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This is a portion of a massive Miyamoto interview over at Wired. Trust me, you'll want to read the entire thing...
Wired.com: Super Mario Galaxy was also the first time where we saw a story in a Mario game that was more than just window dressing, that was a really interesting narrative. Are we going to see more of that?
Miyamoto: I’ve talked to (Galaxy director Yoshiaki) Koizumi about that a lot, but this time I’d like to go with as little story as possible. I’ve always felt that the Mario games themselves aren’t particularly suited to having a very heavy story, whereas the Zelda series is something that lends itself more naturally to that idea. We’ve differentiated a little bit between those two, because the Zelda games have had an in-depth story whereas the Mario games have not. Mr. Koizumi is the type of person who, whenever we’re working on a new Mario game, he always wants to bring more story elements into it, as he did with Super Mario Galaxy. But in talking with him this time, he agrees and feels that with Galaxy 2, there won’t be a need for as deep of a story.
I think you did see a person carved out of a tree stump in the trailer. That person has a bit of a story.
Wired.com: When I talked to Mr. Koizumi, he said that he would try to sneak in story elements without you knowing.
Miyamoto: Well, I put a stop to that at the beginning, this time (laughs).
Wired: Why did you decide to show that image from Zelda at a Q&A session, instead of the press conference?
Miyamoto: There are a couple of reasons. One is that personally I think the videogame industry has adopted a bit of a bad habit in this idea of announcing games long before they’re ever going to release. I don’t necessarily think it’s the most healthy of habits. In terms of the media briefing itself, for us that’s a place where we’re going to talk about our business for the coming year and the products that we’re going to release over the next 12 months or so. To that end, looking at how many products we have here at the show, we felt that it was important to focus on those products, important to focus on the Metroid announcement, and that the announcement of a Zelda game was not as high of a priority. It’s a particular challenge for me, and the way that I develop games, because we tend to not release games before they’re done, and that makes it hard to announce things very far in advance.
The other reason, relating to Zelda in particular, is that the development of Zelda has been focused strictly on the gameplay structure at this point. We haven’t devoted much in the way of efforts to things like graphical representation, and story, and those types of production elements. Because of that, we thought it was just more valuable to continue have the team focus their energies on creating what will be a very entertaining gameplay system, rather than have them waste their energies creating a trailer to announce a game at E3 very far in advance.
Wired.com: You’ve mentioned that you’re not sure if the game’s going to be MotionPlus or not MotionPlus — why not make it exclusive? Doesn’t it handicap you if you have to make two different control schemes?
Miyamoto: Of course, we don’t yet know how things are going to go. We’re doing our best with what we’ve created with Wii Sports Resort. We feel confident that it’s a strong product and that it will help to really drive the install base of Wii Motion Plus. Hopefully with something like Wii Sports Resort, people will feel like they want to have two Wii MotionPlus units in the house to be able to play that game. But the goal at this point is that we would make Wii MotionPlus required in order to play Zelda.
Story Feedback
I hope Zelda is a WM+ exculsive, if only because it would be a great way to ensure that the "core" don't miss out on Wii Sports Resort
Otherwise, a great interview. ^_^
And I liked the fact that there was story in SMG.
It's odd to me how Miyamoto seems so determined to keep story out of Mario games. (Especially since his big breakthrough came by giving games more story than they had previously.) I get that he doesn't want folks to be distracted or whatever. But I thought the way the story was presented in SMG (the whole watch it if you want to, don't if you don't want to) was a great solution.
I'll say this. I'm gong to want to know why Rosalina and gang are back (assuming the hub is the Comet Observatory again).
At least now he's saying that it can be used for a Zelda game but even there he has apparently tried to minimize story elements too
Some games need it, some don't(with the exception of RPG's). It all depends on the developer, after all. Nothing we can do about it.
"Peach gets kidnapped and saved. The end."
As long as I have fun with the game, that's all I tend to care about in Mario. I will say one thing though: Galaxy 1 did have some nice story elements, though they were still minimal. But still, it's not like Mario is Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, or heck even Ratchet and Clank. Story just doesn't matter much in Mario platformers.
Story works better in Zelda, though, since it is an adventure game after all. The characters in particular have become more fleshed out ever since the N64 days (Linebeck and Midna are two of my favorite recent characters from the Zelda series). Still, similar to Mario, gameplay is what matters most. I will say this though: either give Ganon a damn good reason to be in the game, or don't have him in at all. I'm gonna get the game regardless, there's no doubt about that, but seriously the guy needs a break after having been the final boss in Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures, and Twilight Princess (the three most recent home console Zelda games; this reminds me, just what the heck is Spirit Tracks' story? Does it have Ganon or some new guy?).
Yeah I do like stories in Mario Games, although the Rosalina storyline was a little nebulous I still liked that it was added in. I think that's one of the reasons why I like the paper mario games-there's a bit more to the story.
all in all it's an interesting article
"It's at times like these that I feel Miyamoto goes off a bit too much doing his own thing instead of giving gamers what they want."
Unfortunately, for guys like you, 'giving gamers what they want' isn't Shigeru's style.
BOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo
I know you're going to throw out that "what's the issue with just having the classic option?!" Here it is: In order to create GENUINELY NEW experiences in the game from combat tactics, weapon usage, puzzle solving etc., they need to be rooted in actions and executions that can only be created through unique WM+ control opportunities. Including classic support would then require them to add in generic stock animations and the ability to conquer any part of the game with those animations. I really feel they are going for an ALL OUT new Zelda game here (couldn't be happier), and that starts at control/interface and then creatively bleeds into plot progression, setting, emotional weight etc.
so, BOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo
Exactly, and honestly doesn't the story concepts sound very silly to begin with? You're playing as a plump Italian plumber who uses mushrooms to grow in size, flowers to shoot fire, and he needs to rescue a princess who rules over anthropomorphic mushroom people who's been kidnapped by a creature that looks like a turtle mixed with a dragon. Bot to mention all of the cooky characters and enemies you encounter throughout the series.
But still, despite how silly it is, we still love the series for the fact that it's very fun.
And Zelda should be motion plus exclusive wether the install base is there for it or not. I want to swing the sword!!!
They code alternative methods for those based on what controller the player is using. It might take a month or so to complete, but it would be nice to have the option of playing from your bed.
Yeah, it's pretty nice to just have a fun, simple, straight forward game sometimes. Especially these days, when just about every movie and game has to have the "omg, everyone I thought was on my side all turned out to be septuple agents. Who can I trust?" story line.
Well, I mean... I guess it did if you went and read the story of Rosalina or whatever.
But, I'll be happy with the classic "rescue the princess" story.
read a book or go to sleep in that case, joes actually made me say i couldn't say it better,
multiple control schemes hamper each other
but at least they are focusing onj the Gameplay.
Agreed. If anything, make a side part of the game like the storybook was to Galaxy and explain the other little details of the plot.
Still, there needs to be some story to the game, not just 'Bowser kidnaps Peach and goes into space to create a galactic empire' exactly again. At least add a helping intergalactic villain to Bowser's hand and toss it up abit.
As for Zelda Wii, it has to be WM+ exclusive. End of.
Do you want to know what you would have gotten if they had focused on narrative, story and character development (or lack thereof) over gameplay?
My eyes! I played the demo of that game, and yeah I really have NO intentions of buying it. Luckily the games after it have been way better *hugs Sonic Unleashed*.
I guess you make a bit of a point. People complain about Metal Gear Solid games having lots of cutscenes, but at the same time though the games are also quite fun to play (I own the first three MGS games; MGS2's only real problem was that there were too many Codec cutscenes, luckily MGS3 has more in game cutscenes than Codec ones).
Mario is not about much of anything else, in other words, its how you get there, the Thwomps you Stomp and the coins and stars you collect to get there are all the story I'll ever need to keep playing Mario games. The man knows what makes a game fun for its medium and that sometimes requires difficult decisions about what changes from each installment to the next.
As far as the Zelda announcement, Zelda's gameplay is one of the key points that it uses to convey emotion, establishing the core gameplay elements first will ensure a positively awesome experience once the story and graphical elements fall into place.
Sonic 06 had no focus on ANYTHING and DEFINITELY not story... after all, they realized at the end that the entire thing was crap and erased it from existence.
Still, I'm sure that any story or lack of story they put in SMG2 will be fine.
You don't want Mario to become like Sonic, do you?
Though I will admit I did enjoy SMG's cinematics and the story book about Rosalina's childhood was very sad.
Mario is a cookie-cutter moral*** who does the right thing because it's the right thing and his depth is fine at being just that. Luigi has more depth now than Mario, and I actually prefer that. Mario is not a character I want to associate with. I just want Mario to be Mario and do what he does.
What Galaxy 2 SHOULD have is a few cool barely dialogue driven cutscenes at the beginning, one or two random parts, and at the end, and maybe another narrative like the storybook. An "optional" story. It works fine that way. It pleases both crowds. I loved Rosalina's story and thought it was a really unexpected thing from Nintendo. But I like it remaining a little extra, in the case of Mario.
Zelda is, and should be, story driven. And it still is. They are just focusing on making good controls. And the reason is because they are actually making the first Wii Zelda, from the ground up, rather than taking The Wind Waker's controls, restructuring them, and then mapping them to a Wii remote and adding a few basic motion controls. It was just copypasta without thought. The new Zelda has potential for a good control scheme, especially if they limit it to the WM+.
Personally, I like the variety that Nintendo shows in it's core games when they actually try. Mario being the easy-to-pick-up platformer you can jump right into, Zelda being the story driven epic with cool items and gameplay elements, Metroid being an exploration/action game with platforming elements and story elements throughout. I love it.
@Okari
I have to disagree with you here. And no, I'm not someone who normally parades Wii controls on things (there are a lot of games I would prefer to just have Classic/Gamecube support instead of Wii remote stuff), but I am going to have to say no to classic controls for Zelda Wii.
As cool as it is to play with normal controls again, I feel as though Zelda would really benefit from a perfected control scheme. You don't need to be moving around and flailing to play it, granted, will it be more involved with the sword than TP because of WM+? Yes. But that's what makes it so cool. It's what we originally wanted with TP and more.
Limiting it to WM+ only allows for them to really bring out a lot of potential and set a bar/standard for action games of similar nature, like Metroid Prime 3 set a standard for shooting games on the Wii. This would be great for the console and the series. The option of the Classic Controller greatly limits what they can really do with that because of extra coding that could be spent on more important elements of the game and could hinder the potential of the motion controls.
If they were to ever include classic controls, it should really be the last priority, past WM+, story and overall gameplay (with items, dungeons, sidequests, character development and content overall - things that TP greatly lacked).
i spoiled myself about the mechanism on mario galaxy
and zelda definitely is going to use motion plus.
I couldn't agree more!
Miyamoto is awesome but clearly not a marketing man. The industry, be it gamers, the press and other companies love to know what is coming, hiding stuff only does them damage in the end. Why shoudld third parties care if Nintendo themselves don't? Miyamoto said that Pikmin was coming last year (as damage control), yet here we are with nothing to show for it.
I can understand if Zelda isn't ready, but it better have full M+ support with sword fighting, and naturalistic (Twilight Princess style) visuals that are around 3 times better and makes full use of the Wii.
Actually, I think Miyamoto's genius is at least partially related to giving users what they want before they know they do - You do not get what you ask for, but something awesome you did not even think of yourself.
Hopefully they don't just plop Mario in a hub with a text bubble.
Galaxy's gameplay was great, don't get me wrong, but the game was even better with the very cool opening, and of course the high production values as far as music and all. I wish they had asked Miyamoto if the orchestra is returning.
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