The New Zelda

freakonaleash881 writes "IGN is reporting that the new Legend of Zelda for the Gamecube is going to be a cartoon...that's right, a cartoon! It's supposedly showing off the Gamecube's realtime cartoon shading abilities. I just don't know about this..." I think it looks sweet considering the general poor quality of the snapshots. I tell ya folks, the next few months are going to be really exciting for console games with the new Final Fantasy, and the release of 2 new systems.

Re:Cartoony? How disappointing!

[Junks Jerzey]

I'm wondering why they made this choice when developpers all seem to be converging towards more encompassing (and realistic) 3D worlds...

This is not true. The wall game developers are running into (and I am one, not just some lunatic fanboy), is that making encompassing and realistic 3D works takes a huge amount of time. We're talking months and months for one medium-sized level. And that's with 'old' technology, not all the new crazy stuff that's coming out in hardware (programmable vertex shaders, for example). So we're headed toward games that will take armies of people ten years to create. Wouldn't it be better to take a different approach and concentrate on fun?

Here's a link to an article [google.com] that Slashdot ran last year on the subject.

Re:Cartoon Shading, and Dreamcast vs. PS2.

[Jerf]

I don't know the details of the systems, but the cell shading may have been done more efficiently using the Dreamcast hardware (clock for clock), or it may have been done more easily (in programmer-hours). However, both the Dreamcast and the Gamecube are Turing complete... with enough power and patience, any effect is possible on either platform.

BTW, somebody get Taco a DC, now that they're dirt cheap. Clearly his Playstation mania has left him out of some great gaming experiences if he thinks nothing has been happening the past year or two in the video game industry. (Then again, I should thank people like him. DC stuff wouldn't be anywhere near as cheap if demand was as high as it should have been...)

Re:Cell Shading = Old News

[egomaniac]

True, cel shading has been around for a long time (what, ten years or so?). However, Nintendo's take on it is unbelievably advanced, with very impressive lighting and shading -- this makes Jet Grind Radio look like crap in comparison. I think saying that "they're just using the age old method of 'cell [sic] shading'" is doing them a tremendous disservice.

You might as well be saying that we shouldn't get excited about today's 2GHz machines, because after all they're just the same old von Neumann machines we've had for decades, while ignoring the fact that modern machines are millions of times faster and doing tricks John von Neumann never even dreamed of. This really is groundbreaking stuff, folks.