If they were to give us a character who wasn't a pain, who we didn't have to carry so much... But NPCs are iffy, and there's no way they could go anywhere near a party system without abandoning the essence of LoZ.

I've been writing for far too long. I'll let someone else poke at my ideas. Yay for engaging posts. Thanks muchly, Wolfess.

[In two posts. Because apparently I talk too much.]
In theory, you make a splendid point. I could cite myriads of RPGs that demonstrate the importance of flawed characters to elaborating and making more true the storyline, and I'd love to see it done in Zelda, which has always first and foremost among my games-ever since I was a little kid who didn't mind cut-out characters and fairy tale endings.

The trouble is that you can't just give him sins or guilt, not without will to exercise them or the words to mope properly. And if we, the players, don't have control over Link's will, then it's not a game--it's a parody of a film; a choose-your-own-adventure novel with a few boss fights thrown in for variation.

The easiest cure is to alter the fact that Link has no voice. He nods, he smiles, he watches in terror as the boss rears its head, but... without that voice, there can be no elaborate character, not in a video game where voice and expression are the only things that are his, and not the player's.

But I can't 100% say that I approve of making Link human, rather than a character in a legend. For one, once a character is decided, the actions he can take are limited: I've played RPGs where some of the actions you can take don't match the character--it drove me mad in Final Fantasy 8--and it always sounds wrong when you have them do something that goes against the grain. If reasoning behind any and all choices is done right, it's fine, but I'm in no way that trusting.

Another reason I shy away from lending him voice is because every one of us has made their own little construct of who Link is-through the imagined emotions we lend him and through every action we take, be it giving the beggar boy a few rupees or stealing from the creepy shopkeeper in Koholint, the one who kills you if you go back. And what if the character they decide on isn't right, because I've already made my character, whether or not the sprite on the screen has the ability to say what I think he would?

I've played dozens of games where the main character has no voice--notably, just about every old-school Nintendo franchise. Mario, Link, DK... It's true in shooters, too, and some RPGs (Ah, Chrono Trigger...)--and only very rarely have I been able to find the character hidden behind the silence. My only real example was in Ocarina, where it wasn't Link's characterisation that won my sympathies, but the realisation of what he would face if he were more than just a rc-drone.

Firefly Fairy
http://i438.photobucket.com/albums/qq110/syniram/fairy.jpg?t=1246933401

mario_mikoto27@yahoo.com

I think I remember that article on the mutual dimension in the split timeline. Any chance you still have a copy of it floating around (or could direct me to where I might find it?) No clue what it was called, so I doubt I could stumble upon it on my own.

[I did not think on spoilers. Whoops. Because of the game's link as 'sequel' it seemed unnecessary. If you haven't beaten it, my humblest apologies. Though, it's not really that big of a surprise.]
The Sea of the Ocean King isn't the same Great Sea as in Wind Waker; they entered another dimension/world when they walked on to the ghost ship. There are hints scattered throughout the game, and confirmed in the post-game ending sequence.

Hahaha! I try; took like an hour and a half to formulate right, but hell, it was a great distraction from real life.

I'm one of those fans that never quite got in to Wind Waker. I agree that the feel of the world was vastly new, and fresh, but I've always been fond of tradition. The part of the game I enjoyed the most was seeing the world beneath the sea: the shadow of that ancient Hyrule.

After I've finished a game, the part I recall most fondly isn't the dungeons or the worlds or the subplots. It's the story. Probably because I write so much. And the games I enjoy the most are the ones that tie back to those older premises, revealed in aLttP and OoT, and even better, the ones that can be linked to the minuscule bits of information found in LOZ and AOL.

And not to say that Wind Waker's story wasn't brilliant, but it wouldn't have been complete if the whole of it wasn't a tie-back to those older games - a "what-if" situation covering a possibility much darker than one would expect, based on the carefree look of the game. Twilight Princess was the same way, though its darker tone was much more overt (which was both a curse and a boon to it. But I don't want to talk about TP versus WW).

Phantom Hourglass didn't have that connection to bring it to life; like the Oracle Games, Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening before it, it's one of the travelling games. And that's fine: variety and deviation from the standard 'Save the Princess! mission' is essential to the franchise's continued existence. But I can't say I'm fond of the notion of continuing to develop one of those worlds. [It should be said here that I'm ignoring Four Swords, which I technically oughtn't be. It's tied to Minish Cap, which gives it an edge up in this argument. But I do my best to forget that Four Swords exists at all, so forgive me for the glaring gap in my logic.]

The worlds of Koholint, Termina, Labrynna, Holodrum (and Subrosia, too), and the World of the Ocean King (notibly nameless, in this list) are well enough, but I don't feel they are designed to be grand enough to go back to: in Hyrule, even as the characters change, you still have the tie-backs to hold the world together. What would Labrynna be without Ralph and Queen Ambi? Or Termina without Kafei and Anju or Sakon and that stupid bird of his?

Hryule has more legends and history than any of those other worlds (and the history, game-wise, to keep them going strong). You knew, stepping into Twilight Princess's version of Kakariko that it was the same village, even if the western twang in the music seemed foreign. Or looking up after exploring the Forest Haven's floor and seeing the Deku Tree - looking more like the Maku Tree with age - you knew that it was the same woods from Ocarina of Time, thousands of years later.

The World of the Ocean King doesn't have that. One could say (mean though it sounds) that the world doesn't even have a proper existence in its own right: like Koholint, it is shown as a dream-world, an alternate existence. And not that that's detrimental in itself, but it certainly doesn't have the depth I feel is necessary to create a path of its own in the franchise. A future-scape game or not, there's not enough history (both in the premise and the franchise) for Spirit Tracks to pull it off well.

Going back to Wind Waker, despite how different the world was, there was that lingering echo of "Hyrule" writ in each island and each people's history. Or in Twilight Princess, which was so obviously recognisable as the same world, despite the grandness of it and the altered hierarchy. That echo isn't going to be there in Spirit Tracks: not like it ought to be. At this point, we don't even know if we'll see familiar names: Mercay Island, The Isle of Frost, the Ocean King himself could all be far away or history. And without those details, those places and stories to tie the game back to its roots, what will be left? The Anouki and the Yooks? Two admittedly novel races, but hardly a good enough summation of a whole game's premise. And even if we do see Mercay, or the Ocean King, in a world so radically different from the World of the Ocean King that we know, how will we recognise them? There won't be obvious clues like background music or stained-glass windows to help us out: one short game isn't enough to ensure the warmth of familiar reunion in places one-hundred years different, especially in a direction of change as radical as Spirit Tracks promises to be.

So, long argument straight: I still don't trust Spirit Tracks, but not because of fear of the 'future' (though, admittedly, an industrial revolution Zelda game is still really creepy). Honestly, labelling it as steampunk helped; I can now keep in mind that trains might not ruin the classic feel of the franchise.

It was good to read an article of yours, pipking. It's been a long while. Thanks for the discussion-fueling post.