…ok, I have a confession.

While the Zelda games are mostly fantastic, there are times when I think, “What were they thinking?”

When we had no idea what to do or where to go in Majora’s Mask…

When Wind Waker had so many side-quests…

When the songs we played in Skyward Sword left something more interactive to be desired…

When they made Navi so annoying in Ocarina of Time…

When I couldn’t find the appropriate bosses in Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link…

When I wanted to attach Link’s Awakening to a grenade… 😉

My point is, there’s an array of things which could be changed, bettered, but that’s kind of how it just works, ya know? You make a game, you can’t make it perfect, so you make it as good as you can and hope for the best. As the Zelda franchise has basically been Ninendo’s flagship because we love it so much, I’d say they generally do a pretty good job. 🙂

There is, however, one game that just stands out to me as being in dire need of a complete rewrite: Twilight Princess.

I must make a second confession here: I am not the only one to think this. Over here on Zelda Informer, you can peruse, at your convenience, the entire spiel which I find myself in perfect agreement with. I know, I sort of feel like a copycat saying this but… really, Twilight Princess is just so terribly flawed that it’s really quite a terrible waste! It’s like they tried to do too much and ended up doing too little. Most of the other games I’ve played or observed could at least keep things interesting most of the time. But that interest fizzles out far too easily in this one.

To fast track you through the problems that Zelda Informer goes through:
How to fix the game (rewriting the plot).
How to fix the villain.
How to fix the final villain.
How to fix the stakes.
How to fix the allies.
How to fix the princess.
How to fix the spirits and sages.
How to fix the backstory.
How to fix the beginning.
How to fix the quest.
How to fix the friend.
How to fix the homeland.
How the game is fixed with all of these put together.

Now just look at that list. I cannot think of another game that had so much and delivered so little solely by failing with the plot. Of course the earliest Zelda games were lacking in plot material, because gaming was still being developed as a storytelling medium. But they were still exciting, especially Link to the Past. After Ocarina kicked the storytelling up a notch, and Wind Waker and even Majora’s Mask continued that, one got accustomed to the higher standards. Skyward Sword raised the bar a little again, but Twilight Princess was a huge misstep, even more so for how very long it was.

So, while I truly do hate just repeating what someone else has already said: the one thing, hands down, that I would change in any Zelda game… is a complete rewriting of the plot for Twilight Princess.