How Twilight Princess Highlights the Problem with Fan Demand

Game developers don't always listen to fan suggestions, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess shows why that's the case.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is an oddity in Nintendo's storied history with an even stranger backstory. During the early 2000s, many Zelda fans were hoping to see the series adopt realistic visuals and open worlds like many other games of the era. Furthermore, gamers wanted a proper follow-up to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. However, Nintendo intended to steer the series in a different direction with The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, which featured cartoony character designs, a cel-shaded art style, and an aquatic setting that radically differed from the worlds of past entries. Despite receiving a glowing critical reception, Wind Waker was divisive among fans for not being the gritty Zelda game they expected. This mixed response influenced its disappointing sales, leading Nintendo to focus on giving fans exactly what they asked for with the next installment, Twilight Princess.

On the surface, Twilight Princess appeared to be everything that Zelda fans thought they wanted. Its story embraced a bleaker tone and a much more foreboding atmosphere than most other Zelda games. Furthermore, its visuals matched this change with the most realistic art style and character designs in the franchise while taking heavy inspiration from Ocarina of Time. With all these highly requested changes, it would be easy to assume that Twilight Princess is the fan-favorite of the franchise. Instead, it's rarely remembered as fondly as its initially divisive predecessor and its attempt to satisfy fans proved to be its worst mistake.

Twilight Princess Was Held Back by Attempts to Appease Fans

Twilight Princess is full of promising ideas and long-awaited innovations but regularly struggles to give them depth or justify their inclusion in the game. Combat is expanded from prior entries with the addition of unlockable attacks, but most enemies can be easily defeated without ever using these moves. There are a few challenging exceptions, such as the armored Darknuts, the javelin-wielding Chilfos, and the late-game bosses, but these enemies are rarely seen throughout the game. Additionally, some story moments task the player with confronting large groups of enemies, but these are similarly uncommon encounters. As a result, most fights in Twilight Princess boil down to mindless slashing, which makes combat extremely repetitive despite its newfound complexity.

Twilight Princess also tries to deliver a large overworld with vast landscapes and towering structures, but its ambition often exceeds its capabilities. The hardware limitations of the Wii and GameCube prevent the game from rendering large, detailed environments, resulting in outdoor areas that mainly consist of barren, featureless stretches of land. Wind Waker suffered from a similar issue with its vast ocean, but that game's colorful visuals, random encounters, and abundance of optional areas gave players plenty of incentive to explore its world. In contrast, Twilight Princess's muted color palette and lack of memorable side quests (apart from the Cave of Ordeals) left players with a world that's disappointingly drab and empty. Traversing such a world was hardly memorable for players, unlike the unique and colorful realms of earlier Zelda entries.

Most of Twilight Princess's issues can be summarized as failures to balance conflicting design choices. Between the realistic art style being hindered by technical limitations and the low difficulty working against the refined combat, Twilight Princess is constantly at odds with itself. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its approach to storytelling. The game spends plenty of time developing its characters and the world they inhabit, while never holding back on its intimidating villains and constantly escalating stakes. Thanks to the effort it places in its storytelling, Twilight Princess succeeds in its goal of delivering a dark and emotional reimagining of the typical Zelda tale. Unfortunately, this focus on storytelling came with significant drawbacks.

Past 3D Zelda games cleverly used cutscenes to reward players for overcoming a challenge or to introduce the next objective. This approach ensured that the narrative complements the gameplay rather than disrupts it. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Twilight Princess. Regardless of the quality of its plot, Twilight Princess fails to balance the pacing of its gameplay and story. The opening hours are littered with lengthy, expositional cutscenes, with much of the game's first half being spent on one-sided conversations and tedious tasks. When the game does return to its exploration and combat, it still forces players through a linear questline rather than providing the freedom to complete dungeons in the order they choose. The awkward pacing risks turning players off and preventing them from playing the game to completion, which just adds to Twilight Princess's inability to stick out despite its ambitious goal.

There's still plenty to love about Twilight Princess, but its glaring flaws are impossible to ignore when it tries so hard to emulate the franchise's fan-favorite: Ocarina of Time. Its influence on Twilight Princess is evident throughout the entire game, from their shared locations, similar narrative structures, and even direct references that connect the plots and characters of the two titles. However, these similarities end up working against Twilight Princess.

Ocarina of Time is a much more focused Zelda entry with a masterful balance of gameplay, storytelling, and presentation. It may not be as ambitious as Twilight Princess, but every aspect of Ocarina of Time contributes to its goal of immersing players in an imaginative adventure. In contrast, Twilight Princess has trouble unifying its story and gameplay, often sacrificing one to develop the other at different points. By constantly comparing itself to Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess inadvertently reminds the player of how it fails to replicate the success of its predecessor.

Other Zelda Games Prove that Fan Demand Isn't Always Detrimental

Despite its flaws, Twilight Princess is still an excellent game with plenty of strengths that began as fan requests. The realistic art style helped the game form a unique aesthetic with memorable character designs and a bleak atmosphere. Similarly, the refinements to combat helped major battles feel fast-paced and exciting, as well as imbuing many fights with a cinematic spectacle that's rarely seen in the Zelda franchise. As these elements show, fan requests can lead to significant improvements and positive changes but only if the developers carefully consider how these additions would impact the player's experience.

The most recent Zelda games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, use fan feedback as a foundation for more creative ideas. Both titles were inspired by fans' desire for a return to Zelda's open-ended roots that moved away from its stagnating 3D formula. Breath of the Wild tackled each of these requests while ensuring that each new addition served a fundamental role in gameplay. The game's massive open world is dense with collectibles and unique challenges, and the abundance of options for traversing and interacting with the environment ensured that the game's size contributed to its gameplay. Similarly, new mechanics like weapon durability, armor stats, and environmental temperature added to the game's immersion and variety. Most importantly, Breath of the Wild gave players more freedom than any Zelda game that had come before.

Tears of the Kingdom improved on this formula by adding even more gameplay options and challenges while also addressing Breath of the Wild's most common criticisms. New abilities such as Ultrahand and Fuse open the door for an incredible degree of player creativity. Likewise, Ascend and Recall drastically changed how players could traverse the world and solve puzzles. Neither of these games would exist without the series' fans, but Nintendo's ability to transform feedback and suggestions into inventive new ideas was just as essential to their success.

The Legend of Zelda series is proof that delivering exactly what fans want is never as easy (or wise) as it sounds. Both developers and players tend to underestimate the effort that goes into seemingly simple changes like making a larger open world or adding new combat options. Twilight Princess demonstrates how appealing to fans can easily backfire through poorly implemented additions and an overreliance on old ideas. But as the series has constantly proven, the best video game sequels deliver what fans want while also surpassing expectations with creative new ideas.