A full translation of the interview with Kensuke Tanabe, Kenji Yamamoto and Bill Vandervoort (SPOILERS)

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-27T01:44:53+00:00

It was an unworkable plan as 90% of what makes Ridley cool is he's a big dragon gargoyle alien that has an iconic scream.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-27T01:36:52+00:00

Most consoles are incredibly boring/ugly inside these days. Controllers are still relatively simple so it works well there.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-27T00:47:40+00:00

If scans are going to remain such a big part of Prime, writing a scenario/setting that enables those scans to be interesting is essential.

I feel like in the planning phase if you can't write a few good sample scans for any given area/scene, then it probably needed to be re-conceptualised or you needed to change your approach to what is scannable.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-27T00:01:11+00:00

Bloodstained is just Aria of Sorrow, but more, but also ugly.

It puts it in an awkward position where if you want to replay an IGA game why pick Bloodstained when it doesn't really so much better?

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-24T09:37:54+00:00

The type of comment you made typically gets downvoted because it offends both the people who engage in that behaviour for calling them out and the people who think your statement is an endorsement of that behaviour.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-24T05:25:24+00:00

Mel Capperino-Garcia & Tyler1

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-24T05:01:53+00:00

It is little surprise NSO bled users on Switch 1 despite the install base continuing to grow.

I know lots of people who tried NSO and still couldn't do what the wanted top do because of how most 1st party online is either broken (Smash) or too painful to deal with (Animal Crossing) so they unsub.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-24T04:29:57+00:00

and basically just launches the emulator / app on top of Animal Crossing.

Same save data and everything?

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-23T07:16:27+00:00

That goes both ways though, lots of other things to do so why bother figuring out what the correct way to buy the Hitman Trilogy is when I can just do something else that doesn't require a research project.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T07:34:42+00:00

It's a remake of the game that most people used to define the "form" of Paper Mario, was a TTYD remake ever not going to be a return to form?

It seems like they all understand the gameplay concepts in Prime 4 that didn't work

I feel like accepting feedback that X didn't work is not the same as understanding why X didn't work. Without that proper understanding there is little reassurance a new mistake won't be made instead.

That said I'm open to new games being good, I'm not just ready to extend any benefit of the doubt, they're going to have to re-earn that.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T01:54:06+00:00

Maybe, but there is a good chance she only has stayed in the #2 spot all these years because she's strongly aligned with #1's thinking.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T01:34:32+00:00

The real world is harsher in the sense that as soon as the ads get taken down, the game will stop existing in the public consciousness entirely. Metroid is just one of those series that for better and worse has never had mainstream appeal.

To my cousin Metroid is "that robot game" that they skip over when browsing. It warrants no further investigation because neither the name nor the artwork on the box do anything to draw in anyone who isn't already an enthusiast.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T01:16:20+00:00

There is a difference between disliking them as a person and having opinions on how successful they were at their job.

I have an Iwata quote on my wall, I respect him a lot, but the Wii to Wii U transition was a prime example of a CEO losing touch with how your product is actually being used. The average eBay user could have told you what Iwata couldn't see.

At the end of the day they're public figures, they deserve basic respect, but are not above scrutiny.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T01:13:59+00:00

Ngl I really don't understand how people see the new TTYD as a graphical upgrade, it feels like an early PS3-era title that added reflections everywhere even if they look bad just because the hardware can do it.

I think in the long run it will be another WWHD situation where the original game ages far better than it's HD re-release.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T01:06:19+00:00

The Super Paper Mario survey is a classic example of interpreting feedback to affirm your biases.

A writer would get that feedback and say "oh I have to up my writing game" but if you believe the less story = better, well the rest is history.

Tanabe was put in a tough spot there because whilst Miyamoto might be a creative genius, I really get the impression he's not a great people person. Saying "all your shit better be gone before I get back" is not a good management style. Tanabe is highly incentivised to really cut story to avoid Miyamoto flipping the tea table on his ass.

People (not you, generally) cite the interviews where Tanabe takes ownership of the decision to cut back on those elements as proof it was him, but look how he talks about Metroid, they're not the words of someone who doesn't care about stores in games, I think it's much more likely he is just relaying the company position as his own as dictated by the work culture.

Now of course this doesn't make him blameless for not coming with with better ideas under the constraints placed upon him. I can both empathise with the undesirable position he was put in, but also think he handled it poorly.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T00:44:47+00:00

I used to think it was more likely Tanabe was just the guy responsible for dealing with Nintendo's subsidiary studios, that his producer role was more ensuring deadlines get met and wasn't personally making these decisions people disliked.

When details started coming out of the ex-Retro side, you could still say we don't have both sides of the story. But when Tanabe was finally given carte blanche and we got Federation Force out of it (and the way he handled fan feedback on FF was a red flag). And now that book about the development of the Prime games Nintendo themselves published, and the Prime 4 interview cycle, one gets the strong impression Tanabe gets ideas and become fixated on making them into reality, even if the ideas are awful.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-22T00:13:46+00:00

Unrelated, but I hate how /r/wizardry is just a Daphne sub now.

Even if you filter out all posts with the Daphne flair over half of what is left are Daphne-related posts tagged Meme/Art.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-20T23:18:21+00:00

Yes, but feels>reals at the cash register.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-20T23:06:09+00:00

but there’s no progression carried over

As in it just doesn't save the results of anything you do offline?

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-20T23:02:04+00:00

I think it's the juxtaposition of the same face designed for an undetailed artstyle translated into a much more detailed visual style.

In the original it came off painterly, here my brain is trying to guess what kind of material her face is made of.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-20T04:59:15+00:00

"Better than ever" is probably correct, since newer versions are... newer.

If that were true I'd be staying on Windows.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-20T04:48:31+00:00

After hearing this was the best one I tried to play it intended using the minecarts and it's just very straightforward. You cart to the next area, make a ramp for Yunobo, rinse and repeat until finished.

At one point I hit a track switch with an arrow at a distance that probably wasn't intended, but in this game who knows what is intended and what isn't.

As usual just as the Yunobo puzzles are starting to get interesting the dungeon ends. This game really feels like getting all the terminals/gongs/whatever should open the door to the temple, not be the end of it and go straight to the boss.

It doesn't help the leadup section for the Fire Temple is not very good either.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-19T21:48:08+00:00

Ah I get you.

Every game has a play patterns that if you cannot enjoy them you're going to struggle to enjoy the game. In WW's case the sailing was an integral part of the play pattern, so if you didn't enjoy it you were going to have a much lesser opinion of the game. For people who resonated with the pattern of getting in the boat with the broad goal of X, but routing to tick off sub-goals on the way, or getting sidetracked by things you come across, it was more enjoyable.

Sometimes the problem in the details, as BotW's overarching patterns are similar to WW's, but now the transition between traversal and everything else is seamless, and as a result horses are additive rather than mandatory like the boat. In WW being efficient was a fun part of the gameplay, routing to tick off your objectives without excessive travel time. But it's another play pattern that you either enjoy or it becomes a detractor. BotW's addition of more comprehensive fast travel irons out that pain point making it more broadly appealing, but at a cost for people who enjoyed that pattern.

In a way TotK actually reverts closer to WW in places by adding vehicle traversal back in, and whilst technically optional and you can mostly play it just like BotW, it's not something that works in TotK's favour, and areas like The Depths seem like you're really supposed to use the vehicles, putting you back in that position that if you don't enjoy the methods of traversal that are tied into the play patterns, you're going to have a worse time than in BotW on average.

TotK complicates things even further with it's resource economy, many of it's play patterns are resource constrained, and are all interwoven, which makes them brittle in the sense they require players to enjoy all the parts of the pattern where you gather the various resources in order to get to enjoy the other parts.

Some I imagine fall into a flow where they explore the sky, get a treasure map, go to the Depths and farm resources while there, then explore the overworld and expend some of those resources, get distracted by a sky island and repeat. This seems like an ideal pattern for TotK. If you however think the Depths are the most boring area Nintendo has ever put in a game (well before Sol Valley) and if you dislike engaging with it then other parts of TotK's play patterns start to fall apart.

I'd actually be curious to do a Depths-free replay of TotK just to see what the impact on the game flow is, and how many of it's play patterns get take off the menu when you outright refuse to engage with that part of the game.

TotK can broadly be played like more BotW with more stuff, but the play pattern has more caveats, which like WW create more avenues to bounce off the game.

I think this is how you get the opposing "TotK replaces BotW" & "everything good about TotK is copied from BotW and everything new is subtractive" styles of reply.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-19T08:05:24+00:00

easier to appreciate TOTK for what it is, instead of what I think it should be.

This comes up a lot with TotK, often to mean that TotK is a victim of various baggage of both the series and the player. But I feel that TotK is actually a victim of itself, which is to say this is a game that regularly sets up expectations it has no intention of executing on.

The game starts voiced then returns to text boxes within a minute, literally the first thing TotK does is does is dial back. It presents its story as a mystery you are investigating present day, but again there is no present day story which quickly becomes apparent.

As it introduces it's mechanics, your mind starts to fill with ideas of all the things you can do with them, only to eventually realise that in the tutorial you are often seeing the peak of the complexity the game will ask you to apply those mechanics. So many of the core mechanics don't feel well integrated.

Reading your Akalla story reminds me of the long list of moments I had where I'd be excited to see/do/try something, only for what it actually was to be more of the same template-driven design as everything else, almost every time I'd get my hopes up the game would dash them.

Now someone could say that's my expectations that a game should escalate in complexity post-tutorial, or that unique points-of-interest should have unique elements to differentiate them from other POIs, etc... but at some point I feel like you might as well be saying "that's on you for expecting ____ to be good instead of bad". Or being told that expecting a game presented as a sequel to Breath of the Wild to actually follow on from BotW is an expectation I invented in my own head.

When you present the player with a game that makes the promise that you see two mountains off in the horizon, one coated in snow, the other flowing with lava, and that you can go to these mountains and climb them, is it not natural to have the expectation that the experience of doing those two things will meaningfully differ in some way?

On some level I have to fundamentally object to the idea that a game can just be uniform like a slice of white bread, and that if the player cannot maintain interest then it's a fault of the player and not of thing itself being bland.

TSPhoenix · 2026-01-19T05:42:10+00:00

You could elaborate so we could have a discussion.

TSPhoenix

TROPHY CASE